Friday
Apr102009
Happy Easter
Friday, April 10, 2009 There will be very little blogging on this site over the next few days - I'm having a break! Hope you all have a very good Easter. Now, where are those hot cross buns ...
Friday, April 10, 2009
Reader Comments (10)
Hope you are chilling out, Simon, and right away from it all. You've earned it.
Hope everyone is enjoying Easter. I'm getting a phenominal amount of gardening done in between eating, drinking wine & smoking. My family and I have just returned from a break at Centre Parks in Holland - so no shortage of cigs!
Here is an excerpt unashamedly pinched from that excellent writer Aqualung, which should set us all up for the week ahead.....
Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2009 12:00 pm, by Aqualung on the F2C Lounge Bar, "Benefits of Smoking" thread.
Long post, taken from the book 'HOW TO BE RIGHT in a PC world gone wrong' by James Delingpole.
Quote:
Smoking kills. But then, so do fast cars, drink, drugs, sex, great white sharks, black mambas, MiG35s, Challenger II tanks, AH 64 attack helicopters, Uzis and daisycutter bombs, and are we supposed to ban them as well?
Actually don’t answer that question, any of you health and safety zealots out there, because I know what you’re going to say already. ‘Yes, yes, yes! Ban them all! Ban everything that’s sexy and exciting and edgy and cool! In fact don’t stop banning things till the only thing left to do is sip room-temperature water from a cup made of splinter-free sustainable wood, eat tofu and watch grass grow (taking care to do so in the shade between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. and while wearing organic, non-allergenic, sun cream of SPF50 or higher, obviously)…’
Smoking kills and smoking is fun. The fact that smoking kills is an integral part of that fun. Of course, smoking has lots of other things going for it too, including:
It gives you a delicious quivery rush – especially when you’ve not had a fag in a while because you stupidly tried to give up but have now seen the light; it goes fantastically well with coffee and alcohol and cocaine and stressful phone conversations; or happy, upbeat phone conversations; and in-between phone conversations; it’s fantastic after sex; it’s the best cure for pre-party nerves; it helps you bond with other smokers who, being addictive type-A personalities, are inevitably more interesting than non-smokers; it stops you getting Alzheimer’s disease, some research claimed once; it enhances perfect moments; it wards off boredom, kills time, and gives you something to do with your hands; it improves your origami skills and enables you to stun friends with the brilliant rose flower you have managed to craft from the packet’s gold foil; it means you’ve usually got a light or cigarettes on you, which might come in handy in unexpected survival situations; it means if you haven’t got a light you’re going to meet new people; it boosts the livelihood of tobacco growers in the third world and North Carolina; it wards off mosquitoes, midges, gnats, wasps and flies; it masks the smell of farts; it provides you with an excuse to escape awkward conversations at parties and speak to people you’d like to speak to instead; it enables you to nip out of the office for some fresh air and some gossip; it winds up puritans and health freaks; it provides instant solace in extremis (war, firing squads, etc); it helps you befriend grizzled peasants in Greek mountain villages, South American rebels, Chinese steelworkers and a billion and one other types with whom you have nothing linguistically in common; it gives you a sexy, husky voice; it helps you concentrate; it makes you feel like James Dean, Humphrey Bogart; Steve McQueen; Lauren Bacall; Marlene Dietrich; Isambard Kingdom Brunel; Groucho Marx; Winston Churchill; Clint Eastwood and anyone else in history who ever looked good with a fag or cigar or a stogie, which is pretty much everybody who smokes.
Extraordinary to think that we’re banning these things. We should be making them compulsory.
..............................................
Mr. Delingpole also has a lot to say about passive smoking, and a nice little entry for ASH.
It's a very funny read (except for the bit about the EU)
headline review books ISBN 978-0-7553-1591-8
_________________
Aqualung always ends:-
"The history of the struggle against tyrants has been frequently inseparable from that of the struggle on behalf of the freedom to smoke." Klein
Before the bereft little Rollo's of this world jump on the statement above - that smoking kills - and quote it out of context; let me add my belief that not only does smoking not kill, any more than life itself kills, it actually prolongs life and certainly wards off many illnesses.
My age is 75 on 18th April and I have smoked all my life. I've many healthy smoker friends much older than I am.
Now, WHERE do they stash those bodies of the 2,000 people who die every day from smoking....?.
S
I do hope that isn't a full fat bun you have in the photo there Simon? And where's the health warning? Didn't you know buns and cakes are lethal? You might just have got away with the currants, but now I'm going to have to report you to the fat police. :-D
In view of Margot's posts, above this seems an appropriate thread for me to have a rant.
I commented some months ago that the day might very well come when smokers are denied benefits. Well, we seem to be a step closer today with the news that HMG is considering withdrawing the benefits of alcoholics (and already has legislation going through Parliament to withdraw them from drug addicts).
Considering that this bloody Government isn't fit to run a bath let alone a country, can you imagine the pig's ear it'll make of this wheeze? How do you define and identify an alcoholic? What proof will be needed to satisfy HMG that said alcoholic is now dry? Are those who fall off the wagon to be left to starve?
If it were applied to smokers, would we be subjected to testing? Would the five a day smoker be allowed benefits but the naughty twenty a day smoker not and so on?
They'll be mocking those who say that we're heading towards a totalitarian state even as they lace up the boots with which to stamp on our faces.
Yes, Joyce, the horror story continues unabated. If the Irish "No" vote hadn't temporarily halted it, the Lisbon Treaty would have been ratified by now. Instead, they are gradually introducing all aspects into UK Law bit by bit. The Lisbon Treaty clearly states that anyone not obeying EU Law can have their Benefits and State Pensions stopped. Gordon Brown also mentioned last year that there will be free health checks for all those over 74 years of age. These will no doubt become compulsory; therefore anyone refusing them and the medication prescribed will have their pensions and benefits stopped. Drinkers, smokers and fatties are now in the firing line. No doubt other classifications will follow.
The so-called "Opposition" in Parliament will not stop these laws going through; their leaders are themselves already well entrenched into the EU gravy train.
The coming EU and Council elections in June this year MUST be well supported. They are vital as a protest against all three main parties. At the moment, it is all we have.
Nice one Margot.
You did however forget a few things that kill - some NHS hospitals, the humble flight of stairs, the chip pan, the uneven pavements that most areas suffer with as well as things like nuts and bee stings, for some people - perhaps all of these should be banned as well!
Lets face it, life itself is a risk. Some people are more willing to take risks and get a real buzz from risk taking than others and that is what makes us all different and therefore, most of us a little bit interesting!
If this nanny government and its quangos have their way, then we will all sit in isolation praying for death to relieve the tedium!
"If this nanny government and its quangos have their way, then we will all sit in isolation praying for death to relieve the tedium!"
Yes, Lyn. So no surprises there then!
Simon may be surpised to find, when he returns from holiday, how much comment has been prompted by one simple photo of one simple hot cross bun.
This is nothing, however, compared to the lengthy and heated comment about what some "scientist", [or should I say "statistician"], did, or didn't say on Desert Island Disks so very long ago.
The mind absolutely boggles!
Such members of the medical profession were commissioned and well paid to create surveys and produce eventual results "proving" that smoking kills. That's what they were doing for a living.
Provided that the surveys ran long enough and covered a sufficient number of people, there seems to have been no regulation about which group of people were chosen as the subjects.
Obviously, if I fell down stairs, broke my neck, and died tomorrow; my death would still be smoking related. If I eventually die of lung cancer, heart disease or brain tumour, that will also be because I smoke. If the lady next-door-but-one, who doesn't smoke, dies of any of these things, it could be that she caught a whiff of my second-hand smoke. Sadly, she did die in December of a brain tumour, aged only 57. She was a clean-living, non-drinking, non-smoking, born again Christian church-going, very nice person. I had very little to do with her over the years but it came as a shock when we heard..
.
Know what you mean Margot.
A local chap who is a Christadelphian, always active and doing outdoor activities with children, including his own and who never smoked, don't know about drink, was found hanged last week in a nearby city; he was apparently due in court accused of paedoephilia!
It would not surprise me however, in the least, if his death were also not related to smoking in some form - 'he probably killed himself as he was afraid of getting cancer or heart disease from SHS' or something similar!
What a cynical world this government is creating!
Margot. When a member of the House of Lords was asked about the figures given for smoking related deaths, he said that he couldn't give figures, but if a smoker died of what could be a smoking related illness then it was assumed that his death was caused by smoking.
If a person dies, even if they are 100, and they smoke, then it is smoking related. It does not matter what it is or what age the person is, if they smoke, it gets put into the smoking related bin. If you have an ailment which needs consultation, you are not only asked if you smoke, but if you have ever smoked. If the person who smoked for ten years, gave up when they were thirty, eventually went to bed healthy at the age of 90 and died in their sleep - it is smoking related.