A ban on cigarettes draws ever closer

Johnnyboy

Rod - get a rowing machine. They only go as fast as you let them... 30 mins a day, every day band you'll be surprised how fast the time goes when you're catching up with Snog, Marry, Avoid on BBC3. You could even have a fag on the go.
I now have the body of a 19 year old!

Noa Zrk

Never trusted those damned talking exercisers myself, or the walking machines either. Have you taken out life insurance recently?

Best wishes for a speedy recovery, if the Gulag medicos determine you are to be permitted to survive the treatment....

se1man

know what you mean re the running machine,Rod.

I made the mistake of hitting the 'Alpine' programme on the treadmill in the gym the other day. Found myself sprinting along at an unfamiliar pace... and up a hill modelled on the Matterhorn. Ouch.

a smoking ban? well at least it will employ hundreds of smoking monitors to spy on us in our cars and in our homes.

investing in jobs, see? nanny knows best.

Martin Denning

I would never argue against peoples freedom to smoke - I was a 30-a-day person for years, BUT Rod please take into account my little ditty (composed after my father died at 55yrs of smoking- induced lung cancer)...

Ash to Ashes

You smokers there
Should be aware
Of what remains
When you lose that dare

Wasted bag of skin and bone,
Pathetic wisps of pubic hair.
Weight around five stone.

Be happy.

Philip Edwards

David Hockney wrote a superb piece on this in the Indy. If I wasn't the most computer-illiterate person in Europe I'd provide the relevant link. I'm sure you can google it. It's worth a read.

Olaf Rye

I notice that it is mainly middle-class smokers that are the targets of these campaigns. We must not deprive the inherently virtuous poor (in Britain, this is a code-word for spongers on the benefit system that are better off than the real poor, that work like swines and are screwed by a taxation system that needs money to create further jobs in bureaucracy) of their fags, nor their drink. After all, nothing they do can be criticised according to our Propaganda Ministry and its outlying agencies like the Guardian, BBC, and for those that are functionally illiterate, the Mirror.

Sorry to change the subject, but I just had to recommend the article in Viz this month entitled 'Leftie Comics to Flee If Tories Get In'. This is absolutely hilarious and our favourite leftie idiots like Marcus Brigstocke, Alexei Sayle, Sondi Toksvig, Ben Elton and so forth are nicely parodied.

Kevinc

Why a running machine? Why not just go outside in the fresh air and, well, run. But I agree with you about the fags. In fact I'd go further - make it compulsory for everyone over the age of 15 to smoke(no saracasm intended - honestly).

dearieme

Smoking cigarettes is a repugnant habit. But I'd still like to know how good the evidence is that stopping will prolong your life.
http://members.iinet.com.au/~ray/TSSOASb.html

Dixon

Crikes, dont you fellow commenters lead sedentary lives, that you need bloody machines to get exercise. Why dont you just take yo feckin body out into the urban jungle as evolution determined and you would get all the exercise you could handle. Im nearly 50 and I carry about 20 kilos of groceries back from Sainsburys 3 times a week, uphill. I get the impression that if some others here did that they would have a cardiac arrest. Iatrogenesis indeed!

But to the topic. Its all about "projection". The medical "profession" smokes, drinks and commits suicide more than any other social group. In the US recent research discovered that medical practitiobners are 130 percent more likely to commit suicide than the background figure. They are such a completely effed up bunch of sick cookies that they try any depravity to relieve the misery, not just exercise machines but actually smoking and drinking, before finally offing themselves. The ones who dont leave it too late and end up barking in an insititution.

And of course, one of the stations along that colourful journey is to bark at the rest of us from their own insititution of enshrined arrogance, about why everything we do in our lives is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Something should be done about it. We could start by sacking half of them, thus alao roughly halving the national debt and saving millions of people from treatments that it is unecessary and pointless for society to pay for and which often kill those treated anyway. No, seriously, like the ad says, are you serious about organ transplants. Seriously, Im against them, its not what the NHS was intended for.

DeeJay

Sorry to hear of your illness squire..hope your soon on the mend. In your absence I had to resort to reading Melanie's vexatious and malicious outpourings so I am particularly glad your back.

My wife's is a jolly keen smoker and she has found a sad little pub near the flyover in Croydon that positively encourages smokers inside the premises. Sadly the smoking ban has killed off a great number of delightful old pubs which have been unable to adjust to the new regime. Its a shame Ron but apparently its called progress and in the new world order we are meant to embrace it. I suspect that Melanie is not a smoker is she?

Niall

In 2003 I inherited £100,000.

I decided to invest it in high yielding absolutely rock solid blue chip stocks.

Thus I paid £4 a share for some Lloyds TSB shares and £6 for some BAT shares.

7 years down the line my Lloyd's shares are worth 60P and NO DIVIDEND. Whereas my BAT shares are worth £20 and pay a very healthy dividend.

Like it or not cigarette consumption is expanding not contracting and UK teenage girls are in the forefront.

Want to make cigarettes illegal in UK go ahead. Consumption will likely increase and prices will rival those of other illegal drugs.

Just because crack is illegal doesn't mean you can't get it on any street corner in UK.

BAT will supply in France and smugglers will do the rest and the only loser will be the UK tax man.

Bring it on.

Dave ATherton

I have read the papers fom the RCP

Woodbine 'Senior Service' Willy

Surely the medics can only ban it during surgery hours - after all, they're off duty between 6pm and 8.30am and at weekends, so it must be ok to smoke then.

Passing Clouds

Johnnyboy I now have the body of a 19 year-old!
What age did you start from?
Take up cycling - I now have the body of a 59 year-old - which is only to be expected at my age.

Dave Atherton

I have read the papers fom the RCP on their "claims." It is not based on any evidence and mereley the opinion of various persons and creative calculators, no fresh papers are cited.

Most of it is just plain publication bias. The difference in smoking rates between affluent and the poor is 15% and 30%, so the poorer you are, the more you are exposed to second hand smoke (SHS).

On middle ear infections (MEI)the incidence is a flat line, very slightly tending towards less MEI the more exposure to SHS you encounter. Asthma sees a raised risk of 25% but exposure to SHS is 100% higher, so it confirms the hypothesis that as a child that SHS is protective of asthma.

I find it worrying that reputable doctors are prepared to mislead the public for what they see as the greater "good."

http://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/professional-Issues/Public-Health/Documents/How-much-disease-in-children-is-caused-by-passive-smoking.ppt#263,5,Socioeconomic status

timbo

Hate to be a bore but you smokers have had it all your own way for years and years. And now the majority of us want to claim some air back, you get all stroppy.
I remember years ago a passenger in a car asked me, also a passenger whether we minded if he lit up his pipe. I said yes I did mind. He blithely carried on and lit up; such was the climate 20 years ago. He assumed he could smoke anywhere. And he did. And we all had to tolerate it. Well hey. Your smoking stops at about one metre from my nose and clothes.

Chas

Exercise is dangerous. ban exercise.

David Ossitt

timbo

“Hate to be a bore but you smokers have had it all your own way for years and years.”

No you don’t, hate to be a bore that is, you revel in it.

Rod Marsh

Stop whinging Rod, let them ban smoking. It will just mean we don't have to pay tax on our 'imported' cigarettes anymore.

John Steadman

Another threatened bite out the bum of personal freedom. Aren't we lucky the Tories are coming in!

Grigori

At least the Lions won Rod. You can remove your Galatasaray shirt now.

seacole notdole

just a thought, but if we didn't have a national health service and paid health insurance according to our lifestyles, these medical nazis would probably get of our backs. Smoking today, drinking tomorrow, then red meat etc

James Murphy

Rod, commiserations, but the glaring fact is that you are simply not making love to your wife enough! Where weight loss is concerned, the press-ups naturally performed during the act of love sex are far more effective than any rowing machine. - Or so am I told.

David Ossitt

seacole notdole

“Smoking today, drinking tomorrow, then red meat etc”

You missed out voting for the BNP or UKIP, the use of salt and eating sugar based products.

Simon Brock

Am I the only one who would like to see a video of rod liddle on a running machine? I don't know why I would want to see it. May be it would be like some adult version of Doctor Who that middle age men watch from behind the sofa happy in the fact that no one has filmed us while indulging in a similar activity.

David Ossitt

James Murphy

“Rod, commiserations, but the glaring fact is that you are simply not making love to your wife enough! Where weight loss is concerned, the press-ups naturally performed during the act of love sex are far more effective than any rowing machine. - Or so am I told.”

At last; a subject, that James Murphy knows absolutely nothing about.

The content of his post; at first hints at this, (the press-ups naturally performed etcetera) but then the final (Or so am I told) is the clincher.

He has listened to others when they have talked about love making; he has probably read copiously on the subject but never actually participated with another.

James; nobody in their right mind, nobody who has an inkling of what would please the one that is being made love to, does any bloody press-ups, whilst having a shag.

Dixon

"timbo
March 25th, 2010 3:24pm
Hate to be a bore but you smokers have had it all your own way for years and years. And now the majority of us want to claim some air back, you get all stroppy."

No mate, complete rollox: I am not a smoker, never have been. I even, in my miss-spent youth once ejected a gang of smoking youths from the non-smoking deck of a bus...so I've been through that phase of miserable intolerance you are in too. But as a non-smoker, without going into detail here, the fact is that that ban has caused me untold aggro and even loss of some money.

In other words, you are just "thinking" in stereotypes. reality is a lot more aggravating.

Dixon

"Niall
March 25th, 2010 2:18pm
In 2003 I inherited £100,000...."

Bastard!

Dixon

David Ossit...hilarious observations! ;-)

Baron

The human body can deal with everything in moderation.

The agency, hired by the ASH anti-smoking lobby before the smoking ban, got sacked when their research concluded that being exposed to cigarette smoke for a year (secondary smoking) equaled smoking one cigarette in a year. True, I haven’t made it up.

To ban the weed ain’t on unless the Darlings could find another £10bn or so in revenue. Given the enormity of the pile of debt we already have to cut back on, I reckon we’re safe. More likely tobacco will rival gold on price, and smuggling will get more sophisticated.

What I cannot fathom is why the great unwashed take it so meekly. So unBritish.

The ClitheroeEuclid

Greetings from the filthy Midlands, Rod. Slightly off topic, but I know you'll be overjoyed to hear that last week I was teaching 6 year olds about Mary Seacole. I noticed that we've got a DVD this year so the Seacole industry is stepping up a gear. Actually I then went and spoiled it by waxing lyrical about the Light Brigade and their bravery. Indeed, I probably ruined it by then explaining that my favourite Victorians were a couple of my grandparents, but when people my age have retired Mary will probably have been declared the rightful queen of England.
We then all trooped off to a staff meeting to discuss our poor attendance figures. Now everyone-Ofsted, the LEA, the governors- knows that attendance is low because so many children are taken to India and Pakistan on holiday during school time, but naturally no one dares say this for obvious reasons. Naturally we decide we're going to get tough with a couple of semi-literate single parents who live in poverty and send in the welfare people more regularly. I imagine this situation prevails in all schools in England with a majority of Asian parents.
Multicultural Britain advances onwards though I'm not sure where to, but then again no one else knows either....

Noa Zrk

David ossitt
"James; nobody in their right mind, nobody who has an inkling of what would please the one that is being made love to, does any bloody press-ups, whilst having a shag...".

But Rod is surely making a case for the right to smoke. 20 cigs a day is more manageable than 20 press ups at 49, especially when making love, I'm told.

JayBay

So when do we get the response to Bates' programme notes, Rod?

WellingtonB

You can ditch the cigarettes and go smokeless. Swedish product called SNUS, best nicotine high money can buy. Discrete and current research shows vastly reduced risk. Legal to import to UK if for own personal consumption.

Northfleet

DeeJay,

Unfortunately having to work in Croydon I spend my 'fag' breaks on the pavement. What is the name of this pub?

No, on second thoughts don't tell me me or some over paid council jobsworth who has no life and no interests other than vindictiveness will pay it a visit.

On the subject of Croydon , when the smoking ban was introduced Croydon council employed persons to visit premises to authorise compliance. The one sent to the businesses on the Wellesley Road just happened to be here illegally, unfortunate really considering the headquarters of UKBA are on the same street.

Dixon

Why the great unwashed take it so meekly, etc....you missed a corking hidden camera expose on ITV earlier. I just caught the end of it. Members of the great unwashed were subjected to untold abuses by "service" employees and it was shown how they would take almost untold buckets of sh-one-t heaped on them from a great height without uttering a word of complaint. One woman in a cab sat and meekly waited a good 5 minutes while the driver pulled over and got out to make a phone call as her bill kept ticking up. He then stopped and went shopping in a grocery store and on his return she still said not a word of complaint. At the end of the journey he massively overcharged her but she just shoved him a twenty and exited without waiting for change, let alone an explanation.

A marvellous depiction in microcosm of the entire British public she was, daft cow.

Jez

Say 'f*** it' and come boxing with me..... and watch all the younger participants run rings around us!.... (but. if you just keep it together Rod and use the frontal labotomy type numbness caused by decades of liberal-left indoctrinated claptrap we've been spoon fed/ had to soak up- and accept... and stay silent about- or we'd lose out livelyhoods, you can *just* get enough shots back in to make it worth while!)

Who needs nicotine when you can get heavy blows to the head three times a week?!

Thanks NuLab / BluLab / LibDum

x

David Ossitt

WellingtonB

“You can ditch the cigarettes and go smokeless. Swedish product called SNUS, best nicotine high money can buy.”

Wellington just one word, Snuff.

Dixon

"Northfleet
March 25th, 2010 10:33pm
DeeJay,

Unfortunately having to work in Croydon I spend my 'fag' breaks on the pavement. What is the name of this pub?

No, on second thoughts don't tell me me or some over paid council jobsworth who has no life and no interests other than vindictiveness will pay it a visit."

I had a "friend" who in latter times worked for the council in some very such capacity as you allude to. I stopped speaking to him when I finally concluded that he was in fact the very thing you describe, a mean-spirited, misanthropic, Guardian-guided ideologue and arse-one-hole. Along the way he came out one day with an anecdote in which a member of the public, by his own account, called him an effing jobsworth. But the irony, it was so marvellous, was that in spite of telling me the story in his own terms, however edited to his own defence, the pregnant silence briefly following this detail indicated that 1) he knew that I was probably thinking the woman in the story was right, 2) that I knew that he knew that and 3) I knew that he knew that I thought that and that 4) he was ultimately damned by his own lights as, indeed, an effing jobsworth. It was the irony of telling a story in his own defence by which he even realised as he was telling it damned him in itself.

Nobby

Dear Herr Liddle, you got a namecheck on Channel 4 News tonight by Krishnan Guru-Murthy as he was speaking to the Editor of the Standard and you were described as a controversial right wing columnist who had been touted as taking over the Independent. You bloody fascist you. Surely these days you can sue somebody for describing you as right wing, after all, being right wing is nearly as bad as being a Roman Catholic priest these days.
If it's any help I am prepared to testify in court that me and my Dad have you down as a bit of a lefty who is possessed with occasional flashes of lucidity about the real world.

Dixon

"WellingtonB
March 25th, 2010 9:59pm
You can ditch the cigarettes and go smokeless. Swedish product called SNUS, best nicotine high money can buy. Discrete and current research shows vastly reduced risk. Legal to import to UK if for own personal consumption."

Someone will find someone, somewhere who dies of something whilst having used some of that and therell be immediate shrieking for it to be banned.

Who remembers the pouched chewing tobacco that appeared briefly in the 80's before it was almost instantly banned?

Iren Brant

Went to Germany over the New Year. smoking booths in the airport. Ashtrays and smoking in 5 Star hotel near Cologne Cathedral.

Eddie

As a former smoker, am I alone in not having turned into an intolerant and sanctimonious b'stard and anti-smoking nazi?

I have NO PROBLEM AT ALL with people smoking in pubs and in parks and in cars. Why? Because I am not an intolerant self-obsessed finger-wagging nanny git.

'Oh but it smells' say the usual anti-smoking nazis; well, so do you; I tells 'em - especially women with their disgusting perfumes and air sprays. Let's ban them too - they cause cancer (cosmetic sprays, not women...)

I see no real evidence that passive smoking is harmful anyway - EXCEPT when children at home have parents smoking in the living room. And are we going to ban that then?

Mobile phones have been proven to harm children's brains. Why not ban them?

Ah yes, a majority of people use mobile phones and only 25% smoke - so classic bullying of a minority by the majority then. I'd rather ban mobile phones.

Democracy is the same - bribe voters with benefits and property price madness and you'll win, and everyone else, including the longterm economic health of this country, can go hang...

Eddie

Actually, bearing in mind most children who are hurt, abused and killed are hurt, abused and killed by their own parents - usually the mummies - can't we just BAN PARENTS?! Think of all the little innocent souls that would be protected and saved!

You parents will object of course - but you would, wouldn't you?

You parents have had everything your own way for years, and you smell, so let's BAN PARENTS to save children.

If 'JUST ONE CHILD' can be saved, it's be worth it...

And ban exercise and sport too, because it caused death and injury...

David Ossitt

Dixon

“Who remembers the pouched chewing tobacco that appeared briefly in the 80's before it was almost instantly banned?”

Dixon my son uses this still; imports small supplies from, I think Sweden.

Plus chewing tobacco is readily available in the UK, [wrongly named] it is used as one would use a pouch.

Bob

Johnson and Johnson, the makers of Chantix and Nicoderm, fund the bans through their Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-RWJohnsnF.html

Many tax exempt political action committees (charities?) received millions to sell smoking bans from the RWJ Foundation. These bans are nothing but clever marketing strategy, with lots of highly publicized "sky is falling" hype.

Tobacco control funding sources;

http://www.rwjf.org/pr/product.jsp?ia=143&id=14912

And what the 99 million dollars was going to. Note on page seven the "inside -out", provision going for patios later, AFTER business owners spend thousands of dollars to build them to accommodate their smoking customers, clearly showing that the tobacco control activists have ABSOLUTLY NO CONCERN about local issues or businesses. You may need to CTRL and scoll to enlarge it.

http://www.no-smoke.org/pdf/CIA_Fundamentals.pdf

Prohibition is their next goal.

http://alcoholfacts.org/RWJfoundation.html

Robert Mitchum

A friend of mine was in his early forties when he decided to take up jogging. Within a few weeks he was put on tablets for life to deal with the arthritis he had aggravated. As you are even older than him I would suggest, at your time of life, an occasional gentle stroll.

Don Birnam

Sue the manufacturers! I mean, where did the instructions say not to try and operate the equipment when pissed?

Dixon

Eddie, at last you are making sense again. As a matter of fact, I understand that in some US cities strong perfumes are already banned from public buildings. I wouldnt ban anything, but if we are going to start banning things, those sprays ought be high on the list. They do as a matter of fact trigger migraines ( in my own case ) and epileptic seizures, in poor sods who just happen to inhale the whiff as some stinking sod walks past.

BTW, research recently found an inverse correlation between perfume and mood: ie women who smell most acrid tend to be women who have depression. Although, of course, it is men who stink most acrid of these sprays these days

While we are at it, brightly coloured clothing and yawning can trigger epileptic seizures in some people who are exposed to them.

As for your comments on parenthood, maybe ironic, but essentially my view exactly: save an infinite number of children from the infinite misery and disappointment of their infinite number of lives by having none of them, indefinitely.

While we are at it, what about the health effects of micro-millimetre wave body scanners at airports. Some evidence exists that they can possibly cause cancer. I see lots of idle chit chat about the indignity of having ones privates looked at by some moronic "security" dork, but nothing anywhere in the MSM about the medical unknowns of x-raying millions of people every year. In spite of the daft hysteria we are subjected to about catching cancer from too much sunlight. Can we look forward to some massively entertaining and utterly gigantic class-action law-suits in the years ahead?

Norman Brand

Good for you, Rod Liddle. Is David Cameron listening?

timbo

David and Dixon,
thank you for your remarks about my borish state. You see I live in Japan where smoking is still dominant. But it's only when I return to it that it now seems so awfully smoky. It's the comparison that gets me. Come on over and enjoy.

daniel maris

It's the Rhineland question all over again.

If we thought they'd stop with smoking, well that's one thing.

But they won't.

Next on the agenda is alcohol.

Then cream cakes and chips.

Then maybe dogs.

And then maybe free speech because opinions tend to raise blood pressure.

James T

Rod. You are quite an odd little man and represent nobody's views but your own.

Ban cigarettes. It is wrong for children to be forced to breath their parents cigarette smoke.

If the product came out today, would it be allowed? Would a product which causes immense damage to health and is also addictive be allowed? Of course not. Ban it. Anyone who complains about a ban is pathetic. It would also save millions on NHS bills. At the very least, ban treatment of smoking related illnesses on the NHS.

Carl

"A fucking running machine" Wow, that is one versatile piece of kit.

A. Laing

As a smoker of some 30 years I decided to do some studies of my own. If you look at WHO figures I am about 40% likely to die of a smoking related illness. This I accept....but when you move to the "second hand smoke" battle there appears to be something rather odd here.
For people who do not live in a smokers environment and do not smoke the figure is 10 out of ever 100,000 will die of lung cancer. But non-smokers who live with a smoker and breath in second hand smoke then this figure only rises to 12 in 100,000 will die. I would say it's either a "tiny risk incrase" or "within tolerances to be shown as a negligible increase".So it on the basis of these World Health Organisation findings and Roy Castle dying (probably of asbestosis) that I, a simple man with simple pleasures, not enjoy a drink in a smoke in a busy pub on a Friday and Saturday night. Instead now I go to empty pubs with no atmosphere and have to stand outside in the rain??
Doctors, get over yourselves.
Stop ruining the mental health of people in Britain by scaring them over and over and over again about this or that tiny thing that might, if the wind blows the right way, increase the chance of you dying 5 years early by 0.0001%

theguywiththelimp

Are you a doctor rod?

paul

Surely this is a misuse of the word 'exponentially'.

K L Simpson

My concern is that these medical specialists have so much time on their hands when they should be working their butts off in doing the job they are hansomely paid to do.

My dealings with the medical profession are threefold: my mother was a GP who went out on her bike in all weathers tending her flock; my GP who is only available for two day each week and who seems hell bent on prescribing pills - pills, pills, pills and often the wrong ones; hospital doctors who have earned my respect for their attiude and professionalism.

My concern is also that the next stage for these under -employed medicos is for them to identify some ailment which results from human and animal flatulence.

I can see fart rationing being introduced and fartometers implanted at birth to monitor the degree of polution generated - a fart tax being levied above a certain level. I would note that MPs are to be immune to such levies unless they can claim their excesses on expenses.

Imagine the job interview - 'do you fart?'; 'sorry we are a fart-free organisation.'

DeeJay

Before this blog is closed perhaps we should all spare a thought for the delightful Dr. Rosemary Leonard and, of course, her very patient patients. In the absence of anything newsworthy, the BBCs default-mode for Breakfast Television is to frighten us all to death with yet another health scare. No matter what the problem the good doctor has an opinion together with words of re-assurance, "remember this might not be the return of the Black Death but if your not too sure about those large sores all over your body,just get down to your GP. And remember there is no need to panic or change your life-style"

wiggins

The Spanish do not give a rat's arse about smoking in their bars, they just spark up.

Sebastian

Both alcohol and cigarettes account for tens of billions of pounds sterling in tax revenue which is raked in by our poisonous Government.

Government would rather see the thousands of people die each year from alcohol and tobacco related diseases and accidents...That way the cost to the NHS and social security benefits like unemployment allowance, pensions and sickness allowances are potentially reduced.

Governments are frauds, killers in themselves-sucking off the misery of the poisons that they legalize...

Ban alcohol and tobacco for one year and the number of related deaths will go down, dramatically.
But Government don't care about people enough,so they won't ban those products, and people will poison themselves each year, much to the joy of the tax departments...