More fail and more exploiting the kiddies.

For the first time in 14 years, the number of young people who smoke cigarettes daily in New Zealand has not decreased.

Well there you go. New Zealand is fast becoming a total nanny state, just like Australia and the UK, and they are also discovering, like us, that heavy handed legislation and blatant smoker bashing just doesn't work.

The survey showed the number of year 10 pupils smoking each day was 4.1 per cent in 2012, the same as the 2011 results.

ASH (Action on Smoking and Health) have blamed government spending cuts in tobacco control and inadequate tax increases for smoking rates not decreasing.
If the trend of smoking is reaching a plateau, the government's goal of making New Zealand Smokefree by 2025 may have been stubbed out unless more funding is invested.

And just like in Wales, the only answer the Tobacco Control Industry can come up with is more of the same. It never changes, does it.

Unlike Wales, although I'm sure it's on their radar, the Tobacco Control Industry in New Zealand have brought the children to bear. In my opinion, using children to spread an adult message is the lowest form of campaigning.

Ms Chamberlain said young people and Smokefree youth ambassadors could have a huge impact on their peers when it came to promoting not smoking.

"They have already created smokefree sports grounds, parks and playgrounds, and are looking at making cars that carry children under the age of 16 smokefree as well.

"It's an educative policy, where the public will encourage each other. It's an action moved by the community, and gives people and children the courage to say 'you can't smoke here'."

These are the new Hitler Youth:

I wonder how these kids will feel when they become adults and look back on this? Will they just become the next generation of hateful 'health campaigners', or will they look back with a sense of resentment at the way they have been used?

How many will actually become smokers themselves?

Roncalli College smokefree ambassadors said they had noticed a shift in attitude towards smoking from their peers.
"Smoking has become a really bad look. People are really starting to pick up the fact that it's not attractive in any way," Rhea Coulter said.
Rowie O'Driscoll said it's not just the long-term health problems that should put people off: "Their teeth just rot and they stink."

The trendy face of the young smoker hater

At the moment, the youth ambassadors are targeting primary school children, because future success depends on educating them.

Call me a cynic but spreading the tobacco message to primary school children is probably going to be the only way they learn about tobacco. They could actually be turning them into the next generation of smoker.

The Tobacco Control Industry needs new smokers though, otherwise, it's redundancies all round.

ASH would like to see well-resourced tobacco denormalisation campaigns, tax increases of more than 30 per cent each year and plain packaging of tobacco products.

Of course they would. How else will they keep the tax payer dollars rolling in?

More of the same please.

It seems the Tobacco Control Industry has been failing abysmally in Wales. Smoking rates have only fallen by 1% in the past six years, regardless of almost constant smoker bashing attempts to encourage smokers to quit.

In has been shown elsewhere (here and here) that Draconian anti smoker legislation is simply not working. Smoking rates were actually in steady decline before the advent of serious Tobacco Control intervention.

Since that intervention, legislation and general bullying began, smoking rates have stagnated. The simple fact is, people don't like to be bullied. All those remaining smokers who were thrown out of polite society have said a collective, 'Fuck you', to Tobacco Control and steadfastly refused to quite.

And there's a darker side to this. Since the Tobacco Control Industry turned into the momentous bullys they currently are, smoking and tobacco has received the most air time and more press coverage since tobacco advertising was banned.

Couple that to the attempts to turn tobacco into a taboo subject, hidden behind closed doors and soon to be in plain packs and you suddenly turn smoking from something that kids were once indifferent about, to something their inherently rebellious nature makes them want to be a part of.

So what is the Tobacco Control Industrys response to the poor decline in Welsh smoking?

Smoking ban: ASH calls for more legislation to cut adult rates

Campaigners are calling for more legislation to cut the number of adult smokers in Wales as figures reveal a fall of just 1% in six years.

Got it in one. They want more of the same. They could have taken a step back and had a look for reasons why the current strategy is not working, but no, the current strategy is written on a stone tablet that was brought down from anti-smoker mountain by a beardy guy in sandals. Of course they can't change it, all they can do is demand more.

Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) said the Welsh government must take "bold action" in light of the Welsh Health Survey figures.
Elen de Lacy, chief executive of ASH in Wales, said: "The Welsh government needs to look at banning smoking in cars and around children.
"We need to be thinking about packaging to stop young people being attracted to smoking.
"The Welsh government needs to be taking bold action."

None of this is 'bold action', it's nanny state interference and in the case of cars, a gross infringement of personal property rights.

"We need to be investing in comprehensive quit smoking campaigns, delivering more flexible cessation services and tackling illicit tobacco in our communities."

And that's really all it comes down to. The Tobacco Control Industry needs money and the only place they can get it from is the taxpayer. Nobody is going to donate to them, nobody is going to invest in them, they need your taxes to keep paying the bills.

That's why they will never re-evaluate their actions and consider a more hands off approach. Legislation is their lifeblood.

The Welsh Health Survey also revealed adults in Wales are getting fatter, with three in five adults being overweight or obese.

Oops! Tobacco was supposed to be a unique product. Now it's not even unique in it's own newspaper article.

Friday tunes - Bad day

What a day! My week started out shit and got steadily worse. I hate clients. Can't live without them, can't chin them.



REM are always good too have around when ou feel like shit and wish everybody would just nob off.

I did a quick Google search for songs about having a bad day and someone had suggested Dido. I didn't ask for depressing songs. I feel bad enough as it is without listening to her. Dido is so depressing she makes me want to give her two pounds a month.

I did spot this one though,



I only have the blues today though, not every day. What happens if you play a blues record backwards? You get your wife back, your house back, your dog back....

I have to go for a Chinese meal with the family tonight. I'm not going to enjoy myself!



Well if you put it that way...



Go on then. I'll give it a try. I'm driving though. Can't have a beer!



I'll just have to pick up a six pack for when I get home and hope that tomorrow is a better day.



I know what will cheer me up. Some Friday Funnies.

Hope you had a better day than I did!

The BMA does it again

Just when you think you've heard it all...

...it seems you have. There's nothing new in this 'report' from the BMA. It's the usual socialist cockwaffle.

A raft of coalition policies threatens to have profoundly deleterious effects on children's lives, driving widening inequalities and sending more families into poverty, according to a scathing report by the British Medical Association.

Scathing must be the new word for bollocks.

The report says that cuts to child benefit, Sure Start centre closures, and regressive tax policies, have affected women and children.
This has occurred, it adds, at a time when there appear alarming trends for young people in society driven by poverty and inequality.

Cuts to child benefit and the closure of Sure Start centres is not a government attack on children. It's not the governments place, and by government, read taxpayer, to pay for peoples children. Before making the decision to breed, potential parents should make sure they are financially able to raise their offspring.

'Regresive tax polices, presumably an attempt to reverse Labours policy to take it all and give a little back, may ultimately mean that parents receive a little less state help but it doesn't mean the state is taking more from them.

Women and children may be more adversely affected by the changes but only because Labour encouraged single mothers and benefit dependency. This needs to stop. Doing so is not regressive.

And as for inequalities, life is not equal, life is what you make it. The closest a society have ever become to being equal was Communist Russia. Back then, people died on the operating table when undergoing simple surgery because the drunken surgeons were paid the same as the factory workers.

I say again, life is not equal. If you want the nice things in life you need to work for them. Or at least you should.

Extreme disparities include 250,000 children a year failing to meet a school standard of good development, such as the ability to speak, recognise words and dress themselves, the BMA reports. It says it is not acceptable to fail children on such a grand scale.

Because now it is the governments responsibility to teach kids to dress themselves. Where are the parents?

Even when the government has made the right noises about alcohol and cigarettes, it has drawn back from legislating for minimum pricing and plain wrapping for tobacco, the BMA notes.

What has that got to do with the price of fish? Minimum alcohol pricing and plain packs are just more nanny state nonsense. Collective punishment that will do nothing to combat any of the perceived problems caused by alcohol and tobacco.

Where ministers have acted on healthy eating, they have done so by co-opting the fast-food industry to tackle the spiralling rise in obesity, the group says.

Overconsumption of snacks, fizzy drinks and fast food has caused 20,000 children now starting school to be obese at the age of four.

Bullshit! Excuse my French but I make no claims about his being a child friendly blog. Nobody is obese at the age of four. Utter crap. And again, consumption of food and drink is a personal issue. The BMA only make up bollocks about four year olds being obese so they can campaign for the same type of collective punishment they want with regards to fags and booze.

Some parents may be irresponsible, granted, but that's no reason to tax and regulate the activities of all adults.

Parents must be left alone to make their own choices about raising their children, even if they make the wrong ones. We cannot regulate adults to gain the illusion of protecting a few kiddies. We live in an adult world, not Never Never Land.

Sir Albert Aynsley-Green, the first children's commissioner and adviser to the BMA,

No conflict of interest there then?

said that more worrying still was the government turning a deaf ear to global evidence on health policy.

He pointed out that Canada had recently begun public information campaigns warning that drinking while pregnant increased the risk of brain damage and "the link to criminality" in the unborn child.

Then the Canadians are idiots who watch too much sci-fi.

I'm not going to dwell any further on this article because it descends into unintelligible gibberish. Go read it if you want to, I'll just finish with this message for the BMA.

Stop trying to tax us more
Stop treating everyone like children
Stop trying to micro manage everyones lives.
And above all, fuck off. Please.

What the hell is wrong with this?

Mother who won £700,000 payout when NHS failed to detect spina bifida in her unborn baby faces having to sell home after being ordered to return half the money when he died

The story begins with a headline that screams, look how awful the NHS is being, trying to throw this woman out onto the streets after her child died.

A mother who sued because doctors failed to spot her unborn son was disabled has to sell the home she bought to care for him in because the NHS wants almost half the cash back after he died suddenly.

Deborah Mackay, 33, took legal action against Bedford Hospital NHS Trust after scans failed to detect spina bifida in her unborn baby Calum, depriving her of the choice to terminate the pregnancy.

The Trust admitted negligence and agreed an out of court settlement beginning with £705,000 of interim payments with a final figure to be set when Calum reached 10.

Ms Mackay was free to spend most of the money on a specially-adapted home where Calum could be provided with full-time care.

The sum of money was supposed to be for the childs care. Part of that care was the caveat that she could purchase a house where the child could be raised and adapt it to meet his needs.

She was living in a bedsit at the time. She spent the money on a four bedroom detached house in Clapham:



Totally above and beyond what was necessary.

But she says she can't bring herself to part with the property which is full of memories of Calum - and parting with it would leave her homeless.

No it wouldn't. I'm sure there would be enough left to return to the bedsit. £75,000 according to the article.

This has never been about the money,

Give it back then.