The process the EU Commission is engaging in is meant to give the illusion of democracy in action. The bottom line is that it wants to tax electronic cigarettes and everything connected with them and, although the outcome might well have been decided behind closed doors, if we can muster up weight of numbers there is the chance we can influence the outcome.

The consultation has been taking place for a number of months but the deadline falls on the 16^th of February – there isn’t very long left to get involved. Jessica Harding, speaking for the New Nicotine Alliance, says: “It would be excellent if consumers could respond. It only takes about 15 minutes to do.”

The forms can appear a little confusing. For anybody struggling with working his or her way through the process, we recommend having a look at the brilliant guide residing on the ViP blog page.

The IG-ED e.V., a consumer’s organisation of German speaking vapers, contends that the issue is coming about because of declining cigarette sales producing less tax revenue for member countries: “The declining tobacco smoking quota is partially due to the electronic vape products which have been on the market for 12 years now. A tax on these products would stop this trend. It is also likely that a considerable number of newcomers would return to the tobacco cigarette.”

“For smokers, the motivation to switch would be significantly lower. This is not necessarily due to the tax, but the fact that a tax is being imposed at all, suggests to the consumer that electronic vape products are just as harmful as smoke tobacco products. Directive 2014/40/EU already leads consumers to be deceived about the actual minimal risks due to the same warning signs as on tobacco products.”

Closer to home, The New Nicotine Alliance believes that “There is no case on principled or practical grounds to apply excise duties to vaping products and other products that offer a much safer alternative to smoking.  The value to health and wellbeing associated with switching from smoking to vaping will exceed any benefits arising from revenue collection.”

“Just as it was with the Tobacco Products Directive, the inclusion of products which do not contain tobacco in the Tobacco Excise Directive is unhelpful and risks creating confusion in the minds of consumers.”

The EU Commission consultation website – here.

 

 

It was on one such break this week that I made a discovery. Taking a sip of Lady Grey, I clicked on one of those links you always try to avoid. “Seventeen things you didn’t know about Japan”, it said. One thing they didn’t know about me is that I love Japanese things, and another is that I am always looking for decent ways to procrastinate.

This is where I discovered that while we have milk, dark and white chocolate KitKats, Japan has benefitted from over 300 different flavours. Plus, out of all of those, the most popular one was Soy Sauce.

Other flavours have or do include: baked potato, cough drop, corn, European cheese, green bean, hot Japanese chilli, Miso soup, red potato, rock salt, sake, vegetable juice, and wasabi.

They should have just done an article about the seventeen things I didn’t know about KitKat – like the name being similar to the good luck phrase kitto katsu, meaning “you will surely win”. So, from its launch in 1973, bars have been given as good luck or thank you gifts and embraced by the nation.

But, according to Flavour Boss, one group of people who aren’t winning are non-smokers. Apparently, in their survey, two-thirds of non-smokers are miffed that they don’t get the equivalent of smoking breaks, while 80% of people responding were unhappy that smokers were allowed breaks at all.

It is difficult to argue against the fact that breaks freshen up employees. If it works for car drivers then it seems logical that taking five minutes away from a terminal or desk would do the same for someone beginning to feel a bit jaded. Walking about helps the circulation too, combatting the dangers of a sedentary life.

Many employers state that there’s a cost involved in having people wandering about instead of concentrating on their work – and, to avoid complications, have banned smoking as well as vaping.

 

But, given the new position taken by the UK government, will employers reconsider allowing vapers to vape in offices and work vehicles? The UK’s war on vaping is pretty much done and dusted (bar a few dissenting voices), the only trouble is whether too much damage has been done to vaping’s reputation over the last few years.

At one point in time, being able to vape at work was one of the main reasons behind people taking it up. Are you still allowed to vape at work? Do you think your employer encourages smokers to switch? Would you eat a wasabi KitKat?

 

*Japanese KitKat image borrowed from Japan Centre, where you can purchase some wonderful yet incredible Japanese KitKats

 

 

Oh, it’s just a smudge on the car’s windscreen. The panic is called off and we all breathe a collective sigh of relief. But then some fool turns on the radio and it’s not tuned to something with music. The air fills with noise about hurricanes and missiles and war and politicians. You can fumble for the central locking but that’s not going to help.

Run, run for home as fast as you can. Don’t let traffic or farmyard animals slow you down, you need to feel the comfort and tranquillity of your little bubble – the happy place where the outside world can not intrude.

You’ve left you door key in the car? You fool. What kind of idiot does something that stupid? You’d better hurry up to come up with a solution because that’s a pair of people in smart clothes walking down the road and they look like they want to give you a copy of something looking suspiciously like the word of a god in a booklet. Or get you to order expensive vegetables, delivered to your door. Or sign you up for window cleaning. Or take out a monthly direct debit, donating spare cash you don’t have to give to animals you can’t cuddle. Quick.

Good plan that was, popping next door is a masterstroke. You can both sit down share a cup of tea and chat about what new juice you’ve tried recently. Oh, and would you look at that? Her husband has only gone and made some wonderful cakes. Phew. A day that started with so much promise suddenly looked like it would be one you’d not forget in a hurry. But it’s all golden now; pick up that mug and sup down the nation’s favourite beverage because there’s nothing more British than a tea

Oh no, simply using the word British has sparked the neighbours off, and their opinions would grace septic tanks and sewage treatment plants better than landing on your delicate ears. Make your excuse to leave the table, any excuse.

Well, I suppose thinking about sewage might make some people want to go to the toilet, but it’s hardly ideal as you are still stuck in the house. Oh you have to be kidding me? Seriously? You’re going to do one of them in somebody else’s home? I don’t care if milk always makes you do that, it’s so inconsiderate. What the flip do you mean “it’s blocked it”?

No – NO! I don’t care what you’ve read on the Web or seen on TV, hurling faeces out of a window is possible the most bizarre thing to do under any circumstance.

But at least, now we have the new SV Multitool, if you did do that you’d be able to rescue the situation. We’ve taken the concept of the hammer and made it a 21st-century device. Our range of hammer multitools means that no matter the emergency – changing a radio station, opening a locked door or rescuing an errant turd – you will always have the correct hammer to hand.

No need to thank us, ‘being helpful’ is what Stealthvape does.

 

 

Currently, 73% of the United Kingdom is currently engaged in filling in paperwork so that your bosses can calculate precisely how much better you are performing now that at the same time last week. We are all being poured into tables and charts to highlight who is the worst – and who is the best at filling in (and telling lies on) forms.

Thanks to annual performance reviews and ridiculously high management targets, we are all working at 13,452% the rate of the average person in 1986. Productivity has never been higher; we are all richer and happier than ever.

Unless you try to catch a train. People who try to catch a train experience delays and strikes, rudeness and tickets that change price by the minute. Oh, and unless you attempt to drive anywhere. People who drive places encounter other people driving on the road. All of these people are impatient, rude and not very good at driving.

The military know this.

For decades, people who like to fight one another sussed out that if you went out in your tank someone else would see it. The next thing you know a little light is flashing, a buzzer is sounding and there’s a missile coming straight for them. Nothing puts a dampener on that Friday afternoon spirit than someone else trying to kill you. Right? We’ve all been there. It’s a real bummer.

So what did the little soldiers do? They went incognito, they embraced the Stealth. They made stuff all black, they put some funky angles on it – but, and this is the most important bit, they called their planes “stealth planes”. Tanks were no longer tanks, they are now “stealth tanks”. Take a flying guess what their little boats are now called go on.

Being stealthy made fighty people much happier and less prone to dwell on how much better stuff used to be. Having a stealthy vape always makes a vaper feel a sense of achievement. It’s clear to us that being stealthy is the future.

We are going to roll out a whole bunch of stuff, beyond vaping, over the rest of 2017. And it all begins with Britain’s second-most popular form of using nicotine: chips. We all love nicotine. We all love chips. We all love the nicotine in chips. But now it’s going to be even better – now they are Stealthchips.

Now we just need to work out how to make fish all angular and a decent way of spraying them a dull machine grey. Once we’ve sussed out how to make Stealthfish there’ll be no stopping us.

Maybe you’re happy with your life? Maybe you’re totally stoked with your vape? It doesn’t matter. If switching to Stealth-life works for people who are all grumpy and misery, just imagine how much more full of beans you’ll feel.

 

 

“Martin who? Chapman what?”

Precisely, the point entirely. If you are unaware, McKee is the chubby lover of all things pies, who believes it is his life mission to save the world from itself (*as long as this doesn’t include pies). Chapman is the same kind of thing but less pie-ridden, more Australian and bitter that he never became the rock god he dreamt of being.

But heroes they are, Melissa Sweet (who?) says so because they “speak the truth to power”. Unfortunately, Ms Sweet doesn’t know how much danger she placed the world in with that one tweet. McKee celebrated with another pie binge and Chapman spent three hours looking at his nude self in a mirror immediately after reading it. Anything could have befallen the plane during that time. Literally anything.

 

Like all heroes, they believe they know better than you and will save you from yourself whether you want it or not (Ref: Marvel’s Civil War). They are going to set you free, they are going to give you liberty. They ride white chargers and have halos and wave mystical swords of righteousness and stuff. Who cares what destruction lies in the wake of this action? Not proper heroes that’s for sure – and it’s that mark of irresponsibility which highlights exactly how heroic MucKy and Chumpman are.

Mucky & Chumpman: making your mind up for you so you don’t have to bother. That’s the film précis right there, Hollywood.

But you, you the pipsqueak in the corner over there. Yes, you. You are like Donald Trump to them. You are the condensed spirit of Hitler, Pol Pot and Simon Cowell. You are the person who told Amy Schumer she could be a comedian. You are the essence of evil because you support a regime that denies their truths. You are with them or you are wrong, for they are academics and always correct and on the side of justice – because they are the heroes.

So, we must be the villains?

 

You know that evil woman in Game of Thrones? The one who made that king bloke kill his own child for no reason? That’s Lorien Jollye, that is. They may as well rename the New Nicotine Alliance, “The League of Nazis Who Leave Milk Out On Work Surfaces”.

Anybody who perpetuates the myth that vaping offers a workable harm reduction approach to combatting smoking-related diseases is clearly one of the bad guys. It’s obvious because we aren’t members of the gang of heroes; a gang that includes Chapman, McKee, Glantz, Mr Burns, Dick Dastardly, Cruella de Vil, and Darth Vader.

So, thank you Martin McKee, and thank you Simon Chapman. Thank you for speaking the truth to power. Thank you for saving us from ourselves.

Oh, and thank you Andrew Laming for actually knowing what “the truth” is and standing up for evidence-based policy.

 

 

Actually, we all grow up with the option to listen to an engaged tone on the day tickets are released. Then we all love to go on to ticket reseller sites, thirty seconds later, because (magically) all the people who just bought the tickets are now no longer able to go. At a ridiculous mark-up.

How much do we love festivals? We love them so much that it is now the only acceptable medium through which to convey political ideas. First, there were wandering minstrels singing about the plague. Then came Corbyn’s Glastonbury ’17 set where he belted out some of his old favourites as well as things off his difficult new album? Even the Tory Party is going to set up its own Glastonbury (or, Gladstone-bury) to boost their popularity. Imagine the scene: Andrea Leadsom in a weekend hippy frock (claiming that she was once in The Fall), Michael Gove with beads around his neck, and Theresa May running around laying waste to a nearby crop.

It’s because we’ve been conditioned.

During the 1970s, an assortment of bearded horrors and future Yewtree suspects were kicked out from Broadcasting House. If you close your eyes you can picture them being forced with electric cattle prods into crates on the Radio 1 lorry. That’s not what happened, but it might help.

We were conditioned to think that if a job is worth doing then it shouldn’t be done in a small room. It should be done on a makeshift stage, in British weather, in front of a load of cheering people screaming out for free stuff. People who, instead of doing jobs or hobbies, are getting drunk and sunburnt/soaked.

Our current selection of ecigfests are all well and good, but all bar one are inside and none of them are going to reach those people who can benefit from vaping the most: non-smokers. This must be the reasoning behind The Science of Vaping tour; a national myth debunking jolly that kicked off in Milton Keynes. Thing is, nothing has been heard from them since the end of June. One can only but assume that the organisers fell into the comedy Amnesty Shredder or are still stuck in MK’s myriad of roundabouts.

So, as we’ve had the three days of sun that constitutes a good British summer, it’s almost definite that Halfords are now having a sale on camping stuff. We reckon that £30 will kit us out with a tent of marquee proportions, a multihob gas stove and some lilo repair kits. All we need is someone with a van and some pens to customise white T-shirts. Let’s get together and promote vaping with the Stealthvape Summer Festival of Vape Roadshow Extravaganza. Who’s in?

 

 

OK, fair enough, as a species we manage to make more than our fair share of idiotic decisions. We’ve created a system of politics that would be better housed in a circus, driving around in a clown car. We value voting for a performing dog over that of intellectual debate. While we’re busy pointing fingers: stand up if you purchased a copy of Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice. All 600,000 of you!

And if you bought the Jedward version, just leave the room now and never come back.

No, if you look at things that way then we don’t appear to be brighter than an old pair of slippers. But we aren’t looking at ourselves that way. We are thinking of higher things: the way that you are regulating your body temperature through feedback loops and evaporating your salty juices. The way your pulse will quicken when you spy Sports Direct is having a sale, and that you don’t think twice about breathing during the course of an average day.

“But hang on,” you say, “you can’t have us all claiming to be bright just for having the ability to not continuing holding a hand onto a red hot oven hob.”

Well, yes.

Public health people believe smokers are so stupid that they’ll quickly vape too much nicotine if left to their own devices. Although they haven’t stated this publicly, they also worry that once people start buying eliquids they’ll store it all in a bath. And then bathe in it while poking themselves in the eyes with 30ml bottles.

Clearly, the only safe thing to do was to campaign for juice bottles to be made tiny and restricting the volume of nicotine contained therein. We’re all far too stupid to be trusted.

Well, no.

If anybody has read Self-titration by experienced e-cigarette users: blood nicotine delivery and subjective effects, and that’s probably most of us, there’s continuing evidence that (if not us) our bodies are incredible.

“Incomplete self-titration may be due to a ‘saturation’ effect, that is, a limit on the volume of liquid that an individual can comfortably consume within a given time period, or because a given level of compensatory puffing is sufficient to achieve subjective satisfaction and alleviation of craving and withdrawal symptoms.”

We will vape only up to the point where the desire to do so is sated. Heavy users simply vape longer inhales more frequently to overcome a restricted volume of nicotine. This, in turn, leads to a higher coil temperature – which is the subject of ongoing investigation.

Consequently, it makes sense to reverse the 24mg limit (even if it only impacts on a small group of potential users) because there’s a lack of logic to the ban. Here’s hoping that MPs discover the innate intelligence our bodies possess, as they zoom about in their clown cars.

 

 

Time For Action was a harmless call to arms for people to go out at night-time, dress up smartly, and issue the bizarre extra-terrestrial demand “Take me to your leader”. The band showed the world what a call to action looks like, in their video, and it mainly consisted of standing around bored on staircases or in front of shops. It is highly likely that adopting this type of action contributed for the lack momentum in their revival.

When it comes to being a time for action for vapers, a slightly more energetic protest might be called for.

If you’ve been on holiday, living in a box or one of those vapid people on Love Island, you will have missed the news from San Francisco. No, they haven’t renamed it Trumplandia, in honour of the President – no, they’ve done something really stupid.

How stupid?

Banning all vape flavours apart from tobacco stupid. That’s how mind-numbingly stupid they were. Almost all vapers tend to kick off with tobacco juices and some choose to stay on them, only a minority mind you. Our survey last year showed that less than 10% of vapers regularly use tobacco flavours. We love custards, we love sweets and we love fruits.

The reason is obvious: shortly after switching from smoking tobacco cigarettes, our sense of taste begins to return. A world of sweet delights that had been closed off to use blossoms, taste buds explode with delight. And, because some of us are that way inclined, we love to vape juices that taste like Tooty Frooties.

This doesn’t matter to the fervent puritans bent on banning all forms of smoking. It looks like smoking to them and, what they hate even more, vapers appear to enjoy what they do. “Heavens to Betsy! You can’t actually enjoy vaping,” they holler. So, they have come up with a way to make sure you don’t.

“For too many years, the tobacco industry has selectively targeted our young adults with products that are deceptively associated with fruits and mint and candy,” lied the authoress behind the imbecilic legislation.

Will it make a difference?

Obviously not to current vapers, those who know what they’re doing will simply drive across the city limit to somewhere that sells what they used to buy. Others will hop online and order a delivery. What this does do is send a clear message that despite the advances being made in winning the argument in Europe, there is a stronghold of crass irresponsibility in California. There is a cohort of liars and charlatans who won’t stop in their mission to ban vaping in all forms, and they will take any measure necessary to achieve that end. We may be an ocean away but their influence spreads over to the UK.

Maybe you can go stand in a concrete stairwell, maybe you can loiter outside the front of a shop, or maybe you could give some support to the New Nicotine Alliance.

 

 

Some people claim the majority of negative vape research comes from just three people: Chapman, Glantz and McKee. This is not true, it conflates opinions being sought or expressed in the public domain with the origin of the research. Chapman is a retired rentamouth, McKee has not authored any study other than the odd paper review-based exercise, and Glantz’ forte is twisting other people’s findings.

Of course, this should surprise nobody seeing as none of them are scientists in any true definition of the term. They are anti-tobacco in the sense that they are puritanically anti tobacco companies, and smokers are simply casualties of the war of words they are waging.

The question that ought to be asked is ‘what is it about their words that they carry a disproportionate weight in the media?’ How come their sound bites take precedent over quality science?

The answer, according to the American Association for Science and Health (ACSH) comes down to snappy, simply headlines. Or rather, scientists conducting proper research looking at aspects of vaping haven’t learnt to write in clear English. The response to that would be, ‘why should they cater to the general public when their papers are aimed at their peers for review?’

ACSH respond: “Whether they like to admit it or not, scientists want to have a broad impact on society. Sure, recognition from other academics is nice, but most scientists would prefer to see their research splashed across the front pages of the New York Times and BBC News.”

Nicola Di Girolamo, in her paper titled “Healthcare articles with simple and declarative titles were more likely to be in the Altmetric Top 100”, discovered that, err, simple headlines get better media coverage.

Researchers looking into vaping need to take note: The media adores a good ecig story, especially if it is gifted to them on a plate with a good press release and easy to understand bullet points.

So, the initial statement can be rewritten: “The problem is,” they say, “that there’s not enough information out there [in the mainstream media] – we simply don’t know ” what we don’t know.

Do you know how many ecig-related papers were published just in the last week of June? All of these:

·      “In-person retail marketing claims in tobacco and E-cigarette shops in Southern California” by JS Yang, MM Wood, K Peirce

·      “Nicotine delivery to the aerosol of a heat-not-burn tobacco product: comparison with a tobacco cigarette and e-cigarettes” by KE Farsalinos, N Yannovits, T Sarri, V Voudris

·      “Electronic Cigarettes as an Introductory Tobacco Product Among Eighth and 11th Grade Tobacco Users””Oregon, 2015” by JZ Hines

·      “Why Don’t More Smokers Switch to Using E-Cigarettes: The Views of Confirmed Smokers” by N McKeganey, T Dickson

·      “Behavioral economic substitutability of e-cigarettes, tobacco cigarettes, and nicotine gum” by MW Johnson, PS Johnson, O Rass, LR Pacek

·      “Electronic cigarettes smoking among youth, its trend and factors associated” by S Ali

·      “Tobacco Use Among Middle and High School Students””United States, 2011-2016” by A Jamal

·      “Electronic Cigarettes in Germany: Patterns of Use and Perceived Health Improvement” by K Lehmann, S Kuhn, J Reimer

·      “Advances in Global Health Communication” by CE Beaudoin, T Hong

·      “E-vaping device” by SR Rinehart, BS Smith, C Dendy

·      “Offsetting the Impact of smoking and e-cigarette vaping on the cerebrovascular system and stroke injury: Is Metformin a viable countermeasure?” By MA Kaisar, H Villalba, S Prasad, T Liles, AE Sifat

·      “Recommended core items to assess e-cigarette use in population-based surveys” by JL Pearson, SC Hitchman, LS Brose, L Bauld

·      “Prevalence and correlates of electronic cigarette use among Canadian students: cross-sectional findings from the 2014/15 Canadian Student Tobacco, Alcohol and ” by A Montreuil, M MacDonald, M Asbridge, TC Wild

·      “Electronic cigarette use among US adults in the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study, 2013-2014” by BN Coleman, B Rostron, SE Johnson, BK Ambrose

·      “The electronic cigarette, do we need to worry?” by ML Løchen

·      “Effect of Electronic Cigarette Messages on Young-Adult Behavioral Dispositions Towards Use” by I Ariel

·      “Novel method of nicotine quantification in electronic cigarette liquids and aerosols” by M Ogunwale, Y Chen, W Theis, MH Nantz, D Conklin

·      “PERCEIVED HEALTH RELATED RISKS OF VAPING AMONG UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS IN FACULTY OF MEDICINE AND HEALTH SCIENCES, UNIVERSITI ” by HS Minhat, S Selvanathan, A Wahab

·      “Attitudes Toward Tobacco 21 Among US Youth” by H Dai

·      “Pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic assessment of electronic cigarettes, combustible cigarettes, and nicotine gum: implications for abuse liability” by MF Stiles, LR Campbell, DW Graff, BA Jones, RV Fant

·      “Electronic cigarette use as an aid to quit smoking in the representative Italian population PASSI survey” by G Gorini, G Ferrante, E Quarchioni, V Minardi

·      “Comparison of Periodontal Parameters and Self-Perceived Oral Symptoms among Cigarette-Smokers, Individuals Vaping Electronic-Cigarettes and Never-Smokers: ” by F Javed, T Abduljabbar, F Vohra, H Malmstrom

·      “A study of regulatory policies and relevant issues concerning electronic cigarette use in Taiwan” by TH Jiang, LM Cheng, MA Hawkins

·      “CPDD News and Views” by G Kong, S Krishnan-Sarin

·      “The impact of cancer drug wastage on economic evaluations” by J Truong, MC Cheung, H Mai, J Letargo, A Chambers

·      “Influence of smoking on aneurysm recurrence after endovascular treatment of cerebrovascular aneurysms” by J Futchko, J Starr, D Lau, MR Leach, C Roark

·      “Do neurobiological understandings of smoking influence quitting self-efficacy or treatment intentions?” by K Morphett, A Carter, W Hall, J Lucke, B Partridge

·      “Lower-Risk Cannabis Use Guidelines: A Comprehensive Update of Evidence and Recommendations” by B Fischer, C Russell, P Sabioni, W van den Brink

·      “Legal and health dilemmas challenging India’s e”cigarette endorsement” by G Agoramoorthy

·      “Global and targeted serum metabolic profiling of colorectal cancer progression” by Y Long, B Sanchez”Espiridion, M Lin, L White

 

 

Here follows an appeal on behalf of the Stealthvape Benevolent Dictator Party.

The problem with modern politics, it seems, is that the major parties all seem to be in it for themselves. This isn’t the problem, it’s that they pretend to have your best interests at heart. This isn’t the case for the Stealthvape Benevolent Dictator Party, we think that it’s in your best interests that we don’t pretend to care about your best interests. While this may seem harsh, stick with it as you’ll probably discover that our selfish interests coincide with yours.

Firstly, let’s be very clear, it’s the Stealthvape Benevolent Dictator Party’s ambition to do away with government, turn the Houses of Parliament into a 24hr car park and set up a base of operations in a flat above Greggs in Hull instead. This restructuring will speed up decision making, make the law making process more open and generate huge savings to the public purse.

These savings can be passed on to you, the taxpayer: each MP currently earns £74,000. On top of that they can earn a supplementary salary of between £15,025 and £74,990 depending how they spend their day in parliament. Plus they all get extensive allowances and expenses for kitting out second homes, employing someone to have an affair with and go on fact-finding tours of expensive holiday destinations. Voting for the Stealthvape Benevolent Dictator Party could put well over £100-million back into your pockets. Literally. We think it will be easier to do a draw on TV rather than go about rejigging tax laws. We’ll get that Tucker Jenkins from Eastenders to do it, you don’t see him about much these days so that’s one extra job created.

Modern party politics has a number of fundamental flaws: Firstly, they don’t relate to real people or what they go through. Only last week, the Stealthvape Benevolent Dictator Party secretary struggled to source our usual supply of caviar and this made us think of you poor people being unable to find any houmous. The Stealthvape Benevolent Dictator Party stands shoulder to shoulder with you in your suffering – or we would if you were in our banqueting suite also enjoying some roast swan.

Secondly, none of the other parties appreciate what it means to be a party – we do. If a political party doesn’t mean cake, jelly and ice cream in the minds of the public then it’s not surprising they garner few votes. The first law of the new Benevolent Dictator authority will be to instruct supermarkets to make party food free on the last Friday of every month.

Also, we are aware of the current issues that matter. For example, did you know that home taping is killing music? The country needs protecting from Ed Sheeran so we will be sending C90 cassettes out to every household.

What about health? NHS cutbacks have meant that hospitals can no longer afford expensive stitching due to the constraints on time. They now rely on unqualified assistants to gift-wrap patients. It’s a shocking state of affairs and one that we will stop immediately. We will cut a special price on silica wick for the NHS to use instead.

In place of bans on vaping in public places we’ll have a ban on the use of beginning sentences with “I’m sorry, but ” and “I know, but I was just ”. Instantly, this will solve the problems of people not doing what you’ve asked them to do. Teenagers – we’re looking at you here.

Most importantly, the thing that will matter to practically everybody the most, we promise no more elections or votes ever. That has to be worth voting for.