FRENCH DIGNITY DENIED TO UK SMOKERS

I just read this poignant account from Anna Racoon of her cancer treatment at a French hospital.

I found the last part of her story the most reassuring and well deserved considering what she'd been through. Anna said :

On arriving at Bordeaux, I met the ‘Oncologist’ – she spoke a little English she said. That turned out to amount to:

‘I have a lot of questions to ask you.’

‘Hmmn, OK.’

‘Do you smoke?’

‘Oui’ … (here we go!)

‘Ow many chaque jour‘ … (are we coming to the end of the English? Maybe the lecture in French is not so bad!)

‘Hmmmn, 20 or so’ … (takes deep breath and braces self)

‘Would you rather sit in zee petit jardin so you can haff a zigarette while I demand the questions…?’

-and with that she poured out two coffees and carried them to a seat in the garden and smiled benevolently as I lit up!

Wowee! These people are human!


Other reports from France show that smokers are treated equally humanely, with dignity, and not derided for "making themselves ill" as in the UK.

The message below was sent to me recently of a similar experience in France :

I was amazed when offered the opportunity to smoke in the hospital garden over a cup of coffee when filling in a questionnaire.

I was stunned to discover that even when hooked up to an intravenous drip, I was free to do so at any hour of the night or day in order to join the other walking wounded snatching a quick fag outside the door.

I was completely gobsmacked when two nurses appeared outside one evening pushing an entire bed containing an obviously very sick lady outside the door - followed by her partner carrying a bottle of champagne – and waited patiently for some half an hour whilst he had a couple of cigarettes (she was attached to an oxygen machine…ergo, they had come from the third floor, the lung department,) and shared the champagne whilst watching the sun set ...

One of the better sightings was a lady with only one leg on crutches, accompanied by a nurse who patiently alternated between holding her cup of coffee so she could smoke, and holding the cigarette so she could sip the coffee!

I have talked to one of the nurses about it, and their view is that – we already have cancer, so why worry about getting it somewhere else/ it is more important that we are stress free to survive the debilitating chemotherapy / the law only says no smoking inside the premises / most of them smoke as well...

None of the British nonsense of no smoking within the grounds of an NHS trust, not a single anti smoking poster in the entire place, just one statutory notice affixed to the main door.

Ashtrays provided in the small garden, and an elderly man who goes round with a broom sweeping up all the cigarette ends left by the walking wounded who can’t manage to get as far as the garden ...

Why is British law so hysterical – this place is a centre of excellence for cancer care in France, and if they are not hysterically anti-smoking, why are the British?


The email reminded me of two very different examples of NHS care that I'd recently heard about here - one by a close friend whose relative died in 2006 and the other a young mum I met on the street last July and chatted to over a smoke.

In the first case, the old woman in her late 70s was dying. Her last wish was to have a cigarette. To my friend's amazement, the hospital staff pulled a curtain around her, brought her an ashtray, and allowed her to smoke in her hospital bed between puffs of oxygen. That's how I'd like my end to be if I am not at home when my times comes.

I think that for some people smoking is a culture. One of the floral tributes at this woman's funeral was in the shape of a giant cigarette. I stifled a giggle when my friend told me because it seemed a bit bizarre but the point was that her relatives knew she'd want that final fag for her journey. Smoking had been a central point of her life since childhood. I'm sure her view would have been like Mark Twain's : "If I can't smoke in heaven I shall not go."

The other, recent, case was a young mum's grandma who needed a hip op but she was told she would have to pay for it herself because she was a smoker. Apparently on the grounds that the outcome after an operation is not good for smokers and they did not want to risk her life - but she could if she paid for it and she did. That was 2011.

All of the above are anecdotal examples of how NHS compassion appears to have been lost in such a very short time. It has been forced out of the service by a new regime and the politicisation of the NHS through our lifestyle factors. Everything about the sudden change in the way smokers are treated began with the smoking ban and health act of 2006.

The current Govt is adding to the woe in the misleading guise of "public health" which punishes people for wrong life choices. Soon there will be no NHS worth having if politics doesn't butt out.

If this new "progressive" form of NHS must lead to change, I would much rather see it go the French way than the American. In the US they don't just discriminate against smoker patients as our NHS does, they also discriminate against smoker staff on grounds of hate. There is not one single proven piece of evidence to suggest that the smell of smokers harm others.

If these so-called Progressives think that enforced social change can be achieved by denying people with "bad" lifestyles access to communities, housing, jobs and services, that their exclusion from the NHS is justified and a good and positive move forward, then they are showing themselves up for what they truly are - bigoted Regressives who are intent on taking us socially backwards because it fits their own ideological view of the perfect world.

And some of them are downright dangerous to society in pushing this enforced change.

Just about every single day since July 2007 it has been demonstrated time and again that this is really not about health.

END THE HATE AND STOP THE LIES

When I first started in journalism I attended a council meeting with a senior reporter and I'll never forget what she said as we listened in disbelief at some of the stupid things that members who were not greatly articulate were saying. She said :

"You have to remember, Pat, that councillors are generally as thick as shit but they wield a lot of power."

They are not only thick like Stony Stratford Councillor Paul Bartlett who ranted about smokers burning children but he also had a problem finding any evidence of litter to back up his prejudicial claim.

I said ages ago that it was a bad idea to put such power to make bans into the hands of local councils - particularly in my own area which is now once again led by a smokerphobic leader who refuses to listen to balanced evidence and prefers to push his own bigotry instead.

And it seems the exclusion of smokers based on hate and prejudice and not health is spreading

Smoking is not and never has been "socially unacceptable". If it was, then they wouldn't need to devise a program to make it so by denormalising the normal and normalising the weirdos like those with a mental phobia about law abiding people who like something that they despise and fear.

And this fear is continually hyped up by Govt Quangos and bigots like Stanton Glanz who adopted the white suprememist attitude to smoking and spread his foul hatred across the world.

I fear that putting stupid councils in control who don't have the intelligence to debate reasonably is a very dangerous move and one we will find hard to fight. This issue is no longer about health and is being openly said so. It's now about not letting chiiiildren SEE smokers.

I think a much better idea would be to stop our children from seeing xenophobic, smokerphobic bigot councillors who teach our kids how to hate and loathe and not tolerate, understand and respect different cultures and lifestyles.

OH NO. NOT AGAIN

Nick Smith, Lincoln and Gainsborough UKIP branch chairman with Karl McCartney, Lincoln Cons MP, and another bloke nicked from The Lincolnite which gives an excellent blow by blow account of what happened at tonight's local election in Lincoln.

Sadly, NuLabour won control of the council back by two seats and so we're in for another couple of years of hell.

The make up now is 15 NuConservatives, one Illiberal democrap and 17 Tyrants. If the one sitting libdem's seat was up for re-election this time, I think she would have lost it. All in all, however, they didn't do too badly and beat UKIP in six seats although not by much and we kicked their ass in three.

Yours Truly got the grand total of 151 votes. The TUC Against Cuts got 121, the Libdems got 236 (ouch) the Cons 619 and Lab 1052.

There were a few spoiled ballots in my ward and about five premature AVaculations. Some voters put candidates in order of preference, apparently thinking tonight was the night AV began rather than the night we voted on it. The returning officer said case law dictated they couldn't be taken into account. Turnout was just over 36%

I have no idea yet how I've done in North Kesteven where I'm also a candidate for a seat but no doubt I'll find out tomorrow unless it comes on TV soon.

Overall, it's been a great night for UKIP and a great election campaign. We learned a lot, got more professional and more interest in what we are doing and what we stand for.

Overall we got more votes than we've ever had and we had candidates standing in all wards. As soon as our feet touch normal again, we will be having a debriefing session to discuss how we can do even better next time.

* Oh No. I just heard. Coun Carl Mimms has lost his seat. Poor Hull. A City in joint suffering with the heavy spectre of Labour oppression ahead. Are the people of this country stark raving mad? Hopefully by next year they will have learned the error of their ways and turn back to voting for decent folk. Carl was definitely one of the good guys.

BIGOTRY TO RULE LINCOLN?

According to Big Brother Watch NuToryLimpDump junior health minister Ann Milton is giving local councils the power to further socially exclude smokers which is really bad news in my bigoted city.

pRick Metcalfe - former NuLabour council leader and now in the minority since his prejudicial party got booted into touch - is bound to push for this. He's a real nasty piece of work who hates smokers.

About five years before the blanket ban, there was much unhappiness here when a local hall was refurbished - because PRick's council had let it get to such a bad state following a lack of investment - and the council decided to ban smoking in it once it was done up.

One of the reasons they gave for this move was one of the most ridiculous I've ever heard. One councillor - a stupid woman whose name escapes me - said the council had done this to protect the chiiiildren. She said because the hall would be used at night for live acts, and for school workshop groups by day, then it was too much of a risk to their health when people had been smoking the night before.

Many people were furious about this including me. I wrote to PRick Metcalfe and he never even bothered to reply. I wrote again. Again nothing. I was so incensed by his lack of response that I wrote to my council chief executive and said as a local council tax payer I was entitled to a response.

I wanted to know why smoker tax payers' needs had been ignored. After all, our tax also helped to pay for this refurbishment and it seemed to me that the least they could do for us was to create a designated place somewhere inside. We'd paid for that right.

PRick's response was that if I was such an addict and couldn't do without a smoke for the length of a performance then I had no business complaining. Charming. I sent him loads of stuff from Forest about the fraud that is SHS plus the actual ONS survey which showed that the majority preferred choice to an outright blanket public smoking ban. You may recall that the thoroughly corrupt Nulabour party turned these figures around to suit it's own ideology to enforce the ban upon a public that didn't want it.

PRick dismissed this by saying only Forest was saying this and they were liars. Charming. A real fair and unbiased man of the people this one.

For me professionally this exclusion was disastrous. My political beliefs about choice meant I had to withdraw when a local "community" group wanted to use my book Devils Let Loose about the Lincoln riots of 1911. I had given them permission to use my copyright (thanks NB) on condition that I could be involved in the writing of the play they planned to base on it.

At this time there was nothing in the pipeline for the hall and it was decided the play would be staged at the local University. It was non-smoking but I had no problem with a private building setting its own policy. When it was announced that the hall would be finished in time for the play, the group decided to hold it there and I had a problem. It was a public hall that I had helped to pay for and I asked the group if they would hold a ballot of members to see how they felt about it.

I was told not to be "so silly". They said : "Everyone knows the hall is non-smoking and if they had a problem they'd say." I still asked for a vote to be held and if they all agreed the place was suitable even as a non-smoking public venue, then I'd accept it and carry on. At least they had been given the choice.

The idiots in the group said no. I had no choice but to back off and disassociate myself. They stole my work, changed the title to Devils Let Loose? and decided the question mark after the title made it their own work and they did not have to credit me or my work as the basis of the play thereafter.

They proved that "community" includes everyone - except smokers and those to whom choice is important. I had grounds to sue them for copyright theft, and I could have gained an injunction to stop the production in its tracks, but in England you can only use the law if you are rich and I am not so I lost out while they claimed all the credit for my work.

Of course I accept that they used my book as the basis and did a lot of their own work, but without it and without my title they would have had no starting point.

Of course we in Lincoln kicked out our former bigoted MP St Gillian of Merron because of Nulabour's stance on smoker exclusion and we hoped we might just get a fairer Govt instead. People were conned into thinking that the Tories were not nannies nor did they think it their business to tell people how to live their lives.

What we got was NuLabour in a different colour and a health department in bed with the fake charity ASH. Milton and her boss Andrew Lansley are so tucked up with Deborah Arnott one must ask if they are running a prostitution racket



Uuurrgghh - sorry - this pic makes my stomach churn too but it's necessary to show how corrupt this current health department is. Milton and Arnott couldn't be any closer unless they were snogging.

This despicable and fraudulent group's lies and propaganda - based on junk science paid for by Big Pharma corporations who compete with the tobacco industry to supply smokers with nicotine - has not only excluded people who don't want to quit, it is working furiously to criminalise them as well.

So I was completely uplifted today when I went to my doctors for a routine check up. I hadn't been in years because last time I got a bigoted nurse who told me I was a serial killer as well as a suicidal maniac because I smoked. The new nurse I saw was great. She told me the last one no longer worked in the practice after being asked to leave.

When the new nurse asked if I was still smoking I told her I smoked moderately for my health because as a lifelong smoker from the age of 8, I was scared to quit because the prognosis for lifelong smokers is worse if they quit than if they conitnue to smoke moderately. She agreed and completely understood how I feel as one who started smoking in childhood - when there was no protection for children - and who now resents being treated as an outcast as an adult when I could never have envisaged more than 40 years ago when I started what would happen when I was grown up.

Bigots like PRick, Lansley and Milton could never understand or empathise. They have no intellect and therefore have no business in positions of authority.

The only hope we have of getting these people out is in elections. Local council elections are coming up in May and we can show the LibLabCon that we have had enough by voting alternatively. For me it's UKIP - for many others in Lincoln too as I explained previously how many new members we have. That indicates to me that many more votes will also come our way and to help with that, I will be standing for anyone who supports choice, fairness and equality and is against corrupt and fraudulent institutions and quangos.

The day PRick loses his privileged position the better and the sooner fairness will return locally. The sooner we have a general election and the NuToryLimpDumps lose their seats because of their corrupt association with a fake charity, the better this country will be. Ours is the land of tolerance and fair play. It's such a shame that these bigots are working to erode our once decent society.

INSANITY

If I've read THIS right then it seems that these days pulling a vacuum cleaner around with one's penis is far more socially acceptable than smoking.

These people really are philistines, bigots, and idiots.

Wouldn't it be great to have a local authority that's run by people with some kind of intellect. At least Skegness is not prepared to brush this issue under the carpet on stage at least.