Wednesday 15 September 2010

The Smoking Terrorist.

Those Righteous who support the rights of Islamists to blow you to bits because they're a bit miffed about a cartoon are the same ones who tell you about second hand smoke and its ludicrous derivatives. The very same.

You antismokers don't believe it, do you? Of course you don't. In your mind there is no connection. In your mind the two things could never be combined.

Here's a quote from Dick Puddlecote:

To finger-waggers the world over, 9/11 wasn't so much an unspeakable act of evil, more a handy occurrence on which to exercise their mentally disturbed fantasies.

He is entirely correct. We are up against people far worse than anything radical Islam can throw at us. We are dealing with a mindset that cares nothing for your sensibilities while claiming to protect you from 'being offended'. As long as you are offended about the approved things. If you are offended because your favourite pub, club or cafe has closed, well you are just being narrow minded. If you are outraged at the possible throwing of a plastic bottle in the general direction of an Ethnic, you are Approved and can carry on being outraged.

If you are offended at the intrusive and irrelevant questions thrown at you by a State official, then you are not approved. You are, instead, a suspected terrorist. As Pat Nurse found in conversation with a member of what used to be the medical profession, but which is now concerned only with propaganda and shamanic ritual.

I don’t visit doctors any more because there’s no point. They will ask me if I smoke. If I say yes, anything that’s wrong with me will be caused by smoking. No other cause will be considered. If I say no, then a whole raft of illnesses become impossible. I couldn’t possibly have heart problems or cancer or emphysema because those are now the sole preserve of smoking.

If you don’t smoke and you have one of these ‘smoking-related’ illnesses, then you’re going to die. Your shaman won’t even test for them. He’ll have spent the money for those tests on that smoker who came in with ringworm.

Smokers are terrorists now, and the Righteous love terrorists. As long as the feeble-minded are scared of something, then the Righteous can protect them from that thing and control them in the process. Nobody has ever died of second hand smoke, but many are going to die from second hand antismoking.

Smokers contribute far more in extra tax than they will ever cost the NHS. I know, some of the more rabid antismokers simply stick their fingers in their ears and go ‘La la la’ at that but rest assured, antismokers, your controllers are all too aware of the fact. Oh, they regale you with claims of dead babies and rotting flesh but the reality is that they really don’t want us to stop smoking.

Why do you think tobacco is not banned? Why do you think they expend so much effort to prevent ‘smuggling’ of something that is legal to bring in to the country and is legally on sale here? Surely it shouldn’t matter where we obtain the evil weed, if it’s really so bad for us? We’ll just die faster and you antismokers will cheer.

ASH won’t cheer. Dead smokers don’t pay taxes. Dead smokers can’t be harassed. Dead smokers don’t keep the Dreadful Arnott in her well-paid job as controller of the antismoker horde. Oh no, ASH really don’t want us gone.

Antismokers are expendable to ASH and their ilk. They can easily get some more trained up. Smokers are what generate their income. ASH depend on us for their very existence. Oh, they started out as a moral crusade, they started with the intention of stopping smoking but no longer. They are now a business, linked to the Pharmers with their patches and gum. All of them depend on smokers, and they depend on new smokers joining our ranks. If we all stopped, ASH and their Pharmers would see their income plummet. That’s why they keep smoking in the news, all day and every day. It’s not because they hate it. It’s because they depend on it.

The Antismoker Legion is not there to stop smoking, even though they think they are. Their job is to continually draw attention to smoking. To make it seem rebellious and cool so the young will take it up as an act of defiance.

The NHS gets a lot of money from tobacco taxes so they don’t want us gone either. Their local managers can harass us to their heart’s content but at the top, there will never be calls for tobacco to be banned. The NHS has a considerable vested interest in keeping smokers alive. Nonsmokers don’t provide as much cash so keeping them alive isn’t important.

As for your local councils, those who enforce the smoking bans even in places where it’s not banned, well surely they wouldn’t have pensions that depend on the well-being of tobacco companies? (tipped by Olly in comments)

So, if we smokers all stopped, ASH would be completely unemployed, all those antismoking council Stasi would be on the dole, the Ciggie Busters would have to learn something instead of being Righteous-approved muggers, the NHS would find itself suddenly very short of cash and the entire pharmaceutical profits from overpriced patches and gum would drop to zero. All of that will happen anyway as smokers quit or die and no youngsters take up the taxpaying mantle.

So when you rail against us, when you whine about the smell, when you point at us and scream, Bodysnatcher style, remember this.

In a large part of the economy, smokers are the base of the food chain. You might think there are moves to make us stop but look again. All those actions are designed to make us dig our heels in. They are designed not to stop children smoking, but to make it appear rebellious and cool. The entire antismoking movement is terrified of Electrofag because it has the potential to put the whole lot out of business. It is harmless but they want it banned. They don’t want tobacco banned but they want to stop us getting it without paying UK duty – which the EU allows. Give it some thought.

The antismokers have a part to play in this too. Your job, antismokers, is to keep the smoking gospel alive. Your job is to ensure we dig in harder. Your job is to make the rebellious young look at smoking as a way to enrage you, so they will take it up. Your job is to make sure we don’t all quit and to keep us from switching to Electrofag.

Your job, antismokers, is to keep the Dreadful Arnott employed. You think you’re controlling us? Look up and see your own strings. You are the controlled ones here. You are not the farmer, nor even the sheepdog. You are the sheep. You do as you are told. We do not. So who is controlled?

That’s why I laugh at your depiction of smokers as equivalent to the Islamic plane-crashers. That’s why I scoff at your comparison of us to terrorists.

We are now, thanks to the antismokers’ war on us, much more powerful than any terrorist group. They might bomb a building but we have the ability to entirely crash the economy. All we need do is realise it. Forget conscience, forget compromise. Those who attack us don't know the meaning of those words. Realise, smokers, that your enemy wants to torment you forever and will keep you alive so they can torment you some more. Realise that as long as these edifices remain in place, it will never stop.

Realise that you are paying to keep them in place and that without your contribution, the whole lot will fall apart.

And then stop paying UK duty.

Well, they have called us terrorists. So let's play their game.

12 comments:

Stephen said...

1. I don't give a shit that you smoke
2. I don't give a shit that you smoke
3. I don't give a shit that you smoke
4. I do give a shit if you smoke in an enclosed public space where I want to breathe
5. If you make yourself ill through your habit, well you've paid enough tax on your ciggies so I've no compaints that you receive public health care
6. If lots of smokers give up and we lose revenue as a result then then it seems entirely fair for us to pay a bit more tax to make up the shortfall. It's rather exploitative to rely on revenue derived from addiction to nicotine
7. I don't give a shit that you smoke

Leg-iron said...

Stephen - all fair points but I have to take issue with number 4.

The law is not there to protect you from me smoking in an enclosed public space that you might want to be in. In fact, it is illegal to have an enclosed outdoor smoking shelter with nothing inside to interest any non-smoker at all. They have to be open to the elements. Who is that protecting?

This is how far the law goes.

Find a scrap of waste land surrounded by a nuclear power station, a chemical works and a sewage farm. Ensure it's a dead end and there is no through road.

Build a club there. Call it 'The Slow Death Emporium' and make smoking a condition of membership. Only employ smoking staff.

Black out the windows. Install ventilation with filters such that no smoke particles are emitted to the outside.

Non-smokers cannot join the club so there is no danger to any non-smoker at all. It is in a place that nobody is going to be walking past and surrounded by the vilest air on the planet.

Guess what? We'd still have to all go outside to smoke. That is what the ban actually means.

So don't bother me with your 'right to fresh air'. You lost that during the industrial revolution anyway and you are currently inhaling far worse things than tobacco smoke.

We are not smoking in any enclosed public place and we are banned from private businesses too. Even our own. Yet we are still hearing 'smokers stink out the pub' long after we have been banned from there. Still more restrictions are coming.

I'm afraid your indignation is no longer any match for our fury.

Compromise? Not interested. We tried that. It resulted in calls for restrictions in the open air. There is no point trying again.

The witch from Essex said...

Terrific article !!
I just love the new growing movement of anti-anti tactics. That is, as you say for us smokers to either stop smoking, not pay a penny in tax on tobacco or start using the e-fag.
All there guerrilla tactics will upset the economy so much that the anti's will be begging for smoking bans to be relaxed and prices of tobacco to come down.
The alternatives will upset the anti brigade in high taxes on products that they like in the form of VAT or huge tax hikes. It will end the filthy lucrative jobs of the righteous smoking cessation mob etc.
I am really quite happy now that I have got over my distaste of the ban and realise that I am one of 12 million smokers that hold the economy in the balance.
Yes, I am in control at last !!

Fascist Hippy said...

@Stephen
No.4 got to me as well.

There are a lot of places I won't go to because there are nauseating smells, people or practices that I am uncomfortable with.
The point being is, I DO NOT GO THERE, simple, as it is not my place, as an individual in what I like to think of as a free society, to enter these places and tell all concerned that they must stop whatever they are doing just because I do not like it!

Or it may be the fact that I am not a self-centred control freak who thinks his views are more important than those of anyone else.

Gav said...

I'm sure you will love this Leg-iron.

http://www.mousebreaker.com/games/stuboutjoe/playgame

That link will take you to a flash game on a very popular flash game site. I urge you to give it a look...

Dick Puddlecote said...

Top stuff, LI. A bit harsh on Stephen as I think he is just about to e-mail the government and tell them that it's fair to allow smokers somewhere of their own ...

... aren't you Stephen? ;)

Leg-iron said...

Dick - harsh is what we've been getting all these years. The time for being reasonable has long passed. Nothing reasonable has ever come our way so let's take a leaf out of other minorities' books and start getting nasty.

The government and the Righteous cave in to nasty, but will not listen at all to reasonable discussion. Little Clegg won;t even consider amending the smoking ban because he thinks we are no threat to him. When we become one, he'll be begging for compromise.

Except there is no compromise to be had now. He has already refused that option. Now we want all-out Smok'iah law throughout the land. Under which anyone can live their lives any way they damn well please.

De-nose those who insult Smok'iah!

Leg-iron said...

Zebras - someone, somewhere, must be able to compile a game where smokers are chased by zombies from ASH and have to blow smoke in their faces to kill them.

I'd pay to play that.

Anonymous said...

This might sound like heresay, but here goes anyway...
I think the time has come to call for a total ban on all tobacco products.
Get the government to treat it like any other illegal drug, make it an offence
to possess, supply and use tobacco.

Time to call their bluff IMO, put the fear of god into ASH and their government sponsors.
Deny the government billions of pounds annually, put ASH and Co. out of business for good.
Raise income tax permanently, for everybody - a real vote winner that one!!

We are already treated like subhuman criminals, so lets not dissapoint them.
We will still be able to get our baccy......organised crime will see to that!!

With a blackmarket of 12 million people, tobacco smuggling will be more profitable
than heroin and probably cheaper!! - of course illegal smoking will have be confined
to your own home, but it is effectively that, now, anyway.

Lets send them the message - make tobacco illegal or STFU!!!

Angry Exile said...

Agree with Anon, but it won't happen soon. I've been saying for years that governments are more addicted to the tobacco revenue than any smoker is to nicotine, which won't be good news for ASH and others who are addicted to telling other people what to do with their own bodies. Maybe they'll ban it - properly ban, not this increasingly make life awkward type ban - if/when the idea of not paying UK duty really takes off and the government loses most of the revenue anyway. It'll be interesting then to see how many pot growers switch to growing baccy instead. Some people here in Oz are already growing it, and it grows quite well - it was a cash crop once upon a time. These days they can only have a couple of three plants and have to keep logs of weight and jump through various hoops to prove it's for personal use, and even assuming they all do and none of them has a paddock sized crop growing somewhere no-one ever goes - not that hard in some places - it's still money the government isn't getting.

Anonymous said...

Pat Nurse's conversation was with a nurse, not a member of the medical profession. In the comments she says that her GP categorically states that there will be no discrimination against smokers but don't let that get in the,way of a good rant.

There are high profile medical *politicians* who are anti smoking and the medical profession has its share of Righteous but your assertion that (a doctor) asking about smoking will blind them to the possibility of other pathology is just wrong.

The doctor-patient relationship is not political or judgemental. If you want good advice then you need to give them the information.

I am a pro-smoking non-smoker. I agree with your assessment that there is war on smokers. All I am saying is that the average front line doctor is not your enemy, the politicians and the Righteous are and they exist in all walks of life.

Leg-iron said...

Anon - Pat's GP might well be against any form of discrimination but Grampian hospitals certainly aren't. To the extent that they propose to discipline any staff member found in possession of tobacco!

I'm sure most doctors would prefer not to have to even ask the question but they have no choice in the matter. Boxes must be ticked. Well over a decade ago, I visited a doctor with an infected finger. First question - do you smoke?

I asked if smoking caused infected fingers. He said no, he was just required to ask.

Non-smokers with missed cancers are now appearing in the news. it's not conjecture, it's happening.

I'm sure the front-line doctors aren't the enemy but they aren't autonomous. Their continued income depends on them following instructions.

Not just about smoking, either.

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