Growing wise to corruption

This post is the result of my last post Tobacco Control in action - harming the people 

It is about my illumination into the world of corruption. It is about my illumination into the world of manipulation of the people by those who have money and power. It is my illumination that ordinary people, even in our democratic systems worldwide, have absolutely no way to change anything because democracy has been soiled by the world of corruption. 

I have blogged often that the trouble for vapers is caused by the way the many tobacco control industries have purposefully engineered society to hate smokers. There are not words enough to describe the fracturing of society that has followed. In the UK here, one simple example of unfortunate outcomes, are the demise of Pubs due to the smoking ban and now the fact that there are thousands of older people who need  costly "loneliness caring" where once they would have been socially nurtured by going down to the Pub.

As I write this, I am listening to the TV on how the culture in the UK "needs to be changed" in its attitude to drinking. Drinking is costing too much. Prevention is better than cure, they say. I point out street drinking might have got worse since the smoking ban since people are out in the streets.

When do we stop winging about the money it costs when we do things to ourselves? Do we ban sports? Do we tell future knee/hip replacement applicants that they did it to themselves by running too much? Do we ban bell ringing, dancing, headphones, motorbikes, bicycles, gardening, DIY? Or any other activity that produces injuries we did to ourselves that cost?

COST. Money. Money. It makes the world go around. I don't have the solution, but it truly is an evil thing. I am no righteous person. I see how it affects one aspect of my own life. I do social networking for tourism to the village I live in. It used to be a paid job. I did it well. But a few years ago, the funding ran dry. I still do the same job (actually the work load has increased because I also work on the website too) but because there is absolutely no reward and I am already a busy person, I do the job very badly - when my guilty conscience makes me uncomfortable! I have grown to hate it. 

So that gets me to Clive Bates Doctors, Smoking and Money.

I have slept on the illumination that, in the UK, doctors who work for the National Health Service (NHS) are PAID to prescribe to their patients. I have looked up how very beneficial my husband has been to our local surgery in earning them money. Overnight several ideas have come to me.

The first is that this system is open to profound corruption.

What a doctor may prescribe is tightly controlled by NICE

How incorruptible is NICE?

NHS doctors are paid to promote treatment.

Illness is a doctor's best friend - every referral/drug prescription gains more cash.

Collecting points is financially beneficial to surgeries, yet might not be in the interests of patients.

How many referrals for further treatment/diagnosis are unnecessary? 

Is data gathered from points registration by surgeries  a true reflection of national health?

Points for the surgeries might feed points for specialists, hospitals, and other services   a sort of points "layer cake"  - everyone conforms at an enormous cost, for simply doing their jobs which are already salaried.

I think the points system is a  perfectly understandable effort to make doctors tow the line and provide proper healthcare to the people. But the discovery of it for me, has been like exposing the Wizard in OZ

So doctors in the UK that work for the NHS, are paid extra if they do their jobs as prescribed. I am sure that being a conforming doctor is worth the effort, and might be done better through it. I know not being paid for all the effort of social networking I do, not for me, but for something else,  has made me a sloppy worker who couldn't give a damn!

But the biggest danger in the practise of paying doctors to conform, reach targets etc is that it makes doctors into robots of the prevailing political system.

Yesterday I wrote Quote - The system of bribing paying doctors to induce fear into people who smoke is evil and it is the way society has been molded into a fearful, compliant, hypochondriac mass. It soils the government, the medical profession, any science that might be extrapolated from data collected from this "points" system, the drug companies and all the many tobacco control industries promoting antismoking that are complicit. It is an immoral use of power. This is politics at it's worst.

Even if doctors were paid to promote vaping. I would object on moral grounds. Paying the medical profession to promote anything - anything at all - is a scandal.End quote

Today, that seems a bit over the top. Yet, yet....something inside of me, my moral compass, is greatly uncomfortable. Corruption is so EASY with money and power.

All that ordinary people, like me, have to fight it with, are words.

Tobacco Control in action - harming the people

This post is the combination of three thoughts that exposed themselves to me whilst reading other people's posts. The first post/paper I  read was  The Scientific Scandal of Antismoking. (see more below) . The final conclusion hit me as being pertinent to what is happening in the Vaping world.

Quote - It may now be apparent why there is such a general belief that smoking is dangerously harmful. There are 3 reasons. First, studies which in any other area of science would be rejected as second-rate and inferior but which support antismoking are accepted as first-rate. Second, studies which are conducted according to orthodox and rigorous design but which do not support the idea  that smoking is harmful are not merely ignored but suppressed. Third, authorities who are duty-bound to represent the truth have failed to do so and have presented not just untruths but the reverse of the truth.

It may be argued that this is news about an old and settled subject. And who cares about smoking anyway. But smoking is really a secondary issue. The primary issue is the integrity of science. This has no use-by date. When the processes of science are misused, even if for what seems a good reason, science and its practitioners are alike degraded. End quote

Then, as I see that antismoking is so very tangled up with vaping and that the promotion of the antismoking ideology, is the complete and total enemy to vaping and vapers and how evil it has been in fracturing society, I was fascinated to read Clive Bates illuminating piece on how doctors have been bribed to promote antismoking and smoking cessation here in Britain. See Doctors, Smoking and Money

His post made me realise how naive I am, how little I truly know, how others like me, get caught up in evil, thinking it is good. The system of bribing paying doctors to induce fear into people who smoke is evil and it is the way society has been molded into a fearful, compliant, hypochondriac mass. It soils the government, the medical profession, any science that might be extrapolated from data collected from this "points" system, the drug companies and all the many tobacco control industries promoting antismoking that are complicit. It is an immoral use of power. This is politics at it's worst.

Even if doctors were paid to promote vaping. I would object on moral grounds. Paying the medical profession to promote anything - anything at all - is a scandal.

This brings me to the next bit of information I found that semi answers my suspicion (and it's only a suspicion because I am not an academic with the power to prove anything) that constant nocebos/negative implications on cigarettes and anti smoking promotions, make people sick. It is really strange that the big smoking generation (mine) are the ones that are living the longest and are causing annoyances because we are not dying. This is supposedly because of better healthcare. Yet a huge proportion of us smoked/grew up in smoking homes. This seems to suggest there IS life after smoking. And something is not correct about things Tobacco Control terrify the younger generation with - like "There is no safe level of smoking" and "Second Hand Smoke Kills". We must be an embarrassment!

So here is an interesting piece of information from Denmark  Frank Davis. Quote - It has already been shown very clearly that health paternalism does not work: Diseases and hospital admissions in Denmark have skyrocketed since politicians began to interfere in people’s lifestyle – with the smoking law in 2007 as the most significant intervention, and with the other health paternalism that has followed:

End quote

Wonder what our British hospital admissions look like? Where can I find out?

Interesting bit in this paper here The Scientific Scandal of Antismoking

Quote And so appeared the results of the whimsically acronymed Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial or MRFIT, with its 12,886 American subjects. Similarly, in Europe 60,881 subjects in four countries took part in the WHO Collaborative Trial. In Sweden the Goteborg study had 30,022 subjects. These were enormously expensive, wide-spread and time-consuming experiments. In all, there were 6 such trials with a total of over a hundred thousand subjects each engaged for an average of 7.4 years, a grand total of nearly 800,000 subject-years. The results of all were uniform, forthright and unequivocal: giving up smoking, even when fortified by improved diet and exercise, produced no increase in life expectancy. Nor was there any change in the death rate for heart disease or for cancer. A decade of expensive and protracted research had produced a quite unexpected result.

During this same period, in America, the Surgeon General had been issuing a number of publications about smoking and health. In 1982, before the final results of the Whitehall study had been published, the then Surgeon General C. Everett Koop had praised the study for "pointing up the positive consequences of smoking in a positive manner". But now for nearly ten years he fell silent on the subject and there was no further mention of the Whitehall study nor of the other six studies, though thousands of pages on the dangers of smoking issued from his office.

What the MRFIT authors themselves had to say about their work was quite different:
 "In conclusion we have shown that it is possible to apply an intensive long-term intervention program against three coronary risk factors with considerable success in terms of risk factor changes. The overall results do not show a beneficial effect on CHD or total mortality from this multifactor intervention." (Multiple Risk Factor Intervention Trial Research Group, 1982)

But in 1990 the Surgeon General published "The Health Benefits of Smoking Cessation" and at last the subject was addressed. The Whitehall study was rejected because of its "small size". A once praiseworthy study had become blameworthy. The MRFIT results were described, this time truthfully: "there was no difference in total mortality between the special intervention [quit] and usual care groups." This and the other studies were rejected because the combined change in other factors - eg diet and exercise - made it impossible to apportion benefit due to smoking alone. End quote

Vaping on YouTube - expect trouble!

Here is a nice link to a "scientific" study, that I predict forecasts TROUBLE for vapers. It will be followed by other studies as soon as the funding is found. Tobacco Control will see that it is.

How will it be used? There will be a flurry of anti-vaping videos promoted on YouTube.  Hundreds of them! In every language. Pushing fear. Tobacco Control will make sure of that.  They have the money. Already, the promotion of electronic cigarettes to the public in the Media will be controlled by new European legislation coming in.

And YouTube might not be exempt. YouTube will conceivably be forced to comply by blocking the new illegal videos or pod casts or broadcasts etc. Who knows?

And I am extra interested because of MY channel "Vaping for the over sixties" which promotes vaping, obviously. THIS little old lady will be exceptionally pissed off if she ever gets picked up by the radar.

 Quote - "This study presents the first surveillance studies of the portrayal of e-cigarettes on YouTube. The results presented in our study highlight the extent of “pro” e-cigarette content on YouTube. It is critical to develop appropriate health campaigns to inform e-cigarette consumers of potential harms associated with e-cigarette use. Further research is needed to evaluate the influence of e-cigarette messages in YouTube videos on people."end quote

If you are interested do read the whole study, or just whizz through the summary..... note - the people doing this study never used the search term "vaping" but used "smoking" - shows what ignoramuses they are. I'm sure the study results would have shocked them even more had they done so!

Here is a summary.... and the last paragraph is key.

Portrayal of electronic cigarettes on YouTube

Background
As the most popular video sharing website in the world, YouTube has the potential to reach and influence a huge audience. This study aims to gain a systematic understanding of what e-cigarette messages people are being exposed to on YouTube by assessing the quantity, portrayal and reach of e-cigarette videos.
Methods
Researchers identified the top 20 search results on YouTube by relevance and view count for the following search terms: “electronic cigarettes”, “e-cigarettes”, “ecigarettes”, “ecigs”, “smoking electronic cigarettes”, “smoking e-cigarettes”, “smoking ecigarettes”, “smoking ecigs”. A sample of 196 unique videos was coded for overall portrayal and genre. Main topics covered in e-cigarette videos were recorded and video statistics and viewer demographic information were documented.
Results
Among the 196 unique videos, 94% (n = 185) were “pro” to e-cigarettes and 4% (n = 8) were neutral, while there were only 2% (n = 3) that were “anti” to e-cigarettes. The top 3 most prevalent genres of videos were advertisement, user sharing and product review. 84.3% of “pro” videos contained Web links for e-cigarette purchase. 71.4% of “pro” videos claimed that e-cigarettes were healthier than conventional cigarettes. Audience was primarily from the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada and “pro” e-cigarette videos were watched more frequently and rated much more favorably than “anti” ones.
Conclusions
The vast majority of information on YouTube about e-cigarettes promoted their use and depicted the use of e-cigarettes as socially acceptable. It is critical to develop appropriate health campaigns to inform e-cigarette consumers of potential harms associated with e-cigarette use.

White feathers for smokers

During the first world war, a marketing technique to get people to sign up for service, was to have young ideologically brainwashed women presenting men, not in uniform, with White Feathers to infuse them with shame. This was done in public so the shame was seen by everyone else too. Men were frightened of actually going outside. To counter this agoraphobia, the government issued badges for those men who had done their active service, or who were home, injured, or were doing war work somewhere, so they would not be given "The Order of the White Feather".

Shame was used as a tool to control soldiers too. There was no bigger shame than running away, and deserters were shot. Conditions of war were hell on earth. People broke under the stress. Those who went insane were considered weak - not courageous. They and their families were shamed. This attitude left a whole generation deeply and irreparably damaged.
 
The marketing of war through shame technique is used by Tobacco Control in marketing their war on Tobacco. They are shame marketers. Sometimes what their White Feather Brigade does, is simply DISGUSTING! They are the ones who should be ashamed.

From
"Oi - stop smoking, you" Taunton hospital gets kids to tell parents to stub out the fags

It is a classic image that dates back to the earliest days of the NHS – lines of nervous fathers-to-be endlessly chain-smoking while their partners are in labour inside. But bosses at a Somerset hospital are so fed up with those soon-to-be dads – and even the women in labour – puffing away outside the door of the maternity unit that they have installed a special tannoy to shout at them to stub out their cigarettes.

The PA speaker system is being piloted at Musgrove Park Hospital and is specifically aimed at the entrance to the maternity unit, which nurses and midwives said was ‘a hotspot’ for the problem.

As well as smoking being banned inside the hospital buildings – as part of the smoking ban – smoking is prohibited across the entire Musgrove Park site, outside as well as indoors.

But try as they might to get the visitors, relatives and patients to stop smoking within yards of the doors, the Taunton hospital is still often surrounded by a fug of cigarette smoke – and the maternity unit is the worst place.

“Despite initiatives and campaigns encouraging people not to smoke on site, and to ask staff to approach smokers on site to remind them of this policy, the maternity unit remains a hotspot for patients and visitors smoking,” said a hospital spokesman.

Hayley Stone, who is the midwife with the special responsibility to get mums-to-be to give up the evil weed, came up with the idea of having a personal announcement system. It is operated by the receptionist to play out a pre-recorded Smoke Free message. When a smoker is seen to be smoking outside the main entrance of the maternity unit, a receptionist can press a button to operate the PA device.For extra-powerful guilt trips, the messages telling them to stop smoking have been recorded by local schoolchildren.

“The idea for using children’s voices for the speaker system came about after hearing that posters using children’s’ artwork, encouraging no smoking, had been positively received when put up in public spaces, such as parks,” said Lucy Rexworthy, whose job is to get people to stop smoking across the whole hospital.

“After a lot of time with Hayley planning its implementation we are all thrilled that the PA speaker system is finally here; and I know that the receptionists in particular are really pleased to have this to encourage people to stop smoking outside of the maternity unit,” she added.

“The Smoke Free team are extremely grateful to all of the children involved in the project and to their parents who helped make it possible. It is hoped that the PA speaker system will have a good and positive impact on eliminating smoking at Musgrove Park Hospital,” she said.

Smoking and vaping WILL survive

As a vaper, I have been in a state of shock that vaping and vapers are being treated just like smokers. As a human who has now reached the grand old age of seventy, I have nostalgia for the past, and the way things were before the Tobacco Control Industry appeared on the planet. I cannot explain to young people how strangely "cold" the world has become; how alien to freedom; how artificial and contrived; how rigid with legislation in many ways - not just about smoking.

I have told this before, but I have never experienced the horrors of smoking in my life. My five children grew up in a smoking home as both my husband and I smoked. In those days, people smoked everywhere, even in front of the cheeeldren! None of our cheeeldren died a cot death (I smoked whilst breastfeeding to keep myself awake at night). None of them has asthma. And none of our cheeeldren smoke!

I think smoking is like carrying around your own pollution chamber. I think cigarettes as manufactured by Big Tobacco have extra harmful ingredients added to them. I think Tobacco Control could have insisted that only real, unadulterated tobacco as it is meant to be smoked was offered to smokers - and that would have been REALLY worthwhile! Cigarettes as we know them today are fake things - horrible mutations of what smoking could be.

I really know this from my own experience. I smoked commercial cigarettes for about thirty years,  Rothmans. When I got to the UK, the Rothmans were horrible! They burnt down excessively quickly, and they left me totally unsatisfied. Tobacco Control's meddling did that! So I switched to rolling my own. For some years I smoked rollies. Then I discovered Natural Tobacco. And switched. In twenty four hours, I could feel the difference physically. It was the same when I switched to vaping. I think it was easy to change to vaping because I was not used to the added chemicals that made my smoking of commercial cigarettes so addictive.

So, I wonder about the insanity of man. How, now that China has signed into The Tobacco Control Directive, banning people from smoking in the street where dogs and children collapse in the pollution from vehicles, and people wear masks, can possibly be considered by any thinking person as "sane"! Is banning smoking in London, or New York sane? Is banning vaping ANYWHERE sane?

I think the world has gone mad. I think vapers will be ground down by legislation. We will enter a "colder", more artificial and contrived society, rigid, joyless, insane. Smoking and vaping will be private pleasures - but they WILL survive.

WE will see to that!