Friday 19 September 2014

Smoking is good for you?

I'm a smoker. I like to smoke. Unfashionable I know but there we are. I've stopped three times since starting almost 40 years ago, once for 12 years - so I don't take shit from 'former smokers' - I simply tell them they're never out of the woods.

The first time I gave up (3yrs) it was in protest at the price of a packet having gone up to 50p, given they're now about nine quid that seems churlish but it mattered at the time. The second time (the long one) was when my kids were little and the last time was six years ago (2year abstinence this time).

I won't be giving up again (unless they make it illegal) and here's why

During my life I've seen smoking move from being what everybody did to being something that pompous twats now feel able to moan about. I can't smoke indoors because Roy Castle's wife invented passive smoking and big business loved this trashy pseudo science so much they created an agenda that GP's then happily 'confirmed' by bending health figures. I am clear, and so should you be, that passive smoking is a myth - it's like the tooth fairy, it makes some people happy and others slightly wealthier.

Airlines loved banning smoking. Like businesses it reduced their cleaning costs but, in the case of airplanes it allowed them to turn down the air circulation systems - the air in the average airline cabin is now ten times as dirty as it was when smoking was allowed on planes- but the airliners save a fortune while you catch colds.

I also used to get terrorised by my GP. He's a fat lad and I finally snapped and said that whilst I was 20 years older than him I'd be prepared to race him down the seafront and I guessed I'd win. We don't discuss it anymore, I still smoke and he's still the size of a house - we are both comfortable with our existence.

Then there's the stuff about how we smokers cost the NHS loads of money. This also is a terrible lie. We die early, the savings in geriatric care and pension provisions when added to the tax revenue on cigarettes actually amounts the five times what the NHS has to spend on us. We are not a burden we're a revenue stream!

My dad smoked, he was a professional - 80 Capstan Full Strength a day (for the uninitiated trust me that's serious smoking). He loved life, liked his beer,worked hard and died of cancer when he was 69. My mum neither smoked nor drank, at 86 a consultant told me she had the heart and lungs of a lion and would live to be 100. Twelve months later she didn't know who anybody was except me but her internal organs were still going to take her through another 10 years or so.

I decided I'd rather go like my dad - that's when I started smoking again.

So I smoke, I like smoking. I won't be preached at or have some prick screw their nose up when I spark one - good chance I'll break that nose for you if you push it too far. 

Every year 'science' decides they got something wrong. Generally after we've paid them lots of money for their shit research and bad advice. Suddenly chocolates ok, global warming is bollocks and low fat diets are the wrong way to lose weight.

I'm living in hope they'll realise one day that smoking is good for you. But I'll probably be long dead by then......

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