How television works
Tuesday, December 2, 2008 I have just been watching the second in a series of programmes on Channel 4 called Battlefront TV. The series offers a platform to 20 young campaigners who want to "save the world".
Today’s show, one of ten, featured 17-year-old Zander Percival, a very personable teenager who suffers from asthma and wants to ban smoking in cars with children under the age of 16. His TV-funded campaign is called You Smoke I Choke and it features the animation above which includes the line, "I love my mummy, but when she smokes I choke. Why is she killing me"?
Battlefront TV is made by Raw Television. Eight weeks ago they sent us the following email:
The programme in question is about a young man who is strongly anti-smoking and who wants to have a law passed to ban smoking in cars with under-16s. It is a personal cause which he wants to take to the highest level. As part of his research, he would really like to talk to someone who could be a ‘devil's advocate', since to take it to parliament, he is likely to encounter fierce opposition.
It would also be an opportunity for him to learn more about the civil liberties aspect of this subject, and for the audience in general to appreciate that such a stance exists. It would be great to be able to talk to you or one of your associates in order to get a balanced view of the subject.
I thought about it for a day or two but I wasn't sure I wanted to be seen arguing with a 17-year-old asthmatic on national television. Wendie, the producer, rang to reassure me. Eventually I suggested that Zander speak not to me but to someone with equally strong views who was much closer to his own age. Someone, in fact, like Suzy Dean of the Manifesto Club who features in THIS Free Society video.
Wendie loved the idea - and arranged a 20 minute "debate" featuring Suzy and Zander in front of an audience. Audience? What audience? Alarm bells ringing, I cautioned Suzy to be careful. I needn't have worried. Come the day Zander had no answer to Suzy's well-delivered arguments and when it came to a vote there was a clear winner (and it wasn't the 17-year-old founder of You Smoke I Choke).
"They'll never show it," Suzy told me later. And do you know what? She was right. Or, to put it another way: "They cut me from the programme! I'm not surprised."
Nor me.
Simon Clark
One explanation for Suzy's non-appearance could be the fact that viewers had already seen Zander's campaign seriously undermined by several of his classmates playing devil's advocate. Had they featured Suzy as well it would have killed the campaign stone dead. Odd, however, that the outcome of their debate doesn't even merit a mention in his campaign blog. Equally strange is the fact that a self-confessed asthmatic (viewers were shown all Zander's medication) should stage a PR stunt that required him to sit in a small car thick with smoke (courtesy of a smoke machine) with no apparent ill effects. In fact, he seemed to be enjoying himself. Funny, that.
Reader Comments (9)
Well done Suzy. So it's not only the BBC that is biased.
I briefly met Suzy at the Freedom Zone event and she is articulate as she is attractive.
As many of you maybe aware I do spend a lot of spare time writing emails and even articles that often go completely unanswered or end up in the bin. My impression is that people choose not to acknowledge the truth, and there is blatant bias from the media. I have even wrote to the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph pointing out Amanda Sandford's letter to the New Scientist where she said that a 30 minute exposure would not lead directly to a heart attack. I did not even get a courtesy of a reply.
I am sure attitudes one day will go in our favour and our time will be rewarded.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19626320.100
Sloppy grammar " I have even written...."
Funny how some asthmatics smoke for pleasure, with no apparent ill effects concerning their asthma and how others actually smoke to help alleviate a bad asthma attack!
Asthma can be caused by any number of irritants, including dust and pet hair, some of these things being easier to remove than others. I am sure that parents of an asthmatic child whose asthma is triggered by smoking will, if they wish to continue smoking, do all they can to ensure that they do not smoke around their child. That is common sense.
If their child has not adverse reaction, in terms of asthma, to smoking, then how they choose to live, with regard to smoking, is up to them. There is more credible science that states children brought up in a home where parents smoke actually have a certain amount of ammunity to diseases and illnesses. As I have said here before, my own experiences seem to back this up!
It disgusts me that this government are hell bent on castigating smokers and drivers, who, by comparison cause far less harm than cold weather on the elderly, when the millions that have been wasted in order to alienate smokers, in particular, would have gone a long way to preventing many elderly deaths that are 8 times higher in the 3 to 4 months of winter than are deaths on our roads in a 12 month period! Of course, all of these deaths are 100 higher than any caused by smoking, as none have yet been proven to be a direct cause of smoke of SHS!
This government and whoever comes after, seriously need to get their own house in order before trying to dictate to their masters how they should live their lives!
Everyone, but drivers and smokers in particular, need to look very hard at what options they have come the next general election - I do not believe any of the 3 major parties offer any real alternative to what we have now!
Sorry -
Of course, all of these deaths are 100 higher than any caused by smoking, as none have yet been proven to be a direct cause of smoke of SHS!
Should have read 100%
But I am sure most of you knew that!
Dear Lyn,
Before I make my comment I just want to say that I always enjoy your comments and appreciate that you, Dave and other regulars here go to so much trouble to find reliable information. What a shame the government in the UK cannot follow your example.
As to the seventeen year old nitwit who is clearly trying to revenge himself on the parents who blessed him with the name Zander I have the following suggestions.
1. Get a job and leave home then being chauffered around in Daddy's car won't be an issue.
2. The fumes from petrol, chemicals released from upholstery and plastics in the confined space of a motor vehicle are probably just as bad for his asthma as any kind of smoke. To help him and other sufferers I suggest banning asthmatic children from motor cars.
3. Exercise and fresh air are good for asthmatics, let Zander walk, it will only do him good.
4. As he is seventeed a ban on smoking with under sixteens in the car won't be of any use to him and demonstrates a distinct lack of joined up thinking on his behalf
5. Since when did seventeen year olds run the world?
Sorry for the tone of the above, but the whole item just annoyed the hell out of me.
MCO
Glad Forrest stood up to the challege and blasted that connived asthmatic show. What will they think of next Celebrity I'm not a cigarette smoker!
My niece has been an asthmatic since birth even has an inhaler and is still quite happly smoking her cigs at the age of 45 with no obvious ill effects.
Dear MCO
Thanks for your kind words and 'nice one' for your post too. Good points made, indeed.
It seems to me that people like Zander think EVERYONE who smokes and drives has children. I don't have kids nor do I drive so how is this piece of "film" expected to make me feel guilty about children breathing in smoke while they are in a car. Here's a slogan for that little git, "When I smoke, you get lost!" :P