Anti-Smoking Fanatics Will Lose

Warning: this is a bit of a boast post.

A few days ago, the truly horrible Duncan Bannatyne published a truly horrible set of thoughts (it hardly qualifies as an article) on the Grauniad website about why he would "only be happy when smoking was banned" and calling for children to report parents who smoke in their presence to the police. Their own parents! I was so incensed by his fascistic attitude to what is certainly an unhealthy habit, but nowhere near at the apocalyptic, genocidal levels anti-smoking fanatics like him would have us believe, that I posted a few innocuous remarks of my own in response.


The piccy is hard to read unless you click on it. This is what I said:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Another proselytising ex-smoker banging on about his Damascene conversion and the need to treat evil smokers like second class filth. It's not the anti-smoking thing that gets me, it's the sheer hatred masquerading as concern and justified by a dangerous sense of moral superiority.

Stick to making money by exploiting the hard work and creativity of others, mate. That's what you're "good" at.

Next!

Not quite an exocet, I know. Yet a few days later, when glancing at it again, I was pleasantly surprised by the response my gripe had stimulated, complete with 800-odd "recommends", which is pretty high for Cif.

But I was far more impressed by the deluge of other (far better) comments that together nailed Bannatyne comprehensively and deservedly. Old Labour, Brownite brown-nose that he is, too, the ubiquitous condemnation couldn't have happened to a nicer man.

Suffice to say, a far more libertarian, anti-authoritarian mood is definitely emerging in this country, and that is a cause for optimism. There is hope for Britain after all.