alexknibb/satire

OK, as a smoker I have a vested interest in this topic. That aside, I also have a vested interest as a British citizen.

When the government put the proposals for a smoking ban before parliament for the vote, the three options were as follows:

1. No ban at all.
2. Complete ban.
3. Ban smoking in pubs which serve hot food prepared on the premises.

What? Hot food? What the living Christ has that got to do with smoking? This is a slimy, conniving government that will do anything to get its own way. If the government had put forward the obvious compromise that both smokers and non-smokers would have preferred, i.e. sealed off smoking rooms in pubs, then that would have been a sensible alternative to the first two. Food-related 'compromises' are a nonsense way to ensure the vote for a complete ban came in. And let's not forget that the Labour election manifesto specifically stated that they would only introduce a partial ban. Yep, another promise broken.

There are two other things that really piss me off about the issues surrounding smoking.

Firstly, non-smokers who call smokers 'selfish'. We were the ones who supported a partial ban. You were the ones who wanted all the pubs to be smoke-free completely and cast us out into the cold like social pariahs for doing something we have a legal right to do (and we pay through the nose in tax for).

Which brings me neatly onto my second current Want-To-Scratch-My-Own-Eyes-Out-With-Frustration bugbear. Statistics. Look at the following sentence (the numbers are made up, it's just as an example):

63% of the public support a complete ban on smoking in public places.

Seems pretty cut and dry, doesn't it? Now actually think about it. What that figure doesn't tell you is how vehemently someone feels about it. Out of that 63%, maybe 90% of them feel "well, I'm not really fussed, but it'd be great for me to go into a smoke-free pub". But what if 90% of the people who oppose the ban feel "what the hell? That would a complete violation of my rights and that of the landlords and business owners!"? Statistics are almost always manipulative and don't actually represent a decent cross-section of actual opinion.

Let's take another example, using maybe a less heated debate as our starting point:

80% of people feel that the government pays too much in benefits to single parent families.

Sure, those 80% of people may be a little narked that their taxes are going on people who they perceive are a burden to the state. However, the remaining 20% could be single parents who are desperately struggling to meet their childcare costs, and to hold down a job. People for whom every single pound they can get their hands on is a godsend and helps them to be self-sufficient. Just because 80% think the government is paying too much, should we reduce their benefits?

Next time you see some stats quoted on the news, I urge you to actually think about what they mean, rather than taking them at face value.

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I've just read the other reviews of this site, and some are pretty alarming. One, by 3djelly.stumbleupon.com [3djelly.stumbleupon.com] said simply "all smokers can go to hell". Thanks for that. As we'll be there about 10 years before you, we'll make sure to save you a seat so we can discuss your reasoned, well thought out argument some more. Perhaps over a cigar.