No oil painting
Thursday, August 19, 2010 Last night on Five Live I was talking about smoking with presenter Ian Payne and Birmingham GP Dr Fay Wilson.
Dr Wilson (an ex-smoker) is listed by Pulse at No 7 in "the top 50 most influential GPs":
Described by one GP on our panel as ‘unstoppable’, the veteran Birmingham GP has been a chair of the annual LMCs conference and a guest editor of Pulse – using her issue to champion the role of women in the profession. Dr Wilson continues to be an inspiring figurehead and her popularity was reflected by the warm applause she received last June after announcing she was stepping down as LMCs chair.
I suspect that descriptions like this have gone to Dr Wilson's head because she sounded remarkably pleased with herself ("Hiya", "yeah").
I don't doubt her good intentions but she really over-stepped the mark when she commented:
"Smoking doesn't just make you sick, it makes you poor and ugly as well."
To my mind it's comments like this that bring the entire medical profession into disrepute. Is this how she speaks to her own patients? Do her older patients who smoke know that she considers them to be "ugly"?
Now I deplore personal attacks, especially on people's personal appearance, and I don't intend to start now. Sometimes, however, I am sorely tempted ...
PS. You can listen to the item HERE, about 35 minutes in (August 18). No gratuitous insults, please. Let's not stoop to her level.
Reader Comments (22)
http://rockthetrend.com/2007/08/29/models-who-smoke/
These girls are all certainly not poor nor ugly. As for Dr Wilson, she may well be wealthy as a result of living off our taxes but she is also 'aesthetically challenged'. While she could do nothing about her looks without a team of plastic surgeons she could do something about her attitude which might make her a more pleasant person.
Is she just a jealous, spiteful old woman with a major chip on her shoulder?
I think you are being a little unkind Simon, she is an oil painting with paints from Castrol GTX and brushes from B&Q.
It is getting to be desperate stuff from the anti smoking lobby, keep it up.
I doubt if even Gok Quan could sort that one out.
Reminds me of the picture they used to put on the front of the Norfolk stuffing packet.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_BRtASsu3vYA/R9KmQ-uJ3sI/AAAAAAAAAS0/7jnFMo1McVM/s320/Blog+Stuffing.jpg
Poor and ugly? Honestly - these anti-smoker comments are sounding more and more like playground insults.
Whatever happened to aspiring to be a grown-up? I feel these days as though I'm surrounded by and bossed around by very tall children...
I don't think Dr Wilson knows what she is talking about, no one gets sick after smoking a cigarette, it's not like drinking a cup full of sea water, people would not smoke them if they made you sick. As she is a doctor and a quitter she should know that both from her medical training and from that time that she smoked. Unless she ate her cigarettes, that would do it. If Dr Wilson really cared about poor people then she could write a nice letter to HMG and ask if they could remove all taxes on cigarettes. Then cigarettes would be dirt cheap, many more people could afford to smoke them comfortably - even pretty people. A win,win,win situation. Apart from the Tax man, I can not see any reasonable person objecting. With the ~£2,000 a year I would save, I could save up for a face lift and then I could be pretty again.
Thinking about it, It's a shocking state of affairs when in this country people are struggling just to buy cigarettes. What with the advances in food production over the last 50 years, one would have thought that cigarettes could be brought to the masses
very,very cheaply. I think we need to remove all taxation on cigarettes and make it clear to big tobacco that they have a moral duty to help poor and ugly people - not just the rich and pretty ones.
Well, she may not be poor (thanks to smokers' taxes), but ....
So THAT's what Roy Hattersley's mother looks like ?
Often wondered.........................
Question 1: why do these people ALWAYS look as though they use a Brillo Pad to brighten up their complexion ?
Question 2: if Scarlett Johansson (aged 25, and a Sagittarian) gives up smoking NOW, will she still have a fighting chance of looking as good as Lady Kleb in thirty years' time ?
Answers on a postcard, please.........................
Go easy on fat lads who have had sex changes.
'People who live in glass houses' and all that. She's just bitter and if you looked like her, who could blame her? This is great stuff. Desperation abounds. What, with this and those kids in Kent, what a marvellously mature and convincing portrait they paint.
I hope they keep it up, they're doing wonders for us.
"Smoking doesn't just make you sick, it makes you poor and ugly as well."
To which the answer must surely be; "Well, if smoking makes you ugly, and you don't smoke - what the Hell have you been using?? And can I have some, because it must be darned good??!"
Whoops, sorry, Simon - you said no gratuitous insults. Couldn't help myself.
Of course it makes the poor poorer.
These idiots advocate taxing the hell out of them ?
I am not sure if her very silly statement regarding smoking making you sick, poor and ugly, is aimed at provoking a reaction from smokers, which she intends to use later in her poorly thought out and thinly veiled propaganda war on smokers, or is she really that silly?
Does she really believe that smokers, especially young smokers, will believe her, that they will look at their mega-rich pop and film idols, who they know damn well smoke, and say "Oh dear Cheryl Cole smoked a cigarette, so she must be ever so sick, poor and ugly because Dr Wilson said everyone that smokes is"
Dr Wilson would be well advised to stick to handing out prescriptions to old ladies, and to be a real GP, instead of trying to be a minister for propaganda, like another well known doctor from the past.
Im already both but its mostly taxes in the former and genetics in the latter, of course the beer doesn't help my Brad Pitt six pack much, maybe they could just round us all up and transport us to say an island off Africa somewhere, - oh shit, somebody already thought of that years ago didn't they?
Hmmm ,bit big ain't we Fay,know what I mean ,I vaguely remember Donaldson suddenly losing weight .
Now.. why would he do that I wonder ?
How possibly in this eternity could the FAT as they where proposed to be described by the propaganda arm of the medical profession itself ,splashed all over the gutter press ,i.e The Guardian,climb to the top of the ritcheous pile when you are obviously a potential victim yourself ?
You want the job ?
Better start jogging.
No room for you in the sad new order.
"and transport us to say an island off Africa somewhere, - oh shit, somebody already thought of that years ago didn't they?"
Yep - the Zyklon B Option proved more economical.
If there's one thing these people are good at.................it's accountancy.
(A trifle weak on the Humour Front, though)
I have often wondered why antismokers make such seething remarks. Maybe their face was used as an ashtray when they were a child:-).
I really don't understand how she rationalizes her ideas. Ok i know shes not using logic, that wouldn't support her goals. But which age-group is the largest user of illegal drugs? The demented rantings of the cretinous woman who rang in, sadly obfuscated her own foolish ideas. Raise the age of smoking further! Well i support this, lets get this made law now. I think 35 is a great age, oh what a backlash.
Btw, can you advertise the Forest charity in the form of cigarette cards?
"I feel these days as though I'm surrounded by and bossed around by very tall children..."
(Reverse Gulliver Syndrome ?)
Either that, Liberty, or Very Small Children with too much pocket-money and whose Dad-is-a-Policeman.
They DESERVE to have their marbles knicked.....................................
Concrete evidence that the Lunatics are indeed running the Asylum.
Dr Wilson a quitter, eh (Fredrik @ 11.37) ?
In that case, I don't understand why she doesn't resume The Habit.
I mean, what harm could it possibly do her NOW ?
But I forget: Non-Smoking is for ALL age-groups.
Like Non-Sex.
And Non-Drinking.
And Death..........................................
And just look at her eyes.
They're dead.
"Reverse Gulliver Syndrome"
LOL. Excellent. :)