The smoking ban was always going to be the thin end of the wedge

David

Great Commentary, as always, Rodders. I replied to your commentary on smoking (in Franglais) a while ago; here it is again if you missed it.Thank you for standing up for us sinners.
OK, OK, Rod le Liddle, je forgive vous.
Après votre sycophantique whimpering dans ‘Le Spectateur’ au sujet du Knighthood pour Salman Bleedin’ Rushdie, vous avez succeeded à reestablishant vous self sur ma liste de favourite journalistes – vous et Clarkson; oh, et Boris, Lord Mayor de Londres.
Vous étiez là, outside la station, smokant votre fag et mindant votre own business, quand up il comes – ce moron transatlantique.
“Pardonnay-moi, Monsewer. Parlay voo onglais?”
“Mieux que vous, visage de merde.”
“Voulez vous extinguisher votre cigarette?”
“Quoi?”
“Votre cigarette…ma femme et mes deux filles, nous n’aimons pas le smell et le pollution de votre fag dans la station.”
“Mais vous etes 50 metres away de mon fag…”
“Oui, mais c’est disagreeable à nous….à inhaler votre smoke.”
Et maintenant, Rod, Bébé, vous distinguish vous même. Avec un display de civilité et brevité remarkable, vous répondez,
“Fouque off, tu twat americain.”
Quoi else à dire?
Une chose que j’aime about les français, c’est le total disregard pour toutes les signes “Défense de Fumer”. Pouff! Dans tous les pubs, restaurants, clubs, ils fument exactement ou ils désirent.
Si vous ne l’aimez pas, c’est tough merde.

Andrew

It's already started. Harridan Harperson's proposal to outlaw prostitution is surely only the first step to banishing sex.

RobertD

Sir L would do us all a favour if he concentrated on matters under his direct responsibility like the level of superbugs in hospitals, insufficient medical training to keep up operating standards and understaffed and disorganised A&E departments that are killing far more people than alcohol.

Jon

Sir Liam gets his figures from a report written by Sheffield University. They are derived from a review of a large number of studies; including economics papers, looking at the elasticity of demand in, for example an Aborigine population when alcohol prices are increased; and American college campus focus group reports. That this junk could determine our future drinking habits beggars belief.

Norman

I don't understand why the Conservative Party does not speak out against the political menace implicit in all this control freakery. Also the Tories should press for a right of pubs,clubs and their staff to decide for themselves how, where and whether to allow customers to smoke. There are maybe millions of votes in it. I had a very lukewarm response to a letter I wrote to my Conservative MP.

Incidentally, my wartime primary school years were spent with coal fires, in blackout sealed rooms, when most adults smoked. I would not light up in the company of those who do not want me to but I do wonder whether second hand smoke is as dangerous as claimed. I dislike 'second hand music' and avoid it where I can but it is played in my bank all the time.

N

Aren't statistics great? You can just make up any numbers you want to achieve agendas, and political goals, no reliable data required! It's like a giant gift to all mankind. It's just like a few years ago in the U.S. when some militant, hippie, man-hating, feminists proclaimed that statistics showed that 1,000,000 ( yep i said a million) women were beaten to death by their husbands that year. Funny, i missed that genocidal story on the news.

davidb

I take it that you know about the indoor smoking lounges at the G20 summit, Rod.

Becky Collins

Not bothered by either tax or either ban. I enjoy a superb glass of red from time to time, but have no need to frequent loud chav hangouts only to puke my guts out onto the pavement at the end of the night. I can live without cigarettes, and am not dependent on alcohol for a good time either.
The aforementioned yobs are the very people I hope this tax targets.
Fine wine for those who can afford to indulge without offending others, and two small alcopops for those who realistically cannot handle any more without making a fool of themselves.

BARRUS CONNACHT

Shotly before last years local elections I received a letter from David Camerons office verifying his support for the
total ban on smoking in pubs and clubs. I showed this to my
Conservative friends who were DUE to do some canvassing in
a Labour held (once tory) ward.
We gave up the fight and Labour
held on with 13 majority after 3
recounts. The smoking ban issue
could have won millions of votes
PITY ABOUT THE GEN ELECTION

karenb

I'm very much hoping he throws a wobbly and threatens to resign if he doesn't get his own way, like he did with the smoking ban. Perhaps, this time, someone will have the good sense to say, 'off you go, then.'

William E Harman

My brother saw 34 doctors in 3 years went in to hospital about 6 times and died because none of them diagnosed he had an ulcer which burnt a hole in him they could not patch up

Citizen Robspierre psssssst !

I'm very dubious about the whole thing for example why is it that 75%'ish of mortality due to smoking related deseases are deaths amongst people who don't actually smoke?
Iatrogenesis ,i-a-t-r-o-g-e-n-e-s-i-s kills 72,000 Britons every year.
What is "iatrogenesis", for those who do not wish to google it.
Its the medical term for "error".
So the only logical conclusion I may draw from this is that medical "error", causes more
fatalities than smoking related disease estimated at 87,000 per anum amongst 620,000 deaths from other causes.
Why ?
75% of the "fatalities" do not smoke, hmmm?
You see smoking related disease means that you suffer from a smoking related disease,this is a very open statement
For example if you are unfortunate to die from a lung or Cardiac related disease
and you do not smoke you still go on the statistics for smoking related disease.
Sorry that's true there you go.
The conclusion is that doctors kill 4 times more people each year than "fags"
Oh dear, is it not amazing how figures opinions polls etc are so easily ........
RIGGED !
Here is another one ,Lung cancer has not really reduced as smoking amongst adults has.
In fact Lung cancer rate increased in Australia last year.
Australia like the UK has some of the toughest anti smoking laws in the world.
Childhood asthma has increased as smoking amongst adults has decreased.
This defies logic and common sense to the point where it rewrites the rules of mathematics.
This simple piece of logic shows that the smoking fag may not be to blame.
So what is ?
Who's the first one to have the guts to say it?
Answer .... No one.
Why ?
Jobs.
Money.
Position.
Social standing.
Peer pressure.
The Emporers new clothes syndrome.
The anti smoking lobby seem to have enough funding to buy column inches ?
Smokers are an easy target due to their minority status (this attracts bullies ,human nature, some people are like that).
You know like baboons and other lower orders of primates prone to prejudice, manipulation, (read.... thick ).
Anyone who told the truth now would be looked upon as being "eccentric", to say the least.
Oh and the real reason "prejudice",and non smokers "nostrils".(see 4000 pub closures)

Why the social change around smoking ?
It is very difficult to walk within a mob ,turn around ,and walk through the "mob".
Most just follow.
ps
This observation can be applied to every political issue you may think of simply by changing the dodgy statistics to the next set of dodgy statistics refering to another issue or other.
I suppose if more than half of the people in the UK smoked like "the drinkers" (They backed of that one did they not?),Politicians, would back of a vote loser naturally except the SNP (Bye !)
However I have some bad news for you.
22% of smokers still buy tobacco in the UK legally.
The other 12% buy abroad or smuggled .
Try 34% plus of adults smoke maybe more because a lot of smokers hide the habit now.
The 22% figure is based on ligitimate tobbacco sales.
OOOOPS.
pps unlike Sir you know who im slim.

George Speller

Great article, Rod. Of course I agree with every bit of it - I'm a disgruntled smoker . . . I'd like to quote the iatrogenesis figure to people I talk at, but I've got to say, the number needs more authentication than I can find. can you reveal your sources?

JimmyS

Putting the price up reduces consumption among the young which reduces the numbers of young blokes going on to be middle aged pissheads. Liam is right. Also and more importantly ref second last sentence traditional image also wrong, God is ginger which is why he doesn't like pictures of himself.

David Short

I'm always grateful for the sanity that RL brings on these matters, and his research to back it up.

Why should anyone listen to this fool? He is a doctor not an econometrist. How on earth can he forecast a change in habits/consumption according to a price change?

I just took the train from London to Newcastle arriving at drunk time, and believe me the young drunks in Newcastle are perfectly nice and friendly, though if you are a soft southerner and not a native Geordie you might be a little frightened by the noise they make. They are not 'chavs' just young people having a good time.

The most drunken young people I have ever seen were in Turku in Finland, even thought the government has slapped punitive taxes on drink.

But Finns just get drunk anyway. They do it because they are Finns. And they are the most mawkish, miserable drunks you could ever see.

If you see a bunch of Finnish drunks approaching you on the street, avoid them. They'll bore you to death.

They don't even start fights when they're drunk, not even over women.

You can steal their girlfriends. They just shrug and go away.

Try it.

David Short

By the way, I read a print copy of the Spectator on the journey.

Have only read a print version once since the change of ownership and vulgarisation so hadn't noticed what's gone wrong.

Who has let some toddlers onto the design desk? At the end of some pieces, but not others, there's some kind of raised box. And elsewhere, but not everywhere, there's a big arrow at the bottom right hand corner to remind you to turn the page over.....Weird, and tragic that such an elegantly-designed title should come to this.

David Short

Becky, if you are 'not bothered' by the tax, why do you want to target yobs, people whom you choose to avoid, with it?

Live and let live.

Tim Gillette

Not to give Sir Liam any ideas but think of the lives that could be saved if all left turns (US) or right turns (UK) made by automobile drivers were outlawed! These busybodies will never stop. They must be crushed!

Roger Carr

Man after my own heart, Ron.
p.s. Could you please advise that cartoonist King Canute did NOT attempt to stop the tide?

Contravariant

Quite so. In another country - Switzerland - there is cheap gut-rot booze, cheap fags and cigars, but no NHS and no general smoking ban. Result is a longer life expectancy than in the UK. But there's no Liam Donaldson telling people that you need Government action to live healthily. LD is hazardous to the people's health.

rod liddle

George - Healthcare research group "Dr Foster", study published in the BMJ in August 2004. Previous study suggested 36,000 direct deaths, many more indirectly (also BMJ, 2000).

Paul Bentley

Rod, you ask what will be next, after food? The answer is already there: sport. I kid you not. Already we have the nutters proposing that every cyclist in the land wear a helmet and I will bet you money that the (freakish) death of Natasha Richardson will signal the beginning of the end for helmet-free skiing.

danny

if a person is physically stressed out and depressed, this seems like a bigger killer than what the governments health gurus are trying to say. That is why some people can drink lots and smoke and still live long lives, while others dont. But thanks to the Labour party who have taken away the freedom of millions of people to relax and socialize and releive themsives from stress, more peoples bodies will not be able to cope with what they take in "polution, germs, alcohol, unhealthy eating, smoking ect" and the government health gurus are going to blame these peoples deaths on something they want to be banned, like what they have done with smoking, they have created phoney figures and phoney infections "the so called effects of second hand and third hand smoke" yes smoking and drinking could be bad for some but not for all, so at the next election the choice is yours, freedom of choice or robotic dictatorship, as for me i am voting for UKIP at the next election.

shirley

Please Rod, pick up on why the house of commons bar is still the only one in the UK where you can smoke and the G20 summit also had special dispensation for smoking- this is not ok, one rule for them and us!

Graham

I actually e-mailed the government asking how many death certificates had been issued stating secondary smoking as the cause.. After being shuffled about for a while, the answer came back, "None".

Bob Gregg

Again Rod simply brilliant, but I concur with you another inevitable step in the UK's walk towards total fascism under Broon and his ever swelling PC cohorts.

Charlieray15

Absolutely right Rod, as so often. I do sympathise with you in that it's becoming almost impossible to satirise this government. It seems to be that satire gives them ideas! "Oh, yes, why don't we ban secondary drinking, and tax ..." Perhaps I better hadn't mention breathing here. I've said it before here and I'll gladly repeat it - Rod Liddle, although coming from a somewhat different angle, is Auberon Waugh's heir in exposing the lunacy and pschological of Britain's politicians.

Andy

There won't be any pubs to have drink free areas. I don't smoke, but I was against the ban. I knew the Hunting Act was the thin end of the wedge. Once they'd tasted blood by obtaining one ban, they had to have more.

Dixon

Brilliant piece Rod.

I shall preface my comment by stating for the record that I have never smoked a cigarrette in my life. However, the smoking ban had adversely affected me in several unforseen ways. Including my business ( which, also for the record, is not a pub or anything to do with supply of tobacco products but is connected to pubs ).

Rod predicted this. Others predicted this KIND of thing years decades earlier. In 1979 or thereabouts Anthony Burgess predicted the absurdities resulting from the ascent of Political Correctness ( a term at that time not invented ) in his satire "1985". It didnt get everything right ( I still hope to see his prediction that youthful rebellion would manifest itself in scholarship come to pass ) but got the essential pulse right.

Before that, Kurt Vonnegut predicted PRECISELY these developments. He went as far as to predict that children would all be made equal by the fitting of devices to cancel out their individual characteristics.

For my part, I inserted into a science-fiction story ive been labouring over for several years the iddea that in the Britain of near tomorrow the purchase of cigarrettes would require registration on a license scheme. I thought this was far fetched. Then the BMA proposed precisely such a scheme last year!

It truly can be said of the times we are living in that "you cannot make it up".

Personally, I think the notion of trying to extend the longevity of the citizenry is in any case absurd. Do we really want people to live until their 90's, spending one third of their lives on a pension and supported by carers at the taxpayers expense? Is that REALLY cheaper than giving them treatment for a short-lived terminal illness? If it were, would not the way to cut back on the expenditure on treating such conditions simply be to...cut back on the expenditure on treating them! Just cut the now massively over-blown NHS budget and withdraw free treatment from the most expensive categories.

I would disagree over one thing. The thin end of the wedge was not the smoking ban. It was the hunting ban. Which has itself lead now to a campaign to ban angling.

However, at the end of the day, I am a nihilist and will draw some compensating pleasure from seeing the "shiny happy people" of Politically Correct, right-thinking mien of contemporary Britain, whom I so detest, suffer the encroachment of the kind of invasive regulation and oppression that we can look forward to in coming years.

BTW: The smoking ban has not in reality reduced the amount of smoking at pubs. I visit hundreds of pubs in my work. Nearly every place I visit has found a way of circumventing the ban. Usually by having technically "outdoor" areas added onto the premises. "Outdoor" areas which are enclosed, roofed, with seating, tables and heating to boot. Of the proprietors I can say I salute those who demonstrate such initiative!

Dixon

Becky Collins
March 19th, 2009 5:36pm
Not bothered by either tax or either ban. I enjoy a superb glass of red from time to time, but have no need to frequent loud chav hangouts only to puke my guts out onto the pavement at the end of the night. I can live without cigarettes, and am not dependent on alcohol for a good time either.
The aforementioned yobs are the very people I hope this tax targets.
Fine wine for those who can afford to indulge without offending others, and two small alcopops for those who realistically cannot handle any more without making a fool of themselves.E"

You really need to get out more Becky. You will find that the "Chavs" and "louts" you describe are just another hysterical myth created by the media. I have spent a lot of time in the belly of bozeries and my observation is that the falling over drunk and fighting doeas happen, but as a very, very small fringe of what tends to be people being good to each other. There is actually much more aggression and bad behaviour on the City streets any sober daytime.

Dixon

Charlieray15
March 20th, 2009 7:06pm
Absolutely right Rod, as so often. I do sympathise with you in that it's becoming almost impossible to satirise this government. It seems to be that satire gives them ideas! "Oh, yes, why don't we ban secondary drinking, and tax ..." Perhaps I better hadn't mention breathing here. I've said it before here and I'll gladly repeat it - Rod Liddle, although coming from a somewhat different angle, is Auberon Waugh's heir in exposing the lunacy and pschological of Britain's politicians."

But its not this government. Look at Camerons flash-mob of enviro-PC Green-shirts and you have to recognise that this is a rot that permeates British culture irrespective of party affiliation.

teledu

What pleasure will be taxed next on spurious health grounds?
I don't know but I'm just glad that masturbation isn't now believed to cause blindness - there's only so much taxation a man can take.

Wilhelm

Rod Piddle

I thought the liebour party was founded on methodism, against heavy drinking, gambling, smoking, hen nights.

Like you said Rod its a pity we cant drink and drive anymore.

Les W

I live abroad because i had to find somewhere i could live my life the way i wish to, not the way someone ive never known or met in my life ( never met a politician, and wouldnt wish to) would have me live.

I do however like to keep up to speed on how the country i served, with 24 years in the military, is slowly destroying itself from inside out.

I have to give thanks to Rod Liddle, who i found via a link from the Daily Mail online, thanks to you too.

But back to Ron, your columns are some of the best ive found written, informative, interesting, and with a special brand of British ( I used to use the word English more often - when were we brainwashed into calling ourselves British?)humour.

I shall be reading more from you, unless the Chief Medical Officer decides that by getting rid of all the good news reporters for the sake of his departments health, would result in him having more time to sit and think up ludicrous ideas rather than having to sit at his desk and have to tediously submit these ideas to writing in order to implement them. i.e if theres no reporting, theres no need to do the work

wish i hadnt mentioned that now - good luck with your job Rod

Les in Thailand, having a glass of wine and a ciggie at 10 am in my local where its not frowned upon

ej

"Drinking was always going to be next, followed very rapidly by punitive measures to stop you eating the sort of food that you enjoy."

Right on the button, Rod. The template has been well and truly set in place.
Every time it is re-applied the process will be faster and more streamlined.
And it will be re-applied.
Over and over again.
Until we stop them.

G.Marquis

We live unfortunately in a World run by "socialists" who mission is to run our lives and make it a misery. We, poor idiots, should have no choice, the "Socialist Intelligencia" must guide us, and assist us.
When the smoking ban came (I had just arrived from Souhern Africa)I predicted that in my business (french restaurant) I would not be allowed very soon to serve the drinks I enjoy with my customers, to put salt and seasonning in my food. 1984 enacted by the New Labour. Please God and "The Spectator" save us from these zealots.

A, MacAulay

The numbers are specious in that 72,000 is not revealed as a percent of the actual number of medical procedures, whether OP's for in-growing toe nails or brain tumours. Just as all those tobacco/alcohol "victims" are presented in a way unrelated to the actual number of cigarettes and pints consumed. Perhaps all these deaths are merely collateral damage from of what we fondly call civilisation.

If food is to be taxed then why not tax people by weight? Joggers could get a break whilst the fat could be encouraged to go training with (Slob Tax) carrot and stick taxation. Eat a carrot, or get stick! Liposuction would then be also legally fraud.

A further TV Tax, aside from the involuntary contribution to quality, independant TV journalism, would encourage couch potatoes to leave their lairs and get some fresh air.

Wilhelm

Rod Piddle

Yeah Rod , when Im taking a stroll down the street I love being accosted by a drunk smelling like a mountain goat, wih a fag in hand, smoke blowing in my face.

What a pleasurable experience.

James Murphy

All true, Rod: but you should blame yourself, and all the other suckers who believed in the messianic socialism of Blair and his disciples! A kindly co-operatism may have been the stated creed, but right from the start, Socialism's methodology has always been a vicious Political Correctness that confiscates personal freedoms in the name of the 'greater good'. So now you've had some of yours taken away - are you really surprised? Did you never look at the way Eastern Europe worked? Wake up and smell the proverbial, Rod - because they'll take that away too soon!

SJ

Ron talks a lot of sense. In the current financial and political climate, given the disaster inflicted everywhere on us by Herr Brown, I would at least like to choose the manner of my own anaesthetic.

Wilhelm

Yup, Rod there is nothing finer in life than driving a 1960s Mercedes Benz convertible down the autobahn with a hip fask of Jack Daniels in one hand and a Havana cigar in the other, not wearing a seatbelt. Happy days eh ?

Nicholas Storey

Nice one Rodders!! The kind of extreme stalinism described (in fact far more extreme than stalin would have been in relation to such matters) drove me to live in Brazil: a packet of Lucky Strike originals costs = £1 and no perceptible tax on booze makes this just a heaven on earth. So far as Harridan Hardman is concerned - she will never successfully ban prostitution - far better to do as they do in Brazil and have some regulation, including regular health checks and safe environments for the workers - which was the trumpeted reason for the smoking ban in the first place. Driving activity such as prostitution underground creates unacceptable risks for the sex workers, whose symbol might well be other than a hammer and sickle - but then no one uses that one anymore - maybe the new labour party and its officials could adopt a symbol involving a heavy jack boot. By the way, anyone recall the names of the victors in 1945?

donald fraser

Reading social and economic history at university in the early 1990s, I asked why we couldn’t be taught the exciting bit of modern history called the 1960s. The lecturer answered because it was current affairs and not yet history. Unlike some students who experiment with drugs, I suffered a mental breakdown and afterwards observed the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games as a down-and-out. Later that year I became a voluntary patient at a psychiatric unit in Yorkshire. While in the hospital, I discovered a magazine in the library about “democratic psychiatry” and RD Laing.

Upon recovery I explored this new world, prohibited to me as an under-graduate. I researched via the British Library DSC (Document Supply Centre) in West Yorkshire the subject more closely and attended several mental health conferences. I discovered it was the 1967 Conference on the “Dialectics of Liberation” and the categorisation of the NSM (New Social Movement) of “Anti-Psychiatry” that defined this period, rather than the vague “hippy” and “music sub-culture” labels that I had assumed. Conveniently the keyword “Anti-Psychiatry” was still used by the BLDSC to index the computerised archive.

Rod talks about the erosion of our liberties as something inevitable, but I want to ask him if he might suggest an underlying cause of it all? I would suggest the military analogy of a typical platoon on an obstacle course exercise is the best one. You are only as good as your weakest link. Success is judged by the last man in each platoon to make it to the finishing line, not the first man across. Using that model, it suggests most “liberty eroding” power of the medical authorities comes entirely from their uncontested authority to diagnose “bio-chemical brain disorder” and “mental illness”. Your platoon wins if you can just discount one or two of your worst. RD Laing coined the phrase “medical-legal-pharmaceutical conspiracy” to describe it, well before it became illegal to smoke in the workplace.

So what might Tories make of the 1960s experiment? Firstly that MK-ULTRA (MK stands for Mind Control) was the codename for military research into the use of LSD for interrogation. In my opinion such techniques have resonance today in a world that strayed dangerously into the use of physical torture. If the Tories are grasping at new ideas to mend a broken-society, is not the big social experiment of the 1960s the place to start digging for new shoots? Labour cannot easily do so without appearing to advocate social disorder and subversive, anti-establishment thinking. Tories can do so with a colder, sceptical and more analytical approach. That is what defines (as my old university lecturer hesitated to cross) the line between history and current affairs.

An obvious start is to digitise these historical records. LSD was initially manufactured by the pharmaceutical company Sandoz and it received medical reports in return. Where is the research held and will it ever be digitised? Of course, there may be no point to such a line of investigation. However the general public won’t confuse Tories advocating better knowledge of this modern history period with those suggesting a new tolerance of illegal drugs. LSD was used very specifically at the beginning to research mental illness only in the hands of qualified personnel. What would come of it? I would ask the question the other way around. What has come of our society that encourages much healthier platoons, both in the workplace and public spaces, but leaves behind millions hidden from sight? Whatever the moral failures or personal weaknesses of the average mental patient, surely each new one diagnosed is one more piece of ammunition given to the medical authorities to stifle the liberties of the rest of us?

Maximilian

Look what they're proposing to ban in New Jersey:

http://tinyurl.com/d6f2xe

A. MacAulay

Victors of 1945? Wasn't that Attlee and the Labour Party? Joe for King, home for Christmas.

Nicholas Storey

By asking "who were the victors in 1945", I am not being entirely facetious. I often wonder about the youngsters who fought and many that died - especially those who took part in the desperate - seemingly hopeless - fight in the skies, to preserve our liberties and how they might feel to see how we are squandering them - yes we - our generation - as we have allowed all this to happen. Maybe it is possible to stem the flood but I suspect that it is too late to undo the rotten things that have been legislated for in the face of crumbling social constraints (called manners) but there is probably reason to hope that a halt could be called to the rot. As things stand now, I have to say that the thought of actually living in the UK again would fill me with unutterable dread.

JohnBUK

Actually, sex should be highly taxed, if not, banned. After all being born is fatal - 100% of people who are born, die.

Nicholas Storey

Yes, John Bukk - I once saw a health leaflet advising us that "If you don't stop smoking, you could die". This is part of the trouble - some people nearly believe that they are going to live here forever if they follow the dictats of Garden Broom's army of regulators. I see today in the news that the medics - the mad scientists - are now claiming that if you eat red meat you could die of just about anything - so today I am going to go to the local 'lanchonette' for a plate as full of barbecued beef as possible - only that and some mustard. I shall have a glass of Chilean red table wine and raise a toast to all the cigarette-smoking, red meat munching; alcohol toping, happy, olduns that I have known in my life - many of whom lived to be over eighty - one actually got to 93. The toast shall be the RAF's stirring wartime toast:
" who minds to the dust returning, who shrinks from the sable shore, where the high and haughty yearning of the soul shall be no more? So stand by your glasses steady; this world is a world of lies; a cup to the dead already: Hurrah for the next man who dies!" Then I shall hurl the glass into the fire and, if the others in there understand my English, I shall leave to standing applause in this very free place. If they don't understand my English I had better start running - as there are policemen everywhere, guarding that freedom - and they don't like or tolerate violence or rowdiness in this sleepy hollow 50 miles NE of Rio de Janeiro.

Mike

An eye opener, but i'd like to think that puritanism, no matter how temporarily popular, can never last in the real world....... I hope.

jollyroger

How do you do… FAGS

"We want to help you"

What? If vilifying large groups of society for no reason, ostracising them to the cold climate, bombarding them with nightmarish obscene imagery of cancerous lungs and diseases while already threatening them with death, illness and deformed babies and, AND charging those people more and more money for the privilege of doing that sounds, like a heap of help. Sounds like an invasion of our civil liberties to live, without judgment. Considering the smoking masses make up 1.1 billion of us or 17% of the worlds population. I think that makes a pretty strong, probably not healthy, minority.

more at www.lifetyleguides.blogspot.com

Scott Andrews

"He once warned that the death toll in Britain for bird flu would most likely be 50,000 but that a figure of 750,000 was ‘not impossible’. The actual death toll proved to be, uh, nil."

Thasn't been a bird flu pandemic within the human population yet. So Sir Liam's figure is in the realm of speculation and remains to be disproved. We'll only be able to judge his figures after a Bird Flu pandemic, which hopefully is a long way off.

Talk about tilting at windmills. Come on Rod, you're smarter than to throw up straw man arguments like this.