A North West branch of CAMRA issues a monthly newletter which is read by 7,000 subscribers. Guess who was kindly offered a little spot in their latest offering which has begun to be circulated around Manchester and Stockport ale-houses?Please do go read the final draft, settled upon after the editor cut out (two small) bits he didn't like. Comments are very welcome.
14 comments:
Crosshairs surely
best regards
A Pedant
Excellent piece!
Amazing how most people nowadays are afraid to say NO.
Excellent article, but I don't think the typical Camra member will be sympathetic. They are generally a bit Asbergers and nerdy and far too logical to smoke. Usually quite decent and harmless, though.
Anon again, s/b Aspergers
Are you the new Mudge?
Very well written. Nice to see that it plays by our rules; factual with reference to sources. It's a shame the bansturbators play by no rules or those of the gutter.
I have a bit of aspergers myself, and I smoke. It helps me keep my mind running in circles, churning ideas over and giving it deeper, more concentrated thought than if I were not to smoke, the way some of us mildly autistic, sometimes brilliantly clever, asperger sufferers respond.
Be interesting to see how this works out, because if you do a sociological analysis on the IanB Scale, a scale of Puritanism which I invented several seconds ago, CAMRA are a heavily puritan social formation. Puritans come in a number of guises, and can, on the surface seem to be promoting something notionally libertine, such as imbibing an intoxicant. Nudists are another example of a puritan formation that you have to look more closely at to see it. Try bumming a fag in a nudist camp and see the reaction you get.
The thing about the average CAMRAman is that he's after this *pure* unadulterated ale experience; ale is healthful and nourishing and natural, not like artifical, chemical, adulterated keg beer. Hence the general CAMRAman support for the smoking ban; the solitary purpose of a pub is to supply healthful nourishing ale, so tobacco smoke is an unnecessary and distracting impurity in the experience. On the IanB scale, they score a 10, I'm afraid.
As a result, they see themselves as on the side of the angels and are entirely unable to understand what's heading their way.
"Excellent article, but I don't think the typical Camra member will be sympathetic."
Very likely not, but the article is consciously intended as a bit of a provocation. After all, nothing was ever achieved just by preaching to the converted.
Maybe IanB would like to repeat his comments on the original article ;-)
A Counterblaste to Tobacco - 1604
King James I of England
"Thus having, as I truste, sufficiently answered the most principall arguments that are used in defence of this vile custome, it rests onely to informe you what sinnes and vanities you commit in the filthie abuse thereof.
First, are you not guiltie of sinnefull and shamefull lust? (for lust may bee as well in any of the senses as in feeling) that although you bee troubled with no disease, but in perfect health, yet can you neither be merry at an Ordinarie, nor lascivious in the Stewes, if you lacke Tobacco to provoke your appetite to any of those sorts of recreation, lusting after it as the children of Israel did in the wildernesse after Quailes?
Secondly it is, as you use or rather abuse it, a branche of the sinne of drunkennesse, which is the roote of all sinnes: for as the onely delight that drunkards take in Wine is in the strength of the taste, and the force of the fume thereof that mounts up to the braine: for no drunkards love any weake, or sweete drinke: so are not those (I meane the strong heate and the fume) the onely qualities that make Tobacco so delectable to all the lovers of it?"
"a branche of the sinne of drunkennesse, which is the roote of all sinnes"
Rose
Excellent piece, DP. Concise enough to be easily digested but makes all the points and supplies references. Nice work.
I like it! Well written too.
Oo-er, Ian! Yes, I suspect that "bumming a fag” in a nudist colony might well result in a negative response, but I’m not sure that would be entirely due to anti-smokism!
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