TOBACCO CHAT

Apologies to those of you have been revisiting all week to find an update on my planned chat with a tobacco company representative and found nothing but silence.

The representative was going to write a post for this blog about several things that are being done by the industry to help the consumer but was then told to hold back because of certain things that are happening. Letting the cat out of the bag could well prove to be counter productive and I wouldn't want to be responsible for that.

I am assured, however, that as soon as something can be said, it will be said. The chat in general perked me up a bit and I felt a bit more positive that the latest assault on smokers - the tobacco display ban and plain packaging - can be fought and won.

The other reason for the lack of blogging has been my painful arm and needing it for use during a very busy working time which has meant resting it in my own time. I did ring my GP and was offered an appointment I couldn't take because of work. I asked for today when I'm free but was then told the computer didn't go that far ahead in the diary but if I rang today then the doctor would asses if I needed an appointment or not.

I hadn't even told the receptionist was what was wrong with me. I was flabbergasted and an involuntary mock snigger was given in response. I just said I'd get in touch another day. My cynical level then shot up about 100 notches of disbelief.

Dontcha just love the NHS that, here at least, has got to the point that they don't think we're even bright enough to know when we are ill or that we do actually need to see our doctor.

I hear our local A&E pretty much throws you out unless you're on the brink of immediate death these days but there is a walk in centre in town. I'll have to check if I can go because I live out of town and then just grin and bear the four hours or so waiting time to be seen.

That will have to wait until I'm free again which won't be anytime soon. I am covering full time at a local paper for, hopefully, not much more than another month. I can't take time off because if the cover is off then where does that leave the paper that needs the cover, and where would it leave a freelance like me that has no employee rights to be off sick?

In addition, our local election campaign for UKIP has been launched and as official press secretary, it has taken up a lot of my time which would normally be spent here and there is so much more to do yet.

Please do keep visiting the blog because at some point there will be a post from the tobacco company representative - don't expect the earth because this fight now is little bit by little bit but every move we make is going the right way - and there will be times when painful arm or not, a good old rant cannot be suppressed.

If anyone wants to post articles, links, news, or any other item of interest on this blog during my intermittent absences, then let me know.

CULTURED AND NON-CULTURED

I was busy working at my desk yesterday when a foul smell permeated towards me, so bad it made my throat burn and I got that watery mouth feeling which is symptomatic of an impending desire to vomit.



With nostrils flared I looked to my colleague sitting next to me and wondered if it was him but as he is a very dapper and a smart sort of chap who cares about his appearance, and I hadn't noticed it before, I doubted it. Almost immediately my attention was drawn to a man at the front desk who had come into the office to place an advert.



He was dressed casually and looked a bit like Foggy of Last of the Summer Wine. His breath was foul like he was rotting inside and as he spoke I could smell it a few feet away. There was also a bitter musty smell, like putrid garlic mixed with decayed socks, urine soaked underpants, and a year's worth of dry sweat.



He was about to turn and leave after handing in a piece of paper when he turned back towards the receptionist.



"Oh, does it say non-smoker? It must be a non-smoker and is it going to cost any more?"



He was advised it would be an extra quid or two depending on how the lineage worked out. He decided his prejudice was worth it.



When he left, everyone in the office was relieved and I'm told he is quite a regular so they will have to put up with him again. I asked the lady at the desk what he wanted. She said he was advertising a property to rent. I am the only smoker in the office but not the only one to see the irony.



I'd been working on the big story of the day that a planning application in the paper's historic market town - that had been previously refused because it was out of character - had now been approved on appeal by a Govt inspector who didn't give a damn about how it would affect the local area or local people.



I was sent out to talk to this intensely interesting and cultured chap who will be adversely affected by it and other residents in the street who fought against it, won, and then saw local democracy in action overturned by Big Govt institutions who have decided what the town needs and not the local council or the people who live there.



As I arrived at Mr Wyatt's house, jazz music blared out and I wondered if he'd hear me knocking. I pushed two door bells and banged the old iron knocker on the huge door. My Wyatt appeared in his wheelchair and graciously invited me in. As I followed him into the kitchen there was the trace of an aroma of fresh tobacco and I found myself involuntarily smiling. I felt immediately at ease.



He was cutting onions in a special way that causes no tears and reduced smell - one when strong that I find quite unbearable but this was even mildly pleasant. There was one stump in the ashtray with the onion skins he'd removed and I smiled again but said nothing.



We chatted for while about why I was there and when all was said that needed to be said for my story, I couldn't help myself.



"I see you are a fellow friend," I said and nodded towards his ashtray.



He looked surprised for half a second and then smiled back.



"Oh yes, do feel free," he said. "And if you don't mind, do you have one spare?" He offered me a cup of tea, but then I'd have had two reasons to stay longer than I should have done so I politely declined.



I got out my elegant cigarette case with my ready rolled cigs inside, handed one to him, lit mine and then his as he didn't have a lighter handy. I apologised that they weren't tipped and he said that's how he liked them best.



We spent the next three quarters of an hour in perfect civility before he took me round to speak to others in the neighbourhod who were unhappy. I was sad to leave him as I'd had quite an enjoyable time and I felt connected in a way that I don't with people like Mr Stinky who came into the office earlier that day.



Mr Wyatt shared my dismay at the smoking ban which he dismissed as silly. As for the new development, he said it was indicative of how we were going backwards as a society from recognising and valuing local heritage to the bad old days of the 1960s. That was when many UK towns and cities unaffected by the bombings of World War 2 lost a lot of their history to aluminium and asbestos flat-topped buildings because "the future" was suddenly deemed more important. Vandalism of local heritage seemed a worthy price to pay back then in the name of "progress."



I could have said the same thing about the healthists who are ruining many aspects of our social lives and culture with their hysterical view of the "progressive" smoking ban but I didn't. I thanked him for his hospitality and help and left feeling comforted that there is still some semblance of normality in this bad, sad, uncultured modern world.

THESBIAN DEBATES FUEL

I was asked to appear with the three main candidates in what I thought was a hustings event in Woodhall Spa by Lincolnshire local BBC TV news programme Look North.

I was looking forward to getting my teeth into my first debate with real politicians but when I arrived at Moreton's Service Station on the B1191, I found that there was a candidate from the Lincolnshire Independents, Lincolnshire First party and the Labour blokie Patrick Mountain. We were to discuss "transport."

However, as the three of us stood by the chilly roadside, waiting for the cameras to roll, and I tried to rehearse in my head all of the great UKIP policies on transport , I was rather put off by Patrick loosening his voice with a scale of notes.

BBC interveiwer Tim Iredale looked at him surprised and Patrick piped up that he was "practising".

"It's what you do before going on air, isn't it?" he asked.

Iredale said : "Why, are you a thesbian?"

Pat Nurse (under her breath) : "Plenty of those in the Labour Party, I think."

Anyway, cameras began to roll and instead of discussing transport, it was one question : "What would UKIP do for the motorist in the face of rising fuel costs?"

I said the party intended to give a windfall tax rebate to the motorist. Iredale asked me where the money was coming from. It would be linked to the price of oil. I said that obviously the billions we waste by being a member of the EUSSR would also come in handy and UKIP is the only party willing to give the British people a say in whether they wanted this money in the Britain's pocket or Brussels. Only they can tell us whether they want in or out.

It seems I will get that chance for debate tommorrow morning on BBC Radio Lincolnshire. I am to debate all sorts of issues with all seven candidates including the three old parties, the BNP, the English Democrats and the LiLf party.

LOUTH AND HORNCASTLE CAMPAIGN KICKS OFF

I thought it was probably about time that I announced my intention to officially enter politics and stand as a Parliamentary Party Candidate. I am one of UKIP's 500 that it is putting up to fight the next general election. Ideally, I wanted to stand in my own city, Lincoln, but we have an excellent candidate here, Nick Smith, who is known locally and I so chose Louth and Horncastle, an area I know quite well having covered the magistrates court there for some years before it closed. My other half's family on his mother's side also originates from Horncastle and they still have strong ties there.

Our day in Louth's Market Square was to spread the word about voting choice, promote UKIP and it's policies and to introduce me to any local people who happened by our stall and wanted to stop for a political chat.

There were many disaffected old Labour supporters and traditional Tory supporters all looking at where they could put their vote next time having vowed never to vote for their parties again. The blanket smoking ban, my own personal bug-bear, came up twice. During a discussion of why 52 pubs are closing nationally every week, one lady said she liked the ban. However, after I explained that choice would not affect people who don't like smoke, it would just enable those smoker pubs - the ones currently dying in their droves - to contnue to trade as they had always had done, she agreed that it wasn't really a big issue for her.

A couple later approached. The man only wanted to know what my view was on the ban. I took a deep breath and let him have it. His face lit up, and he said I'd get his vote. He went further and signed the UKIP call for a referendum which is now about our membership of the EU and not the Lisbon Treaty which is past all hope. I suspected that the man was a pro-choicer as he felt so strongly against the ban but he wasn't. He'd never heard of F2C, Forest, or any group currently working to fight for choice and democracy on the smoking issue. I found that encouraging. I gave him some links in case he wanted to get involved or know more.

His partner was a teacher. She was fed up with the education system which she says currently encourages disrespect for both teachers and parents. We both agreed the National Curriculum was at fault for the state of today's youth. Kids are not uniformed beings who all fit into neat little boxes of the same size. Some of them are square pegs trying to fit into round holes and when they don't, the system chucks them out, they end up feral and before long causing trouble on the streets. She pledged support for UKIP when I told her that the party supported individuality in education and would make home education easier for those parents who wanted to choose it.

I was also asked about my view of the postal stike. Deep breath again as I explained as an old labour supporter, I would always take the side of the working man or woman if their cause was just. The man who asked promply signed the UKIP pledge and so I assume I gave the right answer.

One sight deeply distrubed me. Standing just a few feet away, outside a shop, were three childen. The eldest was about 14. The other two boys about 8 and 10. They were all smoking roll-ups with filters in. People stood looking in amazement and I fear the boys lapped up the attention. Two old ladies remonstrated with them but this had no effect. The women moved on. I couldn't help myself but approach for a word.

I told the boys the reality of smoking. I said I'd been a child smoker and that all I'd had from a lifetime of smoking was grief. I said smokers were excluded from every public place since the smoking ban - er... what smoking ban, they, said while furtively looking around in case PC Plod was about to cart them away - an explanation rather went over their heads so I tried a different approach.

I told them that smokers were despised so much that if they were still smoking at my age, the people now standing across the street watching them, would one day be throwing rocks at eggs at them for daring to light up in public. Again, it went over their heads and they weren't really interested. I could have given them the health spiel but then the old ladies did that and I'm sure that gets rammed down their throats as much as anyone else.

When I wrote my piece Life and Times of a Dedicated Smoker, I said that some children do smoke whether we like it or not. A tobacco display ban, the abolition of vending machines, and the prospect of plain packaging will do nothing to stop them. I sense a "get the parents" law being made any time soon. Certainly, I think, that if those boys had been smoking in Lincoln, which is littered with police on every street corner, then they would have been picked up, taken home, and criminal prosecutions either for the boy who gave the younger ones a cigarette, or the parents who failed to stop them smoking, would have followed.

Louth and Horncastle is a safe Tory seat and was formerly held by Jeffrey Archer. It's current MP is Sir Peter Tapsell and I'm told that I don't have much chance of winning but it's fight that I'm thoroughly going to enjoy.