And Still We Stand Back Meekly

I spend a lot of my time reading blogs on the internet. In fact, I read a LOT of blogs that I find on the internet. Those blogs cover a massive range of subjects, from politics, to public health, to science & technology and even some that deal with conspiracy theories. Some I read from amusement, some for information purposes, while I read some simply so I can get an alternative viewpoint that I can try to understand – whether I agree with it or not.

But a common theme that comes through on a lot of these blogs concerns the closing down of different things. There is always some law or regulation being promoted in the news to shut something down. Be it a habit, a behaviour, a certain type of speech, a business, a premise or a political argument. 

Have we really developed into such a ‘snowflake’ world that we have to campaign to shut something down just because we happen to not like it ?  Whatever that ‘something’ may be ?

What happened to tolerance ?    

What happened to common sense ?  

What happened to self-choice/enlightenment ? 

What happened to progress ?

Society across the world is becoming more and more authoritarian. They usually become this way as a result of concerted campaigns by somebody with a bee-in-their-bonnet about some aspect of human behaviour they do not like. More often than not, that lobbying comes from within the ‘Public Health’ lobby.

Throughout the 20^th century, we saw various health bodies lobbying Government to introduce more and more taxes on legal goods like alcohol and tobacco. As the century wore on, those taxes were slowly ramped up more and more until we quickly got to the situation that alcohol and tobacco bought in Britain was far and away the most expensive country. Then others (Australia quickly springs to mind) jumped on the same bandwagon and pretty soon so did other countries. The result being a kind of competition between a number of countries as to who can lay claim to having the highest taxes on these products – all gleefully trumpeted and promoted by the ‘Public Health’ bodies in each of these countries as some kind of achievement. Meanwhile, the people got poorer.

The breweries, the tobacco industry, and the various licensing bodies all offered minimal resistance.

...and the people stood back meekly.

Not content, with pushing up taxes on these products, the next thing that Public Health did was push to introduce a ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces. Private businesses suddenly became public spaces. Instantly, bingo halls, snooker halls, pubs, clubs etc started closing down as a result. In a trickle at first, but the closures are increasing year on year. Once again, Public Health gleefully shouted from the rooftops about how proud they were of their achievements and what success they were.

Jobs were lost, business closed. Yet the breweries, the tobacco industry, and the various licensing bodies all offered minimal resistance.

...and the people stood back meekly.

Now Public Health are ready to go to the next level. Emboldened by their ‘successes’ in tobacco control, they quickly realised they had found a ‘winning formula’. Tobacco Control tactics are quickly being employed to other areas that Public Health can see as attracting more money to their coffers.

They have successfully argued for Minimum Unit Pricing on alcohol in Scotland – though already they are saying that 50p is not enough (we can all see where that is leading). The Scottish LTA has said it ‘welcomes’ the proposals (talk about turkeys voting for Christmas). It is looking extremely likely that same measure will come into force in Wales. It will then be only a matter of time before England also follows suit.

...and the people stood back meekly.

You can hardly accuse Public Health of being short-sighted though. They have already realised that curbing smoking and drinking will have a detrimental effect on their coffers as less and less taxes are raised from these products as fewer and fewer people buy them.

Next April will see the very first sugar tax introduced. This will again be heralded by the Public Health community as a great success. It is only a matter of time before a salt tax is introduced. That will be quickly followed by a tax on fast foods. Hospitals are beginning to refuse to treat people who are overweight. They are threatening to refuse to treat people who refuse to give up smoking. How long before the first mutterings of refusing to treat people who drink alcohol ?

People, it is time to make a stand.

It does not matter if you are a smoker, non-smoker, drinker, non-drinker, vaper, non-vaper, sweet-toothed, non-sweet-toothed etc. They are coming for you all.

The time for being nice and holding the hands of Public Health while gently trying to persuade them 'not to be so silly' and change direction are past. These people are blinded by the fortunes they make by telling us what we can and cannot eat/drink/consume (just look up that astronomical wages these people earn). They are not going to give up those comfortable lifestyles. Most of them seem to spend their lives moving between different public health forums and conferences (nary a week goes by without some form of Public Health conference occurring somewhere), sometimes jetting off to somewhere exotic, but always to stay in plush 5 star hotels at yours (and my) expense. 

The only thing these people understand is when they have the public 'in their faces'. We need to be campaigning for shut-down of a different kind. We need to be campaigning to shut down these tax-spongers who serve no real purpose in our society. We need to be closing down the careers of these people who contribute NOTHING to the well being and succesful functioning of our society. All that Public Health does is close down, or seriously hamstring, legitimate businesses. Businesses that bring money, employment and prosperity to our society. Shutting down Public Health would instantly free up all the resources our NHS needs. Shutting down Public Health would allow business, society and the economy to fully function, unhindered, making a happier and, ironically, HEALTHIER society.

How will you feel in a future where there are no traditional pubs ?   Where the only place you can buy alcohol will be at state-regulated eating premises that just happen to have a bar (and everything you eat and consume in them will have state-mandated warning labels on them). The food they serve will be bland and tasteless because all the nutricious fats, sugars and salts have been removed from the cooking (and eating) process.

Like a takeaway ?  Well you will have to travel several miles to find those as they will all be situated several miles outside of Town (to ensure none of our cheeldren are tempted to visit them) and ALL will be prohibited from selling any condiments with them. All of them will also be subject to stringent tests as to how the food is cooked and what ingredients are used.

If this bleak, sanitised and empty view of the world of the future scares you, then it should and is intended to. Because that is exactly where we are headed in our future if we do not put a stop to it.

EVERYTHING that we eat, drink or consume in that future will massively expensive due to the taxes we will have to pay on them (they will have to find the money to fund our ‘dear old NHS’ from somewhere once the taxes from tobacco and alcohol dry up).

It is time that we realised that Public Health are NOT our friends. Public Health has very little to do with actual health. It is ALL simply an ideology. All that Public Health is concerned with is the accumulation of more and more money to oil the carefully lubricated wheels of their fake industry. Public Health has grown from a tiny enterprise at the start of the 20^th Century into a massive behemoth that rivals any so-called ‘Big Business’ they rail against in size. 

The difference is that Big Buinesses make their own money by making and selling us products that we actually want. Public Health on the other hand makes no money whatsoever and is actually a considerable DRAIN on our society. Their aim is to deny us the products that we actually want.

For proof, simply look at the money that is poured into the various public health bodies in the UK alone. Every single penny that they receive is given to them by the government, and every single one of those pennies the Government has taken from us – forcibly. Then when you have looked closely at the money poured into the UK Public Health bodies (and wept), take a look at the absolutely eye-watering amounts of money our Government give annually to the World Health Organisation, then multiply that with the number of countries that exist in the world (and also contribute to the WHO) to see an astronomical sum of money that even the largest business corporations on the planet could only dream of generating.

Do NOT expect anyone else to do this for you. As we have already seen in the tobacco and alcohol industries, those business will not stand up for us. They will just surrender meekly and kow-tow to what the Public Health lobbies want to do.

Public Health is a massive (and world-wide) scam. A massive Ponzi scheme that can be brought crashing down by we, the people, simply waking up. It is an industrial scale con-trick and it is about time we woke from our slumbers and claimed our lives back.

How Your Taxes Are Spent

I picked up on a quite breathtaking tweet of hypocracy today by those known tax-spongers over at ASH. It was the following:

Can you see the fatal flaw in their logic above ?

Yep, ASH are (once again) making the claim that all smokers want to quit (ignoring the pleasure principle) and that is a 'powerful justification' for high taxes on cigarettes and smoking bans in public spaces and the workplace.

Actually, they have probably missed a trick there because 'Love Island' is a reality TV show (as I understand it) and therefore technically all of the contestants in Love Island are in a  work environment so should not be smoking as it is a workplace. But I digress....

Anyway, back to the subject matter. Looking at the picture in the tweet above, it would seem that all the participants are quite young (though technically anyone under 50yo is 'young' to me), but certainly adults, and so I think it is pretty safe to conclude that they are all well aware of the supposed dangers of smoking and yet choose to do so anyway. Why ?   Because they enjoy it (something that the likes of ASH simply cannot get their heads around). So, given they know the dangers but still choose to smoke, I cannot see why it is any business of ASH to go around criticising them for that choice. Especially as Love Island supposed to be a REALITY TV show.

In REALITY, people smoke, get over it. Why shouldn't the programme makers not feature a NORMAL and LEGAL activity like smoking ?

However, the real breathtaking hypocracy comes in the article they refer to in the tweet.

First of all, the headline of the article:

Love Island sends out 'dangerous message that smoking is somehow harmless and innocent'

Really ?   Now I admit that I have not watched Love Island (not am I ever likely to watch such reality TV dross), but I am pretty sure that no such message was transmitted. No, what the show did was to feature several young adults who happen to enjoy smoking, enjoying smoking. All while having what I am sure they considered to be meaningful conversation and, dare I say it, FUN !!

But then when we read further into this article, what we find is that 'researchers' (which means busybodies with a preconceived agenda) from the Universities of Bath and Nottingham 'conducted a study'. Yep, here is your hard-earned taxes being spent meaningfully by a bunch of 'researchers' spending hours and hours watching Love Island and being paid for it (nice work if you can get it - and if you happen to like Love Island I suppose).

So what did their 'research' discover ?

• The 21 episodes included 204 intervals of tobacco related content - 20 per cent of the total across series 3.

21 episodes ?    Assuming that each episode is at least 1 hour in duration, that means these 'researchers' spent at least 21 hours (each) watching Love Island (all paid for by yours, and mine, taxes). Of course we can also assume they were making copious notes and pausing/rewinding various parts during viewing so can easily add on a few extra hours on top of that. Plus of course, they still had to write it all up at the end of their 'research'. Enjoying how your taxes are being spent so far ?

• Actual tobacco use appeared in 66 (7 per cent) intervals, and usually involved cigarette smoking by one person; smoking by several people occurred in 10 intervals.

Wow, the gall of these young people. They did normal everyday things that normal people do everyday, not just by themselves, but they actually had the audacity to do it in groups - and probably enjoyed it too. I can imagine these 'researchers' positively wetted themselves in apoplexy

• Implied tobacco use occurred in 104 (10 per cent) intervals, and paraphernalia in 143 (14 per cent). This last most often involved plain white cigarette packs (117 intervals), with up to eight visible in any one interval.

How the fuck does one 'imply' tobacco use ?   You either use tobacco or you don't. The implication from the 'research' is that very soon they will lobbying for a law prohibiting people even discussing smoking. Anyway, surely the fact that there were 'plain white cigarette packs' on display is a cause for celebration for the likes of ASH as that is something they actually wanted ?

• Branding was visible in 16 (1.6 per cent) intervals, and involved just one brand, which was clearly identified from the logo on the cigarette as Lucky Strike Double Click, a brand that is not widely available in the UK.

Branding was visible on the cigarettes, 'a brand that is not widely available in the UK'. Oh the shock and horror that Tobacco Control had to have evidence, on the TV no less, that there is a thriving black market for tobacco out there. Tobacco Control keep telling us that black market does exist and that is why their calls for further increases in tobacco excise duty are justified. The last thing Tobacco Control want is for clear evidence of the black market to be shown on prime-time TV. Oh the horror !!

• Following widespread media criticism of high levels of smoking in the June 19 episode, tobacco content fell significantly from 12.4 intervals per episode to 8.4 and actual tobacco use from 4.9 intervals to 2.3.

Now call me cynical, but I bet the 'widespread media criticism' came from Tobacco Control themselves, using their contacts in the media to highlight this. I am willing to bet that very few members of the public actually bothered to complain or criticise any episode on this matter. The simple fact is that the majority of the public just do not care. Especially so when said smoking is on the TV and therefore not likely to impinge on anyone.

• When all the data were combined with audience viewing figures and population estimates, the researchers calculated that the 21 episodes delivered 559 overall tobacco ‘impressions’ to the UK population, including 47 million to children under the age of 16.

 Erm, isn't Love Island considered an 'adult' reality TV show and surely it is therefore shown after the 9pm watershed ?   So what were 'children' under 16 doing watching the show ?  Furthermore, I would bet most children under 16 regularly see normal people smoking every single day of their lives. Smokers are not difficult to find. You can find them gathered together, often in groups, outside just about any public building, but especially outside of pubs which is where Tobacco Control sent them all as a result of the 2007 smoking ban. So seeing somebody smoking on TV is hardly likely to add to that as it is already 'normal' in their eyes.

• Tobacco impressions were highest among the 16-34 age group, averaging 6.95 per head, and twice as high among women as they were among men. The episodes delivered 44 million impressions of branded tobacco products, including 4 million to children.

How do you do an 'impression' of tobacco ?   Did the contestants on Love Island stand around painting themselves bright white while setting fire to their hair in front of the camera ?   To do 44 million such impressions must have hurt and therefore anybody who is happy to go through such an ordeal deserves admiration for their dedication to the cause.

• The evidence clearly shows that a link between young people’s exposure to on screen tobacco imagery and starting to smoke, emphasise the researchers.

Oh FFS. We have heard this argument before. The problem is, the 'evidence' does NOT show such a link. Tobacco Control already tried to convince a court of law on this matter with their evidence in a Law Court in California recently when they (Stanton Glantz et al) tried to take the film industry to task over smoking images. They failed abysmally as the Court Judge saw straight through the flawed 'evidence' and rejected the claims.

Really, in these days of constant carping about how much extra funds are needed to fund the NHS, why is tax-payers money allowed to be wasted on such pointless 'research' ?

Tobacco Control really are disappearing up their own arses. They waste millions of pounds on such pointless and worthless research and then have the gall to come cap-in-hand to Government to ask for more millions of pounds to waste on further pointless research.

Listen Tobacco Control. Smoking IS normal. You can try to airbrush it out of TV, film and even history, all you like. But it still won't go away. Millions of people CHOOSE to continue to smoke regardless of what you do or say. That means that smoking is normal. If a 'Reality' TV cannot show smoking, then it is not really a Reality TV show then is it ?

Muppets !!

Vapour Trails

I read, with interest, the article over on @Dick_Puddlecote’s page discussing ‘Vaping Etiquette’. On the one side, we had Dick’s view that ‘cloud-chasers’ are ruining the vaping scene and handing ammunition to the prohibitionists. Giving the opposing view was Dave Dorn’s opinion in the defence of ‘cloud-chasers’.

What struck me about this ‘conversation’ on vaping etiquette was how the vaping community is being split on such a polarising viewpoint. I would think that any of the puritans reading the article would be delighted to be reading such a thing. I have little doubt that already such people are excitedly sending emails and memos to other in their clique on ways they can exploit the situation to drive a further wedge between vapers. ‘Divide & Conquer’ is the phrase we are discussing here.

I have to admit that this whole debacle on ‘vaping etiquette’ seriously pisses me off. On the one hand we have plenty of good people out there campaigning and advocating for tolerance to vapers, but on the other hand we have many of those same people screaming intolerance towards vapers who prefer to cloud chase. This simply has to stop.

When I sat on the board of the NNA, the first rumblings of this so-called ‘vaping etiquette’ came to my attention. I made it clear at the time that I had my reservations about developing an etiquette around vaping, but I was in the minority. I left the NNA in the Summer of last year, but keep on following (and supporting) the excellent work they do for vaping advocacy. Since that time, the NNA have put out posters around vaping etiquette. I couldn’t get behind it when I was a part of the NNA, and I still cannot get behind that campaign now. It makes me uneasy and, in my humble opinion, is unnecessarily alienating large portions of the vaping community.

I will admit it. I am an unashamedly proud cloud-chaser. It has NOTHING whatsoever to do with the ability to blow mahoosive clouds of vapour (I can do that quite easily and have many ‘drippers’ that I can build to make clouds that would make even the biggest cloud-chasers jealous). No, the reason I am a ‘cloud-chaser’ is because that is how I actually enjoy my vaping. These days, I rarely build any drippers, preferring instead to use one of the plethora of sub-ohm tank devices that I can easily buy the coils for online. It is easier and so cheap that there is little point in building coils these days. I still occasionally build a coil and ‘drip’, but that is more for keeping my hand in on my ability to build coils. And there is the whole point. All vapers have different preferences, be it flavour, nicotine content, VG/PG mix, power or cloud density. There is no right or wrong way to vape. You vape because you enjoy it and you vape because you have chosen to use an alternative to smoking.

I happen to enjoy filling my lungs up with enormous amounts of vapour and blowing out huge clouds. I don’t do it to annoy anyone. I do it because that is how I enjoy the vape. I could not give a single shit about impressing anyone with the massive clouds. It is just a cloud and, more to the point, it is harmless to me and harmless to anyone around me.

Do you really think the puritans care about whether you are blowing massive clouds or small wisps ?

Of course they don’t. All they see is a ‘filthy nicotine addict’ enjoying himself and, in their eyes, circumventing the smoking ban. Even when you barely blow out any vapour at all, such puritans will still ‘tut-tut’ in their corner and give you disgusted looks. Many of them, emboldened by prod-noses like ASH, will even pluck up the courage to get in your face about it. It is what our world has become in that regardless of what you do to enjoy yourself, there will always be some curtain-twitcher who will disapprove of your habit. Maybe even emboldened enough to start (yet another) campaign group which will campaign to lobby politicians to take away yet more of the freedoms that we used to take for granted in this country. We have fought wars to protect such liberties many times in our past, only to now slowly give away more and more of our liberties to the permanently offended. You can see it most clearly in all the campaigns against tobacco, alcohol, sugar, salt, fast-food etc. The list is ever growing and if we are not careful there will be a future where everything you eat, drink or choose to do will be carefully regulated by the State.

It really is that simple. A vaping etiquette that disapproves of a vaper that blows out larger vapour clouds makes as much sense as pub alienating spirit-drinkers because beer drinkers are a nicer crowd (or vice-versa). The only way that tolerance will come back to the general public is to make people realise that vaping poses no threat. By toning down the vaping habit/choices all you are doing is pandering to, and reinforcing, the already entrenched view amongst many of the general public that vaping is dangerous.

I will end this blog with an anecdote (yes, I used that ‘much abused’ word).

Many of you will know that I own a caravan that is situated by the sea down in sunny West Wales. When I first bought that caravan, I would frequently be found in the early evening at local bar near the site. When I first started going to that bar, the weather was gloriously sunny and I was quite content to sit out in the beer garden with my pint of Strongbow and a vape. As it turned out, there were lots of other caravan owners on the same site as me who also frequented that bar. As often happens, when vapers identify other vapers, we all started graduating toward each other and chatting because we all had something in common – we all vaped. The age-range of this group was startling. We had some guys (and gals) in their early twenties, right through the age range to the oldest of us who was 85. We dominated the beer garden as a large group. The range of devices we used showed great variety too. Some were using simple cigalikes, some box mods and/or MTL devices, whilst others (like me) preferred to use high-powered cloud-machines. Anyway, after several weeks, the bar owner approached us in the beer garden and informed us that he had no issue with any of us vaping inside the bar itself. You see, he had seen the trade we were bringing in because we had become an informal group (which was attracting more and more), meeting up as often as possible to chat and drink (and vape) . Anyway, this went on for several months, until one day we discovered that the bar owner was selling up and that new owners would soon be in place. The new owners were not at all vape-friendly and we were immediately exiled to the beer garden – just as the weather began to cool as Autumn crept in. Not wanting to sit in a cold (and wet) beer garden to chat, drink and vape, we all stopped going the bar and instead started meeting at each others caravans to chat, drink and vape instead. The bar had instantly lost a huge proportion of its best customers. Last month, I discovered that the bar had closed down after the Christmas period had failed to save their dwindling profits. All that happened because they alienated their best customers – the vapers.

Closing Comment

The vaping community has come a long way over the last couple of years. We have successfully fended off many bans and made our voices felt in the corridors of power in  the European Union, USA, Australia, New Zealand (and many others) as well as closer to home in the UK. To spoil that progress by dividing the vape community now would be a disaster. Do not alienate other vapers just because they enjoy vaping in a different way than you do. That is simply showing the same intolerance towards fellow vapers that you have accused the Public Health community (and Government) of showing towards vaping in general. It is counterproductive and WRONG. Most vapers I have met consider themselves to be libertarians. 

PROVE IT. STOP THIS SILLY AND DIVISIVE CAMPAIGN NOW !!

Bringing In The Old For The New

I was reading the Head Rambles blog earlier, as I do every day, and reading about the right fuck-up that has occurred in the city of Dublin since they introduced the 'Daniel Day Luas', or Dublin City Tram System to the rest of us.

It made me think about the scramble that seems to be happening everywhere to reintroduce old technology. It seems that City planners everywhere, in their rush to free up the clogged roads of the Cities, are introducing Trams all over the place. You can find them in Croydon, Manchester, Edinburgh, Sheffield - even Cardiff may well have a brand spanking new Tram system soon if the plans I have seen publicised by the Welsh Government come to fruition. And I am sure there are many more examples.

The thing they all have in common is that every one of them has cost eye-watering amounts to introduce, and every single one of them completely screwed up the Town/City centre arteries (roads) they were supposed to be relieving when they were first introduced. Then of course, they cost a similarly eye-watering amount to remedy the problems they caused in the first place - all paid for by the tax-payer naturally.

But it is not even new technology. If you look at most of the Cities mentioned above, they ALL had perfectly functioning Tram systems a 100 years ago. You can easily find pictures of them online with a simple Google search. Even my home city - Swansea - had a tram system at one time (there have even been suggestions to reintroduce trams in Swansea - despite the major failure of the so-called bendy-bus system that was aborted 3 years ago). I am sure that most of the major Towns and Cities of the UK had trams systems  a century ago.

What they all have in common is that they were all scrapped because they were old technology and the Towns and Cities were (supposedly) looking to the future. The same thing happened with the railways, though at least some of those survived into the modern age.

The irony is that we are now looking to the future in our major Towns and Cities by looking to the past. Or at least we are at the moment. Who is to say that in 10-15 years all these Tram systems will be being scrapped again as the same urban developments look to the next 'new' thing - which is probably from the past. I wouldn't be surprised to see Trolley-Buses making a comeback at this rate.

While we are talking about it, what is it about all these Towns & Cities that they have to name new things after famous people from those Towns/Cities/Country who, the moment they became famous, fucked off to live somewhere else. As far as I can tell, the majority of famous Irish people leave Ireland as soon as they become famous and settle down in the UK or USA. Meanwhile, famous people from the UK seem to leave to live in Ireland or America. It also seems to be a common theme amongst famous Americans these days too.

Anyway, to get back to the original subject, what is it about Town/City planners that they cannot come up with anything more innovative than to return to a system that was scrapped a century ago? 

Technology moves on at a staggering pace, yet transport seems to be going backward at a staggering pace. It is not just the trams. 50 years after Beeching ripped the guts out of the Railway Network, there are massive projects underway to reinstate or restore defunct railway lines all over the country (except in Wales because here you can only get funding for a Transport solution if it benefits Cardiff).

The proposed Swansea Tram system seems to have been kicked into the dust because the pen-pushers reckon there would not be the footfall. I am not convinced by that argument as the Swansea area has a population of around 220,000 people and the current road system in the centre of Swansea is attrocious and even if you get into the Centre it is hard to find somewhere to park and bloody expensive if you do. 

Personally, I would rather they had looked into introducing a monorail system in Swansea. It would have had the advantage of being elevated, so not interfering with existing transport and could have been developed as a loop system that feeds off to different surburbs at each end. The other advantage of the monorail system would be that the elevation would provide breathtaking views of Swansea Bay and be a tourist attraction. It would be the perfect replacement for the long-lost Mumbles Railway (the oldest passenger railway in the world) that was scrapped by an act of sheer vandalism by backward thinking Councillors 60 years ago. But nobody could ever accuse Swansea Council of being imaginative or innovative and I very much doubt anyone in the Council has the nous or the daring to take on such a project.

Yep, progress into the future seems to always be fuelled from the past.

A Question Of Trust ?

For once, things actually got interesting in the Senedd yesterday when a heated spat blew up between Plaid Cymru AM - Adam Price - and the the First Minister - Welsh Labour's Carwyn Jones. As many will already know, the First Minister is already under investigation over claims of a bullying culture that exists within the Welsh Government and into claims that he has been deliberately misleading the Senedd. This all came to a head due the tragic and unexpected death of one of Jones own AM's in Carl Sargeant,

That investigation is ongoing with many claims and counter-claims that the inquiry is already flawed. But it has led to a rather interesting and tense atmosphere in the Senedd, especially during First Ministers Questions, as many clearly have the scent of a First Minister fighting for his political life.

However, the spat yesterday was interesting given that there are now threats of legal action over whether the First Minister has breached the Data Protection Act. You can read about it as reported on the BBC Wales website this morning here.

I am not going to go into the legalities of what is being claimed - that is for a court of law to determine if it gets that far - and I am not about to blog opinions on something that may become a court case. But it does raise some interesting questions.

Adam Price later tweeted about the matter:

And Plaid Cymru themselves later confirmed they are pursuing this:

 
 For those unaware of how the Senedd works, '@yLlywydd' in the tweet above refers to the Welsh Assembly equivalent of Westminster's Speaker of the House (John Bercow). The present 'Llywydd' is Elin Jones.

As most people know, the emails of Assembly Members are available for anyone to examine under the Freedom Of Information Act, as long as they are emails held by the Welsh Government email system (it would not extend to an AMs personal emails on a personal service - such as GMail - for example). Therefore, it is quite possible that any member of the public could have got access to the emails mentioned by Carwyn Jones. There are some rules, so some emails can be excluded from FOI if, for example, the contents of said email could be something with might compromise national security. There are obviously many things that Politicians discuss behind closed doors which the general public cannot be privy to for obvious reasons (such as national security).

It is also true that the Welsh Government email system is considered a corporate email system and therefore anybody using that email system - employees AND AMs - would be subject to their emails being analysed by the Welsh Government at any time if there was just cause for viewing them (e.g.  such as the employee and/or AM being suspected of illegal activity). So again, nobody in the Welsh Govt can expect any email they send or receive to remain personal.

However, what can be questioned is 'how' the First Minister got hold of the emails in question that he used to attack Adam Price. If he asked Welsh Government staff to retrieve those emails for him to use, then he would have needed to go through a formal process, which would have been logged and recorded, which would include the reasons why he wanted such information and on what grounds he could expect to have a right to see them. Furthermore, the person whose emails he has asked to see would also have the right to know that such a request had been made. Adam Price's reaction in the Senedd would seem to indicate that he was unaware that any such thing had taken place.

Of course, it is also possible that the emails were supplied by the Health Board themselves, as is their right because they were also involved in the exchange. However given the recent bullying claims that were made in some quarters, as reported by ITV News here, then one could also legitimately ask if those emails were given willingly or under duress.

A further complication in any legal proceeding would be the concept of 'Parliamentary Privilege'. This means that Ministers enjoy a legal immunity from criminal or civil proceedings for actions or statements done in the performance of their Ministerial duties.

A fuller explanation is given on Wikipedia here.

Now whether Parliamentary Privilege applies in the Senedd I do not know. I am sure that guidance is held somewhere, possibly on the Welsh Government website itself. But even Parliamentary Privilege only gets you so far. Breaches of the Data Protection Act can, and should, override any such 'Privilege'. But we all know that buried deep in the Legislations around Parliaments are often surprising 'get-out' clauses or 'immunities'.

So, as I said at the start, these are indeed interesting time in the Senedd. Rather than the same old bland 'business as usual' things seem to have been stirred up in recent months in the Senedd and the tension is rising and rising. This particular episode may yet even end up in the Law Courts.

But one has to ask how much longer the First Minister can keep his tenuous hold on his office. A fingernail grip can only last for so long. And if he does fall, how many others would he take with him ?

Welsh Politics has taken a turn toward the 'interesting'. About bloody time too. 

I will certainly be watching with interest.

Historical Lessons

I am a proud Welshman. I have lived in Wales for most of my life (apart from a brief spell in London when I got a first job). I love Wales. It has friendly people (for the most part), astonishing scenery and an abundance of beaches that attract people from everywhere during the summer months. Unfortunately, it is also governed by overly-paternalistic fuckwits at both Government and Local level who have a strong desire to micro-manage every minutiae of our personal lives that they can get away with. The latest wheeze on the part of these fuckwits is to give the vote to 16 & 17 year olds. This because the fuckwits in question are Labour politicians and they seem to be of the belief that the young will vote for them in their droves. I think that will backfire badly on them.

In my experience, young people cannot be arsed to cast a vote even way past their 18^th birthday as politics do not register as being important in their lives. Besides, what world experience does a 16/17 year old actually have. They can only marry prior to 18 with their parents consent. They can join the armed forces at 16 (with parental consent) but cannot be sent to the frontline to fight. They are banned from buying knives, glue, alcohol, cigarettes and even over-the-counter drugs because they are not considered responsible enough. Despite this, the Labour Government think they are responsible enough to vote, even though those same politicians want to deny them the right of buying or doing any of the items I just mentioned above, and more.

If these people are constantly trying introduce ever more restrictions on adults (and they are), then just think about what they have already banned kids from doing. 

I did exactly that. The whole announcement of giving the vote to 16/17 year olds has led me think back to when I was a kid growing up during the 1960’s/70’s. What I could do as a kid that is denied to today's youth.

What was different ?

We were much freer. I can remember as a kid owning several air-rifles and pistols (it was not illegal). I also owned two (sport) longbows and arrows and 3 javelins (I was a very keen athlete). As I enjoyed angling, I was also the owner of several different types of knives. In fact, it was common for me to be carrying at least one knife even when I wasn’t fishing. A knife was useful for all kinds of things such as cutting/whittling wood for whatever I was making for myself to play with. Of course, as with all kids, I was regularly involved in dust-ups as disagreements with friends/foes broke out. They carried knives too, but none of us would ever have dreamed of using a knife in a fight. Nope, for us, the way to settle a disagreement was with our fists. If you resorted to threats with a knife then you were considered a complete wimp and shunned.

Another thing I regularly did was to go down the shop to buy cigarettes. Not for myself or my parents (both my parents were life-long non-smokers), but for my grandfather or grandmother. The shop assistant, whether at a small corner-shop or a fledgling supermarket (supermarkets in those days were tiny premises) would not bat an eyelid. Most enclosed public spaces (like pubs. clubs, cinemas, snooker halls etc) were fug-filled places that was like walking into a fog-bank. But it never harmed me.

There were enormous mountains of spoil heaps at one end of the village and we regularly 'sledged' down those spoil heaps on old pieces of rusty, corrugated iron sheets. We would inevitably have a few mishaps along the way, resulting in a few cuts and bruises, but no real harm came to us (though a few of the more unfortunate did sometimes end up in the river at the foot of the spoil-heaps).

In the school holidays (and most weekends) I would be off out of the house before 9am on my push-bike, never to be seen again until the sun was setting. We would often be many miles from home by midday. Something else we often did was to cycle (or push) to the top of the nearby mountain, spend a few hours up there, then race back down on the mountain road, often reaching speeds of 50-60mph on the steep slope, overtaking cars, vans and even lorries on the way down.

We bought sugar-laden sweets in bags that were a mixture of the contents of massive jars behind the counter at the sweet shop. Some of those sweets were sugar laden cigarette look-alikes, replete with similar cigarette style box packaging. We’d have great fun with those in the winter months putting them in our lips and blowing huge plumes of steam in the cold air pretending we were smoking. But despite this, I never once was tempted to smoke an actual cigarette throughout my childhood. Granted, some kids did, but most of us did not.

I still recall going with my father to watch him playing rugby, entering the smoke-filled rugby club before the match. Sitting down with him the same smoke-filled rooms after the match while he enjoyed a pint and I had my glass of (full fat) coca-cola. Hell, I can even remember watching some of the players having a smoke on the rugby field at half-time.

Most days, the Corona Pop lorry would come through the village where we lived, selling the pop in bottles from the back of the lorry. I would always go around the village later in the day with my mates collecting the empty bottles to return to the Corona lorry the next day because we used to get money for returning the bottles.

.... and Yes. I still have all my own teeth !!

I could walk into any ironmonger and buy sharp tools like screwdrivers or wood-chisels, even knives and scissors. Hell, my father often used to send me up across to the ironmonger with a 1 gallon can to buy paraffin for the paraffin heater we used during the winter months.

I can even remember, along with several of my mates, going to a petrol station and filling a 1 gallon can with some 4-star (leaded) petrol, then heading off up the mountain to some ruins with a load of (glass) milk bottles and rags and we made petrol bombs with them. We did not cause any problems with these explosive devices, just chucked them against some old stone walls and watched them burn. Health & safety would have a fit at such a sight today.

Speaking of which, we could also purchase fireworks. Proper fireworks, not the watered down two-sparks-and-a-meek-bang ones you get these days. I could not imagine Health & Safety ever allowing such a device as a Jumping-Jack firework (which did exactly what you would expect from the name) to be sold these days. On November 5^th, we’d have a massive (usually at least 20ft tall) bonfire on the common and let off fireworks. Not an adult to be seen. None of us ever came to any harm.

As I reached my latter teenage years, I became interested in cars and motorbikes - the majority of which (in the 1970's) were veritable deathtraps. Seat-belts were not law in those days. Most cars did have seat-belts, at least in the front, but plenty were on the roads that had no seat-belts whatsoever. I learnt to drive without ever wearing a selt-belt. I even took my driving test without wearing a seat belt. It was several years after I had passed my driving test that wearing seat-belts became law. By that time, most cars also had rear seat-belts and a few years later it became law to wear those too. The first time I ever rode a motorbike, crash helmets were not required, though those did become law before I took my motorbike-driving test.

But even with all that life experience and freedom, which kids these days do not have, we would not have known or cared who to vote for. I was in my early twenties before I first voted, by which time I was working and had a more realistic view of the world.

We thought we had no world experience upon which to choose to vote in those days, that fact has not suddenly changed. But if Labour think giving the vote to 16/17 year olds will give them a sudden leap in support, they are sadly mistaken. Besides, Labour have already lied to the young once when they pledged to annul all student debt, only to then admit after the last election they couldn’t do it. Most will not forget that lie. But then again, there are still plenty of terminally thick people even amongst the young.