As this world of ours dips evermore into the disturbingly murky world of healthism and all the freedom bridges healthism destroys it is refreshing to see a couple of ‘stand outs’ on the team of normality.
Brendan O’Neill is the editor of spiked, an independent online phenomenon dedicated to raising the horizons of humanity by waging a culture war of words against misanthropy, priggishness, prejudice, luddism, illiberalism and irrationalism in all their ancient and modern forms.
He tells us in today’s Sunday telegraph that Bloomberg is the man that killed New York. I’m afraid I cannot fail but to agree with that statement, for I really don’t see why any free-thinking person, especially if they smoke, would ever want to visit an open prison like NY! Shopping trip? no thanks. If I can’t have a fag after an hour or so of mooching round all NY’s fancy named stores without the threat of a $50 fine (from someone unknown), then i certainly don’t want to be there! Relaxing lunch in central park, fine, but the relaxing afterwards bit has been banned by Bloomberg-for some reason probably only known to Herr Diktator Bloomberg-oh and his health freak ‘oppo’ Thomas Farley. To me, a park is a wonderful place where it is freedom personified, a greenery where one can relax in peace and tranquillity and be at one with the world-especially whilst drawing on a comforting cigarette. Err…not anymore. Bloomberg & Co obviously think that cigarette smoke travels horizontally, for as long as it takes, to embalm the nearest non-smoker in a deadly fug. If the nearest humans to the smokers happen to be smokers, the horizontally travelling deadly fug will obviously scoot round them and attack a non-smoker-clever stuff is ‘deadly fug’. Perhaps the multi-millionaire needs to go back to school and learn that heat, ie smoke, generally rises. Still, what can one expect from an ex-smoker who is now seeking a seat on the top table of the righteous?
Another elderly gentleman, better known to us in this country has thanked smoking for saving his life as a ‘very early’ interviewer tries to get him to denounce smoking as a killer; very neat turnaround indeed!
Bertrand Russell died aged 98, after more than 70 years of pipe smoking. Naturally the great man saw nothing wrong with smoking tobacco and quite candidly told the interviewer such. Bertrands lifetime work has had a considerable influence on logic & mathematics – we need a reincarnation of the great man as all humane logic seems to have gone out of the window and the mathematics-well-the mathematical part of this anti-smoking equation has been forgotten as it seems there is no end to the amount wasted on denormalising smokers! Funny though that politicians have now given up on the war on drugs!
In 2007, the then Attorney General declared the war on the illegal drug trade a lost cause-much to the horror of many! Four years later and the Global Commission on Drug Policy have now concluded that the much-berated AG was indeed correct.
So, it seems obvious now that as the establishment have conceded defeat on an illegal business that is worth £billions worldwide, of which nothing goes to governmental coffers, they have now decided to wage war on a legal product which does see them gain £billions worldwide for governmental coffers-because they think they can win that one! Again, at what cost? Bloomberg has ‘killed New York’, ASH are killing most of the civilised world and the workers, mainly smokers are beginning to wonder why they bother to work at all, in the face of all the restrictions of freedoms being heaped upon them!
Strange how we now seem to have lost all the wise old heads-now replaced by mentally deficient sad sacks!