Wednesday 24 March 2010

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.

26 comments:

Hoon's a hoon said...

There was that famous case in Australia though where Mrs Sharp got $500K or something.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/may2001/smok-m12.shtml

Spartan said...

l smoke in my car, in my house, in my clubhouse and on my motorbike.

So if they pass legislation to ban smoking in cars etc they can come and get me because l'll carry on smoking.

... however l'll make it extremely difficult for them to say the least!

Leg-iron said...

Hoonsquared - throat caner has many causes, one of which is plain bad luck. The antismokers don't get that. Anyone with cancer must be blamed on a smoker.

Allegations have been made that the NSW Labor government accepted help from tobacco companies in fighting Sharp's claims.

Anyone denying the antismoker case must be a heretic or in league with heretics...

The methods never change.

Big Mango said...

One of the main scares in the original story was that passive smoking triggers asthma. Which is odd as there are a lot of studies that say that it is the too high levels of hygiene in modern homes that leads to allergies (best way to avoid allergies in kids? Buy a dog) Here are a few details. And what about in the old days when everyone puffed away and hardly any kids had asthma or peanut allergies come to that.


In other words this bollocks is a LIE, christ how can I trust doctors after this eh? Especially considering how many people they kill in their filthy hospitals (more than those that die from lung cancer that's for sure).And to think I used to respect Doctors.

Leg-iron said...

Spartan - on a motorbike? Do you have a little hole drilled in your helmet to put the cigarette through? If not, it must be absolutely hysterical when you take it off and the cloud appears. I might get one just to do that.

And do you have a Politician on your bike - who would be as much use as an ashtray...

Leg-iron said...

Big Mango - the incidence of almost every disease has increased as smoking has decreased.

As a scientist, I'm not stopping just yet. While the non-smokers around me drop from diseases I have never experienced, I will continue to light up and laugh.

Anonymous said...

WTF "thoughts" vs evidence - "The report found more than 20,000 chest infections, 120,000 bouts of middle ear disease and 200 cases of meningitis in youngsters are also thought to be linked to the effects of second-hand smoke both inside and outside the home."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/hi/the_p_word/newsid_10070000/newsid_10072200/10072238.stm

I am Stan said...

Yo Smoky,

I`m not the fearful type but when I first read about this in the MSM a shiver ran up my spine,the righteous are coming for us big time....we smokers,drinkers,salt enthusiasts,fried food nibblers and photography buffs(add your own) will soon be rounded up and taken away for re-educating!!!!!

Snakey said...

Follow the money ;)

From the Royal College of Physicians website:

Educational grants have been received from pharmaceutical companies for the independent furtherance of the Unit’s aims and objectives.

Grants received from:
Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (formerly the Healthcare Commission)
NICE
The Health Foundation
Department of Health

No bias there then.

Spartan said...

@ Leg ...At speed? :) yeah , that won't work but when you've arrived at your destination, say a resort by the sea, it's easy to do just cruising along the seafront. Good to get the bloody crash helmet off too! :)

Simon said...

And don't forget Leg-Iron that YouGov has just completed a survey on attitudes to smoking in the car and public places.

You know because a "push poll" will generate far more news than anything boring like, erm, facts.

Just remembered another question which asked if smoking should be banned where there are children's play areas!

Chief_Sceptic said...

" The Honda Forum " - that would be me then ... ( :< } ...

However, I was batting 'for' - not 'against' - I'm the J. Derek Riddell in there ! ...

Gendeau said...

As a non-smoker I'm starting to think that I need a t-shirt saying that I'm not smoking because I don't like it, not because I believe any of their fucking lies.

What the fuck has happened to honesty in this country?

Perhaps we need to start henna tatooing 'LIAR' on the forehead of anybody telling lies.

Obviously this would get expensive for politicians and climate 'scientists' - I recommend branding them instead

Dr Evil said...

No controls for the blow into this research? LMAO! So totally invalid. Non smokers on the street should have done the same. Also the air should have been sampled and any CO data subtracted from both the controls and the smokers. Funny, I would have thought most CO would be locked up as methaemoglobin anyway.

Pogo said...

"Big Mango"... One of Prof Brignell's ("Numberwatch") books looked at the rise in childhood asthma and found that it correlated strongly with the increasing use of fitted carpets in homes. Carpet is the preferred environment of the ubiquitous housedust mite - which is known as a strong asthma trigger.

John Pickworth said...

"...even if they were laburnum leaves dipped in cyanide."

Listen, I think a lot of this banning nonsense would end if we held out an olive branch to the MPs. Seriously, we've been giving them hell over their expenses and so its only natural they want to hurt us back.

Let us all come together in friendship and broker a peace by offering a nice box of posh cigars to our hard working politicians.

Hands up all those with a Laburnum tree in the garden? ;-)

Anonymous said...

YouGov has just completed a survey on attitudes to smoking in the car and public places.


Peter Jon Kellner (born 2 October 1946) is a journalist, political commentator and President of the YouGov opinion polling organisation in the United Kingdom.

married to Labour lacky Baroness Ashton, High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy of the European Union (EU)

Rob said...

If asthma is triggered by smoking, why is asthma far, far higher now than it was thirty or forty years ago when more people smoked and smoking was perfectly common in public places?

As the rate of smoking has declined, asthma rates have sharply risen.

Where is the science to link asthma to smoking?

As for "third hand smoke", if particles on your clothing are so dangerous, how come we aren't all dead from spending twenty years drinking in smoky pubs and going on smoky buses and trains? We were inhaling doses thousands of times stronger, hundreds of times a day yet strangely life expectancy continued to grow and the streets weren't littered with dead bodies.

Rob said...

Pogo - plus double glazing and central heating. Whereas complete changes of air in a house happened about every four hours a couple of generations ago, now it is about three days.

Don't quote me on the exact figures, but the gist is correct.

Targeting fitted carpets as a hate group isn't quite as good as targeting smokers, however.

Anonymous said...

Asthma is an allergy, right?
What are the allergens in cigarette smoke then?


Anyone??


*tumbleweed*

Bald headed John

Anonymous said...

The “flat earther” one always amuses me slightly because those using it always seem to forget that in much earlier times, far from being the outdated, off-the-wall thinkers which the expression today insinuates, it was the flat-earthers themselves who believed unquestioningly when the “learned ones” of the day stated that the sun went round the earth - and in any case, everyone could see the evidence with their own eyes, couldn’t they (i.e. "the evidence was overwhelming")? In essence, then, everybody “knew” and agreed that the earth must be flat; and those fools or heretics who had the temerity to suggest otherwise were ridiculed, ostracised and, often, punished severely for daring to voice ideas which challenged the accepted viewpoint. Sound familiar?

Oh, and don’t let’s forget who, ultimately, turned out to be correct between the flat-earthers and the much-derided round-earthers, either. Who knows, in a few years’ time maybe the term “to be smoke-fearing” will carry similar connotations.

Closet England Lover said...

I'm confused. Isn't bacterial meningitis caused by... bacteria?

Chief_Sceptic said...

Closet England Lover said ...
I'm confused. Isn't bacterial meningitis caused by ... bacteria?

Exactly the point I made in the afore-mentioned Honda Civic Forum (I'm the [ J_D_R ] in there) !!!

Leg-iron said...

Chief Sceptic - you're doing a fine job of batting in there too.

Chief_Sceptic said...

Leg-iron said...

" Chief Sceptic - you're doing a fine job of batting in there too. "

Thank you, kind sir ! ...

Anonymous said...

Something I've not seen mentioned, I can absolutely guarantee, and put up a good sized bet if you disagree, deaths due to road rage will go up significantly if this is introduced and enforced...
Zorro

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