It's a crazy mixed-up world
Wednesday, July 9, 2008 "It’s not only national politicians who make one think the world is galloping mad," writes Allan Massie in today's Scottish Daily Mail." (Massie, for those of you who don't know, is one of Scotland's most respected writers and journalists.)
"One Scottish newspaper yesterday ran an interview with the campaigns manager for ASH (Action on Smoking and Health), the occasion being the BMA’s recommendation that the portrayal of smoking be taken into account when classifying films. Now, as a happy smoker for more than 40 years, I should perhaps tread warily on this one, for it’s now generally held that smoking is not only wicked, but, after knife crime, perhaps the deepest and darkest blot on society.
"But then again, perhaps not, for the campaigns manager touched agreeable heights of craziness. Asked his opinion of the portrayal of smoking in movies, he said: ‘It isn’t very realistic. Although you often see actors smoking on screen, you rarely see the consequences. So while you see someone stub out a cigarette, you do not see them having a heart attack or dying of cancer.’
"Well, no, you don’t – and it wouldn’t be ‘very realistic’ if you did because, no matter the possibility – or likelihood – that a smoker may die of a heart attack or lung cancer, you don’t often actually see one doing so each time he stubs out a cigarette. But in the mad world of ASH, I suppose we should have movies in which every cigarette smoked is followed by the actor clutching his throat and dropping down dead.
"Laughter," Massie concludes, "is often the only sane response to the lunacy of the modern world."
I couldn't agree more.
PS. See also Neil Clark ("Anti-smoking hysteria reaches new heights") on Comment Is Free in the Guardian HERE.
Reader Comments (28)
A society that gets into more of a strop over fictional characters puffing on pipes, cigars and cigarette holders than people blasting each other to kingdom come, is surely one which has lost all sense of perspective.
Britain today!
Isn't it strange that the number of smokers has been declining nearly every year since the 1950's. The number of men smoking has decreased from about 80% to about 20% despite smoking scenes on film and TV. What has made smoking more attractive is the smoking ban.
Chas - as I have pondered before, could the smoking ban in fact be a double bluff? How often do you hear that old uncle Fred was fine until the doctor made him give up smoking - he was dead within a few months after that!
I am convinced there has to be a hidden agenda here as the government are having huge problems funding pensions so the very last thing they want is people to live longer!
Look at some of the 'stop smoking' drugs that have been licenced - can't remember the names just now, but one or 2 of them have apparently caused depression so bad that some people have taken their own lives - is this government actually stooping so low as to knowingly kill off a few people here and there in order to save money on pensions?
It may sound far fetched, but 10 years ago wouldn't the smoking ban have sounded far fetched? I think there is an ulterior motive to just about everything this government does, and certainly one that is not for the good of us, the electorate!
Sorry to sound paranoid, but that is just how I feel!
Lyn
My father died of a smoking related illness, ten years after giving up.
I forgot to mention. When cigarette advertisements were all around our streets and on TV, the number of smokers was still declining. Since ASH and HMG the decline has ceased. I wonder if ASH is in the pay of tobacco companies.
I just find it quite amusing that anyone could question the reality of a character like Will Smith's smoking in a film like Independence Day. Isn't that about Aliens invading the world..? ... but then in this crazy country , I suppose they will tell us that yes, that really does happen! Beware all of you! The little green men are coming for us (Ahhhhhh!)
Lyn.
Not far fetched at all. Once the beneficial healing aspects of smoking nicotine are withdrawn from the system, all that has been held at bay by them rush in and kill. It's still blamed on having once smoked, though.
What really sent a chill down my spine was G.Brown's plans, earlier this year, that free health checks will be available for all over 74 [I think it was 74]. When EU take over via Lisbon Treaty, no doubt this will become compulsory.
Also within Lisbon Treaty is the fact that if people do not obey EU Laws, pensions and other benefits can be withdrawn.
Good news on the UKIP website today that the Polish president has refused to sign the Lisbon Treaty. He says there is no point as Ireland has not signed therefore it is null and void. Also on UKIP website is the news that Dr Bob Spink has asked G.Brown if he will still go ahead, in spite of no Referendum. G. Brown says he will.
Vile, vile, people!
Chas.
I'm sorry to hear about your father but must agree that he sounds like another victim of the pharmo/medical system. That is - remove the benefits of smoking and let all the germs rush in - then blame the smoking.
I wrote this on a thread below:-
Don't you just get tired of being told that someone's relative died of x-y-z illness and he/she was a smoker?
We are now so brainwashed that no matter what someone dies of if they, or their parents et al, once smoked, then the death is pronounced smoking related.
The daftest statistic I ever heard was some years ago when it was triumphantly annouced that one-third of respiratory related deaths were due to smoking and that one-third of the population smoked.
What are they going to do if we don't comply with the new health rules for (supposedly) increasing longevity? Line us up and shoot us?
In my lifetime, I've always found orthodox treatment to do more harm than good. I find other solutions work far better. Am I to be forced to be damaged when I can find a better and safer solution by myself?
Michael Siegel's blog had a long debate last month about whether smoking might actually be good for you, with "nightlight" powerfully arguing the case that it was (although most people remained sceptical). He quite often referenced this collection of good things about tobacco. And there was an Indian study that suggested that lung cancer was triggered by stopping smoking.
Don't you just get tired of being told that someone's relative died of x-y-z illness and he/she was a smoker? - Margot
My favourite was when I went to the funeral of an 85-year-old chainsmoking lady. She'd fallen out of bed, broken a leg in the process, and died two days later. At the wake after the funeral, I fell into conversation with her son.
"Of course," he said, "It was the smoking that killed her."
"What?" I said. "I thought she'd fallen out of bed and broken a leg."
"Oh yes," he said. "She did. But she wouldn't have died if she hadn't chainsmoked Silk Cut all her life."
Ahhhh... maybe she fell out of bed reaching for a fag ;)
(Reminds me of an old Monty Python sketch where the character gets killed by a bus while crossing the road after buying 20 Rothmans... the punchline is that this goes to prove that smoking damages your health).
"Also within Lisbon Treaty is the fact that if people do not obey EU Laws, pensions and other benefits can be withdrawn."
Margot, can you find a link for this as it would be a great weapon. :-)
I got a reply from Greg Clark by the way (original message in comments here)
http://takingliberties.squarespace.com/taking-liberties/2008/7/2/smoking-food-and-sex.html#comments
He passed me onto my local MP but was at least polite.
Sorry, by 'passed' I mean he sent the letter to my MP ... who also voted for the blanket ban. Really looking forward to the reply as I've also spoken to his Conservative opponent at the next election - perhaps I can play one off on the other?
Martin.
You are doing some real work - not just writing comments here. All strength to you.
I can't remember the exact reference to give you regarding pensions & benefits being withdrawn as I have read and studied so much since all this began. A great deal came from a booklet entitled 'The European Union Project' which costs £3.50 and can be ordered from the publisher: info@theeuroprobe.org. It makes chilling reading.
In addition, a close study of the UKIP website provides many links to true EU information which is unobtainable elsewhere. The Lisbon Treaty itself can be accessed in this way if you can find the time and patience to read it.
It still seems incredible to me that the majority of our elected Members of Parliament voted the Lisbon Treaty through parliament without having actually read it. We are living through such fraught and dangerous times and are right on the brink of destruction as a nation, yet all the British public seem able to do is argue whether or not they agree with the smoking ban.
Whatever a person's political persuasion, it would not damage their sensibilities to go on the mailing list for the monthly UKIP newsletter,or just have a daily look at the UKIP site. They will not learn about the relentless march of the EU towards complete dictatorship in any other way unless they commit themselves to thorough research within the many websites dedicated to the subject.
We ordinary human beings who are trying to live a normal life amidst all this chaos, have such limited time we can spare.
Hence the creation of the chaos!
Chas
Sorry to hear about your father.
My first husband died of lung cancer, aged 51. He did smoke, he also drank to excess. In the few years before his diagnosis and death he also worked as a motorcycle courier and, although a good rider, he actually came off his bike a few times, which he did purposely in order to avoid hitting pedestrians who walked out infront of him!
It has been said that physical and mental trauma can be more likely to cause the onset of cancer than smoking, or indeed other things routinely blamed.
Given the amount of stress and depression that is surfacing today and the violence, it would not surprise me at all that cancer deaths are still rising and that these are the causes. How much longer can they go on blaming smoking, especially if they believe their own figures for the number of people giving up! I wonder if they have shot themselves in the foot with that one? No doubt they will manipulate and massage some more figures to explain it though!
It is about time that this government and the other main parties, come to that, joined the real world, opened their eyes and started seeing and experiencing what us real, everyday people see and experience. Until then I fear, there is no hope.
Margot said: "all the British public seem able to do is argue whether or not they agree with the smoking ban".
Are they? I hadn't noticed. It's not reported on TV or newspapers.
When we can have a proper debate about smoking bans, we'll be able to have a proper debate about Europe.
Just spent most of the afternoon following Idlex's links (9th comment, above) and reading Nightlight. My, what a brilliant, reasoned and awesomely-well-researched arguer! And eye-opening, bigtime...a real must-read
Frank.
I agree with you, of course. Sorry I tried to encapsulate my statement. What I meant was that whenever one tries to introduce the subject into conversation with a non-smoker, the innevitable response is, "Well, I don't smoke, so for me the ban is a good thing." Almost impossible, sometimes, to try to broaden the picture with them. This is due as you say to a complete absence of discussion in the media.
Tonight there is an "Any Questions" at 10.30 on BBC [I think]. It is for young people who have won a competition. Among them is an 18 year old UKIP hopeful. Let's hope he does well.
Idlex, thanks for that link to Michael Siegel's blog responses. I'm reading through Nightlight's comments and they are such a pleasure to read. I only wish he/she could've represented smokers in the political debates.
So refreshing.
I actually feel as though my (already good) health has skyrocketed from the positive impact of his/her analysis.
Yes Idlex, many thanks for that link to Michael Siegel's blog responses.
I have just taken time to read the comments - thought provoking indeed.
I would urge everyone to have a look.
Quote: "Don't you just get tired of being told that someone's relative died of x-y-z illness and he/she was a smoker?"
Just wait till it happens to someone you love.
Oh good grief Jane
You've taken the remark out of context, Jane, if you would like to read the rest of the post in which it was made.
Just wait till it happens to someone you love.
I can well imagine the process. First the tears, and then the search for a scapegoat, and quickly the rapid implication of the demon tobacco, and finally the rage and hatred directed at tobacco and those who smoke it. But in the process, between the grief and the rage, reason has gone missing. But scapegoats exist to carry the blame that has been lifted from everyone else's shoulders.
My MP wrote to me a while back and told me that her father had died at the age of 50 or so, He had been a smoker. "Guess what caused it," she added. Well, it might have been smoking, ...but equally it might have been having a vile little daughter like her.
I told the story of the old lady who died after falling out of bed, and how her son blamed it on her smoking. She lived in a little room in a hostel. I visited her there once, and noticed her high bed and the uncarpeted floor. Her son lived not far away in a large house with his family. Couldn't he have given her a room in his house? Did she die because she was living alone, uncared for? Might this have been the reason he was so quick to blame her death on her own habits.
The same man's father had been a smoker. And he also died aged about 50, much like my MP's father. No doubt smoking was blamed for that too. But I happen to know the circumstances of this early death. The son was fanatical about cars, and spent all his time repairing and rebuilding them, and driving them around at hair-raising speed. (Well, it was for me, whenever he took me for a ride.) One day he was driving his mother and father to some distant destination, when his father, who was sitting in the front passenger seat, slumped forward dead. Or was pronounced dead of a heart attack when they got to a hospital. When I heard the story, knowing how fast he drove, and how scary it could be, it seemed more than likely to me that he'd had a heart attack because he was being driven around at terrifying speed. And that the son was actually instrumental in the death of the father. But how much easier it must have been for the son - indeed, how necessary - to blame the death on smoking, and thereby absolve himself of guilt.
With respect, Jane, I think you rather missed the point.
Believe me, there is no need for me to "wait". Like most of us, I have already had people I love who died and who were smokers. I do not, however, blame their deaths on the fact that they smoked.
There is overwhelming scientific evidence on these pages and within all the related websites, to prove this. Anyone who takes the time to really study the true facts will realise.that smoking is not the cause but is, and always has been, a beneficial aid to health and wellbeing.
It also, thoughout history, has been a very useful tool for dictatorships to subdue the population they are determined to completely control. There are instances, even, where the death penalty was punishment for anyone caught smoking.
Since primitive jungle times it has been as popular as the eating of meat or the drinking of alcohol.
I believe that in our present civilised Western society the war between the pharmaceutical companies and the fashion of smoking began simply as a commercial operation. Smokers tend to remain healthy and do not need doctors and pharmaceutical remedies as much as non-smokers. There are substances within the tobacco leaf which have automatic internal healing properties and this is easily proved by the fact that very many pharmaceutical products have nicotine as their base. Look at the ingredients of many drugs and you will see the words Niacin, NicotinicAcid, Vitamen B3 and many others. All these are simply another name for nicotine.
These commercial companies set up and paid for the research intended to prove that smoking is bad for you. They have failed dismally. Even the rats and mice subjected to constant cigarette smoke not only did not die but actually achieved longer life.
Finally, due to the unlimited wealth they have, these companies could afford the very best PR and could bribe and sway heads of governments throughout the world to support the lies they made public as "scientific facts".
Please, Jane, take the time to do your own research and begin to realise that you are in as much danger as the rest of us. The Big Brother Orwellian machine rolls inexorably onwards and all freedoms are being taken away from us daily.
You have obviously suffered a bereavement and I give you my sincere sympathy. I have been in that place myself and only time will heal.
I offer you my best wishes and hope that you will spend a little time looking at the true facts. Realise that there is another side to the present popular belief that smoking kills -it may help you to heal.
I believe that a recent survey in India showed that people can have lung cancer through giving up smoking. It seems that many illnesses rush in when people give up smoking - but the fact that they once smoked is blamed by the pharmaceutical-backed medical profession.
Apropos my last comment, I wonder whether so many doctors blame smoking for so much disease precisely because it is they themselves who are to blame, through their neglect or incompetence. After all, doctors in general must have a lot more skeletons in their cupboards than most other people. As such, they are perhaps in greater need of scapegoats on which to pin the blame. I wonder if most antismoking zealot doctors will turn out, on closer examination, to have been incompetent doctors, many of whose patients met an early death?
Miners used to take canaries down the mines to detect dangerous fumes. I had two budgies that lived for about 15 years, in my living room, where I smoked. The life span for a budgie is between 10 and 12 years. Apparently a budgie that is free to fly about is likely to live longer and I kept their cage door open for them to fly about. I don't believe that passive smoking caused their death, but believe they lived longer due to the smoke or their freedom to fly.
That's very interesting Chas! I grew up in a household that had lots of visitors - I mean 20 to 30 people were regularly at my house smoking away when I was growing up.
We had two cats that spent a lot of time indoors. One lived to 17, the other to 19.
Of course, I'm still here too, by some miracle the antis can't explain. I should probably have dropped dead a billion times over, according to them.