Smoking ban starts this weekend

[citizenED]

On Saturday night, smokers could blend their favourite activities: going to the pub, conversing with friends and smoking. On Sunday, they could do exactly the same things, but not necessarily in the same manner as they have become accustomed.

citizen

[Brendan]

Sorry Citizen. I was quoting you, quoting someone else you see. :-S

I am actually a journalist of sorts so I have a kind of moral duty to misquote people every now and again. ;-)

[SeanMacGabhann]

The Smoking Room - much underrated sitcom. Good spot MP

[Jah Lush]

Non-smokers die every day.

[SeanMacGabhann]

Thank you Bill Hicks

[citizenED]

Thank you Brendan - long may you keep up the honourable mores of your sort-of profession.

citizen

[the_record_spot]

The usual "attack on my freedoms" arguments crack me up. It wasn't so much of a problem for MY rights not to breathe in the gunk and yes, it always WAS a problem for non-smokers by the way!

And for all the arguments about government oppression, the usual "oh, I know so-and-so and he smoked all his days and he's 118" please, spare me this; the NHS bill for smoking related diseases would make you weep. The sight of a smoker's lungs post-mortem would make you wince and that my dad keeled over at 65 and my mum developed chronic asthma at 63 having both smoked since their teens suggests to me that it was at least a factor in my dad's death and my mum's condition (as it happens, I think she got off lightly - could've been much worse).

I wholeheartedly believe in freedom of rights, but only where that freedom doesn't impinge negatively on me or anyone else.

I don't smoke, never have and remember all too clearly sitting in smoke filled restaurants, cafes, etc as a child, my eyes streaming and hardly able to breathe. Not a gripe at all, that was the generation in which I grew up, but this is a long overdue move, it's the right move and if it can work on a bloody freezing cold night in Aberdeen when it's cutting up a gale, I'm pretty damn sure it'll work in the more temperate south!!

(Sorry folks, I feel strongly about this!)

[Domitianus]

Back to snuff! When I was a poor pissed-up student I was introduced to snuff by a mature student who used to work as the curator of a railway museum and who wore a velvet waistcoat and had a proper old-fashioned pocket watch. Dr Romney's Special was the brand although I also took to McCrystals. Cheaper brands were like sniffing ground glass. Unfortunately my consumption of this marvellously heady substance increased to the extent that it caused inflammation of the linings of my nose and eventually nose-bleeds! That was when I decided to pack it in. Was fun for a while though if you don't mind having to launder vast quantities of stained handkerchiefs.

I remember reading that Dr Samuel Johnson was a great snuffer and actually had leather linings sewn into his pockets to obviate the need to actually use a tin. He would simply dip his mit into his coat pocket and grab a pinch off the stuff.

A pleasant chap offered to sell me a snuff movie the other day and I thought I might take him up on it to remind me of the old days. Any thoughts on a reasonable price?

[Asset]

Are you sure it was snuff?

Gives you nose cancer I think, not to mention all the passive stuff ejected when you sneeze.

[Huguenot]

Good God, passive snuffing is now an issue?

[mockney piers]

Are you spamming Huguenot ;-P

I shall add you to my RSS!!