Don't forget - big brother is watching you.

Sometimes I'm glad I'm too poor to pay taxes. Apparently, in an effort to enforce the smoking ban which is coming into effect in England on July 1st, city councils have been given 29.5 million pounds to hire and train secret agents to scour pubs, garages, and workshops, catching out deviant tobacco smokers. These anti-smoking spies "will have the power to enter premises undercover, allowing them to sit among drinkers, and will even be able to photograph and film people." I hope I'm not the only one who gets the chills from reading that story. Next it will be mandatory calisthenics in front of the televiewer every morning. You'll be sitting in a restaurant and a plain-clothed police officer will bust you for putting salt on your food. I'm not kidding: another public health story on the BBC website stated that "The ideal daily intake of salt is no more than six grams and ministers want everyone to achieve this by 2010". Come 2010, you may find that salt is a contraband - after all, reducing salt intake lessens your risk of cardiovascular disease by 25%. At what point did it become a government mandate to monitor my salt intake?

I hate to belabour the point, but I don't know anyone who has died from the effects of 'passive-smoking' (to use the ridiculous phrase). Actually, statistics indicate that about one in 60 thousand die from 'passive smoking' each year. One in 60 thousand!!!!!!!! I see at least 3 or 4 advertisements on my daily bus ride into town, alerting me to a risk which affects 1 in 60,000!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is psychotic! (statistics taken from this article) On the other hand, I know a number of people who have died or suffered very serious injury from automobile accidents. My boss nearly died last November when a 4x4 backed over him. He is still bedridden. Was he a victim of 'second-hand driving' or 'passive-driving'? Ridiculous. Nobody is allowed to get sick or die anymore. If you die, it is because of some abnormality which needs to be identified and controlled. Somebody or something must be held responsible. "It's the tobacco lobbies!". "It's the automobile manufacturers!", "it's the smokers!", "it's the additives in our food!". I shocked and offended my 'green savvy' classmates the other day when I suggested that a world with 6 billion people can't live on subsistence farming or organic foodstuffs.

Another funny thing I saw the other day - a poster in a pub with a very alarming picture of a person caught in a fire. The poster said that "40% of people who die in a fire were consuming alcohol that day". Basically, taxes are being expended to put up messages in pubs which say "if you drink, make sure you don't set yourselves on fire, you dumb plebs." There's a great website dedicate to exposing and ridiculing ridiculous scares like this called spiked. Check it out. Basically, since politics is dead we now have a political class with nothing better to do than monitor the minute details of our lives.

Here's my new slogan - "Passive driving kills!". "Second hand driving seriously harms you and those around you!". "Protect your right to clean air: ban farting!".



You will be happy

You will be healthy

You are being watched


Have a look at this article if you want to get an idea of how crazy this anti-tobacco trend is.