They do say that money can't buy happiness. It would seem that they are partly correct. Only the sheer bliss of using one's influence to piss on your fellow man, grinding them into subservient misery for one's own personal gain, truly gives that buzz of satisfaction.However, you still need celebrity, and about £320m to do so, if you are Duncan Bannatyne.
(Red mist-o-meter alert)
And the poor thing just isn't happy yet.
I'll only be happy if smoking is banned
Well, would you credit it? Just what we need right now - yet another selfish, bigoted, closet Nazi from Jockland. Is there something in the fucking water up there? Some severe strain of viral puritanism which turns every kilty into a mouth-frothing paternalist with a sideline in sadistic subjugation of those they consider unclean, once given a badge/microphone/newspaper column?
So, what has this deeply miserable multi-millionaire got to say to back up his anti-social view?
I used to be a smoker.
Ah. I think we know where this is going.
I tried several times to give up, but only lasted a few months before going back. During one of the periods when I was off cigarettes, I went to the pub. Somebody bought a round, then someone passed round a packet of fags. I foolishly took one – I'd had a few drinks – and the next thing I was a smoker again.
You see, an ex-smoker will never be a never-smoker. Ask anyone who has ever quit if they would, deep down, want to smoke just one more fag and they will tell you that the urge never leaves.
The brave will just accept this as a fact of life and get on with being a part of the rich diversity of modern living. Selfish cunts like Bannatyne, however, will demand that the rest of society comply with their personal wish to be free of temptation. Even being 176th on the rich list can't take that nagging desire away when a wisp of smoke errs, like a naughty schoolkid, close to their cowardly nostrils.
Bannatyne has bought into the anti-tobacco movement with every part of his being. So much so, that he is now President of No Smoking Day and a co-opted rep for fake charity, QUIT.
As such, he has been wheeled out by the tobacco bansturbation lobby as they ramp up their activities prior to the third reading of the Health Bill tomorrow. For those that aren't aware, part of Lord 'I'll say whatever the DoH tell me to say' Darzi's wide-ranging legislation is the concealment of tobacco displays and the banning of cigarette vending machines.
The state-funded healthist brownshirts have been furrowing their collective brows on a plethora of media outlets over the weekend, in anticipation of the return to Westminster of the nice-but-dims who will be placing their vacant backsides on the green seats tomorrow.
Labour donor Bannatyne got the Guardian/Observer gig.
Tomorrow, the House of Commons will see the third and final reading of the Health Bill. I believe MPs must support the clause that would ensure that cigarettes being sold in shops must be stored out of sight, though I'm puzzled and concerned as to why so many seem reluctant to back this move.
Arch-businessman Bannatyne doesn't understand why business owners are reacting angrily to potentially lethal costs to their business? Fuck a duck! For chrissakes I hope this guy never gets a commission for a TV show advising businessmen ... sorry, what did you say?
Whether by accident or design, the primary colours used on both the outside of cigarette packets and the shelves they are kept on attract children.
Tobacco companies can't be trusted to make cigarette packets a colour that doesn't work in this way, so they should be put out of sight.
Like I say, swallowed the anti-tobacco lines verbatim. I don't know what colour he is thinking would be acceptable, but then, this tactic has been used over and over again by the righteous. Quite simply, there isn't one. No matter what the purveyors of non-approved products do, it will never be enough.
The non-co-operation ploy was the reason given for the ban on tobacco advertising in the 80s, and is being used right now as the puritans march towards ultimate alcohol prohibition.
The government's "de-normalisation" of tobacco is welcome, but it's taking too long. The Health Bill proposes to restrict cigarette-vending machines in pubs. But they should be banned altogether.
Hey Duncan, you cunt, the vending machine operators are not too happy about this either. Are you, the incredibly gifted business guru, also puzzled about why that would be? Because their business would cease to exist overnight, that's fucking why.
Even smokers don't like them, because they typically give you only 16 cigarettes instead of a normal packet of 20 and cost £6, about £1 more than in the shops.
Smokers don't like them so much, Duncan, you blinkered cock, that the vending industry has been thriving for decades.
Here's a quick economics lesson for you. In business, yeah? There is a thing called supply and demand. With me so far? Vending companies sell their product at a price which is optimal for their profits considering its placement, OK?
For crying out loud, if this guy ever gets to spout his business ideas on TV, we're in deep shit without a rubber ring. Wow! So many hands up all of a sudden. Can you wait till the comments? I'm in the middle of a rant here.
And many pub landlords think the government's halfway-house proposals are unworkable because bar staff would have to check people's age ID before operating the machine by remote control.
Well, bugger me with a beer pump sideways, perhaps I misjudged you, Duncan. You're quite the business saviour, after all. All that checking of ID for bar staff to do. What a bind, eh? I'll bet they will need special training too seeing as they don't DO IT EVERY BASTARD DAY!
Still. Job done. He's had his one-sided view. He has done exactly as ASH, the DoH and the rest of his taxpayer-funded puppet-masters had instructed.
Oh wait, he's barely started ...
In my view smokers who currently stand outside a pub or restaurant having a fag should have to stand at least several yards away from the front door, to save the 79% of us who don't smoke from breathing in their smoke when we go in or out. We should curtail the rights of the 21% and increase their responsibilities towards the 79%. In other words, we should stop them killing us and our children.
Shhhh! That's yet to come, Duncan. ASH must be looking through their fingers at this stuff. It's only on the drawing board for now, you daft sweaty sock! The studies to 'prove' kids will die by walking past a smoker in the High Street haven't been paid for yet!
Studies estimate that about 11,000 people a year die because of passive smoking.
Wrong. It was just one study, by a guy called Konrad Jamrozik of Queensland ... Australia. The anti-smoking knob-chokers had to look to an insignificant bigot from the arse end of the world to come up with anything remotely worrying, and that was about heavy passive smoking. Inside. And even then, he needed a dodgy calculator to produce such nonsense.
This isn't nanny statism, Big Brother, or wrongful interference in people's personal freedoms – it's the right thing to do to protect the health of the vast majority of us who don't smoke from the declining minority who do.
Can you see the approach here? Us and them. It's a deliberate method to point out that smokers are evil, and non-smokers must defend their own kind.
Divisive and evil. But then, what can one expect from a disgusting self-absorbed cock-socket who uses the first person singular pronoun over a dozen times to advance his views on society.
By saying "I want" over and over again, he is apparently benefitting community, tolerance and inclusiveness in our country. Or he could just be a scottish goat-felcher with the tobacco control lobby's bollocks bouncing off his chin. Your choice.
So, has the self-indulgent drivel come to a close yet? Like hell it has.
Smoking should be banned in cars, and particularly any vehicle with children in it.
Duncan. Again, can you please keep to the subject at hand. That's for next week, you caledonian berk.
On a school visit I met a 12-year-boy who wanted to be an athlete who told me that every morning his mother lit up when she was driving to school, even though he'd begged her to stop. He should be able to report her to the police.
Because that was quite effective in 1930s Germany, so it's a proven winner, huh?
Jesus fucking Christ, smokers will be confined to our homes at pain of death soon.
It should also be illegal to smoke at home in front of children.
!!!!!
I accept that enforcing such a law would be difficult, but it would send a message that such behaviour is unacceptable.
Not difficult to enforce at all, Duncan. You're not much of a tobacco-averse loon, are you? It's quite simple, really. Unannounced spot checks from social workers with entry powers to every property in the UK would cut it. Now, where's the problem in legislation as unobtrusive as that, eh?
Some shopkeepers are genuinely afraid of a ban on tobacco displays.
Some? Some? No, you cunt. If not all, it is the vast majority.
But that is because the tobacco industry have been up to their old tricks. They tried to convince pubs that the smoke-free law would drive them out of business so they would lobby against the law.
This is pure cloud cuckoo land. What tricks? The pubs didn't put up any resistance and are now cloing at a rate of 52 per week. The smokefree law, did, quite literally, put most of the 3,000+ that have disappeared since July 2007, out of business. If tobacco companies tried to convince pubs before the previous Health Act, they would have been absolutely spot on.
Now they are doing the same thing with shopkeepers.
If they are, shopkeepers should be extremely afraid. There is now a terrifying precedent from which to draw evidence.
A retailer from the northeast recently went to Ireland to find out the truth and the shopkeepers he spoke to told him that now they had won their displays back from the tobacco companies who controlled them, they were free to promote products that allowed them to make a healthy profit.
Anecdotal, so I shall add my own.
I was on my way out of a newsagent local to my business when I overheard the asian owner chatting to a confectionery rep - just chewing the fat, as one does. I stopped on the way out to listen unobtrusively, pretending to look at the front page of the Daily Sport ... OK, I was looking at the front page of the Daily Sport, but I didn't inhale - too busy listening.
He was regaling how he abhors smoking. His wife and he had never smoked and they wished they didn't have to sell cigarettes. But he had to because the additional purchases were vital to his business. Without cigarette sales, his business would die.
Guess what I initially went in for? And guess what I came out with? Yep, my fags, a Picnic bar ... and a copy of the Daily Sport.
The island's surgeon-general said that he wanted Mauritius to become the first totally no-smoking country in the world. I would like the UK to get there first.
And that is the entire premise of Bannatyne's ridiculous leap into the future. It's what he wants, and therefore it's what MPs should all vote for.
It matters not that Lord Darzi and the Department of Health have been deliberately misleading parliament. It matters not that an entire vending industry will cease to exist overnight. It matters not that convenience stores will undoubtedly close despite there being no evidence whatsoever that the measure will have any beneficial effect.
It's what Duncan wants, and Duncan always gets.
But then again, in Duncan's fantasy world, even the recession is another chance to get extra revenue.
If you've just lost your job there's no excuse for avoiding a work out!
There really aren't words to describe such a self-serving, anti-social turd. But at least I tried.
