17. The Chancer Vaper

“Hello everyone, I’m new to the forum and I’d just like to say that this looks a great place. I don’t fancy working for a living or paying my own way so can someone send me a Hana mod and an Origen dripper. Genuine mind, none of that cheap stuff coz I support makers innit.”

You spend your online time avoiding conflict and refusing to invoke Godwin’s Law but The Chancer will raise your blood pressure as you lift a pet to throw it at the screen.

Seriously, put this person on ‘ignore’ now because their second post will be in a Pay It Forward thread where they’ll be accepting a lifetime’s supply of Japanese cotton and offering up a cracked CE4.

18. The Illiterate Vaper

*We are on holiday for two weeks*

**You decided to ignore the message on the Homepage, no worries. But seriously, we’re backpacking in eastern Syria for fourteen days.**

***You appear to have scrolled to the purchase button. Do not order, we’ve no Internet or anything. We can’t sell to you.***

****YOU HAVE ATTEMPTED TO PURCHASE. LIKE, DO NOT CLICK PURCHASE AGAIN. JUST DON’T!****

*****Oh, you appear to have reached the basket page because you have mistakenly ordered something. You must have missed the many messages on the website telling you that armed with nothing but a three week old piece of haddock we’re taking on Islamic State single-handed. Still, at least you’ll now have read this message and so you know not to bother placing your £4.25 (after discount) request. Are you reading this? Hello? Hello?

DO NOT CLICK ON PROCEED UNLESS YOU ARE HAPPY TO WAIT FOR DELIVERY!

It’s probably best if you just empty your basket and return when we’ve liberated the world from extremism. Thanks. 🙂 *****

 

Vendor returns home to find inbox full of angry emails demanding to know where their orders are.

19. The Litigious Vaper

“Dear vendor/manufacturer,

I have spent fifteen minutes watching Watchdog and feel suitably qualified in telling you that you are in breach of Section 19, subsection 2, clause b of the I’ve Got The Right To Get My Money Back Act 2014.

At no point did the item come with instructions not to insert it into our pet ocelot and then place said item and ocelot into the microwave.

Not only do I demand a replacement item but a £50 gift voucher for my anguish and a pair of chinchillas to make up for our broken ocelot.

Er, within seven working days.

Not only am I looking forward to going to court (as I might appear in the local paper) but my wife’s cousin has a mate who writes a blog and he will destroy your reputation within the emu-riding vaping community.

Yours very serious,

Etc.”

It is highly likely that the Litigious Vaper will have now wound himself to fever pitch. Within seconds of sending the email he will have reported the transaction to Paypal and tried to make contact with the spirit of Lynn Faulds Wood (using a ouija board, two cups and a length of string).

20. The “I May As Well Go Back To Smoking lol” Vaper

The use of ‘lol’ in written text ought to be justification for compulsory euthanasia. The chances of the writer actually laughing at the time are bleaker than Sophie Raworth knocking at my door in the next 3 seconds.

3…2…1…Nope. Gah. Another Friday full of crushing disappointment.

The IMAWGBTSL vaper uses this catchall phrase to combat any and every vaping eventuality. From proposed legislation to being told his kitchen sink mod improvements is liable to take him and half of Stroud out in a ball of smoke; “Ha ha,” he will affect, “IMAWGBTSL!”

See also Insufferable Vaper, Tedious Vaper, Humorless Vaper and/or Lives With His Mum Vaper.

 

Part 2 of Vaping Types is available next month (with a collectors edition of belly button fluff wick for £19.99) from newsagents everywhere. *Except Stroud.

If you would like to find out more about Section 19, subsection 2, clause b of the I’ve Got The Right To Get My Money Back Act 2014, my online course is effort-free and affordable. Successful completion entitles you to attempt to get your money back.

 

 

I don’t.

In fact I’m pretty sure I have the least amount of interest in celebrities it is possible to hold. Consequently I have had to enter the realm of celebrity gossip entertainment websites. The trauma is likely to keep me from sleeping without access to serious celebrity-style medications.

Most vapers I’ve met are equally disinterested in celebrities too so I’ve compiled this comprehensive list. Not for our interest but benefit. If your partner is anything like mine she abhors discussing mesh gauge, Clapton coils or the mad things sub-ohmers have done this week. Well, if she does like to then she clearly prefers just to listen while resting her eyelids.

As I crack open a tin of Guinness on Friday night I’ll point to the region of vapid on the television and say: “See her? See that Lohan? She’s a vaper she is”, and conversation will flow. And a moribund marriage will form new bonds of common interest.

That list in full:

Katy Perry, famous for being able to recite one line over and again while music plays.

Johnny Depp, famous for being a cool drunk pirate in every film he’s ever appeared in.

Leonardo DiCaprio, famous for being one of the few people not to have died on the Titanic. Unless he was one of the people who died on it, I don’t know, I’m one of the seven people who have never watched the film. He’s renown for not being as crap as Nicolas Cage as he has three expressions.

Lindsey Lohan, famous for being a drug-addled car crash of a human being. I thought her bottom gave an Oscar-worthy performance in Herbie.

Paris Hilton, famous for appearing in an online video so badly filmed it could have starred Nicolas Cage.

Britney Spears, famous for not being Mylie Cyrus like a music version of Leo DiCaprio.

Sean Penn, famous for becoming a much better actor thanks to divorcing Madonna (who is Britney Spears’ mum or something).

Jack Nicolson, famous for being one of the few celebrities who is genuinely great at his job. He must be as he has played the same person in all 45 of them.

Courtney Love, famous for being “the best **** in the world” (© Kurt Cobain). My grandma, mum and rabbits have all denied any carnal knowledge of Mr. Nirvana so I’m not sure how he calculated this.

Robbie Williams, Britain’s most famous fat man; due to him supporting the despised Stoke City FC everyone dislikes him.

Gok Wan, famous because his parents ran the chippy up the road from my mate’s café. I’ve not met any other sons of chip shop owners who have managed to get so many Rubenesque ladies to go naked on TV so he must be the best.

Charlie Sheen, famous for probably being the person who told Kurt that Courtney was good at sex as he’s slept with everyone in the world. Twice.

Kate Moss, famous for being my wife. Well, the publishing company she worked for told her that she was Kate Moss for the purposes of signing hundreds of copies of an autobiography.

Jenny McCarthy, Stephen Dorff, Kevin Connolly, Bruno Mars, Katherine Heigl, Cheryl Cole, Zayn Malik, Alexa Chung, Isla Fisher, Bradley Cooper, Zoe Kravitz, Spencer Matthews, Robert Pattinson and Rosie Fortescue are all famous for being a group of people in this list. Beyond that I have no idea who any of them are although Rosie Fortescue may have discovered a cure for cancer.

According to Bloomsburg Business Week, “public health officials fear (celebrities vaping) might not just spark e-cig sales but could reverse the decline in cigarette smoking as well.”

Are people that easily led by what the celebs do?

I’d formulate an answer but I’ve got to shoot off to dress up as a pirate, have sex with Charlie Sheen and watch Stoke City pitifully attempt to play football.

 

 

It makes me chuckle to see how easy people are offended in comparison to the insults that used to be traded on Usenet bulletin boards and newsgroups. That, and how feeble the insults are posted underneath Youtube videos and BitTorrent magnet links.

Ahh, I’m going all mushy remembering the days when ISPs hosted Usenet binaries.

Anyway, lists. Of all the lists I’ve added to my favourite has to be the “Things You Don’t Like” type of threads. As a person who naturally hates everything this is quite easy for me.

Stuff I’ve never liked includes things like AOL, Windows operating systems, period dramas, celery, DC comics and custard.

Custard – why? Like mosquitos, wasps, Celebrity Big Brother and chicory, what ungodly purpose does it serve being on the planet? School mealtimes always ended with an indeterminate lump of something in a bowl with jug upon metal jug of the congealed stuff sitting on tables. Before we became proper Middle Class and had brandy butter with our Xmas pud it was always destroyed by a sea of yellow muck.

Truth told, if Room 101 really existed and I was tied to a chair a tin of powdered Birds would be enough to reduce me to a gibbering wreck.

And then I took up vaping.

I held off trying some for ages, but the longer I was interacting with folks on the friendly forum the more people waffled on about GVC. As time clicked by I became convinced that either there was the most elaborate Internet hoax of all time taking place (that I was blissfully unaware of) or I needed to bite the bullet.

If I were to contribute to a thread of things I like then the first few slots would go the vaping way. I’ve found a real spirit of generosity and good spirit within the online vaping community, learnt a great deal and made some great friendships that have broken out into real life.

But, anyway, custard:

I’m no stranger to playing with words, I’ve got a reasonable vocabulary, but I’m buggered if I can put into words why I adore vaping custard so much. Plain custard, custard with banana, rhubarb and custard or tobacco & custard – it doesn’t matter, I love them all. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Is it all down to the cartoon? Is it because it would take a stone-heart not to love Bernard Cribbins?

I have grown to adore it so much I asked the wife to whip up a bowl of her finest that the kids woof down in seconds. And what do you know? Yep, it remains as odious and repugnant as the sight of a politician trying to smile at normal people.

So here I sit, listening to Roxy Music typing away while tugging on a Kayfun loaded with custard from Vapertrain. And tonight, once I’ve got some Thursday beers on the go, I’ll recoil a Taifun with .28 Kanthal, 2.5mm Voodoowool and fill it with PowWow Sauce.

And the world will be as one; peace will reign

unless someone posts a thread asking where they can buy some GVC because then it’ll be a flame waaaaaaar!

Phreaking

Phreaking according to Wiki

Forget torrents – go Usenet

Delia’s recipe for proper custard

 

 

With relief, I discovered that throwing my music onto the new iTunes was easier than getting murdered on Coronation Street [insert Brookside for older readers]. The same could not be said for the hard drive with all my films on and other assorted docs. I tried different USB leads, different power supplies, spilling the blood of a goat and incantations to Satan – nothing. The thing has flat-lined.

Corrupt data is something you can at least play with and work around but when a drive resembles Monty Python’s parrot it’s beyond my abilities to control.

It seems to be beyond our collective abilities to control the actions of pharmaceutical companies too. It’s not like they’re new kids on the block; we’ve known for ages that they have all the morals of a city investment banker combined with the caring nature of Mother Teresa and Pol Pot.

One of the phenomena I’ve noticed from organisations pontificating on the need for e-cig/vaping regulation is that they tend to cite each other as examples as to why we should hold back from accepting them as part of a harm reduction strategy and they all reference the Food & Drugs Administration (FDA) in the States.

Why?

I can only speculate to this, but my feelings are that it comes down to an arse-covering policy found in middle management the world over. As long as we can point the finger of blame at a minimum of one other person we might be able to sneak out of the building job intact.

The problem is that the FDA and Big Pharma have history. Given that, the lack of anyone doing anything about it and Pharma’s opposition to e-cigs eating into their profit margins on NRT therapies and grossly over-priced cancer medication, is it wrong to suspect they’re still at it?

In 2013 there was a succession of stories implicating the FDA allowing Parma to pay to play. Pharmaceutical companies paid for seats on the committee that decided on the advice to give the FDA when weighing up the results of clinical trials of pain medication.

Documents uncovered demonstrated that up to $25,000 was paid to attend each meeting they sent representatives to, along with annual fees of $35,000. Craig Mayton, the lawyer who made the FOI requests, said “These emails help explain the disastrous decisions the FDA’s analgesic division has made over the last 10 years”.

The two professors arranging the meetings both received up to $50,000 per meeting, paid into their research fund accounts. Of the thirty to forty people attending these meetings only the pharmaceutical companies paid to attend. Other academics received up to $3,000 to attend meetings.

All of this is chump change to the pharmaceutical companies when dwarfed by the $9 billion value of the painkiller market.

Everyone who frequents forums or can remember the Stealthvape website a few months ago will recall Rob’s problems with back pain. I’d like to think that he and everyone else suffering from chronic pain were receiving medications that had been through the most stringent peer-reviewed clinical trials not bumped onto the market because palms were greased.

And yet we have the wonderful Professor Stanton Glantz who, if you peek at print media every now and then, is more omnipresent than a deity on a public relations campaign.

Last week confirmation came that he receives an honorarium from the World Health Organisation to slant his studies to match WHO’s objectives.

Clearly, I have no evidence of Glantz possessing a bulging research bank account but I am minded of a scene from Hamlet, after Horatio and Marcellus spot his dead Dad:

Horatio:
He waxes desperate with imagination.

Marcellus:
Let’s follow. ‘Tis not fit thus to obey him.

Horatio:
Have after. To what issue will this come?

Marcellus:
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. [that it festers with moral and political corruption]

Horatio:
Heaven will direct it. [that God will sort it all out]

Marcellus:
Nay, let’s follow him. [that we have to sort it out ourselves] [Exeunt.]

Consequently, I feel a wash of FOI requests need to be brought to bare who is funding the man. The only problem with this is that the tobacco industry did just this quite extensively in the 1990s to tie the man up in red tape.

I do tend to side with Marcellus on this, it’s something we need to sort out ourselves – just like what I need to do with the black box that used to be a hard drive

 

On the 1^st day of Vapemass, Stealthvape sent to me

Some free sheets of organic Muji

On the 2^nd day of Vapemass, Stealthvape sent to me

Two coiling jigs

And free sheets of organic Muji!

On the 3^rd day of Vapemass, Stealthvape sent to me

Three Naos Raptors, two coiling jigs

And free sheets of organic Muji!

On the 4^th day of Vapemass, Stealthvape sent to me

Four reels of Kanthal, three Naos Raptors, two coiling jigs

And free sheets of organic Muji!

On the 5^th day of Vapemass, Stealthvape sent to me

…Five Clone V2s…

Four reels of Kanthal, three Naos Raptors, two coiling jigs

And free sheets of organic Muji!

On the 6^th day of Vapemass, Stealthvape sent to me

Six Bespin attys

…Five Clone V2s…

Four reels of Kanthal, three Naos Raptors, two coiling jigs

And free sheets of organic Muji!

On the 7^th day of Vapemass, Stealthvape sent to me

OCD connectors, six Bespin attys

…Five Clone V2s…

Four reels of Kanthal, three Naos Raptors, two coiling jigs

And free sheets of organic Muji!

On the 8^th day of Vapemass, Stealthvape sent to me

Eight gold switches, OCD connectors, six Bespin attys

…Five Clone V2s…

Four reels of Kanthal, three Naos Raptors, two coiling jigs

And free sheets of organic Muji!

On the 9^th day of Vapemass, Stealthvape sent to me

Nine little mosfets, eight gold switches, OCD connectors, six Bespin attys

…Five Clone V2s…

Four reels of Kanthal, three Naos Raptors, two coiling jigs

And free sheets of organic Muji!

On the 10^th day of Vapemass, Stealthvape sent to me

Ten Zener diodes,

Nine little mosfets, eight gold switches, OCD connectors, six Bespin attys

…Five Clone V2s…

Four reels of Kanthal, three Naos Raptors, two coiling jigs

And free sheets of organic Muji!

On the11^th day of Vapemass, Stealthvape sent to me

Eleven Ti tips, ten Zener diodes,

Nine little mosfets, eight gold switches, OCD connectors, six Bespin attys

…Five Clone V2s…

Four reels of Kanthal, three Naos Raptors, two coiling jigs

And free sheets of organic Muji!

On the 12^th day of Vapemass, Stealthvape sent to me

Twelve Voodoowool bags, eleven Ti tips, ten Zener diodes,

Nine little mosfets, eight gold switches, OCD connectors, six Bespin attys

…Five Clone V2s…

Four reels of Kanthal, three Naos Raptors, two coiling jigs

And free sheets of organic Muji!

 

 

 

 

Money

Now we’ve said goodbye to the stupid ticket system that the venue sprung upon people last year we can return to using proper cash. Forget your cards, no one will be taking them (although there is a machine for withdrawals). This is an opportunity for you to play Delboy & Rodney and parade around with an elastic band-wrapped wad like a proper person.

Pretend you are Richard Prior in Brewster’s Millions. Or something. Cruella De Ville maybe.

 

Camping

As a veteran camper, and someone who was kept awake all night at a Le Mans bike 24hr by a bloke revving the nuts off his GPz750, I can say without fear of contradiction that all your fellow campers want to know what music you like.

Don’t worry if you can’t see them, tents have been designed to allow the maximum possible noise to enter them. Make sure that you have a generator pounding into the small hours and loud, portable DJ kit. Turn it up till it drowns out the sounds of snoring, campers hate snoring.

If you don’t have sufficiently loud musical equipment you can always entertain yourself by organising a “How many people can we get on top of this tent before it collapses” competition. Campers love camping games, especially surprise ones as 10 drunken strangers fall on their head laughing.

Unfortunately I will be missing all the fun as I’ve been forced to stay in a hotel. All of us in hotels will regret missing the camping festivities but you will be able to regale them to us while our included-in-the-booking breakfast is slowly digested.

*Remember: prior to arrival check that the flame-proof coating on your tent still works.

 

Toilets

Those who have experienced festival toilets will know one thing: do not go into town and use McDonalds’ facilities or the ones in Tesco. Stay and enjoy the invigorating experience of smelling what the ten people before you in the queue have left.

It is considered bad form for one vaper to ask another to use the luxury bathroom facilities in his hotel room although the offer of a high-end device as a present may be considered as a gesture of goodwill. It could go some way to helping the hotel occupant get over the non-existent guilt they feel as a result of having had a lovely night’s sleep in a comfy bed.

 

Toilet paper

By late Saturday afternoon it is likely that this will become an accepted form of currency. Keep an eye on the person who won the Hellfire hybrid in the raffle as you could pick it up for as little as ten sheets of finest Andrex.

 

The Raffle

It is dangerous for you to win any of the main prizes – remember that you will now be very tired and drunk; a state that makes you a prime target for a chubby man. Fresh from the hotel room, he will have razor-sharp senses and a burning indignation that he didn’t win. The only way to ensure that this does not happen is to not buy any tickets or purchase and give them to a fat man.

 

Kids

Children are very useful, they spend every day at school being conditioned to conform and follow instructions, no matter how daft they may be. Not only are they willing to stand patiently in a line until you stagger over from the bar when they get to the front you can hire them out to provide this service for strangers.

I have a very well trained pair of Springers but I would not trust them with money to go fetch me a burger. They’d fritter it on slot machines or something. No, a child can be relied on to bring you almost everything you wanted provided there isn’t a stall selling loom bands.

 

The bar

If you want to impress people, like really impress people, with your level of eliteness attained, this is the place for you. Not to stand by it, demonstrating the fact that you don’t need anything on sale, no. To truly be a bleeding edge member of the elite you should be lying unconscious next to it with a straw sticking out of your arse.

Bear in mind that rotund gentlemen of advancing years with male-pattern baldness do not have the ability to wait patiently to be served. A courteous “please, you go before me” will always be acknowledged by something resembling a mumble. This is because fat men are wise and know you will be rewarded in the next life for your good deeds.

 

Vendors

We love vendors; without them we’d have nothing to buy during the year. It is a little known fact that they adore coming to Vapefest just to meet the people who demand they work 24-hours a day for free. They want to say “thank you”, but some of them are very queer types and can be unsettled easily.

On spotting a vendor standing behind his or her stall approach in a bold fashion, pushing others out of the way. This gives them the visual cue that you are not afraid of them; it keeps them in their comfort zone. Don’t distract them with inane conversations about their products, this will achieve nothing more than a flustered vendor and a bored you. A simple bark of “What free stuff you got?” will be sufficient to warm their little hearts.

 

The organisers

As you wander like a dandy gadabout, hither and thither, you may glimpse out of the corner of your eye some wraith-like apparitions. They have foregone food, sleep or the opportunity to appear on Deal Or No Deal in the six months while organising the event. Although it is best not to feed them human food they do enjoy big hugs. A word of warning: some vapers are not organisers but are actually goths, do not confuse the two as you should never approach a goth, it may fill the heads of your children with mental images of Marilyn Manson and stuff.

Of course, you could take the foolish approach of ignoring all of this and following the organisers’ instructions http://ukvapefest.com/dummies-2014/

 

 

We all love the idea of biscuits but, much like BSCiTS, the reality is not plain sailing. The cost of a biscuit has risen over the last decade in both financial and health terms. BSCiTS too came burdened by both considerations as well.

For a start BSCiTS was vague (at best) in its proposal for funding: “The precise study design, methods and sample size will depend on the total amount of donations received.”

And, on the topic of funding, Siegel was seeking an incredible amount: “Our total fundraising goal ($4.5 million) is based on the minimum amount of funds necessary ” Yes, he was hunting for at least £2,800,000 through crowd funding.

Now clearly, based on his list of qualifications and previous contributions to the on-going vaping debate, Siegel is not a stupid man – but it takes some level of naivety to propose “the research team reserves the right to alter the scope of the proposed research project to keep it in line with the funds raised. This may entail reducing the time frame or sample size of the study. Alternatively, the researchers may choose to conduct a survey-based study instead of a behaviora (sic)l study if the funds received are not sufficient.”

Having ruled out tobacco and tobacco-controlled electronic cigarette involvement in fund-raising he was expecting the vaping community to fully fund an incoherent study that would cost more than the collected money spent on every other piece of research carried out to date. Unsurprisingly, the BSCiTS team was bombarded with questions searching for clarification and assurances.

Everyone who is a seasoned user of social media appreciates that there are those who will always fail to grasp the point, some who wilfully ignore fact and then those who troll for their own internal reasons. Children are taught in school that the best response is to ignore online comments you find objectionable.

What we witnessed with the recent case of Professor John Ashton is that academics have the potential to be removed from real life, having an inability to deal with people they’d otherwise not come into contact with despite making decisions that effect their lives.

The lack of funding forthcoming is the most probable reason for the team calling it a day but where Siegel has let himself down in the eyes of many is that he made vapers on social media the #1 issue causing them to pull the plug.

Along with blaming vapers, Siegel also suggested that people were only willing to donate if they could dictate the methodology and, thereby, the outcomes. Indeed, he went so far as to say that vapers are being “hypocritical given the e-cigarette community’s rejection of biased research studies produced by tobacco companies and public health professionals alike.”

It is a shame that he is unable to grasp what the key issues are here – issues neatly summed up by Julie Woessner, President of the highly active American vaping consumer group CASAA:

Has Siegel taken the points on board? Unfortunately not; on Thursday he continued to whinge on his blog about the “venom” and “battering” he has received:

Albeit a bit-player to date (compared to the far more self-directed and cost-effective Doctor Farsalinos), Siegel’s contributions have been welcome. Ideally he will be able to see his way past his Facebook growing pains – as someone who has attended faculty meetings in the past he ought to have the tools to deal with attacks on his ideas. It would be nice to see a small group of vocal vapers realise that alienating a supporter is hardly in our collective interests either.

Now let’s all have a nice cup of tea and a Hobnob.

 

 

One of my pastimes is to live in a fantasy world planning for the moment when a drab reality is changed forever by a statistically improbable lottery event. I will happily paw over the Rightmove app looking at multi-million pound properties. I can justify this as if I don’t win a jackpot I will have an excellent working knowledge of the floor plans of the rich if I turn to a life of crime. Now, winning the lottery is virtually impossible – I am not sure of the actual statistic but I’m sure that I am more likely to be struck by truck loaded with White Lightening than win. Especially considering I never buy a ticket.

Some of the properties in the Lake District go for £1.8-£5million. One would imagine that if you are rich enough to afford such residences that you ought to be able pay for good health. Odd then that someone should choose to live next to the Sellafield nuclear plant. Physicists might be able to explain the reliable and safe nature of such places but I know one thing from life – if the guide on the tour bus is telling you to look at a rare duck out of the left window you just know there’s a terrorist using a piece of fissile material to fight with a jet-pack enabled shark out of the right one.

But, the damage I am doing to my psyche by frittering away unrecoverable moments through window-shopping pales into insignificance compared to the threat posed by comedy. Statistics from a survey I just made up demonstrates that 83% of people attending a Jimmy Carr event never recover from the brain damage he inflicts upon them. Poor comedy isn’t the only risk, doing good comedy is pretty lethal too (Eric Morecambe/Sid James/Tommy Cooper) – which is why I consciously guard against the dangers by trotting out rehashed routines from Michael McIntire in order to prevent anyone finding me remotely funny. You want more proof? Frankie Howard, Ronnie Barker and Russell Howard: all dead, albeit one just in a persistent vegetative state.

Most accidents in the home do not result from a battery being incorrectly charged or children drinking pints of nicotine base. No, two other sources rank much higher: cooking and DIY. To reduce your risk profile it is strongly advised you avoid both of these by becoming comfortable living in squalor and avail yourself of the many fast food delivery services. The added benefit to this is the creation of additional time to coil, wick and shop online for more vaping ephemera.

Stress is a killer, they say. They don’t say that about vaping well, some might but they’ll presently cease due to online bullying. Moving and divorce are claimed to be two of the most stressful things you can do. Clearly the people responsible for assessing this have never tried to speak to 3’s customer services, cancel a SKY subscription or enter a CAPTCHA code.

All told, there are many things in life worthy of avoiding in order to live more healthily but vaping (instead of smoking) isn’t one of them.

 

 

Like the actions of some politicians in Northern Ireland, it’s all based around vested interests, fear and banning things they don’t fully understand rather than educating themselves. It doesn’t matter what the subject is – it all gets cloaked in the robes of being done for our own good.

It appears that E-cigarettes are more frightening to politicians, and in need of more immediate attention, than the on going conflict in the West Bank. But then, come to that, so too are these vacuum cleaners I’ve not come across. Apparently they have the power of Nico Rosberg’s F1 car, kill pets in the home and are threatening to club baby seals in the Arctic.

If these steps to ban things are really for our own good then why do I always find myself missing them? I remember that once upon a time I could enter a room or climb the stairs without stubbing my toes on a dog bone or treading on Lego. These days I take my life in my hands moving around the house at night due to the light bulbs having all the luminescence of a glow-worm’s fart.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m all for curbing the excesses of the pointless cleaning culture. A certain relation who shall remain nameless spends his or her life removing every last bacterium from work surfaces – a waste of time, I believe, that could be better utilised supporting the flagging brewing industry and keeping football players in Bentleys.

But banning?

Continuing with our hoovers: our relation isn’t going to spend the same amount of time removing dead skin cells from the carpet. Less power equals less vacuum equals less detritus in the collection area. No, my in-law will simply put in extra hours with the result that the electricity bill will be the same.

I’ve never been a fan of banning anything. Banning alcohol in depression hit America resulted in an almighty fail, the war on drugs continues to be won by drugs and Mary Whitehouse’s campaign to rid the UK of video nasties just raised their profile into cult movies.

I’d also contend that if the real goal was to reduce environmental impact then maybe, just maybe, some serious investment into green energy sources might be a way to save the world, save the country from being held over an oil barrel and prevent the volume of greenhouse gas produced by people talking about it all. But that would be a mad solution; who needs a workable route when kneejerk responses are so much more fun?

“Ahh, Dave” everyone says to me, “what you are forgetting is that politicians are the cleverest and most responsible people in society, elected to office to make decisions on behalf of dim-witted folks like you.” Well, everyone, what I say to you is this: Phillip Hollobone.

Vaping has forced me into contact with my local Baptist euro-septic. It was a coupling as successful as Michael Bolton and Michael Bolton’s hairstyle leaving me with the lasting impression that not only must it be very easy to get into Oxford University but that degrees are now given away with three Weetabix vouchers making them worth 3/5s of an Alton Towers ticket.

If politicians like Hollobone really want to save me from my idiotic actions then they’d abolish the lottery (well, someone has to win, don’t they?), all forms of DIY tools and place an alcohol-related block on accessing social media.

But no, campaigners and politicians don’t want to save me from myself – they just want me to make the mistakes they think I should be making in order to support companies such as JapanTobacco International.

At least writing this piece has given me time to contemplate my position regarding bans. Despite having a pronounced libertarian view to personal choice I’m pretty sure that if someone asked me to support banning people from running for Parliament I’d support it. But it would fail.

Did banning the “misuse” of the WHO logo work? Did it flip. Within minutes of Clive Bates replacing the image it began cropping up as avatars on Facebook and Twitter. Inside of an hour clever wags were dreaming up a variety of novel twists to their corporate identy – conveying the suspected pharma-driven motives for their e-cig position.

Will attempts to curb the rise of vaping work? It may well impact on those smokers who have yet to try vaping as a quit method but for the rest of us the genie is totally out of the bottle. And speaking of bottle, I can hear my Dark Puros-filled Pandora calling funny that never happens with the hoover.