After writing THIS post, I thought I'd pop over to Dick Puddlecote's Anti-Smoker Psycho spot because I hadn't been for ages. I wish I hadn't ater I read this.
JFW,
03/02/2011 16:43:30
"I do hope never to be treated by an NHS worker who is stupid enough to be a smoker; it's worrying that some people that you might be forced to rely on in an emergency have such limited brain-power."
7 February 2011 14:58
As Dick says, anti-smokers now feel justified in terming smokers like a sub-human species. I'm not surprised. Govt backing of intolerance by it's blanket ban and refusal to listen to smokers could only result in giving the wrong message and encouraging such hatred and discrimination. I said it before the ban came out. It was why I was against it. I believe politicians either realise this and hate smokers enough to let the dogs loose - or they are completely naive and swallow without question the "confidence Trick" that Deborah Arnott from ASH UK admitted she had pulled on the Govt to enforce the ban in 2007.
I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say they are naive given that they were also stupid enough to believe Tony Bliar's claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and could kill us all within 45 minutes - and the Libyan Lockerbie Bomber really deserved to be freed.
Over at the Devils in the Detail blog is tobacco control's new policy as promoting smokers as violent types who call for violence and death to politicians. The article also links to a disgusting poll calling for the final solution for smokers.
The above kind of talk, backed up with state discrimination and enforcement, and the lack of legislative protection for smokers in employment really frightens me but I'm relieved to see that this sort of blatant prejudice based on Govt-backed ideology has not gone unnoticed
Writing about the NICE quango, Simon Hills from the Times Magazine acknowledges outrageous claims began When the government decided they were entitled to vilify smokers
I've also written before about the treatment of smokers, and outcasting them as sub human species of less intelligence, to the years before WW2 and the persecution of German citizens who were Jewish. I've been heavily criticised for that but I'm not the only one to find sinister comparisions.
The Angry Exile wrote an incisive piece about that HERE
He also blames state-backed legislation for allowing this to happen with public support.
It's not just legislative attacks specifically targeting them that they need to worry about, but also this foaming hatred whipped up by the constant process of denormalising, demonising and dehumanising smokers. What should give all of us pause for thought is that if you change just the last word of that sentence to Slavs or Jews or Poles it could have come from a history book on the 1930s, and if those times are any guide we haven't seen the end of this. Wikipedia notes that "The Holocaust was accomplished in stages. Legislation to remove the Jews from civil society was enacted years before the outbreak of World War II.
Old people who fought in that war, people who have embraced fair restrictions over the years, mothers, fathers, grandparents, other people's adult children, business owners, pub landlords, nurses, doctors, journalists, office workers, land workers, the rich and the poor all smoke. They do not deserve to be to be cut off from their fellow citizens
If the Govt is serious about equality and cementing community relations, and it wants people to take it's Big Society ideology seriously, then it could begin by encouraging inclusion rather than exclusion of people who smoke.
It should also recognise that smokers are voters too and turn back this prejudicial and bigoted tide of hatred that it's anti-smoker laws encourage.
According to Forest Eireann spokesman, John Mallon, tobacco control policies should be amended so they “are fair for everyone, smokers and non-smokers alike”.
Who can fail to agree with that if they truly believe that prejudice, hate and discrimination, are bad for the health of cohesive and fair societies?