The silent majority needs to speak up
Tuesday, October 11, 2016 at 10:10 Following publication of Forest's new report yesterday, ConservativeHome ran an article by yours truly.
Headlined 'If May really wants a fairer Britain, she should end the war on smokers', it concluded as follows:
In her first speech as Prime Minister Theresa May said she wanted to make Britain “a country that works for everyone”. In Birmingham last week she added that the Conservatives will use government to “restore fairness” in Britain. In the coming months, as the government’s new smoking strategy is finalised, ministers should reflect on what that truly means. A significant number of adults smoke, and enjoy smoking, and their contribution to society is substantial (£12 billion a year in tobacco taxation alone, far outweighing the alleged cost of treating smoking-related diseases). Further discrimination against smokers would be the clearest sign that this new One Nation Conservative government is not as inclusive as it purports to be.
If the Prime Minister really wants to stand up for millions of ordinary people who are sick and tired of being patronised by politicians and the professional classes, she must stop her government introducing further policies that will discriminate against the UK’s seven million smokers. Enough is enough. It’s time to stop this spiteful war on ordinary people who choose to smoke.
These were some of the comments:
Of all the ridiculous things I have heard over the past few days, this one has to take the biscuit.
Those who wish to stick paper and tobacco in their mouths and then set light to them are quite welcome to do so as far as I am concerned - as long as they put a leak-proof bag over their head and don`t pollute any further the air I have to inspire.
I am appalled at this language which is deliberately inflammatory and offensive to those of us who have had to put up with smokers depriving us for decades of clean air and costed our NHS billions of pounds of tax payers money.
I approve of the legislation and regulations that have already been brought in to control smoking and would support further measures to control smoking in public spaces.
The laws on smoking in public places were the best thing to come from 13 years of New Labour government.
There were some supportive comments too but I find the level of intolerance a bit depressing.
Thankfully I don't think they're representative of the population as a whole (as our report makes clear) but the silent majority are just that – silent.
What politicians (and the media) hear constantly are the moaners, people who spend their lives looking for things to grumble about, and the internet and social media has given them the perfect platform.
It's notable too that there are fewer people willing to stick their heads above the parapet and defend smokers. I guess it's easier to keep your head down, more's the pity.
Anyway it's not too late to comment on ConHome so if you get a moment click here.
Reader Comments (4)
Intolerance??? Judging by the full comment you posted, the problem is that some people are just pig-ignorant, (such as the stupid ill-informed viewpoint that smokers are costing "our" NHS - y'know that one that belongs to everyone not just the mean-spirited - billions) nasty, prejudicial and phobic. The person who commented is a prime example of what a smokerphobic is.
It seems the totalitarian, antismoking propaganda machine is still as strong as ever. While some of these comments are the result of brainwashing and conditioning from the tobacco control cult that deliberately used falsified reports about the risk of second hand smoke to secure smoking bans others appear to be pure astroturf. The vile antismoking comments don't represent a majority; they represent a a loud vocal minority bent on imposing their view at all costs.
I watch Press Preview on Sky News on a regular basis. If ever there is anything about smoking and Kevin Maguire is on (associate editor Daily Mirror) it is almost as if there is a ticker tape turned on and he becomes like a ventriloquist dummy. For example, let us take the latest two media snippets, falling smoking rates and stoptober. I know what he will say. The 2007 smoking ban was great is one and 80,000 people die every year from smoking related diseases is the other. Is he having a secret affair with Linda Bauld?
“The silent majority needs to speak up”
But that’s just the problem, isn’t it? They won’t/didn’t. Because, although the vast majority of non-smokers don’t have a problem with a whiff of cigarette smoke, the anti-smoking movement and the smoking ban simply didn’t affect them, and it seems to be fashionable at the moment for people only to speak up about something when it directly affects them. The fast-growing anti-alcohol movement is a clear evidence for this. All the anti-alcohol “publicity” at the moment cites only “problem drinkers” – those who go out at the weekend and get totally plastered, crowds of drunks who render town centres no-go areas for “decent” folk, those who commit crimes under the influence, or people who get involved in vehicle accidents when several times over the limit. And of course, nobody objects to this because, even if they themselves like a tipple or two, they don’t class themselves in that category, and so “they aren’t bothered.”
The other prong of this anti-alcohol drive is the much milder warnings about the “health hazards” of drinking, with the aim of “encouraging” people to drink less and less (the “safe levels” will fall, mark my words) or abstain altogether, and once that is achieved in a significantly-high proportion of the population, the “social problems” caused by alcohol will start to shift away from “heavy” or “troublesome” drinkers to “moderate,” and then “light” drinkers until – just like cigarettes – just one alcoholic drink will be deemed to turn an easy-going, affable person into a raging, violent drunk. Studies will be cited; statistics will be reported; scientific research will be quoted. And all those born-again teetotallers will pile in with their supportive comments, their heads nodding wildly up and down like a nodding dog on the back shelf of a car with dodgy suspension, as they join the fray to persecute and demonise a new group of “permitted victims” from their self-perceived position of moral superiority.
And the remaining, probably fairly moderate, drinkers will sit back in astonishment, wondering, like smokers before them, exactly how it has come to pass that they, once regarded as Mr or Mrs Average – a friendly, sociable, chatty person who liked to meet with friends for an enjoyable drink now and again – have suddenly come to be seen as the collective causers of all and every social ill ever known to man. And the answer to that question, again, like smokers, will be precisely because they, the “silent majority” in this case (again), simply never spoke up in the early days, because the demonisation, back then, didn’t “apply to them.” Fools.