More thoughts on snipers and smoking
Monday, July 25, 2011 at 13:25 Greetings from Edinburgh.
Flew up yesterday and am currently sitting outside Petit Paris in the Grassmarket, glass of wine in one hand, iPad in the other.
The sun is shining and on the table in front of me are copies of the Herald, Scotsman, Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph.
Bliss.
Talking of newspapers, I see my previous post - and the extraordinary article Snipers could soon snuff out smoking - has attracted some comment.
If I'm honest, I can't agree with those who want to bring in the Press Complaints Commission or, worse, the police.
Let's put it this way. I believe in free speech and that includes the right to be offensive. Do you really want the author of 'Snipers could soon sniff out smoking' sacked or charged with an offence? I don't.
What I want is for people to understand that the war on tobacco (and now smokers) has gone far enough. Stony Stratford, and now this, has drawn a line in the sand.
We should make our feelings known to the editor and to other interested parties, but let's not fall into the trap of becoming as intolerant as our opponents.
Personally I welcome the publication of 'Snipers could soon sniff out smoking' because it demonstrates the folly of the crusade to 'denormalise' a significant minority of the population.
Attempting to be humorous, Alan Dee took this policy to an absurd level, for which I'm grateful.
The villains however are not journalists like Dee or even editor Lynn Hughes, who I understand is contrite and regrets her decision to publish the article. (More on this later.)
Truth is, Dee and Hughes are merely reacting in a rather thoughtless way to the green light that has been given by successive governments to demonise smokers.
Thanks to government policy on tobacco, and the relentless campaign to denormalise smokers, the inappropriate nature of 'Snipers could soon sniff out smoking' never occurred to them. Smokers, you see, are easy targets. Literally.
My advice? Email the editor (expressing your reaction) and write to your MP (pointing out that publicly-funded campaigns such as 'If you smoke you stink' have created this culture of intolerance) but I really don't see what this has to with the police.
Update: Alan Dee's article is no longer available online on Hemel Today. See here.
Not sure about the digital edition of the Herald & Post.
More to follow.
Reader Comments (12)
Inciting people to commit violent hate crime is never acceptable. I am glad PCC has been involved.
I have to agree that unless these outrageous attacks on smokers are brought to the attention of the PCC or the police (if they incite violence or attack) then how on earth will newspapers get the message that smokers are not fair game and we don't take kindly to being described in these terms. Perhaps if we had taken the same stance when one Scottish newspaper felt justified in labelling us "flotsam and jetsam" Dee and his editor would already know that there is a line that can't be crossed.
I am also for free speech Simon, but not when it come to the sort of hysteria demonstrated by some in the media who urge violence or exclusion against smokers.
Should just leave it. Give them enough rope. I laughed at Victoria Coren's comment and didn't have much sympathy for the anti smoking fanatic who died of pancreatic cancer, so it would be hypocritical of me to complain. I'm more annoyed that he thinks smoking is a drain on the NHS.
Perhaps he was aiming for something more like this.
"Look, there's a chap over there smoking. Let's go over and torment him. We've already banned him from smoking indoors, forced him to stand outside the pub in the freezing sleet, charged him over six quid a pack and festooned each pack with images of rotting lungs, disgusting teeth and stunted babies. We've told private members' clubs they can't make their own rules about whether members are allowed to smoke, and we've made employers think twice about hiring a smoker (even if he doesn't indulge at work) as if the act of lighting a gasper was in some way criminal.
But we're not finished are we? People are still smoking in the street, outside the office, in the hotel car park. Look at that chap, smoking in the pub garden. Let's make up a new rule and say, you can't smoke in that garden, it's a health risk. Yes, I'm aware that smoke rises and keeps going up until it's dispersed into the atmosphere, but it's possible that some pub employee could be passing overhead in, say, a hot air balloon at 9,000 feet, could inhale a trace element of nicotine and suffer in the future from a slight cough, and because of this high risk factor, we've told the pub owner to ban smoking in the open air, among the innocent, tobacco-free trees ...
Pardon the sarcasm but, sometimes, the anti-smoking lobby sound like sadistic children, dreaming up ever-more elaborate ways to torment people engaged in a perfectly legal activity."
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/columnists/john-walsh/john-walsh-the-little-sadists-will-insist-on-cigarettes-being-sold-singly-in-paper-bags-1886129.html
But simply forgot to put the rest.
After all what might have been considered light hearted 13 years ago, when aimed at a normal and decent section of the population now living under a government funded campaign of stigmatisation, is really not funny any more.
The article is still available in the online version of The Luton Herald & Post. Just in case that disappears I have downloaded the page (pdf), saved it and printed out a couple of hard copies.
I disagree that the involvement of the PCC and the Police is wrong. The article incited hatred and violence to over 20% of the adult population in the UK.
It is time for smokers to say enough is enough and even if the article was attempting to be humorous it should never have been published.
I have e-mailed both the PCC and the Bedfordshire Police on this subject.
I'm sorry Simon, but I don't agree.
I know we shouldn't fight fire with fire, but I can't see any other way. The anti-smoking brigade/prohibitionists having made so many break-throughs using the methods that we are starting to use now.
We need to start using the same salami-slicing methods seeing as this is the only method that governments within democracies appear to recognise.
To be honest, I was a very tolerant, happy-go-lucky person until the smoking ban came into force. The smoking ban turned my life upside down. I'm a very different person now - so are my family and friends, most of whom are non-smoking. Just multiply that by the millions of people and families within the country who are by now at the stages of biting their lips and tongues as a result of this stupid and unecessary piece of legislation.
“Do you really want the author of 'Snipers could soon sniff out smoking' sacked or charged with an offence? I don’t.”
For once I have to disagree with you Simon. Yes, I do want to see that. I want to see it very much indeed. At the very least, I want to see this young man pulled up and pulled up very, very sharply for what he has written; better still, however, I would like to see him made a very public and humiliating example of to deter others from advocating the same horrific scenario as “a good thing” – whether targeted against smokers or against any other minority that they happen to disapprove of.
Why do I want to see these things? Well, it’s because in the wake of the smoking ban, support for all things anti-smoking has fallen away very quickly, leaving only the hardcore professional campaigners and the volunteer, truly-smoker-hating evangelists to try and keep flogging this dying horse back to vitality. And without the support of what one might call “moderate” anti-smokers, the power and influence (and money) of the anti-smoking movement has become extremely vulnerable. This makes them desperate, and desperate people are dangerous people. To be honest, if everyone adopts the lofty “take no notice of him” approach which you advocate towards this nasty little article, then how long is it likely to be before one of these evangelists stops writing about such things and decides to act them out instead? Think it won’t happen? Of course it will – it always does when such people are not stopped at the first hurdle! And what will you advocate then, Simon? Should we then adopt the same high moral ground and “rise above it” once more, refusing to “lower ourselves to their level” by complaining loudly and angrily about the murder of our friends and families? Or of attempts on our own lives?
Smokers have taken a lot of “stuff” on the chin over the last few decades because that’s the kind of people we are. For sure we may moan and groan and feel a bit resentful and angry about the unfairness of it all, but generally speaking we’re an easy-going lot who don’t want to make a big song and dance about things. We adapt, we compromise and we try as best we can to get on with our lives in the face of countless unfair criticisms, insults and accusations. And the anti-smoking movement have taken full advantage of this easy-going approach to prod, poke and harrass us at every turn and to push their own anti-us agenda further and further, inch by painful inch. But everyone has their limits, even smokers. And if the limit that we draw is at the suggestion that our own murders be legitimised and state-organised – whether that suggestion is made with real intent or as a sign of appallingly bad-taste humour – well, I hardly think that anyone in their right mind can suggest that this is an unreasonable limit, or indeed that we haven’t, until this point, been remarkably generous in giving these playground bullies sufficient scope to indulge themselves before calling time on them.
So I'm sorry, Simon, but shame on you in this instance for suggesting that the people your organisation professes to represent should simply turn the other cheek with a yet another resigned sigh - again - in the face of this new and, quite frankly, frightening, development in the campaign against us. Anti-smoking has moved to a different level with the publication of this article, and I don't know about other smokers reading this, but I for one have - finally - run out of cheeks to turn.
You are quite wrong sir. The odd thing is a few days ago I would have agreed with you, not now. A deeply unpleasant experience over the weekend whilst enjoying tobacco legally and minding my own business has seen to that.
I no longer shrink from comparing the fate of smokers to the early demonisation of Jews by the Nazis, previously considering it an insidious comparison. Many elderly have already disappeared from view completely, social lives destroyed and smokers are becoming ever more invisible and furtive for fear of harassment and state sponsored disapproval.
Bigots like this Dee character can not claim fee speech to call for people to be shot even if he tries to mask it with humour, let alone be given a platform in the local rag. But all he's doing is following the script like a good little drone, so complaints and calls for prosecution will come to naught.
I too must disagree with the proposal to 'le it lie'. We went along with smoking being banned from public transport and cinemas and any other number of places before the ban - but in the run up to - and in ever more inflamatory, fear mongering and divisive tones since it's introduction (done, in my opinion, to ensure the mainting of and extension to the ban), the anti smoking brigade have been allowed to get away with making smokers a target of abuse, discrimination and hatred, and engendered the notion - which has become a reality - that smokers can be treated like, spoken to or about - with utter contempt - and now - this. There is an old addage about the law of unintended consequences ... A law now exists that makes the incitement of hatred a criminal offence. I'm sure it wasn't meant to be used by us filthy low life pigs ... but there you have it...High time then that we SMOKERS use the protections we have in law to make a complaint to the PPC, Police or whoever from hereonin whenever they read such an article, be it by some third rate journo - or the high minded folk at ASH who wish to 'denormalise ' us. It is no excuse to say he didnt *mean* we should be shot in the street - sufficient that it encourages the continuation and growing levels of abuse that we endure on a day to day basis.
So sent :-
Dear Ms Hughes
I wish to complain in the strongest terms about the above article which was published both on line and in print in the 21st July edition of the Herald and Post and Hemel Today publications. Aside from the timing - which of itself should give pause for thought, the publication of such vile 'musings' , however witty or 'ironic' Mr Dee thinks he is, is wholly unacceptable.
As a smoker, I have become a target for abuse and hostility that simply did not exist prior to the smoking ban. The tactics of the anti - smoking activists has given rise to, and actively encouraged an attitude that smokers are virtually sub human... They have been banished from social interaction in any enclosed space save their own homes - and some social housing residents are now even banned from smoking there too, they can be abused without fear of any consequence, discriminated against in regards to housing, employment and health care, denied the opportunity of infertility treatment, or the possibility of adoption. One hesitates to cite the anti - Semitic tactics employed in the last century (and nor is it the only such example) , but you cannot deny that there are strong similarities in the methodology. Then along comes Mr Dee with his prejudice and loathing dressed as 'journalism'... Is he aware that there have been incidents in the USA where smokers have been shot dead for smoking? I
I do hope he felt ill as the events in Norway unfolded. Then again, in Mr Dee's world, I guess the perpetrator was just removing some folk he perceived as scum ...life imitating art ?Mr Dee's article is a disgrace, and you should know it. It serves only to encourage the abuse I have to put up with on a daily basis. If this article had targeted any other 'minority' group; gays, for example, or fat people (you can 'see' they're fat, right ?)... there would be an outcry. You should be ashamed to have been party to it .
Afetr reading all the posts following my earlier one, I have changed my mind. At some time in the future, a smoker most probably will be subject to some act of violence as a result of that newspaper column.