Smokefree People

At the Telegraph, Ed West has been discussing highly-paid public sector non-jobs. He's particularly bothered by this one ... over £50k for a local authority anti-smoking pecksniff-in-chief.

Head of Policy, Innovation & Development, Smoke Free
at NHS Bristol £53,256 to £65,657 per annum + Benefits

What I don’t understand is this – smoking is banned everywhere in Britain, from the restaurants of Land’s End to the pubs of John O’Groats. What possible justification can there be for “Smoke free”?

It's a valid question, but is based on the presumption that the ridiculous smoking ban was truly imposed because of the need for bar workers' health to be protected. As we all know, truth-telling tobacco control advocates are as rare as rarer than unicorn shit, and the only talk since July 2007 has been about how wonderful the ban is because it is forcing smokers to quit.

The operative word there is 'forcing', because what Ed's soon-to-be highly-paid anti-smoking tosspot is being paid to deliver, is not smokefree buildings, but smokefree people.

And he will, on appointment, instantly become as alien to a truthful statement as current ASH muppets like Deborah Arnott. Here, for example, is a perfect illustration that if Debs informs you that she likes your Peugeot 106, you're probably driving a Range Rover.

Second-hand smoke may harm health outdoors

The new study, by researchers at Georgia University in the US, assessed the levels of a nicotine by-product, cotinine, in non-smokers exposed to second-hand smoke outdoors.

They found levels were 162 per cent greater than in those who were not exposed.

Amanda Sandford, from the anti-smoking charity Action on Smoking and Health (Ash), said:

"Although more research needs to be done to verify the findings of this initial study, it shows that further restrictions on smoking outdoors, such as smoke-free cordons around doorways, may be necessary to protect employees who are required to work in places where people are smoking."

Of course, Debs knows full well that the study shows that there is no danger whatsoever, she just chooses her words in such a way as to make lazy journalists, and gullible sheep-minded readers, believe that there is.

The true conclusions of this study were reported by Time Magazine yesterday.

Levels rose by 162% among students hanging out at the bar, 102% among those at a restaurant, and 16% in the control setting. Yet, in spite of the shocking statistics, overall levels of exposure for all three areas remained relatively low, and would be classified as "background" level, according to measures established by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

In other words, you're more likely to die from the shock of seeing an image of Deborah Arnott's quite hideous face on a web page than you are from passive smoking outside.

They will keep pushing this line though, based on another of the quite breath-taking anti-tobacco lies. That being the oft-repeated whopper that "there is no safe level of exposure to second hand smoke" which has taken in gormless politicians from California to the Commons. Again, if you believe that, I'd stay away from the screenings of the movie 2012 if I were you, or else you'll soon be jumping off of Beachy Head, in a blind panic, for no good reason.

The whole gargantuan edifice of anti-smoking rhetoric and finger-wagging is sent down from corrupt fuckknuckles in Westminster and Brussels, financed by a quite staggering waste of an eye-watering sum of our tax money, and embellished by the lies of a stadium-load of rancid, mendacious, tobacco-hating, state-paid weasels ... like the one Ed West has found.

Over £50k to be a hectoring cunt, eh? Ain't Labour's bloated public sector grand.