I took the good advice of readers in the comments of the post below and took time out of blogging to relax, think of something else other than the spite and hatred of anti-smokers, and clear my head.
It was relatively easy because I had decided to close my office down while me and my other half redecorated it. It was long overdue and the only room that didn't get a make over after we moved into this house six years ago.
That was mostly because my office was set up in haste because I had so much work on at the time we moved, the office needed to be functional as soon as possible.
It hit me what a mess it was when Leg Iron and Dick Puddlecote began the blogspace tag game at the end of last year and the clear out I promised myself in the New Year didn't happen because of working out of the office most days.
It always amazes me when anti-smokers slag off smokers for having what they consider to be dirty houses. I don't know if they live in shit and never redecorate but we do every five or six years because we get fed up with the decor before it gets to the really nicotine stained stage.
And I actually like decorating because I like to relax by doing hard physical work, gardening, running, cycling or horse riding.
Immediately after the office redecoration, we had to help daughter No 3 clean a council house that she moved into after a swap. The place was filthy but not in a nicotine stained way despite the fact the woman who moved out with her kids smoked and never opened windows.
The muck that lay in thick black inches of dirt on the window panes was settled condensation that had never been allowed to escape in the six years that the woman had lived there, the carpets were a veritable patchwork of stained, black and coloured spills, there were things under where appliances had stood for years that I couldn't even look at as I cleaned and scraped for fear that I would vomit. The garden was like a junk yard.
As daughter No 3 is expecting her second baby in a couple of months, it has been a bit of a worry because of all the heavy and hard work she has been doing in this new house. Her moderate smoking does not trouble me at all because smoking when pregnant is not dangerous to unborn babies. My grandmother proved it, my mother proved it, I proved it and my daughter has proved it. The anti-smokers lied to scare pregnant women into compliance with their ideology.
Despite this physical work that I've been involved in during the last week, each and every day I've found it hard to ignore the smoking issue because each and every day some other horrendous news story about the next part of the plan for smokers, including the open air ban, meant that the issue was still firmly in my mind but instead of venting those fears and concerns here, I blasted both barrels at colleagues at work.
The never smoker reporter from another paper that sits in the same court each week as I do tends to ask me what's new with the smoking issue by way of conversation between cases. I told him of some of the spite coming from Australia and some of the comments left on DP's anti-smoker sociopath spot.
He looked shocked and suggested it was hate crime. I find it strange that a reasonable person such as that can see it immediately and yet our bigoted Govt can't.
The chap from Addaction told me he is a smoker but he agrees with the ban because in his opinion SHS is harmful. I told him it was not. He said Roy Castle's widow would disagree. I told him Roy Castle smoked cigars and even if he did die of passive smoking, then the fact that he is the only person alleged to have done so proves in itself how safe SHS is. They say smokers kill trillions of people with SHS and yet they cannot name one.
Suffice to say his eyes were opened to the scam that has gained so much unjustifed ground.
Talk of imposing an outdoor smoking ban, for example, has nothing to do with health and even the bigoted, obnoxious, spiteful and selfish anti-smokers admit it :
Banning smoking is not about you not being able to have your little cigarette. It's about us, who have to endure your smoke wherever you see fit to stench up the air.
Do you understand those of us who dislike your smoke aren't worried about cancer, we don't like being assaulted by the IMMEDIATE effects of smoke, which is completely obnoxious. Yes, it's akin to be assaulted.
While, I do not want to take away your right to smoke, not at all, you can not in the same way demand your right to force smoke into our sinuses, eyes, clothes and upholstery, just because you're a selfish dick.
The coward who left that comment on Chris Snowdon's blog can't even put his or her name to the comment that shows more a hatred of smokers than any fears about health.
It's obvious who the real selfish, nasty, intolerant, and spiteful people are in this debate and it certainly isn't smokers.