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The following post has been added to the Facebook pages for St Austell Brewery and the Harbour Inn at Porthleven.
Others may wish to comment!


Dear Sirs, I love your pubs. Let me make that clear from the start. One of my favourites is the Harbour Inn at Porthleven. I was there tonight with family who were visiting from the Midlands. Unfortunately, my visit was spoiled by two factors that may make me question whether I shall go there again. The first is that I was unable to converse with my family due to the excessive volume of the televised football. I am not a lover of football, but I don't mind others enjoying it. However, I understand that there are stadia where people can go to watch it. I choose not to do so, since I much prefer a quiet pint of your excellent produce. I do have a taste however for nicotine. I no longer smoke, for I understand that it is bad for me, and might be harmful to others. Instead, I 'vape', that is I use an electronic cigarette, which does me no harm, and is considered harmless to others. But I understand that you have chosen to ban vaping in all of your houses. I accept that it is your right and privilege to do so, but I question your wisdom. Denying me the right to carry out a legal and harmless pursuit is a dangerous bow to the forces who seek to remove my choices. Where the law requires me to desist from an activity, I obey as a dutiful citizen, but when I am denied the opportunity to carry out a legitimate pastime, I am prepared to fight back. Since you have put this ban in place I am sorry to inform you that I shall not be frequenting your premises again as long as this ban stays in force. I sincerely hope that many others will follow my example, and if the Harbour Inn should become one of the 30-odd pubs closing each week, it will be a sad loss to Porthleven, and, I trust, to Cornwall as a whole. Thank you for your attention.

It is a derivative of directly. However here in Cornwall it has a similar meaning to the Spanish manana (tomorrow); it will be done at some point in the future, maybe not actually tomorrow, but soon, at a time yet to be decided, when I get round to it. Heard frequently from tradesmen such as builders, plumbers, decorators etc., when setting timescales for work to be done, or not done. Hope this helps!

If the beeb can look back with affection at the 'glory days' of smoking so might we. There follows an article that I wrote that may mean something to some of our old hands:- 

chykensa I'm working on that, too, Andy. Obviously it's a complex minefield and I don't know yet whether a 'sin tax' is planned for vaping, similar to that on smoking. That was 'justified' by blaming smokers for rising NHS costs (ignoring the obvious savings on OAP, geriatric care, etc.) but they'd find it very hard at present to make the same argument vis-a-vis e-cigs. Perhaps a 'nicotine tax' will be instituted to compensate for lost tobacco revenues, but who knows?

When did they change the law?



“Ignorance of the law,” they say, “is no excuse.” Is there then any excuse for those who make make and enforce the laws to twist those laws until they break? The law, of course, is “a ass” as one Charles Dickens knew only too well. But how well do the authorities know their own law? Pretty well, you might think, since they write it, uphold it, and enforce it.



Let us go back to a basic principle of law, “innocent until proven guilty”. Simple, yes? It is not for the accused to prove himself innocent, but for the accuser to prove him guilty. If guilt has not been proved then the defendant cannot be punished. How does that work with smoking? Let us see.



Smoking has been proved to be potentially harmful to the smoker. It is suspected of being harmful to non-smokers but evidence is unclear. Expert witnesses have been called for both sides, and they cannot agree. On the balance of probability, it has been decided that there may be some possibility of harm from second-hand tobacco smoke by virtue of 'passive smoking', so smoking has not been made illegal, but it has been banned in specified enclosed public places for the safety of the public by virtue of the Health Act 2006. The provisions of this Act prohibit the carrying of lit tobacco products in an enclosed or substantially enclosed place to which the public has access. Note that by this Act smokers have thus been denied their basic right to carry out a legal practice in places where they have a legal right to be, and when no guilt has been proved.



E-cigarettes are not made from tobacco but from metal and plastic or glass. They use a battery to heat a cartridge or atomiser to vapourise a very small amount of glycerine and/or propylene glycol, which usually contains a tiny drop of flavouring, none of which ingredients are tobacco products, and each of which can be found in foodstuffs, toothpaste and many products found in every home. This 'e-liquid' may (or may not) contain a very small amount of nicotine, a plant alkaloid found in tobacco, but also in many common foodstuffs of the Solanaceae family including potatoes and tomatoes, aubergines and peppers, that are not tobacco products by any definition. Typically the nicotine content of e-liquids is between 1 and 3 percent of the volume held in the atomiser, this rarely exceeding 1.5 millilitres (ml), sufficient for up 200 'puffs'. This would suggest that very few e-cigs hold more than 0.3mg of nicotine and any one puff would not contain more than 0.0015mg. Ignoring the fact that one of the first principles of law that I was taught in school was that “the law does not concern itself with trifles”, bear also in mind that e-liquids may contain absolutely no nicotine at all. Thus the question may be asked, is an e-cigarette a tobacco product within the law? And the answer must surely be no, or at worst, not in every case. So should taking a puff from an e-cigarette be covered by the ban on smoking, especially since the vapour is definitely not smoke?



Secondly there is the question of 'lit'. There is no combustion of substances in e-cigs. The e-liquid is gently warmed for a matter of seconds exactly in the way that a kettle vaporises water to produce steam. And steam is all that is released by an e-cig; harmless water vapour. One would think, therefore, that e-cigarettes are outside the scope of the ban on smoking, and can be used anywhere, this being a prime reason for their popularity with former smokers.



The problem is that some people want to use the e-cig to replace the tobacco cigarettes they cannot smoke whilst in places covered by the ban, as is their right as citizens; to do something which is permitted by law, or not forbidden by any existing law. But the tobacco control fascists do not tolerate anyone exercising their rights, especially if it conflicts with their obsessive desire to eradicate smoking, and anything even remotely connected to it. Thus they either attempt to use the law to enforce what the law does not enforce, or to seek to extend the law even against the principles of justice. In the first instance we see bodies such as hospital trusts applying the smoking ban beyond the 'enclosed or substantially enclosed' places specified by the Health Act, in order to include car parks, roadways and open spaces within the hospital grounds, which are in no sense enclosed. Then they seek to extend their ban beyond tobacco products to include e-cigs, thus exceeding both the letter and the spirit of the Act.



The zealots wish to go further, too. They wish to extend the law that they already exceed, to cover e-cigs by declaring them tobacco products, and by doing away with 'lit' to include any means of vapourising, and all this simply to include something that has not harmed anyone! Something that has, in fact, saved hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people from the very thing that the Health Act was intended to fight, the smoke from tobacco! E-cigs are being condemned by association with tobacco, by being used by people NOT to smoke! This is similar to treating as an accessory to murder, a bystander who tried to prevent the murder taking place by removing the murder weapon from the killer! What judge could condemn in such a case, other than one who has total contempt for every basic principle of law?



The zealots argue too that e-cigs should be banned like tobacco because the act of 'vaping' is vaguely similar to that of smoking. Like a motorist driving at 30 mph is guilty of looking like another doing 120? If a man looks as though he is making a bomb, although he is in reality repairing a clock, is he to be considered a terrorist? Is a man carrying a sack guilty of burglary, or a gardener with a spade guilty of preventing a lawful burial? The 'stop-and-search' rules will need to be radically re-written to accommodate such changes! Justice requires evidence of guilt, not of similarity! Furthermore, it is normal before passing a law to circumscribe anything, to ascertain whether that thing has actually done any harm, and to seek evidence of the harm done. E-cigs have caused no harm. Not to users, and especially not to non-users.



E-cigs have been accused of the 'potential' to do harm by 'renormalising' smoking. Surely NOT smoking can only normalise NOT smoking! For many people smoking is actually normal, whatever the purists may believe. But when did the law ever punish someone for having the 'potential' to offend, anyway? Should we condemn politicians for having the potential to make war? Strike off doctors for having the potential to murder us? Punish bank managers for having the potential to rob us? In fact, all the evidence to date shows that E-cigs have little or no potential for harm; in reality they have the potential to save millions of lives, and to end the smoking of tobacco, as the purists seek! The truly guilty parties are those who prevent the good doing good deeds, not the other way round.



So, when did the law change? Was it when ideologists found that natural justice got in their way? Others have walked that route before, and the world was always a worse place for it, not better!

Sorry it's a long post - and if you've seen it before elsewhere, but it tells you a lot about who and what I am!


I am not normally a soap-box orator, but some matters get me fighting mad.


I used to smoke. Over a fifty-year period I consumed cigarettes (untipped and tipped), pipe tobacco, cigars, and even snuff! At stressful times my consumption came close to chain smoking. I must have smoked some half a million cigarettes, and it is well 'known' to the self-appointed guardians of the public health that just 15 cigarettes are sufficient to kill. Statistically, then, it seems that I must inevitably have died at a very early age, however, somehow, I have survived to the age of 65, and gathered some wisdom along the way. That wisdom has taught me that the common man has more common sense than he is given credit for by anyone in the House of Commons! These are the thoughts of one common man on the subject of e-cigarettes, and their place in the new world order as defined by our political masters.


Over the last twenty years successive governments and their paid lackeys in the NHS have mounted a campaign of demonising tobacco, and its ability to offer smokers a little bit of pleasure. They told us how we would all die a premature death (like the smoking icon Winston Churchill or the late Queen Mother?), but not enough of us listened and quit. So they decided that smokers should finance the NHS in its entirety, and introduced swingeing tax penalties instead, But not enough of us cut our losses and quit. So they changed tack; since we were not dying as quickly as they thought we should, we were instead breeding and forcing our children to follow our example, so they banned tobacco advertising, and started indoctrinating the children in nursery school on the evils of tobacco. But still not enough of us quit (or died off), so they offered us help to quit, with support services, and counselling, and nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) in the form of patches and gum, and little plastic tubes that tasted of nothing and just made us look silly. But still too few managed to quit.


Having failed to convince us that we were killing ourselves, the pundits changed tack again, and decided to utilise peer pressure by convincing the general public that smokers were out to kill them all. They pointed out that hundreds of thousands of entertainers, barmaids, landlords, waiters, cinema usherettes, taxi drivers etc. were falling dead all over the place due to 'passive smoking' - well Roy Castle anyway. So they decided to ban smoking in pubs, clubs, cinemas and restaurants, and even some smokers applauded, until they realised that the ban also encompassed ALL enclosed spaces to which the public MIGHT have access, including anywhere where even smokers worked, effectively meaning everywhere except the home. The hospital hierarchies, and bodies such as the rail companies even took the term 'enclosed' to mean 'inclosed', as in anything inclosed in our site perimeter! Indeed, some institutions even seek to prohibit smoking on public roads adjacent to their sites! It seems that a certain village in Anglesey, Llanfair (it seems they’ve rescinded the joke against the English speakers) are even trying to extend the prohibition to the parish boundary. Thus enshrined in law, tobacco prohibition meant that smokers were forced to huddle in doorways and side alleys, where they could be subjected to the baleful glances of the greater British public, who were able to go about their healthful business without being suffocated by the noxious smog they had been forced to suffer for over 500 years.

 

And so the beleaguered smoker was delighted when a new device was developed which gave him/her the ability to take in nicotine without recourse to tobacco, something to do with his hands, something which tasted better than plastic tubes, and which could not possibly cause harm to his children or neighbours since it produced only water vapour - the electronic cigarette, or e-cig. And moreover, since it did not involve lit tobacco, it was (and still is) totally legal to use indoors or out. So he tried it, liked it, and did exactly what the anti-smoking establishment had tried to force him to do for years - he QUIT! In the thousands, the millions, he became a NON-SMOKER! He felt better, he smelt better, he breathed more easily, he had more cash in his pocket, he became a happy VAPER! I know, because I'm one of the number. Personally, I haven't touched a cigarette in five months, and I don't want to! I don't fancy a smoke at all! In fact, I wish we'd had e-cigs fifty years ago!


Then the establishment bigots came back on the scene.

 
"You can't use an e-cig", they said, "because you can't prove (to our satisfaction) that it's safe!". Now, it could be extremely difficult to prove that a car, bus, lorry, train or plane is safe - but when were they banned?  Many people are injured or killed each year by household cutlery or kitchen utensils. Are we to ban their use in the home? No, we teach our children to use them with care, we handle them carefully ourselves, and we do not let young people buy them. Has anyone ever proved conclusively that tomatoes, for example, are totally safe? Tomatoes are one of a family of plants (Solanum) that includes potatoes along with Deadly Nightshade - and, of course, Nicotiana, the Tobacco plant. When did anyone force-feed beagles with tomatoes to see what ill-effects ensued. People in Bunol, Spain occasionally get injured by flying tomatoes; should La Tomatina be banned?

 

"You will cause children to think smoking glamorous, and undo all our good work of juvenile indoctrination", they said. Well, I didn't smoke because I saw my parents smoke. I think I smoked my first cigarette because I wanted to see what it felt and tasted like, just as I tried my first banana, my first sherbert lemon, my first tomato, my first girlfriend! I didn't much like that first fag, but when I started work most of my colleagues were smokers. Seeing them smoking cigarettes made my try cigarettes. My boss smoked a pipe; I tried a pipe. The MD smoked cigars; I tried cigars. If they had been vaping e-cigs, I would almost certainly have tried e-cigs! And, if I had liked it, I might have continued for life - or not. I cannot imagine that it would have made me take snuff, or start chewing Nicotiana stems, or gateposts for that matter. Young people model themselves on their peers rather more than they do on on their elders. But what they experience in the earliest years can affect their later life. Unlike feeding kids sweets and fizzy drinks that might set them on an addiction to sugar, setting them a good example (like choosing safe options, or learning to make their own decisions) may bring benefits in later life. Making cannabis, heroin, et cetera illegal never stopped them being available to young people! Sensible advice is always better than high-handed governmental propaganda and legislation, however well-intended. After all, do we ban children from the beach because of the undisputed dangers to be found there. On the contrary, we explain the dangers, provide them with any necessary protection, and let them enjoy themselves! Oh, if only we could do the same for the common man!

 

"Using an e-cig 'normalises' smoking", they said. What, NOT smoking normalises smoking? E-cigs normalise tobacco? The clean and hygienic vaporisation of water normalises the dirty combustion of paper and leaves? What parallel universe do these idiots inhabit? Oh, Wales, hmmm.... I wonder about this term, 'normalisation'. Does a vote for nationalist Plaid Cymru normalise neo-nazism, which is universally and rightly condemned? Does gay marriage normalise heterosexuality, or heterosexual marriage normalise homophobia, both of which many people will find unacceptable? Does badger culling normalise ethnic cleansing or animal cruelty? Do the words of 'Men of Harlech' promote racial hatred and normalise tribal warfare? Does the game of Rugby normalise violence and aggressive competitiveness?  Does voting someone into power make them immune to criticism, and normalise dictatorship?


When the decision is made as to the correctness of banning e-cigs, let the legislators take account of the views of those who have carefully considered ALL aspects of the argument, not just those who are blinkered by their desire to force their ideology on everyone else. Let common sense prevail, and let the common man make his own decisions!

This was my idea for a letter to Professor West; use it if you think it's helpful!

Dear Professor West,

As a scientist you must be, I am sure, heartily sick of seeing science perverted in the way that it has been in the war on tobacco. For many years now there has been much research conducted into all aspects of smoking; some has been meaningful, but much has been of questionable quality, and even more has been downright fallacious. The purpose of the research has been stated to be for the purpose of improving human health, protecting public safety, and saving life but, as you will know quite well, results have been manipulated, cherry-picked, suppressed and laundered in order to serve the vested interests of those who sponsor the research. The motivations of those bodies may in some cases have been genuine altruism, but there can be little doubt that political and commercial interests have also been served. The net result has, of course, been the gradual stigmatisation, demonisation and segregation of a group once a majority of the population, now a minority; those who smoke tobacco.

We have become accustomed to seeing smokers accused not only of self-harm, but of harming society. In this way, it has been possible for public opinion to be turned against smokers, enabling the imposition of bans on smoking in enclosed public places, and even the extension of such bans to places that were never covered by the Health Act 2006. Not surprisingly, many smokers have sought to quit the habit. Some succeeded by willpower alone, some by recourse to nicotine replacement therapy (NRT), but overwhelmingly successful has been the introduction of personal vapourisers, or e-cigarettes, first introduced in 2005 and now used by some 2 million people in the UK. Most of these people are former smokers, ex-smokers, non-smokers who have eschewed tobacco because of its capacity to harm health. They do not smoke, but they continue to enjoy nicotine in a much safer way for them personally, but also in a way that can have little or no effect on fellow non-smokers around them.

However, the same corrupted science that was used to stigmatise smokers is now being turned against non-smokers, that is vapers. In the absence of any proven harm either to themselves or to society, they are still being attacked by the self-appointed health watchdogs who insist on a 'quit or die' approach, on extending bans to include e-cigarettes, on regulating e-cigarettes to the point that they are forcing non-smokers back into smoking – the very reverse of the stated intention of the anti-smoking lobby!

As a respected scientist, you are in a position to help us correct this lamentable state of affairs. We need people like yourself to help us make known the true science about nicotine usage and harm-reduction strategies so that legislators are in possession of true statistics, valid information and meaningful data when considering new regulations and legal enactments. Will you please be true to your calling, and help us to enjoy our non-smoking lives?