Fascism and hysteria
Dr Stephen Hall writes: I am an Englishman who retired to rural Ireland five years ago, partly to get away from the nannyism of big government under New Labour. It was a surprise to me that the Irish observed the smoking ban. A colder winter than we had would have shown a different result and there are counties that are more courageous than the bloated east of the country. Ironically, Dublin and the sprawl towns of the east have air pollution and congestion on a Los Angeles scale and all 'smoke' without realising it.
The health argument prior to the Irish ban was specious but the opposition lacked any politician clever enough to stop the bill passing into law and the reign of Bertie Aherne was strengthened in a cheap way a couple of years before Ireland ceases to be a receiving EU state and has to start paying back.
The heroic struggle of proper Irish patriots against oppression was about freedom and every Irish schoolkid is taught that but the 'live and let live' characteristic of the Irish has been undermined by political correctness so smoking was an easy thin end of the wedge. No one noticed that this lovely land was being defaced by rich developers building estates of 'breezeblock haciendas' with tax breaks and probably the infamous brown paper envelopes in Dublin.
The superstructure of complacency in being the first non-smoking state conceals the hull of corruption, neither have tobacco sales fallen in Eire. Clamping down on excessive drinking here would make more sense but that would be too obvious.
More generally, the argument that bar staff must be protected from passive smoking is so weak that only a humourless society would 'buy it'. I was a special education headmaster and worked in prisons too. My choice, and I accepted the risk of assault because I was good at the work and it paid well. Surely a person working in a bar knows that toxic substances are involved in the recreational choices of customers, or are we to believe that bar staff are unusually dim?
Logically it follows that a person chooses a job in full awareness of risks and that blows away the tired argument of protecting workers or are bar staff such an endangered species that we must cosset them? The pompous always use the facile but it becomes sinister beyond a certain point and the first proposal for a total smoking ban was issued by one A. Hitler in a dictat to an elite army unit. It failed.
Are rich societies so bored with no real challenges to face that they have to persecute something, a group, a race, a species or whatever? Anyone who has faced war, adversity or illness has no time for such complacent oppression when so much is rotten beneath the high table would be shocked by this creeping and creepy intolerance and scapegoating.
Think back to Nazi Germany and consider how the Jews were chosen as an easy target so that small men with evil ambitions could obtain mass support and 'legitimate' votes. That same seed of I AM RIGHT AND YOU ARE WRONG is alive and well in rich countries (Ireland's wealth is subsidised) but the thin end has been bashed in under the hinged door.
Will the populous wake up? I doubt it because the choice of some to smoke and do other legal things is squashed by what some psychologists are now calling "choice stress" and the poor victims of this obscene syndrome take pills for it. Take a pill and drive the SUV hither and yon with the smoke of 100 Capstan Full Strength every time the engine is started!
Mad world? I am now old enough to compromise between the freedom the WW2 generation gave us and the misrule of the hypocrites by ignoring the latter unless old artillery is needed. FOREST, count me in.
posted by Simon Clark @ 08:49
2 comments
2 Comments:
I congratulate Dr Stephen Hall for his excellent contribution. I also live in Ireland but am embarrassed to say that I am Irish. I sensed in the ninties that things in Ireland were changing, and not for the better. Certainly the country was becoming more wealthy but pretty soon prices too became higher until now, it seems that certain individuals have gained massive wealth and the majority are less well off than before but are now enslaved.
The best example of this is in employment. By the early ninties when you worked hard, you were a "valuable employee". By the mid ninties as your hard work began to pay dividends for the employer, his profit ambitions (and greed) brought in the numbers men who's task was to maximise profits. That's when the valuable employee turned into a "cost centre". Now, in Ireland, a large portion of our population work for American Global Corporates so we adopted their work practices quickly with the result that the cost centre became a "human resource" by the year 2000.
So a company car is a mechanical/transport resource, the PC on the desk is an I.T. resource and the operator of both is a human resource. By extension, all are replacable and, indeed require to be replaced to keep abreast of progress. The human story is around the couple who marry and mortgage themselves up to 300,000 euro to get a basic house located two hours from their jobs. These human resources are subjected to the new work practices of the human resources department who use the first and second warning technique to get rid of unwanted employees. Our couple cannot afford to lose their home so will do anything, obey any dictate, behave in any manner desired, just to keep their jobs.
So when a well funded powerful elite used political correctness and the smokescreen of employee 'protection' to force through a smoking ban in Ireland, the majority did not have an free opinion on the matter. "If my employer wants me to go out in the rain to smoke then I'll do it". In fact, those seeking to put themselves in line for promotion, came out in favour of the ban (regardless of how they felt about it).
Our free press and media will censor anything that challenges the ban, smoking a cigarette in defiance carries a fine of 3,000 euro (possession of cannabis is 50 euro and a speeding fine is 60 euro) and if you are targeted as a free thinker, you'll never get another job.
So when you read/hear that the ban has been a huge success in Ireland with 137% of smokers in favour of it, read between the lines. It has been a massive con, engineered by a tiny minority for a large profit motive and the success lies in the reality of the exercise in public control by the new social engineers dressed up as caring health professionals.
Oh, and the funders in the Pharmaceutical industry have made their killing and are moving on, maybe to the U.K.
John Mallon
Nice article Dr Hall. I like the maxim 'it is always the pompous that use the facile' - i might have to borrow that. Last week I was in PC World and wanted to get the attention of a person behind the repair counter. A sign on the wall says "Only staff can go behind the counter for health and safety reasons" No it isn't - it is because it is a restricted area or a private area or because you don't want nosey customers seeing the way you chuck customers' computer parts about or eat chips while fixing expensive electronics. But it has nothing to do with Health & Safety. Where did these brain-dean 17 year old 'staff' learn this new vernacular? God I hate this new Britain. Even though as a casual smoker, I am for once please of the nanny state (so as to help me give up) - why can't they just say it how it is - we can't afford to allow you to smoke because it will cripple the NHS - ok that'll do me - it is un-democratic but that is what an elected govt is there for - to make sometimes unpopular undemocratic decisions (like Iraq war). We can judge them in 4 years etc. And these bloody bar staff - who give a toss - get another job. Are they going to ban tandem skydiving? You can't deny that is pretty dangerous? Surely I cannot force a pennyless destitute skydiving instructor to jump out of a plane with me attached to his back in some bourgeoisie folly of the gravitationally-challenge elite.
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