[jambutty]

OK! WillowTheWisp you’ve found cigarette smoke nauseating for 40 years or more. Can you honestly put your hand on your heart and declare that in all that time you have campaigned against smokers or is it as I suggested that you are adding your voice to the rest when in the past you kept silent. That’s called jumping on the band wagon.

I have just read through my post very, very carefully and nowhere does it even hint at suggesting that you force other people to wash their hair. So what was “Did I ever say I was forcing other people to wash their hair?” all about? Oh! I get it. Muddying the waters to deflect from the real discussion.

Nowhere have I suggested that smokers should be able to smoke where they choose and I respect yours or anyone else’s right to declare their own property smoke free or anything else free as they choose. My argument is about the hypocrisy of the anti-smoking lobby as they complain about passive smoking and then drive away in their cars.

I agree entirely that non-smokers should not be subjected to tobacco fumes in restaurants or pubs but if non-smokers have the right not to be infected by noxious fumes then I have the same right not to be affected by lethal vehicle exhaust fumes. I suppose that when I find some overpowering perfumes and aftershaves sickening I have to put up with it.

Why won’t the anti-smokers admit that their use of motor vehicles pollutes the atmosphere far more than tobacco ever has? They won’t because it would mean that they would be grossly inconvenienced if a campaign against the motor vehicle were launched with the same success as the anti-smoking campaign. If the non-smokers are not prepared to be inconvenienced by not having cars then why should I be inconvenienced by not smoking? We ALL have the same rights!

“Why should I have to suffer?” You shouldn’t but why should I suffer your car exhaust fumes if you drive or the fumes from the public transport that you use or the fumes from lorries that deliver food and other goods to the shops where you do your shopping? What makes your rights more important than mine or anyone else’s?

Any argument you can put up against smoking, I can put up the same argument against cars etc. But there are more cars than there is smokers so let majority rule and ban the motor vehicle. Like anyone else I wouldn’t be happy with a ban on cars because I DEPEND on one to get about so if vehicles are not to be banned even though they pollute far more than tobacco smoke, then neither should smoking.

Each property owner should be able to decide for themselves whether to allow smoking or not and let market forces decide if they made the right decision.

Smoking provides billions of pounds for the exchequer pixie and gives employment to those involved in the manufacture, distribution, sale of tobacco products and collection of taxes imposed on them.

So pixie, because you don’t smoke and you don’t drive you don’t contribute to pollution do you? Yet in the very next sentence you admit to using public transport and that does not pollute? Do you shop at shops that get their goods delivered by horse and cart? No! The goods are delivered by motor transport. I assume that you use electricity in your home or gas. Electricity is generated in power stations that burn gas or oil and the pollution from them is second to the aircraft. When you turn on your gas cooker, if you have one, the gas you burn creates pollution, as does the gas used in central heating or gas fires. Have you ever been on holiday abroad and flown there? Aircraft - the greatest polluters of them all.

In a nut shell we all pollute simply by being here and utilising the resources available to us. So what makes one form of pollution more of a target than other forms? Is it not hypocritical to complain about someone smoking and you find the smell nauseating etc whilst at the same time ignoring a smoker’s claim that vehicle exhaust fumes are just as nauseating to them? Of course it is but the self-righteous non-smokers will not admit it and continue in their pompous way.

It’s the ‘holier than thou’ attitude of the anti-smoking brigade that sticks in my craw.

Are there any non-smokers out there prepared to admit that if they want smoking to be banned because of the pollution to their air, they should also campaign just as vociferously against vehicle exhaust pollution? If you don’t mind I won’t hold my breath.