Thursday 1 September 2011

Smokophobia becomes drinkophobia becomes...

In Aberdeen there has long been a byelaw forbidding public boozing. Naturally, the Red Stripe chavs take no notice but anyone else gets fined. That's been in place since long before the smoking ban and the combination very quickly finished a lot of town pubs when the smoking ban came in.

It was like a smoky-drinker's definition of Hell. The pubs can open all day but you can't smoke in any of them and you can't take your drink outside. The only pubs that could get around this were those that had outside seating areas on land they owned. Only those pubs could allow drinks out in their smoking area (only defined as such when it's rotten weather, otherwise it's the smokophobes' outside whining area). Even so, three bad winters and three crap summers, plus pompous whiners on rare fine days, have not made those outside areas worth visiting. Pubs are not permitted to put up shelters worthy of the name because all MPs of any parliament are spiteful gits. No other reason makes sense, no other reason has even been suggested. It's just spite.

In Wigan, apparently, they have also decided to further kill their pubs by banning drinking outside (tipped by Mad Morgan in comments to the previous post). Because in Wigan, everyone is going to die of booze. I've been to Wigan. If I was stuck there, under that maniac council, I'd drink myself to death too.

The articles are not my focus this evening. They are the antismoking template all over again and entirely predictable It's the comments. Like this one:

if it wasn't for the tax paid on all this alcohol all you abstainers would be moaning about the extra tax you would have to pay !! what do these doctors want !! you live to about 75 and die quietly so you do not draw too much pension or use the NHS ? there seams to be to many so called professionals telling the majority how to live their lives !! sod them its my life and i'll do what i want in moderation. old age and poverty is not a good combination for a working class lad and private pensions a waste of time.

We smokers tried that approach. It didn't work for us and it won't work for drinkers. Sure, the duty more than covers the stated costs, as with smoking, but don't imagine you are up against anyone who is remotely interested in truth. You are up against neo-Nazis who hate you for no reason other than they've been told it's okay to hate you. By the government.

Even if you just like wine with dinner and have never been out raging and drooling after a night drinking beer mixed with something luminous, you're still a problem. Here's what just one of those commenters said:

Known this for a while now. Telling habitual drinkers it's not good for them, is a risky business as their immediate response is to defend, deflect & deny. Being teetotal ( spelt properly ) a little of what you do not fancy isn't going to do me any good. I dislike alcohol and the horrors that goes with it. It damages mental health ( why drinkers spring to its defence ) causes accidents & harms third parties.

This one has it all. The addict who cannot reason, second hand drinking, the 'horrors' of this evil substance, the old 'I don't like it so nobody can have it' childish bleat, it's all there. The antismoker template in a nutshell and there's not even a whiff from a cannabis-based catalytic converter to be sniffed.

Oh, you didn't know what was in those catalytic converters? Well what did you think it was? Sucker.

I had an Email earlier from my regular South African correspondent which, coincidentally, referenced a witchcraft (the new word for science) study that shows all smokers to be mad junkies (thanks, Chris). This started with the 'smokers cannot make decisions on smoking because they are addicted' in the comments left by the deranged. Now that same approach has begun with booze. You will note that the booze article in the Mail is not about spewing thugs fighting in the streets. It is about you having a bottle of wine with a meal in the evening, and not even a bottle each. That is what the comment refers to.

There is no safe level of (insert personal prejudice).

Next might be 'junk' food or salt. It'll be the same template again. 'Junk food addicts' has already appeared in comments so maybe that one's first. 'Salt addicts' can't be far away now.

I hope there's an asteroid landing soon. A cull of the useless is long overdue.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

The banks seem to be joining in too if the headline I saw yesterday is to be believed (banks phoning mortgagees to tell them that they should cut back their spending.

Meanwhile, this morning I heard on the radio that the EU is to award grants for research into homeopathy for cows in a bid to reduce the useage of antibiotics. Even the Mash wouldn't have made that up.

Jay

nisakiman said...

"Meanwhile, this morning I heard on the radio that the EU is to award grants for research into homeopathy for cows in a bid to reduce the useage of antibiotics."

I read somewhere many years ago that Hitler experimented with homeopathic methods with a view to remedying the "Jewish problem". The experiment took the form of rendering rabbits into a dilute solution, as in homeopathic practice, and then spraying the solution over an estate that was overrun by rabbits; the theory being that the solution would drive the rabbits off the land. Had that been successful, the idea was to repeat the process with Jewish bodies and fleets of crop sprayers criss-crossing Germany.

As far as I remember, the rabbit experiment wasn't a resounding success (quel suprise) and the project was abandoned.

English Pensioner said...

It is worth reading this report from the Boston University School of Medicine.
Among its conclusions are "Evidence is also accumulating that shows that the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia is lower among moderate drinkers than among abstainers. (Obvious really, anyone who doesn't drink must be mad)
Also "For healthy moderate and responsible drinkers, advice to reduce or stop all alcoholic beverage intake would not be in the best health interests of such individuals."
Two good reasons for continuing as far as I am concerned, and useful for quoting at those who tell me that drinking is bad for my health.

westcoast2 said...

Obvious really, anyone who doesn't drink must be mad

So I must be mad to oppose the smoking ban then - wtf :)

Sometimes I despair (and sometimes even overreact - a poor sensitive soul moi :)).

It is not whether you smoke, drink or what you eat that is the problem There are a group of 'healthists' who use these excuses to control people's choices. They are the problem.

I still believe in live and let live, yet it becomes harder each day.

James Higham said...

It was like a smoky-drinker's definition of Hell. The pubs can open all day but you can't smoke in any of them and you can't take your drink outside. The only pubs that could get around this were those that had outside seating areas on land they owned.

All this must one day crumble.

Anonymous said...

I think that Westcoast has made a strong point. It is something that we have all been skirting around without giving it our attention.

""There are a group of 'healthists' who use these excuses to control people's choices.""

That says a lot. It suggests that when smokerphobes say, "Carry on smoking", they mean it. It is true that they don't care if smokers smoke. It is the reduction of your choices which they are interested in. They see that aim as perfectly legitimate.

But it is not! We have the right to choice. We have the right to see what types of cigarette is on offer. We have a right to decide what type we want. The quacks want to take that choice away from us.

Leg-iron said...

Anon - I have mixed feelings on that. If my bank had done that in the early eighties, I might not have been homeless. Yes, they are interfering but as a mad spending waster,interference at that point might not have been a bad thing. So I don't know whether it's good or bad, I see both sides and don't much like either.

Leg-iron said...

nisakiman - I know (for certain, I was there) that there were experiments on herbal treatments for cows to reduce methane expulsion in the 1990s. Sounds like the madness just took another step forward.

Leg-iron said...

English pensioner - smoking can be good for you too, in certain circumstances. It's just... the Way of Satan, if you listen to the new puritans.

Leg-iron said...

Weatcoast2 - you are seeing divisiveness in action. Smoker against non smoker, drinker against non drinker. It is not restricted to the 'non'. They want us to hate you as much as they want you to hate us.

I will not play that game. That's why I never take walks in the woods.

Leg-iron said...

James - the cracks are alredy widening.

Leg-iron said...

Junican - Government or no, we make our choices.

I have never been interested in cocaine or heroin or Mary the Iguana but I am starting to understabd their position.

Basically, it's a position of 'My life and if I balls it up, why would you care?'

I don't. So why does anyone care what I do with mine?

richard said...

"A cull of the useless is long overdue."
Via mercury-vapour lightbulbs and flouridised water? Again, no choice in the matter. Also, consider that the main medium of financial exchange following WW2 in Europe was the cigarette as people organised their own extra-governmental economy, and then consider the evidence for the coming collapse of the dollar and Euro. Cigarettes in plain packets are easily counterfeited as you say. Who would know what's in them or from whence they came?
NB I've stopped smoking; £450 saved in 3 months. That sort of cash is useful, at the moment.

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