That’s just the beginning of the advert. Shortly after that the sky is lit up by the laser engraving machine spelling out, in clear detail, what a brilliant idea it would be to hand over a large sum of money to protect everything on your vape desk should disaster strike.

And disasters strike.

We’ve looked at the best practice from across the insurance world and believe we’ve identified the key features to make Stealthvape’s Vape Insurance Enterprise the world’s leading insurance company for vapers.

A great advert. Some people might have thought fiscal probity might be the first on the list, but do those people have the world’s first insurance company for vapers? No, no they do not. A great advert has something that will annoy or offend absolutely everyone. Dancing is one of those things. And then we’ll also be using a voiceover from an out-of-date comedian who can’t find work elsewhere – he’ll be doing comedy regional accents. Some people will be annoyed by his take on their voice, others will be upset he didn’t do their nondescript part of the United Kingdom.

Next up comes a really great name change. Just as you are used to our name, just as you remember what Stealthvape’s Vape Insurance Enterprise does everything changes. What is the name of our insurance branch? What? “Stealthvape’s Vape Insurance Enterprise”? Wrong. It became SVI four lines ago. By the end of the article it will have changed again.

Logos are great and everything, but everybody knows a twelve year old with a pack of Crayolas can do the same work that so-called experts charge loads of money for. So we’ve employed a six year old, they’re half the price of their older counterparts and understand nothing about employment law.

So, to the dirty business of insurance.

You might have questions about what we are going to cover, how claims will be made and when you can look forward to your cheque but let’s be honest, that’s not what insurance is about at all. You are going to send us an unreasonable amount of cash in exchange for the illusion that you have some kind of cover, the fun of filling in forms and then the excitement of hearing your name mentioned during an episode of BBC’s Watchdog. We aren’t bringing you a safety blanket, we’re offering you a spicy edge to life. Awesome? It’s the kind of thing you’ve come to expect from StealthIns Co.

In consecutive weeks of the New Year, three papers have been published that deal with the subject of a gateway effect. The first, published in the Addictive Behaviours journal, is called Electronic cigarette use and uptake of cigarette smoking: A longitudinal examination of U.S. college students.

Although the study discovered that there is an increased likelihood of vaping teens going on to experiment with cigarettes, it revealed the simple truth that teens vaping does not mean they go on to become full-time smokers: “Current e-cigarette users at baseline were no more likely to progress to current smoking than young adults who were not using e-cigarettes.”

It’s the weakest of the three studies, but it still confirms that vaping is no predictor of future smoking behaviour. The second offers much stronger affirmation, and comes from The Centre for Substance Use Research in Scotland.

Visible Vaping: E-Cigarettes and the Further De-Normalization of Smoking was published in the International Archives of Addiction Research and Medicine.

96% of the young people taking part in the study were able to distinguish between vaping devices and traditional tobacco cigarettes, and expressed absolutely no desire to smoke. Is there a gateway? “If anything,” said the lead researcher, “the results of this study show the opposite is true. Vaping is making smoking less interesting for non-smokers.”

The third study was conducted in Canada, where public vaping has been under attack. Clearing the Air: A systematic review on the harms and benefits of e-cigarettes and vapour devices is available online from the University of Victoria website.

The researchers were unambiguous in their findings: “There is no evidence of any gateway effect whereby youth who experiment with vapour devices are, as a result, more likely to take up tobacco use. The available evidence is that tobacco use by youth has been declining while use of vapour devices has been increasing”.

One of the two lead researchers went on to add: “Fears of a gateway effect are unjustified and overblown. From a public health perspective, it’s positive to see youth moving towards a less harmful substitute to tobacco smoking’.

There’s only one gateway involved with vaping – and that’s the one-way route away from tobacco smoking.

Sea is usually found near the shore. It wasn’t this week, it was flying over the top of it and onto the land. It was like rain, but skipping several water cycle steps. The impact was devastating; it was impossible for people (who live near the seaside) to go to the shops without being accosted by a television or radio journalist.

Thanks to a drop in air pressure, and journalist standards, what used to be called a very windy day has now been renamed a “weather bomb”. The wind (must be foreign as it’s coming from across the sea) has become a weather terrorist bent on causing destruction to our way of life. You know it’s as serious as it could get because the Met Office has declared this worthy of an Amber Alert, the most colourful of alerts.

It’s not just the things Doris the Air Bomber is doing, journalists are also imagining ways she will mess us up in the future. Upcoming storm facts, if you will. Or, if you prefer, fiction presented as journalism. Some are predicting that Doris will force Labour voters to stay away from the ballot box in Stoke.

It’s the new age, it’s a time where we don’t have to bother with stupid inconveniences like facts any longer. What? You don’t want to like something? Well simply go ahead and make some stuff up. Traffic jams are caused by the decline of the cooked breakfast. Ant and Dec are responsible for the delays in A&E departments.

Oh, and kids have invented a new, horrific way of doing drugs – it’s called “Dripping”.

Dripping, that newest of new things. That thing where they “drop liquid directly ONTO THE COIL”! Oh you stupid, stupid kids – how could you? Not directly onto the coil for flip sake. Don’t you know that it causes cancer? It must do because this lobotomised pair of space cadets say so; we don’t need no research education. They are “hacking” the e-cigarette to “get stronger hits” and it’s “incredibly dangerous”, so says Rebel Circus.

It’s not just these minor league new media outlets, the traditional press fell for the shock and fear agenda as well. USA Today, Fox, and the Mail all covered this nonsense research. There is one hope: maybe Storm Doris could blow away the people who write such garbage.

If you don’t want to smoke then just quit, so one of the arguments goes. But people look at you funny if you suggest they should become vegetarians if they don’t like to eat tripe. What we’ve done here is to cover a lot of the popular objections to vaping that crop up on social media and offer up a reply you can use, most with a link to some actual science.

While there are no guarantees that this will convince doubters, at least it provides an alternative to suggesting they do something painful and permanent.

“It has chemicals in it”

As does your bacon sandwich. The only important aspect is the volume of “bad” chemicals – and, as vaping is a substitute for smoking, the important thing is that without combustion it doesn’t contain almost all of the toxic, carcinogenic chemicals in tobacco smoke. It’s the lack of those other chemicals that caused researchers in Bristol to say that switching to vaping is better for heart cells.

“I don’t want your second-hand smoke”

The problem with this is that objecting to having a large vape cloud blown into your face is quite justifiable. But, just to allay fear, current understanding is that there are minimal contaminants in exhaled vape – and nicotine content is tiny before being inhaled. And it isn’t smoke!

“They explode”

There have been (in the region of) 20-30 explosions over the last couple of years. While these look serious it needs to be remembered how many vapers there are – 2.8 million.

There have been problems with the same type of battery in laptops, cellphones and hoverboards. Still, the incidents of failure were minimal compared to the volumes of products out there and lithium-ion cells remain an excellent choice when balancing performance against cost. The vape-related incidents are almost exclusively the result of a person not following charging or use instructions.

“They give you popcorn lung”

Let’s give it its real name: bronchiolitis obliterans. And no, vaping does not cause this disease. How do we know? Because there has not been a single, verified, documented incident since vaping began. Moreover, vape carries a fraction of the chemical called diacetyl compared to cigarette smoke – and there has not been a single incident of bronchiolitis obliterans in fag smokers either.

“We don’t know what’s in them and we don’t know the short and long term effects”

We know very well what eliquid is made up from and extensive testing has identified the products once the liquid has evaporated and become vapour. Also, many of the toxin levels claim to have been found have been attributed to a dry wick being overheated – something only machines would do because it tastes bad. We know that vape does not contain the products of tobacco combustion – the causes of tobacco-related diseases. Also, we know that vaping is at least 95% safer and produces improvements in lung function.

“They’re marketed to children”

The notion that adults don’t eat sweets, cereals or donuts is a total nonsense. Likewise, the idea that only children watch cartoons is foolish. Recently, people decried a promotion linking Pokémon with vaping – but it’s almost entirely adults who play Pokémon Go.

“It’s a gateway to smoking & it normalises smoking for children”

No it isn’t and no it doesn’t, and there’s overwhelming proof: vaping has been a mainstream activity for almost a decade and, during this time, smoking rates have continued to plummet. Stats illustrate this, like those produced by Professor Robert West: Trends in e-cigarette use, presentation to European Conference on Tobacco or Health. If there were a gateway effect we’d be seeing growing rates of teen smokers – the only place this claims to happen is in the States (where they wrongly classify vaping as smoking). Recently, this study debunked the entire notion that there is a gateway effect.

“They don’t work anyway”

Honestly, they do. Tens of thousands of online forum members and even more social media users stand to the fact that it helps smokers escape from the grip of tobacco. Research says it works, and here, here too.

Yes, vaping is better than smoking. Vaping is better than lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart disease and strokes. It’s better than asthma, premature and underweight babies. It’s better than diabetes, cataracts and age-related macular degeneration. Vaping is better than colon, cervix, liver, stomach and pancreatic cancer – in fact all of the secondary cancers that accompany the primary smoking-related cancer.

Vaping is better than having clothes that stink, halitosis, yellow fingers and gum disease. It’s better than the need to stand outside your back door in the rain or live in rooms full of overflowing ashtrays. Vaping is better than sucking down acrid smoke because vaping means rediscovering flavour, delicate sweet flavour.

Vaping is the freedom offered by a motorbike when motorways have become gridlocked. It’s a group that writes and plays its own music in a world full of company conveyor-belt boy and girl bands. It’s an underdog scoring the 89^th minute winner in the FA Cup final. It’s catching the perfect wave, not dropping a stitch, landing a catch, holding the pose and completing the crossword.

Smoking is the sweary TV chef who cries, the weird TV chef in a cottage with few friends, the TV chef by the sea who charges too much for fried fish and the (frankly bizarre) TV chef who makes food out of concrete and Lemsip. Smoking is all of those ridiculous people – vaping is Mary Berry. Sweet, loveable Mary Berry.

Vaping is getting a brilliant exam grade although you didn’t bother revising. It’s giving up on relationships and then literally bumping into a soul mate on the bus. It’s getting an email from the National Lottery letting you know you’re a winner.

Because you are a winner. You won the second you made the decision to switch away from smoking. You won seconds, then minutes – and then hours. Life began stretching out in front of you once more.

It carries risks, but risks that are almost 1/100^th of those posed by the old habit. It poses greater harm to a healthy bank balance more than anything else due to vaping’s “gotta collect ‘em all” nature. It reduces harm. If smoking is a bloody mixed martial arts scrap, vaping is a bedroom pillow fight at a teenage girl’s sleepover. It’s an electric-powered bicycle versus a Penny Farthing.

The biggest problem facing current smokers is that they believe the lies spouted by pharmaceutical company shills. They believe those lies and ignore the simple truth that vaping is better than smoking. Vaping is healthier than smoking: we say it, experts say it, and the PHE/RCP/Cochrane reports say it.

Stealthvape’s new Ladybits eliquid featured in an early January tale about anger and a vaper’s inability to be social on social media. It was part of a range we thought the world was shouting out for, because some bedroom brewers don’t seem to be able to care how vaping is perceived. Obviously, we never sold any Stealthvape Junior Juice eliquids to underage vapers. We gave it away at baby showers. Or did we? (We didn’t). Or didn’t we?

We formed the The National Union of Apathetic Vapers in February. Well, we would have done but there was little interest and we couldn’t be bothered. Which automatically made us all life members. It couldn’t last. As the inevitability of the impending TPD rose up, we cast our collective hive mind to hope and future-proofed vaping. Given the rise of Trump the ideas all seem a bit prescient now.

As the month wore on, we warned vapers about the unexplained dangers of vaping. One minute you’re happily engrossed in coil winding, the next you are arriving at casualty clutching scorched thighs. It’s a simple step from patiently working to in-patient, which is why we then explored E-cig Ban. We spoke to Professor Simon Cashback and Timothy Frothingatthemouth when nobody else would. We spoke to Martin McPies when nobody else wanted to.

It was a natural progression to explore vaping on the go. So we did. Not for the first time, we thought the unthinkable to provide the solutions other lesser folk would consider unworkable.

It’s the knack we have for getting under the skin of the previously unconsidered that stands us in front of others in the queue for life’s bathroom. It’s a product of travelling the B-roads of the mind that convinced people to consult us with their problems in Auntie Stealthvape Replies. *On the advice of our lawyer, we would like to point out that we did not encourage Mr Foxy Knickers to do the thing he was sent down for.

This is the same person who gave us legal advise after we uncovered the secret choreographed script for the forthcoming Commons ecig debate. No matter what Mr Peter Xenophobe claims in the Evening Telegraph, the judge found in our favour (and we’re still waiting for 73 of the 2,000 rubber duckies we were awarded).

There may be no “I” in Team but there is “Vagina Temp“, “Mega Van Pit” and  “Anti Amp Veg” in Team Vaping. This is why we opened up The Stealthvape Corporate Fun Team-Building Activity Centre, on the edge of the delightful Thurrock Business Park.

Visionaries? Us? Of course, we absolutely agree with you – after all, who else would have created Stealthvapeonburyexpotacular? We knew that the vape scene was now very ‘scene’ with all the hiphopsters and beardymen. So we contracted the very best musical acts. People marveled at the giant sounds of Little David, Jerry Wallace playing every single one of his big hit and nobody played a mean polka quite like Whoopee John.

We created a movie about vaping, explored the social nuances of library vaping, and (in a ground breaking piece of investigative journalism) broke “The Truth about the Vape Industry“.

Barely a quarter of 2016 completed, we had accomplished so much. We created a much fairer system for online vape competitions. Unfortunately, despite being stunningly fair, it transpired that everyone entering wasn’t up to the task so no one won.

Then we invented a motivational program for people looking to quit – creating original products into the bargain. First up, The Stealthvape VapeMate Safe. It’s like a normal safe but six times better. Then, the revolutionary Stealthvape Vapemate Nonvapecig. It looks like a mod and atomiser, it has a colourful liquid in the tank, but press the button and nothing happens. People call us geniuses and we’d struggle to argue with them.

But then came the all-things-to-all-people Stealthvape Vaping Vapebox For Vapers â„¢. A product so stunning that people were lost for words – and when they found those words it was too late because we’d gone off for chips. Chips for days, like you find in the awesome tricky box.

We mourned Mark Drakeford’s passing in May, and gave Wales a whole bunch of ideas of things they could crack down on instead of vape. So popular was our idea that car indicators should be replaced with cuddly Charlotte Church dolls that it’s rumoured VTTV’s Dave Dorn has relocated to Swansea. He loves Charlotte Church that much.

A tale was told about a man’s valiant attempts to cut down to zero nic. We didn’t mention it, due to it occurring in real time, but it failed. Our hearts go out to John. Err, Dave. Umm, no, John.

As the year’s clock struck six, we gave you all a new solution to selling online AND a free-range range of vape products. Such a fun-packed six months that there are those who demand: “Where on earth do you get all of these ideas?” Simple, we steal them from the Dark Net, it’s got something like 19 times the ideas the normal internet has. That and we don’t go out much.

Seeing as we’re looking back at what was, it’s appropriate that we start with the time we looked even further back in time. All because some idiot thought the Fortuna SubOhm Tank would be a great idea. It remains as clever as Leicester selling Kanté, Samsung using that exploding battery or having held a belief that the Chilcot report would change anything.

Halfway through the year we believed that Brexit would or wouldn’t change vaping, and that the TPD (as it stands) will restrict smokers’ access to the truth about swapping to ecigs. How can we overcome this obstacle? “It’s us – we are the sexy advert. Everywhere we go, everything we do, we’ve got to exude the very essence of sexy. Now, for you and me it’s going to be pretty easy. We are sexy beasts.”

Consequently, maybe it’s time to preserve the present, we thought to ourselfves. Maybe it’s time to get busy with the Stealthvape Vape Pot™. It was the moment when industry experts sat up and nodded in unison, they understood why we hold a sterling reputation for delivering ground-breaking products and inventing new segments of the market.

We stood should to shoulder with the poor women and men who’ve spent every penny they own on developing a ridiculous vape collection. And we lined up next to those who can no longer afford to augment their current array of devices. We care, and that’s why there’s now a Home for Vapers.

Then men chased a football in France, women in shorts grunted on Wimbledon courts and lots of people cheated while running about and jumping a bit in Brazil. We can do that, we decided. But we can do it better: the Stealthvape International World Vape Championathon.

We wrote to the Department of Health to point out that they could reduce spending but still reduce smoking rates and improve the health of the nation. Unfortunately, Jeremy Hunt did not turn up to our meeting in Hooters so we drank the sangria ourselves. Not stopping there, we also contacted the Ministry of Defense with some brilliant ideas about doing war on the cheap – all thanks to vapers. The letter wasn’t just another poor excuse to go to Hooters again. That would have been sad.

Maybe the augmented vaping idea wasn’t brilliant. Maybe the plans for the Museum of Vaping hadn’t been fully thought through. Maybe. But our Efficacy of Vaping Survey was a blinding success. Thirty brief questions, with only one mistake from the fool who typed them in, the Stealthvape Efficacy Survey produced some fantastic information and was covered by a number of other people.

Whatever happens in the big world, we hope that the end of the year finds you happy and healthy – and we wish that for you and yours going into 2017. Have a great New Year.

It isn’t easy, we empathise. It’s a hazard-strewn trail from waking to downing the last bottle of Baileys – and that’s not even factoring in the non-stop begging adverts coming from the television. That said, we believe in helping people who really, genuinely need assistance. And do you know who those people are? It’s you, that’s who.

Each year people give you a collection of things that will either serve no function in your life, or offend you to the very core of your being if you gaze upon them. “Easy”, some say, “I’ll just pop them on eBay, lob them at the tip or palm them off to other people next year.”

A simple solution could be a trip to the tip experience. This is an experience unlike any of the decent ones you might have received during Yuletidemas. A trip to the tip currently (at a time when bin people reckon all of your extra festive rubbish will magically be sorted out by David Blane) is like an adventure into a post-apocalyptic nightmare. There’s queues, a bearded man in a hat shouting at you, more queues, and the macho posturing as each person attempts to lob their stuff to the end of a skip and only manages to get it just over the wall. And queues. Trust us, it’s hell.

So, eBay then? While this might seem to be a simple solution to a simple problem we need to caution you that nothing in life is simple – just look at people standing in a fast food restaurant queue. Over the last twenty years there has been no revolution in the fast food menu. The few burgers listed on it are the same as they’ve always been: burger, cheeseburger, double cheeseburger, fat burger, fat burger with cheese, tall burger, fish burger (“that will be five minutes, sir, we’ll bring it to you in half an hour”) and chuck burger.

It all seems so simple but you can guarantee you’ll spend a frustrating time standing behind people who have no idea what they want – every single bloomin’ time. Gifts are the same.

You are not the only person using eBay. The person who gave you that present uses it too. And they are going to see your selfishness displayed in your advert. And, if not, they will find out from Uncle Bob that you palmed stuff off on him because they’ll see his advert next year. It just makes you a horrible person attempting to profit from your selfishness. No, we say, don’t be that person – let us profit from your selfishness and we’ll be the horrible person for you. Yes, this is where we come in, with Stealthvape’s unwanted gift service.

So, here’s you sat in front of a litre of juice that won’t be used. It’s because your family haven’t bothered to note your long-standing hatred of all things mango. Even the name irks you. They should know that but they couldn’t be bothered. Scientists could take bananas and fuse them with grapes…but if they called the frankenfruit “the new mango” it would guarantee you’d jump off a pier.

And that mod? Didn’t they appreciate you’ve already got one of those and wanted the one with a screen you could personalise? The sods. But if you get caught getting shot of it you know it will all be you that’s at fault.

What does our service offer? All you need to do is package the unwanted items, write our address on the label and pay for postage – we take care of everything else and guarantee that you’ll never be troubled by the stuff again. The only thing we ask is that you don’t use the service for getting shot of tat, just nice stuff. Preferably expensive. Thank you.

What’s the purpose of Stealthvape Tours and Travel, you are asking yourself. Quite simply, it offers exactly the same kind of tour and travel service that you could find from any other tour and travel company. Except it’s for vapers. To date you will have had to arrange your holiday by speaking to people who probably didn’t vape, and travel on buses, trains and planes that were operated by non-vapers.

Then, upon arriving at your destination, you would be greeted like Michael Gove at Boris Johnson’s birthday party. Or, just for balance, as welcome as Jeremy Corbyn at Tony Blair’s trip to Carpet Supacentre. “Vapoteur? Non, monsieur,” says the genial host at your vacation centre. “Mais non! C’est un place locale for the population locale.”

The world is splitting in two; there are places where vaping is positively welcomed and places where it is banned. We know those places. Well, we know some of them and we’ve constructed everything from short breaks to full blown tours to explore them.

Fancy an inner city vape break? Our five star tent beckons from a luxurious East Midlands roundabout, handy for Nottingham city centre shopping and all of the vape-friendly places it contains. Martin may look dishevelled, he would be given that we turfed him out of his tent, but he is a font of knowledge and is willing to act as your concierge for two bottles of super-strength cider and a fish supper.

But you want more, right? You fancy combining vaping with extreme thrills. In days gone by, adventure seekers would go to the places the Foreign Office advised against. Well now you can do it from a vape perspective with our round the world ‘Banned’ tour.

Landing in California, you will be breaking the law from the minute you take your first puff until the moment you’re running back to the airport. Hop from there to Australia, to Singapore and then through other Far Eastern countries where vaping is considered worse than murder. Before you know it you’ll have a collection of arrest photographs to be proud of and a story for every vape meet back home.

It’s not been easy setting up the range of activities Stealthvape Tours and Travel can now offer, and they aren’t cheap either – but then nothing worthwhile is. Just make sure you don’t leave it too late, bookings are anticipated to come in thick and fast as the drudgery of January blurs into a miserable February.

Welcome to the Stealthvape Bowl for the very first international Vape Cup friendly. Taking the pitch today is the home side Advocates Athletic and Public Health Disunited, our visitors. The grass has been relayed with AstroTurf for today’s match as a special concession to this afternoon’s guests.

Athletic will be playing in the positive green strip, Disunited are wearing the all-white kit provided by Big Pharma, their sponsors. Although they look clean before kick off it will be interesting to note if the white shirts and shorts look distinctly grubby come full time.

As a unique twist on the old ‘jumpers for goalposts’, each team constructed their own goals prior to kick off – using copies of their respective research reports. I’m looking over now at Athletic’s goal; a solid edifice compromising of the Royal College of Physicians’ study and bound copies of the Public Health England report. I would like to say the same about Disunited’s too, but the piles of CDC reviews and pharma-funded surveys appear to be falling apart with closer inspection.

The ref has blown for kick-off but Stanton Glantz is refusing to touch the football. It looks like he’s complaining that the shape is the same as balls used by people who smoke. Advocates’ captain, Konstantinos Farsalinos, has magnanimously agreed to let the opposition use their ball – which is fetched by their professional Australian right whinger Simon Chapman. Chapman brings a wealth of expertise to his side as he’s always playing games on Twitter.

So we’re finally off. But what’s this? Linda McAvan has picked up the ball and is running to Disunited’s bench. It looks like she’s planning on sitting there and instructing her side to ignore the opposition. And the referee. And the crowd. This is ridiculous; surely she knows she can’t simply make up her own rules?

This certainly isn’t making a great spectacle to watch. Peter Hajek and Linda Bauld have managed to wrestle the ball from McAvan’s hands. Up runs Jean Etter to take the free kick – fans of the game will know he goes by the nickname ‘The Professor’, because, well, he’s a professor. As are most of Athletic’s players.

The ball lands at Clive Bates’ feet, a delightful pass, and he ghosts past Martin McKee. It’s like McKee, Disunited’s left whinger, has no understanding of the game. It’s clear that McKee can only be here for the half-time snacks.

Bates sends the ball forward. It’s West to Stimson. Stimson through to Sweanor. Sweanor is clear in on goal oh, but that’s a horrible challenge from Mark Drakeford and a clear penalty. Michael Siegel steps up and slots the ball home like he always does. Disunited will be unhappy but they are used to being called out for playing dirty.

The match finishes in a clear victory for the vape advocates although the margin is uncertain as Disunited’s manager, Dr Margaret Chan, went on to score an uncountable number of own-goals during the post-match press conference.

And for the losing team of anti-vape campaigners: cheer up, it’s only a game. Shame that access to vape technology is more of a life and death thing.