Woke at 4.00 as usual and logged on to The Times online and read the screaming headline…
Leading doctors call for ban on smoking in cars
On closer inspection the ‘leading doctors’ – as opposed to the non-leading variety who get up each day wondering which particular bit of medical negligence law they will test that day? – are calling for people who smoke in cars containing children to be banned from doing it. My own view on this is fairly straightforward… if parents are daft enough to smoke in a car while their children are present, idotic enough to feed up their children, like geese on fois gras, until the little darlings are so fat they look like mini zeppelins and are so lacking in any form of parental responsibility they don’t know or care if little Johnny is out committing burglary or other crimes – they really shouldn’t have children in the first place… but there we are.
I don’t have children. I don’t want children and, being honest, there are times when I have ‘dark thoughts’ about wanting to have children banned from pubs and restaurants. This then led me to the idea that in these dark credit-crunch times, we could perhaps introduce a Child Tax so that those who do wish to have children actually pay more tax than those who do not. I explored these thoughts on Twitter – only to be reminded that children are our future because they will work and be taxed later to pay for the old. It was but a short jump in thinking to suggest, by way of response,why wait?…. we should put children to work earlier so we can tax them as well as the parents. I shall write to Osbore and suggest this in case he finds himself a little light on ideas if he is the next Chancellor.
I went off to have coffee and get my smoking back to olympic standards after a bit of a lay off while I was sleeping and, as is my practice, I read a tabloid before starting on the more sane newspapers. Today… it was The Sun – where I learned that doctors are at it again, advising us that there has been a four fold rise in syphilis – due, it seems, to Facebook. I have long suspected that Facebook can give one syphylis of the mind, but I had no idea that ‘poking’ someone on Facebook could lead to syphylis of the sexually transmitted variety. Apparently, “Figures released last month showed that people in Sunderland, Durham and Teesside were 25 per cent more likely to log on regularly.” Log on to get syphilis? I had to read more… and then lost the will to continue living….
But… my energy was renewed when I started reading the next story in The Sun – SCANNER GLAMOUR DIG-DONG
I love those gigantic t**s screamed the headline
The Sun reports, dribbling with righteousness and shoehorning a bit of civil liberties in for good measure about how these machines infringe human rights….
A HEATHROW security man was quizzed by police after ogling a girl colleague “naked” in a new anti-terror body scanner.
Jo Margetson, 29, reported John Laker, 25, after he took her picture with the X-ray gadget and made a lewd comment.
The pervy guard leered and told her: “I love those gigantic t**s.”
And then I discovered from the Sun that Al Qaedr have a new TERROR device – women with exploding breasts. The plan is that female suicide bombers will have their breasts impregnated with high explosive – undetectable to scanners, we are told – and blow themselves up. Male suicide bombers, it is suggested, will be given exploding buttocks. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the story on the online version of The Sun because I would then be able to show you a picture of a pair of breasts fitted with high explosives.
But despair not…. The Sun has other astonishing news…
WEDDING guests watched in horror after a guest shot himself in the head playing RUSSIAN ROULETTE.
The man suffered brain damage and paralysis after a prank went horrifically wrong.
Wedding film of the incident — as a bride and groom celebrated their nuptials — has sparked horror after being posted on the web.
Ever helpful, The Sun saves you the bother of trying to find this delight on the internet by providing the video embeded on the page so you, too, may enjoy the same experience as the happy couple. Astonishing…. The Sun does note…”The unnamed man’s condition was later described as “very poor” after doctors removed a bullet from his skull”
I then met a very amusing guy who has coffee at the same cafe and…. what a small world it is. He asked me what I did for a living. I resisted the urge to say that I was a disgraced MP out looking for a ‘consultancy’ or two – so I told him… briefly. He then told me that his girlfriend had just done the LPC and starts today working for a very well known lawyer – the same lawyer that my ex girlfriend did some work for at one of London’s top firms and where she continues to work. I then asked him what he did – he is a builder and stand up comedian. Excellent way to start the day.
I shall return later to write about some Law news…..
“Figures released last month showed that people in Sunderland, Durham and Teesside were 25 per cent more likely to log on regularly.”
And tomorrow’s story: “Correlation does equal causation, studies show”.
Oh, I do feel like taking up smoking again, if only as some kind of human rights protest! Soon one will be unable to walk through the park past the (fenced-off) swings area fag in mouth. Children are the future, of course: a future where there is not enough food in the world to feed everyone, a future where we have run out of fossil fuels, a future where there is so much rubbish in landfill we cannot move! While I would favour a one-child policy / higher taxes for families myself, we are already in danger of creating “Little Emperors” and that problem would just be exaggerated.
If I smoke in my car and I give a lift to a friend’s child, what will happen? Will I be put on the sex offenders’ register? Will my first born be removed from me at birth? That said, it is probably quite a bad idea to smoke while actually driving a motor vehicle…
On the other hand, the government should be supporting smokers and drinkers: perhaps we can smoke and drink our way out of the economic crisis! I am surprised they didn’t think about taxing mephedrone…
It`s true what is said about all those things that bring in most taxes, petrol, alcohol and tobacco are those where any ban would have been imposed if apart from petrol they hadn`t been part of the history of civilisation. I suppose there`s always been a use for all manner of horse**** and bull****. If only it were solely upper classes and various chinamen in Limehouse who smoked opium like it was in the good old days it could be made legal again and taxed but can`t do that when all manner of riff raff use the stuff.
Why a not a special tax on GPs for every nonsensical proposition proposed on their behalf based on spurious statistics of one child in forty supposedly suffering from asthma caused by passive smoking?
My glass is half full…….must go and top it up.
i think even the most hardened of smoke apologists accept that passive smoking exists and is bad for children. you can’t call ‘nanny state’ on this. jp, i’m calling you out as a flat-earther on that.
that said, i don’t think we can get into banning smoking in various places that are private. if the anti-smoke lobby want a total ban they are just going to have to be honest about it. i wouldn’t let my child have a lift in a car where someone is smoking, but that’s surely as much control as i can expect to exert over someone else’s behaviour.