Are you listening, Rishi?
Saturday, October 21, 2023 at 13:50 A friend has reminded me that it was ten years ago this week that I took part in a debate hosted by one of the world's oldest debating societies.
Founded at Durham University in 1842, the Durham Union Society holds weekly Friday night debates on topical issues.
Ironically, in view of Rishi Sunak’s recent announcement, the motion on Friday October 18, 2013, was ‘This House would ban all tobacco products'.
Opposing the motion with me was Nick Barton, a retired headmaster and a tutor at Durham. As I wrote at the time:
What a lovely man. He brought with him a number of pipes and snuff boxes that have passed down through his family, including a pipe that was smoked on the battlefield in the First World War.
He spoke about them, and the pleasure and comfort they had given several generations of his family. He spoke quietly - albeit with a twinkle in his eye - and kept it personal. It was affecting, and effective.
In contrast our principal opponent, Dr George Rae, chairman of the North East BMA, bombarded us with so much information it was hard to keep up or take him seriously after he insisted he was against the nanny state.
The floor contributed some interesting points and questions, but what I remember most was the good-humoured atmosphere, and I sensed the debate was going our way.
Durham Union Society debates are decided by ‘acclamation’ - that is, the biggest roar of support from the chamber - and it was following this process that the chairman (a self-confessed smoker!) announced that the motion to ban all tobacco products had been defeated.
The question is: are you listening, Rishi?
Reader Comments (1)
Rishi should listen because since he declared he was nicking someone else's idea to criminalise smokers, his party has tanked in the polls and at elections. The party will be slaughtered at the next GE and be out of power for the next 20 years. There is no hope, the Conservative Party's life support was switched off by Rishi.
Labour never won a national election following the blanket smoking ban that put so many people out of work, closed down long running businesses, and stigmatised and excluded hard working law abiding people who refused to bow down to the new Metropolitan ideology that wanted rid of anything that did not fit the Blairite vision of the future.
However, Labour will win the next election. Not because people want them but more because they want to give the Tories a well deserved kicking for the betrayal of their leaders, who wanted to shrink the Nanny State, and give some power back to the voter who just wanted to get on with life without being bullied and overtaxed.
The voter who was promised a new dawn, by Boris and then Truss, where everyone's views would be considered, and not just over paid activists and lobbyists installed in the DoH to push the little people around, were let down by Rishi and his band of backstabbers and now they're angry which is reflected in the appalling results at by-elections.
As it stands, we all know that voting is useless and worthless because in these authoritarian and oppressive times, the only levelling up that any party asks us to vote for is to flatten to the ground any opposing voices, opinions or lifestyles not approved by the Metropolitans of the all powerful Bully State.