Carsmoke and guilt.

I've been smoking in my car
It smells like an old-time bar
With smoke, the inside I fill
Till it seeps out through the sills.

With apologies to Madness.

'Thou shalt not smoke in thy horseless carriage' is the latest commandment handed down by a sock full of spaghetti tied up ugly who thinks he is the Medical Moses but who looks more like the last turkey in the shop. It's a good thing Moses wasn't a Labour minister. Those two slabs of rock in his hands would be the only part of the mountain not covered with new laws.

Lots of coverage of this one, as you'd expect. I'm late again but that last rant had to come out or I'd have eaten my keyboard.

Well, you might imagine I'm all ranted out after that last blast but trust me, that never happens. I have to keep the blood pressure up, you know. So let's look at this new idea the Righteous have put out to scare all those feeble little minds.

Take a close look at this link again. Note that the scaremongers don't consider the possibility of opening a window, and base their scare on a momentary peak, not on a continuous level. There is no continuous level unless the vehicle is filled with smokers and they smoke on a relay-team basis. Otherwise, it's a momentary exposure that will only apply if the car is stationary with all the windows rolled up tight.

When the car is moving, air flows through the cabin even if all the windows are closed. Or did you think they were airtight? That would prove inconvenient on long journeys.

Then there's the carbon monoxide crap. That particular junk-science ploy was used once before when gullible drones were charged with the task of checking smokers' CO content on the street. They'd get a smoker to blow into a little machine and then tell them how much carbon monoxide they exhaled.

On. The. Street.

It had to be on the street. Had to be, because the carbon monoxide from vehicle exhausts will put your breath-CO into high levels even if you don't smoke, have never smoked and have never even witnessed a lit cigarette. Those levels will overwhelm anything that comes from a paper tube full of leaves. That is why they did not check a single non-smoker. No control group could be permitted because that would have blown the scam.

Real science: There is simply not enough carbon in a single cigarette to produce a high level of CO in your lungs even if you burned it sideways and inhaled it with your head in a box. Most of the carbon comes off as CO2. Incomplete combustion can produce CO but there's not even one whole tobacco leaf in a cigarette. They also claim benzene, formaldehyde, and all manner of other carbon compounds are formed and will seek out a non-smoker and kill them.

Look at a cigarette. Weigh it. If it was a solid carbon rod it would be a very, very thin one. It simply does not contain enough of anything to do what these people claim. It is a physical impossibility to fill a room with toxins from that amount of leaves even if they were laburnum dipped in cyanide. Outside, we are expected to fill the street with poisonous fumes. That's not possible unless we have a bonfire in the middle of the street with about four tons of tobacco in it, there's no wind and the street has a roof.

Carbon monoxide in a car with the engine running should come as no surprise to anyone. Take a look at where your ventilation system goes.

Ah, but let's not let reality get in the way of a good smoker-bashing session.

Here's a comment from a car forum (I don't have one, and I've never owned a Honda). As you'd expect, the smokers are incensed that their personal space is to be legally invaded and as you'd also expect, there's always one...

A total ban in cars gets my vote..... awful habit and apart from the dangers of second hand smoke, smoking itself whilst driving most be more dangerous than driving while talking on a mobile phone.....

I think a ban is all you can do as you see that many numpties smoking with a car full of kids on the school run.

"I don't like it so it must be banned. For the cheeeeldren. It's even more dangerous than another banned thing because I say it must be and I don't need no steenking facts so there."

Not 'my' children, someone else's. Not 'my' favourite things, someone else's. Their children, their problem. It's their future so why would it affect me or anyone else if they turn their children into kippers? Except of course they don't. My father smoked and I'm not tanned at all. He smoked in a little Hillman Imp and I didn't die. Neither did my brother nor my non-smoking mother. In fact, none of us have died yet and none of us have cancer. My mother has arthritis - go on, antismokers, I double-dare you.

Smoking while driving could be considered 'driving without due care and attention' which would also cover phones, eating a sandwich, drinking from a can of pop, ogling passing miniskirts or juggling. Something that could come up if you crashed while smoking, so watch out for that because if they can get you for smoking, they will. Smoking when parked constitutes no hazard to others at all. And yet there is support for a ban.

Sitting in traffic, not smoking, with the windows open, next to an articulated lorry, will do far more damage to you than a little paper tube of leaves. Even with the windows closed, it comes in through the vents. And yet the little tube of leaves gets the blame for everything. Just like standing on a station platform while a hundred-ton diesel engine roars by. The guy with the little tube of leaves is the problem.

Reality? Hah, who needs it?

Certainly not this one...

The people who believe smoking / passive smoking is a bogus health concern are those who still believe the world is flat, the Earth is at the centre of the universe and Sunderland will ever win the Premiership!!!

Flat-earther is the new 'racist'. The Gorgon used that one on climate heretics recently. New Scientist compares calls to teach children that global warming might be wrong to calls for teaching them creationism in science class. It's the same game. 'Our stats are bogus, our arguments tissue-thin, and if you don't believe them you are stupid'. It's that old Righteous technique of shouting 'racist' to shut up debate. I told you they didn't have very many methods, didn't I? They just recycle them. All their methods are in any book on the Spanish Inquisition. Nothing has changed except the wording. Heretic!

This goes deeper than simple smoker-bashing. Any non-smoker with lung cancer will blame their smoking friends. Their smoking friends, unless they know this scam, will be racked with guilt for the rest of their lives for no reason other than it makes a smug arsehole somewhere feel very proud of themselves. Anyone with heart disease or with any of the other problems blamed on smoking - just about everything - will blame their smoking friends. Anyone whose child gets asthma or any other illness will blame their smoking friends even if they have never smoked around that child. Third hand smoke, you see? Not one shred of evidence for second hand smoke and already they pretend third hand smoke is a fact. Facts don't need evidence any more. They just need a good number of morons willing to believe anything that suits their prejudices.

So what, you may think? So what if those filthy smokers feel guilty?

Well, take a look at this.

And if you shrug that one off, try this.

It's not just smokers who are going to suffer from this massive guilt trip brought to you by the makers of every pogrom in the history of humanity. Everyone can join in. Inquisition time, and everyone is guilty. Feeeel that guilt! Lash yourself, buy a celice, wear thorns on the inside of your clothes and fill your underwear with lobsters. You must atone for the guilt. Sounding familiar yet? Of course it is. It's the same thing.

Simply being a smoker now means getting the blame for absolutely every illness suffered by anyone anywhere, even if they've never seen you smoke. And some of you will cheer the trucks when they take us away.

Then you'll wonder how you manage to still get cancer or heart disease or ringworm or hangnail when there are no smokers to blame it on, and you'll ask difficult questions and kick up a fuss because all those things were not eradicated even though you did your part and helped destroy the heretics...

...and then the trucks will come back for you.

Second hand smoke is a lie. Third hand smoke is a bigger lie. Any damage caused by smoking applies only to the smoker and not to anyone else. If you get cancer and blame me, it is the last thing you will ever say to me because I am not going to hang around anyone so stupid it could be contagious. Second hand stupid is just as real as second hand smoke, you know. So if anyone wants to blame me for their own problems, I will not even respond, I will leave and that will be the last conversation we have. I will feel no guilt because there is nothing to feel guilty about.

And no, before someone pops it up, Roy Castle did not die of passive smoking. He had a cancer that could not have been triggered by smoking. He is the only example held up by anyone, ever, that passive smoking can cause harm and his death was not attributable to smoking.

Passive smoking deaths so far proven - zero.

If smoking is banned in cars I will buy an old banger, SORN it, stand it in the garden on bricks and smoke in it.

And it will have a no-smoking sign in it too. A big one, big enough to use as an ashtray.