Wednesday 12 June 2013

Vapour Trials.

Today, the fate of E-cigarettes and their use in the UK hangs in the balance. Its (rather badly) reported on here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22867161.
For their part, the BBC are doing a very good job at demonising the use of E-cigs-the focus on their mission today must be 'Go tabloid or go home'.

 
I've been a user of them since March and I haven't been near all but two real cigarettes in all that time. They're a real godsend as far as I'm concerned. But this new found method of making me last a few more years for the sake of the kids is predictably, under fire from the ever more sinister and growing police state that is the UK & European superpowers.

There are two issues which I understand as being problems:

1.      There are no age restrictions on buying e-cigs. Of course, manufacturers are being real dicks about it and making brightly coloured e-cigs to deliberately attract younger customers. This needs to stop, seriously.
And all governemt. has to do? Restrict the age limit for buying them, just like cigarettes. Done.

2.      There are no controls on what goes into e-cig juice. All sorts of stuff could be in them (albeit no more dangerous than the cr@p already in real cigarettes I might add). There are also no controls on monitoring how much nicotine is actually in them-just because ot says 18mg on the bottle, is it REALLY 18mg?

So fine, regulate that. Nobody really wants to inhale unmonitored poison anyway. I'd rather my e-cig juice was made properly.

What the EU & UK *won't* do is either of the above. They'll likely address the issue by banning general sale altogether and make it far more difficult to buy other than online from unregulated suppliers, and anything they do allow you to buy will be so hiked up in price that it would be cheaper to start smoking again. Which keeps that tax rolling in.

Unsurprisingly, this subject has been handled far better overseas outside of Europe.
I'd love for the UK & EU busy-bodies to prove me wrong, but let's face it; at about 1pm GMT today, they probably won't.

Saturday 1 June 2013

World Goth Fair: It turned out ever so slightly better than we expected...

So, World Goth Fair in Second Life has pretty much now come to a close. the Cursed event is shut, Port Seraphine is still open for the moment.

The initial figures are in and there will be a blog post on the WGF website tomorrow, But what I can tell you now is that right at the 11th hour we apparently broke the *1 million Linden Dollar barrier*, which in real currency terms is over $3500 (or over £2500).

Of that, a staggering 83360L was made in the licensed t-shirts due to 2084 separate sales of 40L per shirt (there appears to be a lot of gamblers in Second Life). This comes to over $300 or £200.

Obviously, this isn't the final figure, is approximate & doesn't take into consideration the commission cuts that Linden Labs & Paypal will take, but I think you'll agree that this is a pretty hefty sum. The final figures will be available to us soon enough, but...WOW.