Ban me!

Smokers, apparently, love the smoking ban and want it extended right to the backs of their throats. We adore the fresh feeling of sub-zero gales in which the only way to light a cigarette is with a welding torch. We really don't feel we've been banned hard enough yet and we want to be beaten more.

That's what the Guardian says. We really are turkeys voting for Christmas.

I know a good few smokers who have just accepted that smoking is banned and honestly seem to have blotted out their memory of the past. They don't recall that we were thrown off buses and trains long before the ban anyway and have just accepted that we are now thrown off the platforms and bus stops too. That does not mean they like it and it does not mean they want it to be made harsher. Those comments below the article along the lines of 'I'm a smoker and I love the smoking ban' are not written by smokers at all.

Would you believe a comment saying 'I'm an animal rights activist and I think foxhunting is good?' Would you nod in sage agreement at a comment that says 'I'm an illegal immigrant and I think I should be sent back?' Or would you be thinking 'Shill'?

A long time ago, I have a fuzzy recall of a report from Apartheid-era South Africa in which the white ruling classes insisted that the black people supported apartheid and wanted it that way. I remember thinking: 'A whole swathe of their society actually wants to be oppressed? Doesn't sound likely to me'. Yet this was reported without a hint of disbelief, even though it was patently nonsense.

This is the same. Some smokers might have accepted that we are to be shunned and despised by people who have never met us and never will, but most have not and never will. The Dreadful Arnott can claim that we really like being beaten up and spat on but it's not true, never was and never will be.

Three years after the smoking ban controversially came into force in England, a substantial proportion of smokers want to see restrictions extended to children's play areas and smoking in cars. Just under half of smokers support a ban in play areas, while 61% support a ban in cars with children.

I wasn't asked. A few smokers read this blog. Were any of you asked? How about nonsmokers or even antismokers? Anyone out there who was asked, or who knows anyone who was asked?

I've never been to South Africa and I'm not black so you could argue that the lies about apartheid didn't affect me and I should shut up and leave it alone. Likewise, with no car and no kids, you could argue that a ban in cars and play areas won't affect me - and it won't - so why am I bothered?

Two reasons. First, this ban is now at my own front door and any advance it makes means that I will soon have to go outside my own house to smoke. Then they could designate every garden as a 'potential play area' and I won't even be allowed in my garden.

Second, this is based entirely on absolute lies. When I was a child, my father smoked in the car. When I grew up, I spent a lot of time and money in smoky pubs. There is no comparison. You could see the smoke in some pubs as soon as you walked through the door. There was never a smoke haze in the car. With a window open you couldn't even smell smoke.

Dame Helena Shovelton, chief executive of the British Lung Foundation, said the findings showed the government had to act.

Why do we have a British Lung Foundation? My internal organs are not autonomous beings. There is no discussion between brain and stomach over what to have for lunch, nor is there a meeting between brain and liver to set the drinking agenda for the evening. My lungs are my lungs. They will inhale what they are damn well told to inhale and they will not be writing letters to Shovelface to complain.

"Smoking just one cigarette, even with the car window open, creates a greater concentration of secondhand smoke than a whole evening's smoking in a pub or a bar," Shovelton said. "A ban on smoking in the car with children would prevent some of the 22,000 new cases each year of asthma, caused as a direct result of passive smoking.

Absolute lies. Total and absolute made-up nonsense. There is absolutely nothing to suggest a link between passive smoking and asthma. Nor is there any evidence to suggest a link between passive smoking and anything else. It is all made up. Here is how it is done.

This overwhelming evidence of public support can no longer be ignored, and as the only UK charity supporting everyone affected by lung disease we are calling for this legislation."

You are calling for legislation, Shovelface? Who voted you into government? Who elected you into a position to write the law? The ones we did vote for were not granted the right to order us around, so what makes you think you have the right to decide what the law should be?

An early day motion in parliament demanding a ban on smoking in cars where children are present has been signed by 40 MPs.

Name them. Then sack them. They are not there to play God with their constituents' lives. They are public servants. If they are playing around with this nonsense they are not doing their jobs and if they believe this rubbish then they are too stupid even for public office. Their IQs are evidently well below the level required for effective shoelace-tying and they should be dismissed at once. And preferably locked away for their own safety because they cannot be trusted to cross the street on their own.

Ash said that despite the legislation one non-smoker in eight continues to be exposed to tobacco smoke during their work, often at the entrances.

And why would that be? When there was a designated smoking room indoors, nobody walked past a smoker unless they wanted to. Now that smokers are forced to go outside, ASH complain that we are outside. You want a reasonable attitude and fair play and consideration from smokers? Look at what we get from you and expect exactly the same level of fair play in response.

The group also claimed there was no objective evidence the hospitality industry overall had suffered as a result of smoke-free regulations.

Well, there's this for a start.

Then they repeat the 'reduction in heart attacks' lie and list some 'facts' they have dredged up.

2m children live in households where they are exposed to cigarette smoke.

Really? Smokers must be extraordinarily virile, mustn't we? Proof positive that smoking increases fertility, wouldn't you say?

One smoker emits five times more fine particles into a car than are emitted per mile by the car's exhaust pipe.

A nonsense comparison unless you have a car where the exhaust pipe vents into the cabin. In any car that can pass an MOT, there should be no exhaust gas at all entering the cabin. Do any of you antismokers really believe that running a car for a mile produces less smoke than half a gram of leaves wrapped in paper? Even if it was a Prius? Some of you actually do, don't you?

It is estimated that every year passive smoking causes 25,500 new cases of respiratory tract infection in children under three, as well as 121,400 new cases of middle-ear infection and 22,600 cases of wheezing and asthma.

Estimated = we made it up. There is no scientific evidence for any of this. Infections are caused by bacteria and viruses, and smoke is burned and therefore sterile. You cannot catch any form of infection from any kind of smoke. It is simply not possible. As for middle ear infection - what? How the hell does smoking get blamed for bacterial infections of body parts that smoke can't even reach?

About 1 in 8 boys and 1 in 10 girls have a long-term respiratory disease.

They have classed a cold as a long-term respiratory disease. They offer no link at all to smoking, neither active nor passive. The link is to be made in your own mind, which means they can say 'We didn't claim that' when they are proved to be lying.

And which impartial scientific organisation produced these 'facts'?

Source: British Lung Foundation

Good God, how bloody stupid are you people? How the hell did they get 40 MPs to fall for this, along with a huge swathe of wannabe gas-chamber operators and potential camp guards?

Oh, go ahead. Cry 'Nicotine Fiend' and bleat about the smell and believe that they are not going to go any further and are not coming for you too.

These Righteous have the country well under the heel now. So go on, antismokers, give that jackboot one more lick before it aims for your own preferred form of relaxation.

When it does, don't ask the smokers for help.