Mick Hume: the politics of behaviour
Wednesday, January 6, 2010 Mike Hume, founding editor of Spiked, has written an article that screams common sense. A 60-a-day smoker until he gave up (going cold turkey "using the oral crutch of sucking 20-plus lollipops a day"), Hume writes:
As one who has long been irritated by the increasingly shrill and illiberal anti-smoking crusade, I have been thinking again about the issue over the past week. Because this New Year marked the twentieth anniversary of the day I stopped smoking for good.
The intervening two decades have brought remarkable changes in the way that both smokers and giving up smoking are viewed in our society. It seems to me now that these changes are about far more than the way we see cigarettes. They mark a downward shift in the predominant cultural view of our humanity, and a demeaning of the qualities of adult autonomy and independence.
He adds:
The move to redefine smoking as anti-social behaviour has also struck a chord with many because it chimes with the cri de coeur of the age – that your life is being messed up by other people, and you need protection from them (and possibly also from yourself). The underlying issue here is not passive smoking so much as passive living, inviting the authorities in to resolve your problems. Hence there was none of the talked-of resistance to the ban on smoking in public places. Where once it would have been thought these were matters for adults to sort out among themselves, now it is considered fair enough for the state forcibly to stub it out.
He concludes:
I don’t regret stopping smoking 20 years ago, and it would be daft for anybody to take it up as some sort of political protest. But I do worry about what is behind the changed cultural status of smokers and giving up. I think I will always feel like a smoker inside, even though I hope never to have another puff. But even those who have never touched one should surely be concerned about the diminished view of adult autonomy and free choice that the anti-smoking crusade has helped to spread, opening the door to the new interfering ‘politics of behaviour’ in a way that would never have been tolerated in the smoke-filled rooms of yore.
Full article HERE. Highly recommended.
H/T Pat Nurse - Tea and Cigarettes
Reader Comments (3)
What a brilliant article by Mike Hume, he covers everything from the reduction in smoking from the 70's to the present day and then the unnessary take over of peoples choice by the nanny state.
What I cant understand is the modus behind this attack on smokers, from the increase in anti smoking ads on TV and media since the new year.
Especially since people in general have been cutting down on smokes in the past decade, I even noticed it myself since before any smoking ban, in that smoke in pubs had reduced enormously.
So why this dirge all of a sudden out of the blue, when illegal drugs are left run rampant or at least with half the media coverage or warnings.
Is it all to do with the false economy of the past 10years when the prolatariat were made feel rich and could indulge the body image and injecting or swallowing drugs did not look and smell as dirty as butts and ash in ashtrays, and people thought they could live forever looking tanned and groomed like celebs because they were worth it.
Or was it just down to filthy lucre for the elite who govern us, as a side line for votes to hold on to their inflated wage packets and jobs.
When you hear things like 38,000 european civil servants on 17,000euro a month plus perks and tax breaksare, going on strike for a 3.7% inrease in pay and who say they have a legal right to the money, one has to come to the conclusion that the smoking ban, climate change and global warming scams are just fodder to keep these unknowns, unelected and unaccountable free loading robbers in the style they have become accustomed to.
I can only conclude that we're all donating to Big Brother to enable him take more of our freedoms away froms us while they tell us its all for our own good.
God help us all!
Excellent piece by Mr Hume (and Ann, above).
The sooner that some Wise Politician catches on to the vote-winning potential of Common Sense (which now seems surprisingly sexy), the better for all of us.
It's been out of fashion for far too long.......
A really fine article by Mick Hume, although no more than you'd expect from a lifelong MUFC supporter (OK, OK, don't flame me :-) ).
What sort of influence does Spiked have?