New York’s outdoor smoking ban: Will the world follow?
Of course it will. It’s the fashionable thing. They all take their lead from each other. None of them want to be left behind. That’s how fashion works, whether it’s hats or skirts or smoking bans.
The city’s latest anti-smoking measures cover public golf courses and sports grounds as well as plazas like Herald Square.
Smoking will be allowed on pavements outside parks, and car parks in public parks. One area the ban does not cover is “median strips” – known as the central reservation in the UK – the sliver of land in the middle of a large road.
Strange that the median strips are left. Will the motorways be crowded with smokers on the central reservation, getting run over by trucks on the way there, or on the way back?That’s the whole idea, probably. It’s got nothing to do with health, after all.
Soon now, the only places that smokers will be allowed to smoke will be in special camps in remote places, surrounded with barbed wire. Smokers will be taken there in cattle trucks. And none of them will come out alive. And the official cause of death will be: smoking.
It’s a slow motion holocaust. First there are a few restrictions on smoking. Then there are more. Finally there’ll be almost nowhere smokers can smoke, even in their own homes. Nowhere except the camps. At each stage in the process there’s a pause while people get used to the latest set of rules, and begin to police them themselves. The pub smoking ban is pretty much self-policing, after all. Once the new laws are in place, people will obey the law. They always do. And smokers are as law-abiding as anybody. And anyway if the law is changed incrementally, step by step, year after year, it gives people time to adjust to the new normality.
After all, that’s pretty much how it happened in Nazi Germany. The Jews weren’t bundled into gas chambers overnight. No. They were just driven out, little by little, from their jobs and their homes. They had to wear yellow stars. Or were restricted to ghettoes. And vilified in the mass media. In the end, the only place left for them were the camps. But probably because the restrictions weren’t imposed all at once, but gradually, most people got used to the new Jew-free society. And nobody said a word about it.
Same now. Nobody says a word. It’s all happening again, just like it did in Nazi Germany, and for the exact same ‘public health’ reasons. The Jews were seen as a racial poison that had to be eradicated. Which is exactly how smokers are portrayed now. And no statesmen or bishops or writers are thundering about the iniquity of it, just as they didn’t back then.
Nothing has been learned in 100 years. Nothing at all. And that’s probably why there’s a Jewish state of Israel, fiercely guarding itself. Because Israel’s Jews know that nothing has really changed, and that it could all happen to them again. Because the eugenic programme that the the Nazis were following is still in place, preserved by the senior doctors in the medical profession and in the WHO. And those guys probably still think that Jews are a racial poison.
The Jews were evicted from their jobs and homes and herded into the gas chambers over a period of about 10 years. The smoker holocaust is being run more slowly. It’s probably more like a 50 year programme. There were only about 10 million Jews in the world back then, but there are between one and two billion smokers on the planet now. So it’s bound to take longer to eradicate the smokers.
It’s not just the numbers. There is another difference. And that is that people aren’t born smokers like Jews are born Jews. It’s a lifestyle choice. Smokers can become ex-smokers in ways that Jews could never become ex-Jews. And ex-smokers can become smokers again. And so the antismokers will become increasingly worried about ex-smokers. So once all the smokers have been eradicated, ex-smokers will fall under suspicion. Even ex-smokers will start getting fired from their jobs and evicted from their homes and refused medical care. It’s the Precautionary Principle. Better safe than sorry.
And these days we have the internet. It’s not part of the broadcast mass media. It has a plurality of points of view. Over the past 10 – 20 years, it’s become an entirely new source of information and opinion. And it’s one that now rivals the mass media in its influence. If there’s something of a furore about Global Warming, it’s entirely because of the internet. The mass media still push the global warming alarmism message. It’s the mass media versus the internet. And the authorities can just switch off the internet any time they like. Except they probably won’t do that. They’ll just ban things one by one, in a set of creeping restrictions, one by one, just like with smoking bans.
I think it’s very, very interesting that the authorities are moving so slowly and so carefully with their smoker extermination programme. Why don’t they just make smoking illegal, and have smokers wear yellow stars? Why are they pussyfooting around? Well, it’s because they fear starting a panic. They’re worried that if smokers were made to wear yellow stars, that people might remember that this is what happened to the Jews, and wake up. So they won’t be dishing out yellow stars to smokers any time soon, much as they’d like to. But what that also means is that the authorities very much fear what people might do if they caught wind of what was happening. The authorities are very frightened of the people. So they tread very carefully, watching intently what happens with every new ban they impose, only moving on to the next ban when they’re sure that the last ban has been swallowed and digested.
But people like me can see what they’re doing. I’ve got a whole raft of books in my library about Nazi Germany. The first of them was The Scourge of the Swastika, which I read when I was about 15, and shocked me to my soul. But there’s also The Musicians of Auschwitz, and Mothers of the Fatherland, and Escape From Sobibor, and the Drowned and the Saved. They’re all great classics of the literature.
I’m getting old now. I’m 63 years old. Thanks to the smoking ban, I’ve lost almost all my friends. But I’ve lived my life, and it was an absolutely wonderful life. And I’m beginning to think that when you’ve become an old man like me, it’s an ideal time to become a suicide bomber or something. It’s stupid that young people should be asked to throw away their lives before they’ve even lived them. It’s the old guys who’ve lived their lives, and who believe in freedom and personal autonomy and stupid shit like that who should step up to the plate and lay down their lives – like my Spitfire pilot uncle laid down his life, aged 23, fighting for a freedom he never lived to see.
His iconic photograph, cigarette in hand, sits on the mantlepiece above my electric fire.
So if anyone wants somebody to walk into the BMA in London, or the WHO in Geneva, and just blow the whole fucking place up, and half the cunts who work in it, I’m your man. Because I’ve got nothing left to lose.
Frank Davis 
During the Spanish Inquisition, those who had converted from any other faith to Catholicism were always under suspicion. So embracing the antismoker faith is no safe haven. Ex-smokers have only moved themselves to second on the list and the more vocal they are, the easier they will be to find. They don’t realise this. Don’t tell them.
On the yellow stars, there is still talk of ‘smoker licences’ which amount to the same thing. They will only apply to those who buy from shops so Man with a Van would love it if they ever came to be. It would mean a whole load of smokers would be lower down the list than the born-again non-smokers.
And there is always something to lose. Even when I had nothing at all, there was something to lose. There is rage, and rage is a good feeling.
For me, it’s in the fun of tormenting my tormentors. I live for the day when one of them dies of pure suggestion. So I take their ridiculous stories and amplify them back tenfold. They are stupid enough to believe it and I am enraged enough to let them.
One day, words will indeed be mightier than swords, and even mightier than the terrible homeopathic-nuclear potency of nintieth hand smoke. And I want to be the one to do it.
And there is always something to lose.
Ah yes, Leggie. But you have your smoky-drinky places, and your smoky-drinky friends.
I have nobody at all – except my beautiful brother, who is probably rapidly and finally tiring of me (as he long since should have). I think there’s probably a point where even blood relationships are stressed beyond their limit.
Frank. You’ve got us.
1.
You have a role, Frank, which is to spread the word (not body parts )
Frank, we’re in desperate need of understanding the entire scope of the eugenics framework. Eugenics has two aspects – a heredity/racial/breeding aspect and a behavioral aspect. Most are familiar with the first but very unfamiliar with the second. Along this behavioral dimension, eugenics is anti-tobacco, anti-alcohol, and advances prescriptive diet and physical exercise. Health is reduced to an entirely biological phenomenon (physicalism, materialism). Over the last number of decades, health is referred to only in these [physical] terms.
The Nazis didn’t invent eugenics. It was popularized in America. German eugenicists (and Hitler) were students of American eugenics. There was a close relationship between American and German eugenicists and between American and German industrialists who were supporters/funders of eugenics.
Antismoking is not new. It has a long, sordid – even murderous – history. Americans, in particular, should be highly sensitive to antismoking. There were concurrent anti-tobacco and anti-alcohol “crusades” in early-1900s USA. These crusades led to a temporary ban on the sale of tobacco in some states and smoking restrictions in most states, and eventually Prohibition immediately following WWI.
http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1981/2/1981_2_94_print.shtml
Pushed by the eugenics and temperance movements, antismoking (and anti-alcohol) was viewed as in the interests of a “healthier” society. Rather, this fake “purity” promoted irrational fear, hatred, and social division: It brought out the worst in the human disposition. Baseless, inflammatory claims were made as a matter of course by so-called “authorities” and “experts”.
What is not noted in Dillow (1981) is that eugenics was rife at the turn of the last century. In addition to its racial/heredity/breeding dimension, eugenics also has a behavioral dimension. Along this dimension, eugenics is anti-tobacco and anti-alcohol (negative eugenics) and aggressively pushes approved diet and physical exercise (positive eugenics). In this context, tobacco and alcohol are viewed as body toxins that should be avoided/eradicated. They are considered to detrimentally affect human [body] performance and reproduction.
2.
Consider the example of Indiana. It introduced a ban on the sale of tobacco in 1905, followed by a sterilization law in 1907. By the time of Prohibition, 22 states already had sterilization laws and another 11 states would introduce such laws in the decade following Prohibition. Most anti-tobacco laws occurred before Prohibition and mostly in states that had/would have sterilization laws. There was a renewed attempt following Prohibition to introduce a tobacco version of Prohibition. It should be clear that eugenics was the driving force behind anti-tobacco, anti-alcohol, and sterilization laws early last century. It is the eugenics elite, funded by the mega-wealthy (e.g., Rockefeller, Ford, Harriman, Carnegie) and embraced by the so-called “educated”, that had the ear of the legislature. The Temperance Movement, with so-called “religious” leanings, had lobbied for tobacco and alcohol bans for decades since the mid-1800s. It had very, very limited success. Yet, as soon as the eugenicists came on the scene in the late-1800s, things started happening legislatively. The eugenics and temperance movements share the anti-tobacco/alcohol view. However, it was the eugenics movement that harnessed the temperance movement for its own agenda. It would be eugenics that would dominate proceedings in the early 1900s. There were those in the “religious” movement that even fully bought into eugenics.
Eugenics made numerous baseless, inflammatory claims. These claims were simply accepted at face value given that eugenics was viewed as “scholarly” and “scientific”, and it promised a “healthier” society, ridded of crime, poverty, and disease. And it produced a bandwagon effect, with state by state progressively buying into the derangement.
California was the leader in the American eugenics insanity. It performed more sterilizations – by far – than any other state. It performed over 20,000 sterilizations. The next highest state was North Carolina with 7,600. There was also an intimate connection between American – particularly Californian – and German eugenicists. The latter were students of American eugenics that later went on to lead the Nazi assault.
Post WWII, the greatest concentration of eugenicists was in the USA. The eugenics mentality was never resolved in the USA. Eugenicists didn’t just disappear or change their mentality. They believed that Hitler has gone too far, but that the fundamentals of eugenics were sound. They were more than happy for the public to believe that eugenics was a Nazi phenomenon that disappeared with the defeat of Nazism and that anti-tobacco/alcohol in the USA had been solely produced by the temperance movement. Given the horrors associated with the term “eugenics” following Nazism, they simply stopped using the “E”[ugenics] word. Further, given their thoroughly flawed “heredity trees”, they abandoned the heredity/racial/breeding dimension and focused entirely on the behavioral dimension. [Genetics/genetic engineering took over study from “heredity trees”. This study has produced the Human Genome Project which is housed in the very same building complex in Cold Spring Harbor, NY, as the original Eugenics Record Office]
3.
The contemporary antismoking “crusade” has been produced by the same eugenics personnel – physicians, biologists, zoologists, pharmacologists, statisticians, behaviorists – continuing the eugenics obsession with anti-tobacco. Health reduced to biology is the eugenics framework and the aggressive peddling of the definition with a view to societal change (social engineering) is very much the fascism of the eugenics mentality. The current antismoking crusade was put into motion in the mid-1970s (see Godber/WHO Blueprint http://www.rampant-antismoking.com ). And since that time it is California that has been the global leader in antismoking, continuing its eugenics tradition. Rather than ban the sale of tobacco, the goal this time is to ban smoking in essentially all the places where people would typically smoke. Indoor and outdoor bans were planned years before even the first study on secondhand smoke. George Godber (now deceased) would have been happy if people were only permitted to smoke in their homes. So apartment bans would have probably shocked even Godber. However, as far as fanaticism is concerned, the extent of delusional action can be difficult to predict.
In pushing their deranged world view, contemporary eugenicists are very much in line with their predecessors. They use lies, exaggeration, manipulation, pitting groups against other groups to achieve their goals, e.g., propaganda/denormalization. And like early last century, there are many – essentially the “educated”/wealthy classes – that have jumped on the bandwagon. There are now groups around America and the world stumbling over each other to be the first to institute the most draconian, widespread smoking bans for a eugenics-defined “healthier” society. California is still the leader in this regard.
As history shows, eugenics is a dangerous philosophy. It promoted irrational belief, fear, intolerance, bigotry, racism, cruelty, brutality, crime. In the current antismoking bandwagon – just a taste of one dimension of eugenics – we see the same intolerance, irrational fear, and bigotry made to appear as “progressive”.
You have a role, Frank, which is to spread the word (not body parts )
Really? I reckon one of my kidneys would probably have a greater impact than anything I write.
Give vent to your spleen instead?
:-D
JAIL FOR SMOKING MOTHER.; Mrs. Lasher Used Cigarettes in Presence of Her Children.
New York Times
October 18, 1904,
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9407EFD61F3AE733A2575BC1A9669D946597D6CF&scp=16&sq=smoking&st=p
NO SMOKING ON ELLIS ISLAND.; Neither Employes Nor Immigrants May Now Indulge.
New York Times
1902
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9D01E1DE1330E733A25751C1A9639C946397D6CF&scp=44&sq=smoking&st=p
DEGENERACY IN SMOKING.; Cigars Bad and the Taste of the Smokers Worse, to Say Nothing of Tariff.
New York Times
November 24, 1904,
There has probably never been a time since the simultaneous discovery of America and — tobacco, when so many villainously bad cigars were consumed as at the present day.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=940DEFD6123AE733A25757C2A9679D946597D6CF&scp=46&sq=smoking&st=p
MAY WOMAN SMOKE IN AUTO?; Not in Fifth Avenue, Says Bicycle Policeman — Trouble Follows.
Two well-dressed young men, accompanied by two women, rode leisurely up Fifth Avenue in an automobile about 10 o’clock last night. One of the women was smoking a cigarette. At Thirtieth Street Bicycle Policeman Rensselaer spied the automobile and its occupants and requested the woman to cease smoking.
New York Times
1904
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9804E2DE113BE631A25755C2A96F9C946597D6CF&scp=90&sq=smoking&st=p
SMOKING ON THE PLATFORM; No Crime — Merely a Cause for Ejection from the Elevated.
Samuel W. Sadler, a young clerk of 32 Leroy Street, smoked a cigar, which he declares was a good one, on the downtown platform of the elevated railroad station at Eighty-first Street and Columbus Avenue early Thursday morning. He was arrested when he refused to obey the order of Abram Kaplan, the ticket chopper, to stop.
New York Times
1905
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9B03E2DF103EE733A25752C2A9669D946497D6CF&scp=59&sq=smoking&st=p
TALK OF A PRETTY BROADWAY; West End Association Also Discusses Smoking In Cars.
The matter of beautifying Broadway, the smoke nuisance in cars, reckless automobiling, and police protection were discussed at the meeting of the West End Association held in St. Andrew’s Hotel on West Seventy-second Street, last evening. Just what is to be done next in the endeavor to make upper Broadway more picturesque was not clearly brought out.
New York Times
1906
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9900E5D61F3DE633A25750C1A9679D946797D6CF&scp=84&sq=smoking&st=p
BIONDI AND WHISKY SIGNS.; Our Morals Unduly Shocked by One and Not by the Other.
New York Times
June 13, 1904,
About our city are horrible signs to advertise whisky and other drinks; in Forty-second Street there are two women represented, one as smoking and the other desiring whisky, degrading womanhood, instructing the young passerby, and debauching every one who may see this exhibition, it would seem.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9C0CE3DE113DE633A25750C1A9609C946597D6CF&scp=130&sq=smoking&st=p
GENERAL NOTES.
A Boston paper is of the opinion that few men ever voluntarily quit smoking; that the exceptions to this rule are “more subject to parsimony than to nicotine.”
New York Times
1902
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9500E3DF123DE433A25755C0A9619C946397D6CF&scp=150&sq=smoking&st=p
$500 FOR QUITTING CIGARS.; E.H. Harriman Gives It to His Chauffeur on a Pledge.
New York Times
May 06, 1906,
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=980CE2D8113EE733A25755C0A9639C946797D6CF&scp=167&sq=smoking&st=p
TOBACCO AS A MORAL ISSUE.
A very vigorous and generally ill-natured discussion has been excited in England, and may reach this country before it subsides, by the recommendation of Lord ROBERTS that the returning veterans of the South African war be welcomed with gifts of tobacco by those moved to find some tangible expression of their gratitude to the home-coming-volunteers.
1900
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9C02E4DA133EE333A25756C2A9679D946197D6CF&scp=230&sq=smoking&st=p
WAR IS DECLARED ON ‘DEMON’ TOBACCO; NATIONAL CRUSADE PLANNED
THE guns of reform that leveled the wet ramparts of the country are soon to be trained upon tobacco. After the enactment of the prohibition amendment it was predicted that an anti-tobacco offensive would come next.
1923
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40814FE3E5416738DDDAB0894D1405B838EF1D3&scp=44&sq=California+smoking&st=p
He Believes Americans Over-Eat, Over-Drink and Over-Everything and Thereby Slowly Kill Themselves.; ” WE ARE A NATION OF SUICIDES,” SAYS DR. H.W. WILEY
March 19, 1911,
SUICIDE is self-destruction. Then we are a nation of suicides, for we are continually destroying ourselves.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9901E6D61331E233A2575AC1A9659C946096D6CF&scp=48&sq=California+smoking&st=p
ANTI-SMOKERS INCORPORATE.; Dr. Wiley
One of Directors of the Protective League of America.
1911
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9502E7DC1131E233A25750C0A96E9C946096D6CF&scp=86&sq=California+smoking&st=p
PROHIBITION AS “BIG BROTHER” FAILS TO WIN FOR BLUE LAWS; Six Anti-Cigarette States Reduced to Two — Both Sides Claim Gains in Sunday Closing — Film Censorship Defeated in Massachusetts — “Puritans” Still Aggressively Confident
May 20, 1923,
FOR five years we have been hearing frantic warnings about what was to follow in the wake of liquor prohibition. The loudest of these warnings ran to this effect: “They’ll take away tobacco from us next, cigarettes first. Then they’ll give us the bluest of Puritan blue Sundays.
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10C17FA3B5516738DDDA90A94DD405B838EF1D3&scp=89&sq=California+smoking&st=p
FORBIDS CIGARETTE SMOKING.; Violators of New Rock Island Rule Will Be Discharged.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark., Aug. 26. — F.B. Eastey, superintendent of the Arkansas division of the Rock Island Railroad, to-day issued a bulletin notifying all employes that cigarette smoking would not be permitted.
1908
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9C05EEDE133EE233A25754C2A96E9C946997D6CF&scp=1&sq=Arkansas+smoking&st=p
UTAH LAWBREAKERS.
Friends of liquor prohibition must be heartened by the triumphs of the sister cause of tobacco prohibition in Utah. Certain eminent malefactors, the manager of The Salt Lake Tribune, Mr. BAMBERGER, the Republican National Committeeman, divers soldiers and civilians of distinction and some “capitalists,” are learning that the Utah law against smoking in “any public enclosed place” is to be enforced rigorously and impartially.
1923
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0F10FF3B5417738DDDAA0A94DA405B838EF1D3&scp=2&sq=Arkansas+smoking&st=p
TOBACCO PROHIBITION.
Slaves of what JOHN B. GOUGH used to call the Black Devil may affect to scorn the anti-diabolic movement in Nebraska, a State where the license and regulation of the filthy weed points to the inevitable sequence of its prohibition.
1922
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9F07E7D61E30EE3ABC4A51DFB4668389639EDE&scp=17&sq=Arkansas+smoking&st=p
Excellent examples of 2011 = the same as 1911 – history repeating itself, literally verbatim.
Stories like this, from the past, if repeated in the mainstream would definitely give people supportive of anti-property rights, anti-liberty, pro-smoking ban mindsets something to think twice about.
Magnetic, this is an awful lot of information but well worth reading. Perhaps I should postpone my visit to Boston USA.
Frank
There’s not much use for splintered bone after the event, but we’d be quite lost without your brain.
Anyway, I’m surprised, you are in an new place so you wouldn’t expect to know many people, but last year when I ventured down from my ivory tower, I found I had the best introductory line ever.
Do you mind if I join you in the sin bin?
It’s like queues, it’s correct practice to join . You get to know where the best coffee shops are and have some very pleasant conversations.
Though I no longer smoke in public as a rule – I don’t want anyone to think I’m obeying a law I despise – I do if I see someone looking lost and uncomfortable.
It feels like being part of a huge but secret society that stretches across the country, and we all know the sign.
It feels like being part of a huge but secret society that stretches across the country
Rose, up here in the north this secret society is becoming cheekier almost by the day. And we stick together; in my work place we smokers are the best informed people involving all departments and we do support one another.
1911: Dr. Charles Pease stated the position of the Non-Smokers’ Protective
League of America
In a letter to the New York Times, dated November 10, 1911, he wrote:
“The right of each person to breathe and enjoy fresh and pure air—air uncontaminated by unhealthful or disagreeable odors and fumes is a constitutional right, and cannot be taken away by legislatures or courts, much less by individuals pursuing their own thoughtless or selfish indulgence.”
http://www.wordsources.info/words-mod-capnomaniaPt4.html
Sound familiar?
The snowball rolling downhill gets bigger. All hotels/motels/resorts in Wisconsin are 100% non-smoking rooms. All of the Hospitals in our area of Indiana are 100% non-smoking in the hospital, the hospital grounds and even in your own car. Will this insanity ever end? Will it take the kind of action you suggest to at least bring the insanity to public attention? When will the inevitable violence begin?
I’m well aware that the eugenics movement dates back to the 19th century. What I find surprising, after the Nazi episode, is its persistence. Any ‘health’ movement which advocates any ideal type of human automatically generates a non-ideal flip side – Jews, Gypsies, smokers, drinkers, fat people, etc -. Such an approach is inherently discriminatory and divisive, and is always going to lead to stigmatisation and exclusion of large numbers of people. Why does anybody at all adopt such an approach, given its appalling history?
What’s even more puzzling is why the political classes should adopt such a divisive approach. Politicians, surely, are primarily in the business of negotiating between rival groups, doing deals, getting as many people on side as they can. By adopting an eugenic approach, they are ensuring division in society.
Equally puzzling is that nobody in the mass media points out these obvious facts.
In the UK, the answer to these questions may simply be that our politicians have ceded most of their power to the EU, and are now simply doing its bidding. And the EU centralises power in the hands of a few individual (e.g. the Commission) who make the key decisions. It would seem that eugenic thinking is very well represented in the EU corridors of power – far more than in British cultural life. But outside the EU, it’s harder to find answers to these questions.
But people like me can see what they’re doing. I’ve got a whole raft of books in my library about Nazi Germany. The first of them was The Scourge of the Swastika, which I read when I was about 15, and shocked me to my soul.
We were not taught about Nazi Germany until I was 14. But when it was decided that my generation should know the details it was done so by showing as many photographs as possible. I had terrible nightmares after.
And: to discover in early 2010 an anti-smoking brigade using Nazi propaganda with the population of any country falling for it – again (?) – How gullible is the world?
I would say that the gradual reduction in smokers over the last few decades has given these people their opportunity. 20% of the people is a group worth offending, especially if lots of those people feel guilty (I wonder if Jews in Nazi Germany felt guilty?). This offendability is especially true if the political parties agree to act in concert. It is hard therefore for individuals to come together and complain about the smoking ban. But it is good to see the Save our Pubs and Clubs event in London. I believe it is designed for publicans and club people, really, rather than individuals. It will be interesting to see how well it is supported by these publicans etc. If it is not well supported by them, then………..well, let’s just say that an awful lot of people who are sympathetic to the plight of publicans will lose all interest. One of the odd things to me is that these ‘entrepreneurs’ seem to be unable to see that the ban totally inhibits the opening of new places, which restricts their potential – at least, that is they way that I would see it.
But, as regards your sneezing problem ……..could it not be the change of location? I’m sure that it is well recorded that the human body needs to acclimatise!
A nice exploding white non-convert to the religion of peace is the Holy Grail of the ‘national security’ industry. The ideal would be a nice white granny, but a nice white elderly gent would be a good first step. There are probably teams of black ops psychologists ready to groom people expressing your sentiments to progress further. Beware of a fortuitous meeting with someone with ‘contacts’ who can supply things that go bang (your horoscope from next week’s The Daily Mash). Winston Smith was groomed by O’Brien for seven years prior to events.
‘We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.’
Winston
I’ve often wondered what Jewish people think of smokers having become the reigning Reviled Ones of the world. The same goes for American Blacks. I’m just sure that they see the historical match up, it’s so plainly obvious. The major deviance from the past is a new lifestyle aspect veering away from the old-fashioned tribal animosity typically drummed up by the aggressor. In truth there was a dimension of lifestyle disapproval involved in their persecution as well. And to complicate matters, there are Jewish and Black smokers, quite a few actually. Just when they thought the coast was clear, here comes another round of pogroms based on, of all things, something that was a simple mundane pleasure adopted by almost half the population not that long ago.
Stanton Glantz and company don’t see things this way though. They see tobacco companies as the Nazi’s, sending smokers and their secondary non-smoking victims to early graves by the millions. It’s truly disturbing what an unthinking and unceasing antipathy towards a tall plant with smokable leaves can engender in some people. It’s almost as if he was looking for a good excuse to play the oppressor role himself and conveniently found it with smokers.
Thing is, smokervoter, Michael Bloomberg (NYC’ s mayor) is Jewish. His first health commissioner (now part of the federal gov’t bureaucracy), who pushed for more and more bans, is Jewish. Michael Siegel, he of the blog, is Jewish. The head of NYC’s city council, a rabid antismoker, is a lesbian. The NY state legislator most interested in statewide bans, is gay. I wonder, to what extent, it’s a game of pass-the-kick. And all of them take great umbrage at historical analogies. Hating smokers, they say, is “different.”
It is indeed a game of Pass-the-kick Walt. Had to look that one up. Is that a soccer reference? It’s perfect. Oldest kid kicks middle kid, who kicks the youngest kid, that’s the idea.
Publicly they take great umbrage, but late at night lying in a watchful bed alone with their thoughts, they must reflect upon some of the comments like ‘filthy’ and ‘diseased’ and ‘disgusting’ they’ve deliberately provoked from the swarming masses with their vitriol.
That is unless they’re devoid of any humanity whatsoever, which is entirely plausible, too. Bloomberg has a very vacant stare to me.
I see the comments are still stuck in all-italics mode.
Sorry. Hadn’t noticed. Fixed now.