There’s been a number of changes around these pages recently. Some of them long overdue (I can never find the time to really sit down and tidy up around here), and some of them were… well just because I felt like it.
Recently, my good friend and expert blogger Dick Puddlecote considered these pages worthy enough to be nominated for Martin Scriblerus - a group of truly excellent bloggers that all share a similar vein of written excellence.
To be fair, I’m not your average anything. I have multiple - often conflicting - views on a wide range of subjects, most of which will never end up on this blog. When I switched to vaping almost two years ago (June 11th 2014 in case anyone is interested), I had absolutely zero interest in all the nuances of vaping. At all.
I joined some Farcefook groups, engaged with like-minded folks - gamers, geeks, IT people, doctors, electricians, plumbers, carpenters, bloggers, and folk that do weird things on Twitter - people from all walks of life. Different ages - mostly older than me at the time, though there were a few that were younger. The community was, and still is as wide and as varied as the devices folk choose to use.
What is this? Another brain dump? Well, yes it is in fact another brain dump. You see, for once I actually went out and got a bit social with some folks for a friend’s birthday (21 again). Interesting side-note, the birthday girl is married to my boss, and most of this brain dump stems from his & hers opinions on smoking, the smoking ban and vaping. There’s also follow-up commentary from my last brain dump.
Most of my regular readers are aware that from time to time I’ll just put some random thoughts into some kind of (relatively) coherent form. These thoughts are not generally specific to a particular piece of research or media article, they also contain expletives as it is written precisely how I’m thinking it.
Today the Office of National Statistics released a report from the Opinions and Lifestyle Survey on adult smoking habits in Great Britain for 2014.
Ever since the media kicked up a small storm over a 14-year-old having his vapouriser confiscated I’ve been thinking about this area. Of course, my own opinions are likely to differ from a lot of folks so feel free to take them or leave them.
As I mentioned at the start of the previous post on this:
I agree wholeheartedly that proxy-purchase should be allowed for existing smoking youth only. That is a given. If your kid smokes, I have no issue with an adult buying them a vapouriser. I’m more ambivalent towards proxy purchase if the kid in question doesn’t smoke but again, no real problem with it.
What follows here is purely my opinion on what seems to be a subject that is becoming the flash point for a lot of debate, argument and bickering. I’ll try to be as coherent as possible.
Most of you know that the All Party Parliamentary Group on ecigs met last week and a lot of good things came from that, there is already a very good write-up on the meeting from James Dunworth over on the Ashtray Blog, after all he was there. I wasn’t. Most of the information that came from the APPG I know through either that blog, the VTTV show The Haze Hour the following day, twitter (of course), plus the following two blog posts. Sarah Jakes, guest posted on Lorien Jollye’s blog to clarify her personal stance followed by a second posting by Lorien herself.
Over the last few years vaping has been placed under an increasingly magnified microscope, every single aspect from safety through to perceptions have been heavily scrutinized. The consumers, that is US, have been deliberately lumped into the same bracket as smokers and subsequently have been treated no different to smokers. We’ve had scare stories about “cancer causing chemicals” and have been told that vaping is a “public health threat”.
Time for a rewind, to 2009 specifically. I was still happily smoking and had no idea that the vaping community and industry existed. I had no idea that the MHRA wanted vapourisers to be placed squarely under medical regulation. Instead, all I saw in relation to smoking was the incessant beat of the anti-smoking organisations, and campaigns on the telly-box. I never had cause to contact my MP or MEP at the time simply because I didn’t care.
When UK Vapefest 2015 was announced around October last year, and having missed out on Vapefest 2014 part of me really wanted to go. I’d never been, so I was the epitome of a Vapefest virgin, so I scrambled to book some time off work on the Friday and Monday so I could take a leisurely stroll to Shrewsbury, settle into a hotel or a tent and be able to be up and about at a reasonable hour for both days, then take a leisurely stroll home on the Monday.
It isn’t often that I post about things that are completely unrelated to vaping, but sometimes things happen that social media just doesn’t give enough space for me to comment with the entirety of my thoughts, hence the blog.
Today, 1st August 2015 is #WorldLungCancerDay and the subject of lung cancer, and cancer in general is one I hold near and dear to my heart simply because I lost both of my parents to forms of cancer. I donate on a regular basis to charities that are active in bringing the varying forms of cancer to the attention of the masses. The work these charities and organisations do is incredibly valuable in raising awareness and much-needed funding for the ongoing research into the varying forms of cancer, both for treatment and detection for the sufferer and for the families.
To be honest I wasn’t going to write about my trip to Birmingham and the Vaper Expo, but having now had a chance to reflect and sleep on the occasion I’ve changed my mind. There are few things I want to go over, most of it good and some of it not so good, all my opinion of course!
The Queue
When my alarm went off at ridiculous o’clock in the morning, I wasn’t quite sure what to feel. Nervous, excited, dread, a combination of all? Whilst I had made the effort to get to Harrogate a few weeks ago, Vaper Expo had far more publicity in comparison and many folks on all social media platforms had been discussing the event for weeks.