I see my local paper has shown it's bias again as far as the smoking issue is concerned but I suppose I should be a bit grateful that it did at least invite me to comment.
I was told by the reporter that the story was about how people in Lincoln are not living much beyond the age of 75. I gave him a few ideas of what other things might be responsible for that including traffic and I directed the reporter to this quote from minister Tim Yeo :
“Air pollution probably causes more deaths than passive smoking, traffic accidents or obesity, yet it receives very little attention from Government or the media.”
The reporter chose to skim over that as an irrelevance and instead homed in on smoking as the ONLY cause. Strewth. Such obvious bias is one reason why it's circulation is dropping heavier than a brick thrown from the top of it's former high rise building.
The reporter also failed to mention how the NHS - and Lincoln County Hospital specifically - kill old people through neglect. For sure my mother would have lived longer than 75 had she had the care she needed at Lincoln instead of being ignored to death.
And she isn't the only one to have received death instead of care in a NHS hospital although granted this woman lived some 10 years longer than my mum.
As my mum was an ex-smoker - who gave up 30 years before she died - like her sister who is almost 90 and her father who died aged 98 - I think she would have lived but for NHS cruelty and it's obsession with wasting cash on anti-smokerism that could be spent on direct patient care.
Many people have told me they no longer buy the local paper and it's easy to see why. It does not write for all of its readership in a fair, balanced and impartial way. It writes for the authorities and the lifestyle bigots and I guess to it's own prejudices.
A debate has started on the article - as inevitably there always is when this subject is mentioned. So please feel free to visit the Lincolnshire Echo at the link above and knock yourself out in educating the stupid who won't a learn a thing from reading such tripe otherwise.