Friday 15 July 2011

Thin ends, wedges.

From The Daily Mail:

Motorists could face prosecution for smoking while their children are in the car, under new proposals.

The move, outlined in the Welsh Assembly, could see Wales becoming the first country in Europe to impose the ban. It would mean drivers who light up at the wheel in England would be breaking the law if they continue as they cross the border...

Tory MP David Davies*, whose constituency in Monmouth sits on the border, also hit out at the move: "I don't condone smoking and everyone knows it is bad for health and can kill people. But this move by the Welsh Government is reaching the stage where smokers are being victimised and that can't be right."


* Not to be confused with David Davis, which has led to all manner of hilarity!

8 comments:

Ross said...

"* Not to be confused with David Davis, which has led to all manner of hilarity!"

I still want you to get an invitation to give a speech or an interview that was intended for Marc Wadsworth.

Mark Wadsworth said...

R, believe it or not, I once received an email from somebody at the BBC asking me if I'd take part in a local radio discussion about some outreach workers in London being sacked (or something like that).

We prattled brightly for a while, I said these workers sounded like a waste of money and so on. She then asked me what I was up to at the moment, I explained that I was UKIP's welfare spokesman and she then promptly dis-invited me (as politely as she could).

Snowman said...

The antismoking bandwagon is, it seems to be, analogous to the crime situation (whereby a relatively tiny number of repeat offenders make life a misery for a much larger number of people).

If a public-spirited loon was to, just say, brutally murder a few dozen bigwigs in the tobacco control industry, that would pretty much be the end of that as genuine antismoker sentiment is a largely manufactured phenomenon.

Snowman said...

seems to be = seems to me.

Smoking makes ur speling bad! Oh noes!

James Higham said...

My dad would have been in jail many times over.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Snowman, thanks for correcting your own typo, which I didn't even notice and didn't detract from your perfectly valid point.

JH, yes, you have mentioned before that you didn't like it when your Dad smoked in the car. The correct course of action would have been to ask him to stop or to at least open his window. My kids always moan when I light up, so I open the window wide and stick my head out and after a few drags I chuck it away. This is how civilised people deal with these matters.

A K Haart said...

Huge numbers of people alive today were brought up in households with at least one parent who smoked. Until recently, huge numbers spent many evenings in smoke-filled pubs.

So where are all the bodies?

Anonymous said...

The bodies are in NHS hospitals and care homes rotting away. Wait till euthanasia becomes legal if you want to see corpses.