Lighten up - it's No Smoking Day
Wednesday, March 11, 2009 7.10 ... I have just done my first No Smoking Day interview of the day. No doubt there will be one or two more. But it's not what it used to be. NSD is a shadow of the event that used to hog all the headlines. There's a reason for that, of course. Thanks to this government, EVERY day is no smoking day so why should the second Wednesday in March be any different?
I wrote about it HERE last year so I won't repeat the story of Forest's day trip to Paris in 1999 which was the subject of a double-page spread in the Daily Record. Or our humungous smoker-friendly fry-up at Simpson's-in-the-Strand in London in 2000 which produced a full page feature in the London Evening Standard.
Instead (and this has only just occurred to me so apologies for the short notice) why don't we mark No Smoking Day 2009 by lighting up together at, say, 7.00pm this evening? Apart from identifying yourself, all you have to do is tell us where you are (at home, at work, outside the pub etc) and what you're smoking.
If you can't be online at seven, join us in spirit and add a comment now or later. And if you know anyone who wants to join us, pass this on!
Simon Clark
Not for the first time we are told that one million people in the UK will attempt to give up smoking today. No sign of that on Facebook where the official No Smoking Day group has attracted fewer than 150 "fans" since it was launched four months ago. A cursory glance shows that some of these "fans" don't even live in the UK. Instead they come from Australia, Slovakia, Saudi Arabia, Mauritius, Jordan, Denmark and America. Time, I think, to put this outdated event out of its misery.
