My week
Saturday, March 9, 2019 at 8:35 Quick recap on the week.
It kicked off on Sunday with a call by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health - run by ASH - for an increase in the legal age for purchasing tobacco from 18 to 21.
We came late to the story - I think it must have been given to the Observer as an exclusive - but Forest’s reaction was subsequently picked up by the Press Association which led to us being quoted by the Daily Mail, Metro and a number of local papers online including the Manchester Evening News, Belfast Telegraph and several more.
It was then reported that the Scottish Government is to consider the same measure, conjuring up images of a race between Westminster and Holyrood although, to be fair, the UK Government has so far shown no appetite to introduce the policy.
Anyway, I was subsequently interviewed on BBC Radio Scotland alongside Deborah Arnott of ASH and quoted by The Times (Scotland), the Herald, Scotsman and Scottish Daily Mail.
There was also a story in Dundee about Ninewells Hospital using children's voices to ‘encourage’ people not to smoke outside the hospital entrance. The children concerned are aged 9, 10, and 12.
My reaction - I described the initiative as “Orwellian” and “emotional blackmail” - was reported by the Scottish Daily Mail and Dundee Evening Telegraph.
While all this has been going on we have been busy disseminating a new report.
I can’t say more because it’s under embargo but it’s a substantial document that has taken the best part of six months to put together. I’ll reveal all on Monday.
Reader Comments (6)
My week has been spent watching my 62 year old sister die from aggressive cancer just two weeks after diagnosis. She never smoked, didn't drink alcohol, wasn't into junk food and not someone I would call obese.
Despite the war on smokers, industry and fat people, cancer is rising, not falling, and we are still no nearer to finding a cure. As long as lobby groups using charity status as a front continue to play politics using junk science, more people will say goodbye to loved ones while nothing is really done to end cancer for good - that is what needs eradication.
The shocking truth is cancer does not discriminate. It does not care if you smoke or not, if you are fat or not, if you are poor or not. The enemy is those who urge contempt against those who enjoy their life in whatever way they choose knowing that ultimately life is for living because we will all be dead soon enough.
Very sorry to hear that, Pat.
Sorry for your loss, Pat.
Re cancer, I find it telling that the government and their sock puppets prefer to blame the victim, regardless of their personal health history, rather than go after more obvious culprits, such as employers who run unsafe workplaces.
I suspect that the majority of cancers are ultimately industrial in origin, rather than down to personal 'lifestyle choices'. Certainly, one side of my family have been involved in the Salvation Army since around 1900, so haven't smoked or drank in generations, yet each new death I hear about amongst them is from cancer.
In practice, governments who like to proclaim themselves socialists or free marketeers similarly lack the moral fortitude to go after the sort of cost-cutting employer who contributes to party funds, rather than pay some clueless sock puppet public funds to heap insult after insult on ill people who can't hit back.
Thanks Simon. X
I’m so sorry to hear that, Pat. Take care of yourself at this sad time.
As MG says, above, it doesn’t seem to occur to these fanatics that maybe the reason why year on year, more and more people are diagnosed with, and are often dying from, cancer despite falling rates of smoking, is that they’ve been barking up the wrong tree for all these years, desperately clinging onto their wishful thinking that people give themselves cancer by “living wrong,” thus removing the drive for researchers to discover the real cause/s of this terrible disease. For all CRUK’s heartstring-tugging adverts about how much progress they’ve made and how determined they are to “find a cure,” the fact remains that in over a century of their existence in one form or another, cancer is still killing people, they still don’t know what causes it and despite throwing their weight behind smoker (and, now drinker and sugar-lover) persecution, the numbers are still rising. Which, to be honest, is a pretty poor showing for around 100 years of “research” and, if people could only look at them objectively, rather than through their tear-stained, rose-tinted spectacles, it would surely look uncomfortably as if they’ve probably been looking in the wrong place all this time. If a private company had been hired to achieve something, they’d have been fired if they’d failed after around five years max – CRUK have been allowed to plod on uselessly for a whole century and they still haven’t achieved their stated goal! One might almost wonder if there’s a vested interest in them never actually finding a cure. Because, after all, if there was no more cancer, then there’d be no more need for “cancer research,” would there? And what would happen to CRUK then, I wonder?
Just sayin’......
I'm very sorry to hear about your sister Pat. My commiserations.
Personally i think the main cause of cancers, particularly lung cancer is diesel fumes.