ok ok it's time we had a little perspective on this whole smoking debate. First they banned cigarette advertising on the television. This wasn't really a problem as right-thinking people don't watch adverts anyway. They are somewhere between pop music and footballer's hair in their level of utter annoyance.
Then there were those big black warnings on the packets. Not really an issue as there are warnings on packets of nuts these days saying intelligent things like 'may contain traces of nuts' but still a double standard when you consider there are no warnings on alcohol, gambling establishments or Anne Robinson.
Then along came the idea of a smoking ban. Now they got themselves all tied up in knots about this one. Should it be a full ban or a partial ban. Should we ban it from private clubs or just pubs that serve food? well forgive me if I am wrong, but isn't smoking at least half what pubs are about? and I am talking here about real pubs not the havens of hellish sentiment that are Weatherspoons. Anyone know a landlord that doesn't smoke?
How about, and this is maybe a radical idea, leaving it up to the owners of the establishments, who the government intrust with licenses to sell alchohol to the masses, to make up their own minds. How about non-smokers accept that they have the shops, the restaurants, the buses, the trains and the planes and leave the pubs to the grown ups? hmmmmm?
The most ridiculous thing was when the anti-smoking charity Action on Smoking and Health, or 'ASH' were urging bar staff, waiters and people in the hotel service industry to sue their bosses because of exposure to smoke. Well, what if sewage workers sued their bosses because they have to wade about in effluent all day? you'd say - well do another job. work somewhere else. What about bar staffs exposure to obknoxious violent drunks, or even worse the sad, lonely, boring drunks? are they not also a hazard of that job?
All I am talking about is a little fairness. If you are going to have this clamping down on smoking due to health issues and society well why not other things that endanger our health and society, like alchohol and reality television?
Drinking has been known to lose people jobs, wives, families and their lives, it also makes people agressive, causes projectile vomiting and encourages your Grandpa to dance to Steps 'reach for the stars' at weddings. It damages the liver, the stomach, the brain, the blood, the ammune system and your ability to maintain an erection for longer than it takes to boil a kettle and yet if you told people to put down their cans of lager, hide away their cote de rhones and throw away their whiskeys there would no doubt be an uprising not witnessed since the compulsory introduction of flared trousers.
Now the latest hoo-ha is the proposed raising of the national age limit of smoking to 18. Ok, so what? there's an age limit on sexual intercourse but that doesn't stop towns filling up with the illigitimate spourn of 14 year olds with congenital idiots for parents. There's an age limit on drinking but it doesn't stop daily tabloid newspapers paying lots of money to 13 year olds who admit that they too are alcoholics!
Why suddenly the big fuss about a smoking age limit?
And yet there is - everyone has had their say, The pro-smoking lobby Forest, The anti-smoking lobby ASH, The royal college of GPs, the national federation of retail newsagents, the welsh assembly, scottish Mps, the BBC and so on and so on. They have done surveys and made noise in parliment, even formed a commitee which will scruitinise the bill proposing the age increase!
Incredible, with all this attention being put on something so pointless anyone would think that there wasn't a war on, that there weren't terrorist threats anymore, that education was sorted, the hospitals had plenty of beds and were full of trained staff, maybe they've dealt with underage pregnancies, illeagle immigrants and the rising crime rate. Isn't there a country needing to be run? Just raise the age limit and get on with it!
If it works, great, if it doesn't then no change!
What is it about people that they always push things to ludicrous extremes, look at political correctness, look at the fact that town centres are now debating whether to hang Christmas decorations for fear of offending their non-christian inhabitants? Or even better the removal of Jerry Springer - The Opera from shop's shelves on RELIGIOUS grounds.
Now I will freely admit, haven't seen it. I haven't seen it because I choose not to see it. I choose not to see it because I don't like Jerry Spinger. In musical form or otherwise. Also I don't want any of my money going to that grey haired talentless promoter of
mass stupidity and exploiter of emotions.
Now I know what you all think " But he's just so clever the way he manipulates people and he makes lots and lots of money! "
Oh wait - I forgot, that's what makes you a great person, the size of your bank balance. There was I thinking it had something to do with integrity, humour, kindness or the ability to turn your mobile phone off in a theatre. Silly me, it's all financial!
but I still don't like Jerry Springer. Full stop. that's it.
So guess what, when I see it on the shelves, I don't buy it. Surely that is the end of it, you don't like something, you don't buy it. I hate sweetcorn, guess what?! I never buy it.
but that's not the end.
oh no.
There are fundamentalists campaigning agaist it, there are outraged anit-censorship groups demanding it be put back on the shelves as removing it is a violation of our basic human rights. I love that. You expect non-sensical rantings from fundamentalists but to say that denial of Jerry Springer - The Opera violates our basic human rights is a joke, surely it's a joke! please god tell me it's a joke!
Now if they said that the existance of Jerry Springer violated their basic human rights, they might have something.
Infact, in this case it is not the store owners being crazy, no doubt in this mad climate at the moment they are just scared. It's not even the fundamentalist Christians, only 20 of whom, out of a population of 60 million, complained. It's the pro-censorship Springer-fanbase that are going mental.
Firstly they likened the removal of a DVD off the shelves of Sainsburys to a government giving into terrorist demands and then the really silliness started. The boycotting Sainsburys and Woolworths completely over christmas, writing letters to the head offices, getting an MP involved, buying up shares to bother the managers of the corporations and even stating that they will be complaining in person to store managers.
I really pity those store managers this christmas.
who's more deluded? a store manager of Woolworths or a campaigner believing the store manager actually has any control over what happens in their stores?
All this over a DVD - people do realise it is a volintary act to purchase a copy don't they? they do realise that we can make up our own minds, don't they? that different people find different things offensive? this is basic knoweldge isn't it?
For example, what about the fact that I am offended everytime I switch on my television to find they have substituted an artistic fruitful medium with programmes that have titles like 'Celebrity Farm Holiday Antique Brother Make-Over' - where's my fucking banner waving clan of self-righteous busy bodies huh??
Maybe life is dirty, smokey and offensive and people should stop trying to control everything, stop pretending any of us have the faintest clue why we are here and just relax.
or is that offensive?
