I had barely got back from Brussels yesterday when I was asked to record an interview for BBC Look North.
So I drove over to the BBC studios in Cambridge and spoke to presenter Peter Levy (above).
The subject was the decision by hospital administrators to ban smoking outside Hull Royal Infirmary.
Today I saw the full Look North report. You can watch it too but only until 6.45 tonight.
There are a couple of things to note.
One, the report features a 21-year-old patient who despite having a catheter and wearing a nightgown has been forced to go off site to smoke.
As she told the programme, "It's humiliating having to stand at a bus stop. It's like punishing you for smoking."
Two, a woman who is walking slowly with the use of crutches is being followed by a male "stop smoking specialist" who is physically a lot more imposing than she is.
He is walking alongside her and can be heard saying, "I was wondering if you'd like to take this opportunity to stop smoking yourself."
I'm not sure if this can be classified as help or harassment. Whichever, it looks and feels completely wrong to me.
Bear in mind I hadn't seen this report when I did my interview which was shown directly after. Nevertheless I said pretty much what I wanted to say.
Truth is, hospital smoking bans are a disgrace because they demonstrate a staggering lack of compassion to ordinary people. Weirdly perhaps I feel even more strongly about them than many other smoking bans.
Like smoking bans in mental care homes they target people, patients and visitors especially, when they may be at their most vulnerable – stressed, upset and in need of a comforting cigarette.
At Hull Royal Infirmary they used to have a smoking shelter. Today even that has been removed and replaced by a stark 'No Smoking' sign.
Increasingly hospitals are being run not by humans with a heart but by tick-boxing automatons with little empathy and no compassion for people who don't conform to current orthodoxy.
Frankly, it makes me sick.
