The Smoking Ban

I oppose the smoking ban instinctivly. It is illiberal, unnecessary and is a fine example of the nanny state in action. I am also a former smoker who gave up almost four years ago. But I didn't take on the zeal of the convert and start coughing and spluttering theatrically if someone lights up within a mile of me. Nor do I claim to have to wash my hair or clothes if I have been within spitting distance of a smoker, that is just silly and juvenile. If smokers visit my house I regard it as inhospitable to force them outside. If they want a smoke, they are welcome to light up in the warmth and comfort of our home.

As with all the interfering nannying there are unintended consequences. Increasingly people are forced to stand outside their own homes to indulge as even non-smoking husbands, wives and other family members become obsessively convinced that passive smoking may knock a nano-second off their wonderful lives. Like waifs and strays they stand forlornly shivering on their doorsteps puffing away. I couldn't do that to somebody I claim to love.

But recently I thought my beloved had taken up smoking again. When I got in her car there was the definite smell of tobacco. I enquired whether her mother, approaching ninety and still puffing away like a good un had been partaking in the car. No, she hadn't, not that I'd have minded.

I then got a distinct whiff of nicotine in the kitchen one day. It was very definitely there, I knew I wasn't having some form of nasal hallucination. But Mrs B had been out at work for three hours. I looked at the cats snoozing on the settee. No, they may be very intelligent but no, it was definitely not them.

It then hit me. We live in a stone terraced house with the doorstep onto the street. The neighbours on both sides smoke but now have to stand outside when indulging. When my beloved's car smelled of tobacco next door's lad had been smoking and our car was right outside their house as he puffed away. The smoke had found its way into the car. Likewise to the rear the neighbours stand in the garden smoking and it floats up to our open windows and into the house.

Fortunately we don't mind. But it's yet another example of how the interference of mithering do gooders has negative, unintended consequences for others. Thanks very much.

Fat Fighters on the NHS

Last week I had an exchange of banter with my old mate Steve Allison. He believed in the abolition of the seatbelt law, but advocated the charging of costs to resulting accident victims if they ended up in hospital. I disagreed with making them pay for treatment and we agreed to disagree.

Steve has now been elected to UKIP's National Executive Committee. I'm sure some much needed commonsense will make a difference. But I can't help wondering what happens if, as is highly likely, the experience drives him to some kind of mental breakdown. As it's self inflicted would he be happy to pay for treatment I wonder? Only kidding, congratulations Steve and good luck.

There are various areas where I completely agree with the principle of not providing free treatment on the NHS. One such area was highlighted in the media this week, fat people. I'm no skinny beanpole by any stretch of the imagination, but I paid good money on great food and wine to get the size I am, not obese but definitely over weight. If I now decide I need to lose weight I will lose the weight, as I gained the weight, by my own effort and not expect you, the taxpayer, to foot the bill. Fatties should get a grip and find some willpower, the NHS wasn't founded to pander to your weakness but to help people in genuine medical need.

I am, even as an ex smoker, sick of the way that smokers continue to be oppressed and bullied. However, why the hell should the NHS spend money on 'smoking cessation services' as they call them? If somebody wants to give up smoking then use your willpower and stop, as you will if you really want to. I don't see why our taxes should be squandered on people too weak to do what I presume they must want to do if they contact their local 'NHS cessation service'. Wimps!

Then there is your 'gender realignment' treatment. Of course they use these euphemisms to mask what is really involved. If Arthur one day wakes up, and decides he wants to be Martha instead, then fine, that's his/her prerogative. But don't expect to have your widget lopped off out of my taxes, go private, or privates! And before anybody, usually with a vested interest, whines about not having treatment leading to psychiatric problems that cost the NHS much needed resources, that argument doesn't stand up to scrutiny considering the years and years of physical and mental treatment of transexuals as they change sex.

Any cosmetic treatment should be only available privately and not on the NHS. Of the two other issues that concern me specifically, abortion as a contraception and the very existence of the NHS itself, I will be gassing off about both in the coming days and weeks.

Smokers? Evil Bastards!

I used to have a friend who had a bit of an interest in conspiracy theories, not the completely loony David Icke style, slightly more credible, but still conspiracy theories. One of his more interesting ones was about the venemous assault on smokers, this was in the 1980s before the smoking ban.

His theory was that the increased incidence of cancer had been concerning governments for a long time, they were desperate to find the cause. Eventually they found a link, so his theory went, and the evil cause of many forms of cancer were petro-chemicals. That was that then.

But no, the governmnent then looked at what it could do. The petro-chemical industry, as well as being crucial to our existence, was extremely powerful. The government was scared it couldn't win a battle to clean that particular industry up. So what could they do?

Eventually they had the idea of creating a scapegoat in order to placate the population at large, who were increasingly concerned at cancer levels. Hey presto, the government decided to hammer the tobacco industry instead.

The second strand to his theory was that the government, in attacking smoking and the tobacco industry, would use it to assess the power of propaganda in a free and democratic society. Which is what got me onto this post today.

As for the first part of his theory I doubt it very much, although I do think there has been exaggeration of the effects of smoking, especially passive smoking. Wherever you have a new ideology you get the zealots who go to the far extremes.

What got me mulling this over again was seeing this week, for the first time, the government's latest propaganda attack on Britain's last, legally oppressed and officially villified minority, the smokers. If you haven't seen it the goverment commissars are not happy with just banning smoking and forcing people outside buildings for a drag, oh no, that isn't nearly enough. They are now ordering you to smoke seven miles (or was it seven paces?) from the building you have just been kicked out of. You see, the smoke may just seep through the bricks, or waft through an open window thus killing the occupants.

The propaganda element of this theory has worked incredibly well. In fact that element could have seen off smoking but Blair, the great dictator, just had to prove he was boss and brought in the ban. But what effect has the propaganda had?

Two personal examples prove the success of the propaganda. We have friends who still smoke, I gave up about three years ago as did my beloved. But when our friends come for a meal they insist on going out onto our balcony for a fag. We insist that we are not the tedious ex-smokers who claim to need the smell of smoke surgically removing and have to burn the curtains and redecorate the house when they've gone. But they have been conditioned not to smoke indoors any more. Although the power of numerous bottles of Cahors often reverses the effect of the propaganda by about 2-00am!

The second example is a chap a few doors down who, even in the blizzards last winter, could be seen shivering on his doorstep, less than seven yards from his home admittedy, no longer allowed by himself or whoever, to smoke in the comfort of his own home. I can't help wishing he would find some backbone and sit in the comfort of his armchair, with a nice glass of single malt, drawing on a Marlboro or Benson and Hedges.

So I finish with the view that not only has the propaganda about tobacco worked wonderfully well, but it has also shown what a nation of intolerant, self-obsessed wimps we have become, ready to ask how high when the state tells us to jump rather than sticking two fingers up in the great old English tradition.

Nick Hogan-Hero or Clown?

If like me you have been away, or extremely busy recently, you may have missed the fact that anti-smoking ban pub landlord Nick Hogan has been sent to prison, but has now been released. He wasn't imprisoned for breaching the smoking ban, but for non payment of fines in relation to breaches of the smoking ban in his pub. On many blogs he has become something of a cause celebre.

I don't accept that his actions are a great blow for libertarianism even though I heartily oppose the smoking ban, though no longer smoke. If I ignored every law I oppose I would have spent most of the last thirty years in Strangeways. What we all need to do is to campaign and fight against all those things that we find oppressive. There are issues that require civil disobedience but first we have to garner the support of the general population. The general population see those who stood in front of tanks in Tiananmen Square as heroes, somebody going to prison over the smoking ban they are more likely to see as a clown.

If real progress is to be made then libertarianism has to be seen as a credible philosophy. Too many people see libertarians as a group of people who just want to scrap laws so they can do what the hell they want and stuff everybody else, legalising drugs being the easiest thing to beat us with. I don't want to get bogged down in the drugs issue but I'm sure any libertarian knows the arguments back to front.

Supporting somebody over an issue such as the smoking ban, which is even supported by many smokers now, is picking the wrong fight at the wrong time. In a nutshell very few people give a shit. We can either tilt at windmills or we can fight a savvy and credible political war. Supporting Nick Hogan is clearly tilting at windmills.

What it really comes down to is a choice between libertarians posturing and posing on the internet for the next however many years, or building credibility, getting people to vote for them and getting people elected then making a real change. Supporting somebody who stamps his feet and throws a tantrum because he hasn't got what he wants invites ridicule and ultimate failure.

Age, Smoking, Drinking and Exercise

Taking a bit of fresh air this morning I saw an elderly fella staggering and wheezing down the canal towpath towards me. As he got closer I could see he was well into his 70s, glowing red, sweating and doing about 1 MPH. Seriously worried for him I asked if he was OK, he stopped, bent down with his hands on his knees and said: "I'm out for me morning jog, you should try it porky".

To say I was taken aback is putting it mildly, to such an extent that I just left him, no witty retort or torrent of abuse, and carried on walking. At least I don't have people checking I'm not about to die when I do go out for a spot of exercise is the best I could muster, and I just thought it as I walked away.

But it made me think, and I remember a few years back a colleague telling me about her husband, two years younger than me and without a hard earned beer belly and smokers cough. She was urging me to 'look after myself' and to think about doing some jogging, even a marathon or two like her husband. My feeling was sod that, you don't get St John's Ambualance and emergency doctors sitting around in pubs the way they line the route of a marathon. He died three years ago, just after I'd given up smoking.

Every now and then I wonder whether I should start smoking again, just to be on the safe side. It's especially good with a nice glass of Laphroaigh.

Nicotine Addiction

I usually meander down the stairs and check the TV news while I toast a couple of crumpets first thing, a good way of starting the day before popping out for newspapers or cranking up the laptop. This morning I saw the latest celebrity bullshit programme being plugged, and I use the word celebrity loosely.

This one is a programme following a bunch of misfits giving up fags. Wow, that will be rivetting viewing. They include the daughter of a couple of TV presenters, a Scouser who talks to the dead and some other bloke who seems to be famous for lying in bed being interviewed by the BBC on a Monday morning. It seems to have gone beyond z-list and left the alphabet completely.

I gave up the weed nearly three years ago, after more than thirty years on twenty a day, forty or more in my nightclubbing days. The main reason was starting to feel vulnerable to killer diseases (probably an age thing), so I wanted to minimise the chances of self-induced illness, especially after spending a night in a hospital which wasn't pleasant but that's another tale. I did it because I wanted to and didn't ponce about with patches, gum or some poxy NHS course. I certainly didn't do it on telly.

One of the things I don't miss, but it still angers me, is the self-righteous twat of a non-smoker who starts coughing and spluttering if he sees somebody light up fifty yards away, wanker. I still oppose the smoking ban, don't feel the urge to wash my hair or my clothes when I've been in the company of smokers, and urge visitors to my house to smoke if they want to. There you are, I'm all self-righteous in the oposite direction.

What I do object to, and it gets me very angry, is the state, in the form of the glorious NHS, putting expensive adverts on TV with kids whining about how mummy or daddy is going to suffer a long, lingering, painful death in front of said infant if they don't give up fags. That's not what I pay taxes for.

I also object to my taxes being spent by the state, in the form of the NHS, on courses and expensive kits to get smokers off nicotine. Then you hear some halfwit from the local NHS Trust telling us how they don't have the money to treat people with heart disease, MND or some other disease that requires expensive medicines.

Smoking, like chopping off your willy and growing breasts, is a lifestyle choice. NHS money should not be spent helping people change their lifestyles, use your own money not mine.

Here is the Libertarian Party policy on health.

I feel better for getting that off my chest, no pun intended.

Smoking and Brainwashing

I find the current spate of anti-smoking ads on TV quite disturbing, not to say dishonest. The ones I mean are the ones that tell smokers that they cannot possibly give up 'without help', and who's there to help? Yes the government, in the shape of the NHS. You really can't do anything without the nanny state under New Labour!

One thing I object to is the patronising tone of the adverts. It is possible to give up 'without help', I did it last March after smoking 20 a day for 30 years. I know plenty of other people who gave up 'without help' too. Indeed many of us would have given up earlier, but the more the state nagged and whined at us, the more determined we became to continue. And, having recently had my lungs examined, they show no signs of me ever having smoked.

I also object to taxes being wasted on medicines, support groups and whatever other paraphernalia the state funds to help people give up. Let them pay themselves if they really want to give up, it'd be cheaper than buying fags. And if people don't want to give up for God's sake leave them alone to get on with it.

All this government brainwashing has had a truly sinister result that is often overlooked, the vile and ultimately dishonest attitude of so many people to smokers. I've seen people 100 yards away, in the open air, suddenly start coughing and spluttering when I've lit up. Then there are the weirdoes who claim that after being in the company of smokers they have to shower when they get home, and send their clothes to the laundry because of the smell.

We've had friends to dinner since we gave up smoking (Mrs B has too) and they refused to smoke in the house insisting on going onto the balcony for a fag between courses. They thought they were being thoughtful but we really had to convince them, and several bottles of wine helped, that we had no problem with them smoking at the table. We didn't have to shower before bed, or change the curtains next day, because of the stench, but it really highlighted the power of propaganda.

So I still wish FOREST good luck in their campaign.

National No Smoking Day

No idea what Al Gore is smoking here but don't go near him when he exhales, sure it must be causing global warming.

Go on have a cig!