BBC Agitprop And Year Old "News"

The BBC isn't averse to regurgitating any old nonsense from hyperbolic anti-smoking extremists (see Snowdon for illustrations), but yesterday they excelled even their own superlatively one-sided selves.

First up was a comparison of industry innovator James Buck to the inventors of machine guns, explosives and the atom bomb (comment by Simon Clark here), followed by a montage of adverts which are astonishingly identical to those of any other products in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, but which are now implied to be evil according to the BBC. 

And to top it all off, their desperation to attack tobacco continued today with a special investigation into the idea of licences for smokers. 

If you're a smoker, could you imagine having to apply and pay for a licence to buy tobacco? 

The application process might even include a test to find out if you understood the risks of smoking, and your swipe card licence would limit your tobacco purchases - perhaps to 50 cigarettes per day or less. 

So could a government-issued licence be the best solution to reduce smoking? And how could such a scheme work?

Similarly to the previous articles, there is not even a vague attempt at providing balance with opposing views being presented, simply one dreary airhead after another promoting their mind-bogglingly absurd agenda.

The latter of the three was spewed out by the raisin-faced greaseball himself, Simon Chapman.

Prof Simon Chapman from the University of Sydney is interested in the next generation of truly effective anti-smoking measures.

Which kinda admits that the trouser-stuffing gobshitery he's previously been involved with has never been that effective at all.

I'd comment more on the knuckle-dragging lunacy of his idea, but one hardly needs to when the BBC Have Your Say crowd spotted the multitude of flaws within an hour or so of publication (as did Ken Frost). After it had been ripped to bits with an insulting ease by people who live in that real world which Chapman has little knowledge of, one contributor summed up the case against with consummate brevity.

Some ideas are so stupid it is not worth commenting on

Quite. Especially since it's not even 'news' so shouldn't belong on the BBC in November. Well, not in 2012 anyway, because Chapman first dreamed up his laughable plan in November last year and published his pseudo-science to back it up in May. 

As such, all my thoughts on the matter are available in the two linked articles above. So I'm off out now for a regular curry evening with our now-retired accountant, who is 84 but has fewer cobwebs on him than the 'news' the BBC published today.