Is Simon Chapman Sir Les Patterson in disguise?
Wednesday, April 18, 2012 at 9:00 You can be a tub-thumping activist/campaigner or you can be an independent academic 'expert'.
It's difficult if not impossible to be both but that hasn't stopped Simon Chapman, Professor in Public Health at the University of Sydney, from trying.
And, boy, is he trying.
In recent weeks – encouraged, perhaps, by the fawning welcome he got when he visited the UK in January – Chapman's comments have become ever more strident and weird.
He may live in Australia but his ego is clearly visible 12,000 miles away.
In February he even tried to belittle David Hockney. Result? He sounded like a boorish oaf.
If you fancy a laugh follow Chapman on Twitter. His tweets are to academia what Sir Les Patterson is to diplomacy. (Are they by any chance related?)
He doesn't agree with Labour MP Tom Harris either but instead of engaging in an adult debate with a former government minister he tweets:
That last one says it all, really. Then again:
But the tweet that really caused me to question Chapman's sanity was posted a couple of days ago and it read:
He then links to .... a Hands Off Our Packs video!!
High cost? What planet does this bozo inhabit? Anyone can see that Welcome to Nanny Town is not expensively filmed or produced (but thanks for the compliment, you moron!). In fact, it cost exactly £1260 including filming, editing and uploading.
Needless to say, facts like that don't suit Chapman's agenda. My advice? Think twice before you believe a word this idiotic man says.
PS. Talking of money, I wonder how much this pro-plain pack video – The Truth from Big Tobacco - cost? Or this six-minute (yawn) video: Plain Packs Protect launch. Or this smoking and plain packaging video which I described in January as "very slick"? I think we should be told.
Note: the three videos above have been viewed 3,747, 81 and 1,532 times respectively. That's a combined total of 5,360 views. By comparison, Welcome to Nanny Town has been viewed 11,786 times.
Good to know that the plain pack campaign is offering such great value for money!!
Reader Comments (10)
When I was a boy growing up in fifties Britain my father, who worked underground as a miner at the local colliery, always told me to respect anyone that worked in the professions such as our local GP, and to listen avidly to their advice when given. He never felt himself below them, but I’m sure he would have liked to have been something more than what he was – even so, he was a wonderful and loving father and the family respected him more than anyone else we ever met.
But I have to say that by the time the smoking ban was launched (I can’t believe its been almost five years now), I had already begun to delve deeper into the machinations of these so called professionals in connection with the ban, I sadly began to lose respect for them till finally, I began to loath them with a total and unremitting contempt.
Simon Chapman is the kind of vermin that now infest our society with a belligerence and manifest intolerance that would have never been believed all those years ago. Here is someone who is supposed to be a professional and well educated man – but is nothing more than a vulgar mouthed, infantile lesser man, that could never stand however briefly – in my father’s shadow.
I believe he’s been involved in producing several studies which I would dearly love to boil down in fish oil and force feed him every rotten scrap.
A turgid and disgusting wretch.
Simon Chapman is a dangerous sociopath and he scares me - little ole me with no funding, just a consumer from childhood to older age.
He hates people like me because we were child smoker and we haven't dropped dead yet. They only care about the children if those children do the decent thing and get cancer if they take up smoking.
Those of that don't are the enemy of this fantasist who has far more personal wealth than the pittance put in by comparison to rightfully help the legitimate consumer from the deliberate hate campaigning of this financially bloated hysterical nutter.
The bozo Chapman apparently likes to be called the "root of all evil." I very humbly suggest that we start calling him that, because... well it's probably true. I won't link to his twitter feed, but the evidence is there. :)
I'd love to see an interview between Chapman and Sir Les Patterson. The mind boggles!
If only.
Professor Simon Chapman lives in a haemetically sealed world, like most anti smokers, where dissent is rare and more importantly obsequiousness reigns supreme. Going back to the 1990s he has had a free run on the world stage, without dissent.
I caught him on a paper on SHS manipulating the results and posted it on my blog. Incidentally Chapman has blocked me from his Twitter account.
He wrote in my unmoderated comments, “You clowns are such amazing researchers. So you’ve “discovered” this, eh!"
It seems the pace is getting to him.
You should check his Twitter. He says he actually does have a photo of Sir Les in his office. He is very flattered by this post and the comparison.
I guess this is yet another example of his warped and twisted thinking :)
Public Health at the University of Sydney. Academia, Captain; but not as we know it.
Sir Les Patterson and Simon Crapman have more in common than many might suspect. Sir Les was the Minister for the Yartz (“Minister for the Arts” spoken with a thick “Strine” [Australian] accent). Crapman is Minister for the Fartz.
"He is very flattered by this post and the comparison."
He'd have to say that, wouldn't he? Try and show himself as one of the boys.
Let's see, on the one hand Sir Les, fag in one nicotine stained hand, whisky in the other, alcohol stained 'suit', (together with other unmentionable stains) Australian 'cultural' attache and President of the Australian cheese board. The ultimate prohibitionist as I'm sure his 'researchers' would verify. On the other hand, Chapman, a tedious, puritanical, expert in, erm, erm, ah, sociology - as well as sponging taxpayers money, a very good expert at that one.
If Chapman considers that a 'favourable' comparison he,s loonier than even I thought and, definitely, needs commiting, and quickly.
Chapman says that? Don't believe a word from him!
His feed is an everyday comedy read for me already along with The Daily Mash. :)