THE BRITISH THREAD II

Or you could post pictures of mouth cancers and limb amputations caused by tobacco use.

Or by many other things such as mining and driving and welding and stone cutting and living under flightpaths and being poor and eating too much fat and spraying chemicals on crops and redecorating and even, some say, by repressing natural instincts.

What utter arrogance to assume on the strength of a series of lying adverts that you know what causes the cellular disturbances which result in those unfortunate conditions and thus to logically assume also that eradication of smoking will remove them from society or that people will not get diseases which can be photographed in that way and bring all society to a halt when nothing that has a risk is allowed to take place.

What an idiotic position to uphold. One can prove anything one wishes to prove, and you obviously do need to prove it, by such a method of reasoning. Goebells did a wonderful job using the trick.

The weight of evidence has persuaded the medical and scientific community, and they in turn have persuaded the government, that tobacco (despite the benefits claimed for it in arguments such as yours and the huge tax revenues that it generates) in direct or indirect contact is injurious to the nations health; nothing to do with my opinion yet.

My opinion is that I don't like it, and so the recent legislation and ban has pleased me. The fact that it annoys you is just the icing on the cake. :wink:

The weight of evidence has not been produced.

And there is a profound difference between "the nation's health" and the health of individuals. Any war veteran will tell you that.

What do this much vaunted "medical and scientific community" do when confronted with 600 lung cancer cases per year in people who have never smoked?

Say it was caused by passive smoking. Obviously.

If they didn't they would have to investigate which would not only cost a lot of money but might turn up a cause which was also present in a lot of other cases as well.

They cannot prove one case of lung cancer being caused by passive smoking.

It is a lie.

And us being lied to with our own money, which ended up in junkets and grinnings, is not in the nation's best interests goodstyle. And, moreover, lies told by people we have paid good money to have "educated" in the art of how to get lies believed.

Not where I come from at least. Fascists are different.

And why did this much vaunted medical and scientific community not seek to discourage the abuse of tobacco as they do with alcohol and the units thingy, saturated fat (20g / day) and salt although in the case of salt the much vaunted medical and scientific community are in dispute. Some say 6g / day and others 15g. I daresay one might abuse vitamin pills and health foods.

One might imagine a warfarin abuser, trying for sharper teeth say, being shown on TV bleeding to death through all his/her mucous membranes with a daughter weeping beside him/her, and everybody as stupid as you Mac, and warfarin would be banned in the treatment of heart disease caused by over-eating meat and potato pies, traditional English breakfasts and mature Cheddar cheese.

How do you know, seeing as you have introduced a scientific rigour to this debate, that these examples you have seen on TV designed to have you poop in your pants hadn't been on 80 a day and inhaling deeply and working in industrial atmospheres or a load of other stuff. It's all very well giving the interwoven fence a coat of preservative but just try working on a dip tank for forty years.

You can abuse anything. Just look at the state of humming birds hooked on nectar. Do you fancy that Mac?

On reflection Mac you have singularly failed to address any of the salient points I have raised.

The main one being that all the arguments and lies that have been used to attack freedom, and non-smokers could easily have pubs of their own if they provided the demand and could stand each other's company, which is unlikely, could be used to run the nation into the buffers.

Why don't they proscribe tobacco. Smoking was a capital offence in some places not that long ago. Failed places natch. If the arguments you have presented Mac have any validity tobacco ought to be a Class A drug.

Your basic problem Mac is a very common one. You think that when you have seen something on TV or read it in the newspapers you have visited the oracle of wisdom and have gained a unique insight. You should try to remember that millions of others have seen it as well and if those who have laughed are in a minority it only proves that we are getting stupider, which is what one would expect as smoking declines, and that can't possibly be in the national interest no matter how comforting it is to you and the much vaunted medical and scientific community.

Ah, good morning Spendy, good morning all.

Your point about non-smoking pubs is well taken (I don't ignore ALL the points you raise) and taken before the ban, I don't think they would have prospered. Funny, that. People do all sort of self-destructive things. People go into smoky pubs for the company, even non-smokers like me who do not like the thought of breathing secondhand smoke or having their clothes smell like an ashtray the next day.

Pubs were having a difficult time even before the ban, which in my opinion is a shame. I like pubs. But I would not, from choice, stand beside a smoker. BTW have you noticed how smokers (especially women smokers, sorry ladies) hold their smouldering cigarettes to the side and slightly behind them, if they can, so that the drifting smoke can benefit others, and not affect them? Maybe it makes the mascara run, in the case of the ladies.
Or maybe over a period smokers tend to develop a sense of self-disgust like onanists and gluttons and the people who support Manchester United.

In conclusion I would suggest that is the good Lord had intended us to smoke, he would have provided us with a tube as a cigarette holder instead of a nose.

What have occupational health hazards got to do with smoking habits?

Correct. Nothing.

If someone wants to go rock climbing or stick needles through their tongue or do callisthenics on a motorbike at high speed I don't mind, that's up to them. Just as long as they don't involve me and preferably if they have private health insurance.

Smoking in public places is different.

And, overweight people and habitual smokers pay higher health premiums on insurance. That is right and proper. You takes your choice, and you pays your money.

Roy Castle didnt smoke either.

This from the Roy Castle foundation web site



Still its a free country. You are at liberty to poison children if thats what you like doing.

Well, if such is an argument: others are free to full the ER's due to their lcoholism, and NHS pays now ... what was the number? was out some ago .... xx% of total only for the treatment of alcohol related illnesses.

Not to speak of those who died by actions of drunk people.

Anyone mentioned sugar already?


I should concentrate more on smells, bells and costumes now ... as long it's allowed, that is.

The Guardian: You thought the cigarette smoke was bad - now pubs really stink

Steve wrote-



I have never smoked anywhere near children. I don't need legal sanctions to prevent me doing that.

The Scottish Health Authorities are complaining that the ban in pubs is causing people to smoke at home so it looks like it is the pub ban that is exposing children to tobacco smoke. It certainly isn't me.

I don't know anything about Mr Castle and neither do you.

Mac wrote-



Smoking might be taking the blame for them. A number of things can cause these problems and if anybody has smoked they just automatically put it down to that and if they haven't to passive smoking.

There's a massive amount of passive bargain hunting causing serious illnesses in the far-east but being dyed-in-the-wool racists we don't seem to give a flying fornication about those. Our petty bureaucrats can't exert power over us and make easy money bothering about them now can they?

I saw one film where Chinese families, kids and all, babies even, were sifting through a ship load of our domestic waste because having them do it knocked 20p off the council tax. And let's not talk about mining operations in third world countries.

What a bunch of hypocrites we all are eh?

It all has nothing to do with smoking. It has to do with faked self-righteous indignation in the service of selfish interest. Our government has lost its bottle. A non-smoking nation is doomed.

Your spin is just selective drivel. You need to start reading stuff which isn't the house organ of public sector employees.

Walt quoted-



Yeah-- bloody disinfectant and hot fat and farts. Disgusting.

Thing of the past. You just don't know it yet.

A cabinet minister was reported as saying on entering No 10 a few years back- "There's a funny smell around here". And he didn't mean odour.

Bob Dylan said it better- "Something's outa whack".

My, my, my ....Spendi...it's really getting to you isn't it!


I was up early this morning 3am drove to Ringway to pick the eldest grandson up, back from his holiday, his flight came in about 4..20 am from Bulgaria.. Two weeks with his girlfriend in a flash hotel for peanuts and the booze was dirt cheap he told me! He had a bit of fun but got cut by some glass, nasty little cut at the side of his left eye, it could have been worse I suppose.

Anyhow this is part of being a twenty year old isn't it!

Whilst i was waiting, he didn't get through baggage and customs till about 5.20 am. I got talking to two of those cops with guns! I said to 'em, "They can't be for terrorists those, they'll not be coming out after all the ruckus the other week will they? Are you going to shoot the smokers?" I diligently enquired! They both laughed, ..Go on I said, get them two outside the door, just wing em, they look furtive to me with them roll ups in their gobs! One of em said, I bet it will come to that in a bit! I asked them if they smoked, both admitted to having done so, but reckon the pressure on them in the force over the last few years, TO quit smoking had been rather heavy... You can't go round shooting up smokers with a fag in your gob now can you?

So all in all Spendi, I reckon it's time everybody stopped, all these silly anecdotes of yours are rather pathetic and not worth the print your giving us!

National Shoot a smokers day could be just around the corner!

See what I mean about non-smokers talking about themselves and their daily doings all the time as if they are of any consequence or interest.

They are polite though. They take turns or at least they do until they have had a half of bitter and then they all talk at the same time. And they present the boring and useless drivel in a sort of rosy tinted glow in order to show themselves advantageously to an audience of uneducated morons whose brains are soft enough to actually believe their tiresome solipsisms and fervent fantasies. In fact they seek out such an audience and carefully avoid anyone with any critical faculties or knowledge of the human race who will have known for years what pathetic little powerless eating and shitting machines we all are when considered objectively.

It's a form of whistling in the dark.

Not quite Spendi old lad!

You're shovelling elephant **** into sugar bags!

Putting it quite simply, we don't want to confuse your smog enshrouded brain any further than it already is do we now!

Common sense, watch my lips, I'll repeat that for you;

C O M M O N - S E N S E

That's all you need, stupid.. You keep banging your thick gormless silly daft head up and down like an ostrich sticking it in the sand.. It's time to quit.

Furthermore, you are a liability to the members of society who do not wish to partake in such a filthy, outdated disgusting, un-necessary habit.

That is why you have to hide from the rest of us to carry on with it..

Has the penny dropped yet?

If it's the proverbial penny for your thoughts -No.

If that's the sort of stuff which your brain excretes while you still have some smog left shrouding your brain (you have only recently stopped I gather) I shudder to think what we'll be getting in about 9 months when it has completely lifted and you can converse with Mac and Steve as equals.

I have made it very plain on these pages that I am a reformed ex-smoker Spendi..

So already you can see how alert your smog enveloped cranium really is, can't you.

If you're not even trying to stop, you must be dafter, denser, and more senile than I previously assessed you as being.

Keep puffing away mate, YOU know it makes sense.

How common. How unutterably naff.

I'm braver too. A warrior never thinks he's going to get it. So how could he stop. It would be masochistic to deny oneself the pleasures and benefits of My Lady Nictine if one never thinks of any downside. Thinking of downsides can render one catatonic.

Passive motoring has killed and maimed a lot more people than passive smoking ever will. Passive smoking is just getting a small, second-hand glimpse of the pleasures and benefits.

And yet you drive. Unnecessarily too. Simply to assuage the boredom of not smoking. Rides out in the country for lunch was it once.

I am not a reformed ex-smoker, so I do not have the zeal of the convert.

But I could never see the sense in paying money to make myself ill, so I never needed converting.

Hey--candlelit dinners are out.

Candles smoke, and the couples clasping hands are passively smoking the smoke of the candles. It makes no difference to the passive smoker where the smoke originates unless, as I have intimated, envy or sheer bloody-mindedness is at work. Possibly both, one feeding off the other in an ever spiralling circle going down to termagent mode and being rewarded as it goes.

And candles are made out of tallow which is what they call what is rendered down after every last scorrick if shite that has been scraped off the bones has been boiled up with the other bits, which I will forbear mentioning on a thread noted for its taste and refinement, and cooled so that it sets into a greasy horrible almost solid chunk, greyish-whitish, which is despatched to candle manufactures who set about making it look nice, which is to say, expensive.

On the other hand the farmers of Virginia have nurtured and cared for their crop in the warming balm of the sun's benificence and it is as the gods intended it when it arrives from the coast into our welcoming hands.

Valentine's Night must be quite dangerous I would imagine. There could be traces of mad cows in candle fumes.

You shouldn't deceive yourselves that only non-smokers can do the one part in 10 million trick. There's stuff in motor-car exhausts that evolution has never met in hundreds of millions of years. The smoke of organic matter is not very new at all.

Spendy RELAX

it doesnt matter

you can still smoke

just calm down ok?