Driving smokers underground

Labour’s ideas full of centralism and control

Just been to my local paper shop here in South Shields where I have to do the normal chore of buying Mrs. Curly’s cigarettes (I do wish she would give it up) and asked the proprietor how this crazy idea might affect her business.

For a start she would have to find, or borrow, more cash to refit behind and under the counter if Dawn Primarolo, the Minister for Public Health, gets her way, secondly she believes that the problem of children buying cigarettes will end up just like children buying booze (they will get an older person to do it for them, just like now), but more importantly she thought that some of her adult customers would be made to feel like absolute lepers or pariahs simply for exercising their right of choice.

Yes we all know that there are serious health risks associated with smoking (and I think that I appreciate this more than most) and we all understand the minister’s words:

“Children who smoke are putting their lives at risk and are more likely to die of cancer than people who start smoking later.”

that’s without thinking of the heart disease and other lung diseases which may be caused by smoking.

However, what sticks in the craw, more than other people’s cigarette smoke, is the controlling interest of the “nanny state”, the creeping influence of the health commissars who always know what is best for us, and allowing us to make our own informed choices in life is clearly not good! You should know that your actions, thoughts, deeds, and consequences need to be controlled more rigidly. The health commissars seem to have an agenda to make us all live for ever, well if not for ever then at least to a hundred, this is despite the fact that the UK demographic shows that we already have an ageing population with a looming pensions crisis that looks all the more difficult to solve every year. I often think that we would all be better off, as a society, if we popped our clogs of whatever cause at the age it might normally happen without the influence of the longevity brigades, in the longer term this would be a far cheaper option for the NHS than seeking to keep us all alive for a decade or more longer.

The final word belongs to Rita,

“shoving cigarettes under the counter only helps to make them more illicit, and kids like nothing better than doing things they shouldn’t”.

Dizzy is calling it an anti-smoking fascism, perhaps he smokes, he is angry about the whole thing.