Burnham Could Well Live Up To His Name

It is not often that I post about smoking, preferring to leave the subject in the far more experienced and professional hands of Velvet Glove Iron Fist and the inimitable Dick Puddlecote. 

It is the arrogance of Burnham - and the way I feel, he would be; at the stake - in dictating what people, who choose to smoke, may and may not do whether in their own home or in a public space. This article states that Burnham has four 'principles': "where it protects the health of children, where a person's choice affects the choices of others, where barriers need to be removed to allow people to behave healthily, and where the environment can be shaped to offer healthier lifestyles". I knew damn well 'children' would enter the frame somewhere; and if Burnham intends banning something that affects the choice of others then he will have what would amount to a never-ending list! On the basis this government does not believe in allowing people to do anything, his third principle is non-achievable; and, surprise, surprise, like 'children' in comes the 'environment'!

While stressing that the state does not have the right to intervene in a private place, Burnham then assures us that "His department plans to "work with the public sector, business and the public to communicate the dangers of smoking in the home and the car". So our 'private place' is to be invaded with tv, radio and press advertisements attemting to stop us exercising our right of choice? And the cost of all this working with the public sector? And the source with which to pay this cost?

We have the usual suspects backing Burnham with their lamentations, at the head of which is Deborah 'Ar Nott An Idiot, Ar Just Stoopid' of ASH prattling on about the harmful effects of second-hand smoke to which people are subjected, especially children. (Note the use of children again - about time the bloody record got changed) In response to this woman's 'screeching' (thank God I am not Mr. Arnott, if there is one) I can but quote from Christopher Booker's & Richard North's book 'Scared to Death' (2007), pages 260-270 (Sure they won't mind):

"What the campaigners against 'second hand smoke' were not entitled to claim, however, although it was their most constantly repeated boast, was that they were saving thousand of lives which would have been lost through passive smoking itself. Despite their tireless efforts, they have not been able to produce a single, genuinely scientific study that proved beyond doubt that second-hand smoke was actually responsible for killing people. Hundreds of studies had tried to establish this point, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars and pounds. But, for all their researchers' ingenuity, not one had produced evidence which in reality was objectively convincing or, under the strict rules of science, 'statistically significant". 

The second  paragraph after the one quoted above, is most telling and it is today also relevant to the climate change scam.

"The triumph of the campaign against passive smoking had provided one of the most dramatic examples in history of how science can be bent and distorted for idealogical reasons, to come up with findings that the evidence did not support, and which were in many ways the reverse of the truth. In this respect, it provided one of the most vivid examples in modern times of the psychological power of the scare."

What this government still does not understand is that the majority of smokers are mindful of those that don't partake and if and when it may cause offence, smokers refrain or go elsewhere. Consequently Burnham, you prat, we do not need you or that stupid cow Arnott lecturing and ordering us about!