Been a busy morning for the Nanny Staters. If the Coalition wants decent publicity and a soft ride on the BBC, it needs to come up with views that are all about IMPOSING the will of the State on people. So Dame Sally Davies, Chief Medical Officer, pops up on Today @ 8.50 to explains the serious health problems caused by second hand smoke. She made some tenuous connections between children wheezing as a direct consequence of second hand smoke and was allowed to get away with them, unchallenged. In fact she was being encouraged by Humphrys to suggest that we will only really change behaviour if there is legislation so perhaps we need a law to stop us smoking on their own property. To be clear; I have never smoked and hate the smell of it BUT I fail to see why the State, encouraged by the State broadcaster, seeks to remove choice from people in terms of what they do in their homes, in their cars.
SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES…
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Ban buses; ban lorries and vans that spew black injurious smoke into peoples’ faces in every city and town. I bet a single bus causes more lung damage than 10,000 smokers do with their ‘second hand smoke’.
Ban petrol after that woman got burnt. Ban knives and scissors from houses. Ban alcohol. Ban stairs in houses. ban from public places the people that don’t wash their hands after using the toilet.
Be careful what you wish for, Camerloon cannot be expected to think them all up himself. Thinking gives him a headache!
01:51 mins
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/b006qj9z/console
Obviously not the worst example of Humphry’s bias, but a free ride clearly given.
(Oh, I’m a non-smoker too)
Ban the bans!
I can think of banns I’d like to ban!
Had you been up earlier David you would have heard the chap from FAG ( or whatever the pro gasper lobby group is called) being interviewed at length on Today, urging the other side. About 740 i think. All beautifully balanced.
‘Fags’ and ‘banns’, what thread I’m on’ 😀
Yep, 7.40 on a Saturday morning, the ideal time to let the “enemy” put across their view.
And isn’t it bizarre how this “beautiful balancing” goes straight out the window on the weekday 6pm and 10pm news bulletins? You know, the ones people actually watch.
Jim, could you point out to me in the TODAY running order where this balancing interview with the ASH spokesman is?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/listen_again/default.stm
I’ll give you a clue, it’s not there.
I can’t find that at all in the audio file of the full show. Could you please tell me where to listen?
Oh sorry, might have been mistaken. I was listening to Radio 5 from 6.15 until about 7.10, so it might have been on there. My point falls entirely if so!
Thanks for admitting that Jim.
Your point fails entirely and, by default, DV’s succeeds entirely.
Then again, one could also claim that the BBC provides balance when the larger context of all their broadcasting is taken into account. We’ve been given that line of defense a few times in the past.
I’ve now listened to the 8:51 piece. David Vance describes it quite accurately, but leaves some crucial elements out. If Sally Davies was there as the embodiment of the state’s desire to impose its will on us she did a very bad job by refusing to take Humphrey’s bait. So JH kept saying why not legislate, and said very explicitly that she prefered to educate and persuade by laying the evidence out in front of people.
So DV can’t really chalk this one up!
By way of defence of my earlier mistake, I go out running on a Saturday morning and this morning was left rather discombobulated by someone yelling ‘fat c**t’ at me from their bedroom window as I ran passed! Now I am quite a sturdy fellow, but I have two marathons under my belt.
…but I have two marathons under my belt
Is that what they now call ‘Snickers’? 😉
Badumdamtish!
‘David Vance describes it quite accurately, but leaves some crucial elements out. ‘
Kinda like a BBC ‘report’, only without the first bit?
Jim Dandy says:
March 31, 2012 at 4:56 pm
Oh sorry, might have been mistaken.
You know, that is more than I get from the BBC Editorial and Complaints, even when I show them the page capture they claim didn’t happen, so progress.
Now, how does the BBC usually treat a commenter under their spotlight who issues a breezy ‘I might not have checked my facts before hitting the screen…’
Not too kindly, usually.
I’m a non-smoker, I grew up in a family full of smokers and I hated it, I would and still do feel sick when I see an ashtray full of butt’s or my dad lights up a cigar.
But in no way would I ever support any form of ban on them being able to light up in their own home or car.
What happened to this nation that made a host of free thinking people decide the state knows what’s best for us?
Here Here
It’s ‘hear, hear’ as in ‘hear him, hear him’.
I quite clearly got his meaning Jim and I feel confedent in saying so did everyone else, but if we need grammar and spelling assistance have no fear we will fell free to ask the spellcheck first before calling on your assistance.
Kind regards,
More upset than they were supposed to be…
Not grammar or spelling, just a rather archaic and to the modern ear counterintuitive mistake that people make. Like ‘one foul swoop’! Didn’t mean to appear to patronise.
Didn’t mean to appear to patronise.
Is that like the BBC is supposedly hear to educate and inform?
Passive smoking.
I recall when the ‘dangers’ of passive smoke was first used as a reason to drive up prices of cigarettes, and get the focus off of vehicle pollution. It was actually claimed that inhaling passive smoke was more dangerous than active smoke, and therefore passive smokers were more vulnerable than actual smokers. In this way passive smokers could feel justified in vilifying smokers, and feel that they were ‘cleaning up the world’.
I knew it was bullshit from the start, as what were actual smokers breathing in-between puffs of a ciggy?
I have my doubts about the extreme dangers of second-hand smoke only because so many people smoked, many heavily, for most of the 20th Century yet there hasn’t been a massive rash of lung cancer among non-smokers. If it was such a danger to children, both my parents and most people I know over the age of 50 would have gotten ill because their parents smoked for decades. Has the BBC ever had someone on to express this viewpoint?
People who develop problems from smoikng tend to do so from long term, heavy use. Passive smoking therefore makes little sense.
That is not to say if you work in a smoke filled environment for a prolonged period you might not be at risk, or that there is not a miniscule increase in damage done from second hand smoke. But the whole ‘dangers of second hand smoke’ stuff just doesn’t make sense.
You should not only be able to smoke at home, in the car and in the street, but if private bar and restaurant owners want to allow smoking they should be able to.
I hate those gormless twerps who state how much better it is they don’t have to be around smokers in a pub or some place similar, seemingly oblivious to the very notion of private property.
Most of us ‘more mature’ beings will remember a time when smoking indoors was quite natural and most everybody accepted it without a problem. Funny the amount of people who start coughing whenever they are around smokers now, even if it’s outdoors. Shows how psychological it all is.
People should question why it is that drug companies doing tests on new drugs need to use placebos. Since scientists KNOW that what somebody believes can affect the result, what’s the purpose of warnings on cigarettes again?
The damage caused by exposure to the harmful toxins in cigarette smoke results in 9,500 hospital visits in the UK each year costing the NHS more than £23m annually, the report said
How on earth did the NHS ever cope with the demands upon it when 70% of the nation smoked? How were children ever well enough to be able to attend school? Why doesn’t the interviewer ever consider that these health scare stories are at odds with the past facts?
That’s how you know it’s bullshit. It is impossible to state categorically that any pollution related health problem stems from cigarettes with all the other polluters present in the air as well.
The maxim, which also the BBC uses to full effect is, if you believe it it’s true, it will probably happen. Which again is why they have to use placebos in drug tests.
Sponsored scaremongering about global warming = justification for green taxes
Sponsored scaremongering about smoking = justification for higher tobacco duty
Join the dots.
I’d say there’s more to it than that Ian.
In the same way that all the despotic Islamic regimes need to create the reality that their enemies are Israel and the West to keep them on side and avoid their people seeing what’s really being done to them and revolting, our politicians need to make the ‘real’ issues nonsensical to avoid showing that they don’t have solutions for the really REAL ones.
What do you really think does us more harm, if you accept the science according to doctors, Cigarettes or Vehicle pollution?
Don’t expect statistics confirming the latter any time soon.