Life and times of a dedicated smoker
Tuesday, September 8, 2009 
Pat Nurse (left) has written about her speech at the UKIP conference in Southport when she spoke in favour of a motion to stop public money being used to fund what she called the "smoke free quango within the NHS".
Pat is an accomplished journalist but addressing a large hall full of people you don't know on a subject as divisive as smoking takes guts. She writes: "It was my first public speech and so I am entirely relieved not to have broken down into a nervous shamble as I took the stand."
Following her four-minute speech delegates voted overwhelmingly for the motion. "A symbolic victory," says Pat, but a victory nonetheless and well worth the emotional effort she put into those four minutes.
Click HERE to read the full speech.
PS. I first met Pat four or five years ago when she came to a Forest event at the Groucho Club in Soho. I was impressed that she had travelled from Lincoln, and I was struck by her well-articulated anger and frustration at the treatment of smokers and the impending smoking ban.
She later sent me an article, 'The life and times of a dedicated smoker'. I loved it but we didn't publish articles on the Forest website and I didn't know what to do with it. So I filed it and half forgot about it.
Last year, when we launched The Free Society website, I dusted it down and published it HERE. If you've got a few moments I recommend that you read it. You can comment here.
Simon Clark
Pat has posted THIS update about the recent Smoking Festival which she and landlady Emma Chapman organised at the Jolly Brewer in Lincoln.
Reader Comments (12)
Huge congratulations, Pat. What a stonking great triumph!
I can just imagine the days of research and rewriting. I can just imagine the lack of sleep the night before and butterflies on the day. You hit the subject just right and with restraint. Thanks, too, to Dave Atherton for his constant skilled research..
Bravo, bravo, bravo, Pat !
You make me proud to be a fellow blogger........
Congratulations to Pat on giving such a well received speech. Pat is far too generous as I just cut and paste articles and medical journals, label them and send an email to myself. Should anyone have a question on smoking I have about 1,000 articles tucked away, and know where to get my hands on 2,000 others.
Excellent Pat Nurse and congratulations.
It was about time someone spoke up and that something will now be done at last to get rid of all those shameless and useless blood suckers of the health purse.
I hope this starts the ball rolling in getting rid of every one of those bloody quangos and that the government starts doing the job its being paid to do by the electorate.
I echo everything the people above say Pat. You are an inspiration to us all for getting up there and standing firm. Respect!
As for Dave A, I've met him once last year, hope to meet him again next month too, a star and a gent all rolled into one. He can sniff out b/s amongst any anti smoking so called 'stats.' We all need help where anti smoking 'statistics' are concerned so who are you gonna call...not ASH, that's for sure.
Well done both of you.
More power to you, Pat! Four minutes in front of 1600 pairs of eyes and ears takes guts. Wonderful that the response was overwhelmingly positive. There's hope that common sense hasn't completely fled the country.
You were a star at the conference Pat. I couldn't wait for the vote after your wonderful speech (you sounded great BTW) particularly when the other motions had been rejected.
It was wonderful to see the show of orange cards in support of your motion.
Well done Pat on an excellent job.
We now wait and see whether it will be placed into their policy documents - time will no doubt tell.
Yes indeed. Well done Pat.
Is there a video of your speech?
I believe that Pat Nurse, in addition to swaying such a huge audience to a 90% Yes vote, has shown us our own way forward.
While it is essential that we educate ourselves into understanding the many benefits of smoking, this will not convince the Anti’s. Especially in one short conversation. Far better to adopt her line of attack. Wasting public money is the topic of the day.
If the conversation then turns to “But smoking is bad for you”, we simply state the right that the choice is ours. NEVER, do we say that we admit the dangers but the choice is ours. Say the jury is still out on the dangers they claim. If the adversary persists, we can say that we and many others have researched the subject and found that there are many known benefits, [make sure you know what these are]. Regarding the propaganda and lies to the contrary, the mythical research was started and funded by the pharmaceutical companies many years ago in order to replace the benefits of smoking with their own nicotine based drugs. State that all anti-depressant drugs and many other drugs have nicotine as their base. They call it “Niacin”, Nicotinic Acid and Vitamin B3.
…..Sorry folks, you know all this and must be so tired of hearing it. I am ever mindful of newcomers to the blog who haven’t.
We could do with reading Pat’s speech again and again and absorbing a few of the statistics. Very few could argue with it.
Thanks for that refresher Margot, its very hard to keep up with the psychobabble of the antis when they get on their rants and sometimes I forget the little details about nicotine to hold up my argument.
And I'm only talking about my friends and family!!!
Great work Pat. I'm near on 70 and still haven't the guts to stand up and speak to a dozen people. Great work also by Dave with all his research.
It's this kind of support that gives me and others in the pro-choice movement the courage to go where we, perhaps, didn't dare to go before. Thankyou for the encouraging and kind comments.
One other very important person to thank is Nick Smith from the Lincoln Borough Constituency. A non-smoker, he seconded the motion although I had to brief him about it first. Despite the antis making an issue of smoking, I found that people like Nick, and the other members of the constituency - two non-smokers and an ex-smoker, didn't realise that it was an issue at all - certainly not with them who all believe that choice is the far greater moral fight and is a much better value for the greater good.