the brilliantly leaping gazelle

Good news! In the less than three months after taking power, Plonker is really making headway in delivering on his election pledge to change Britain. And whilst he may lack many qualities, ambition certainly isn’t one of them.

He wants to ban death.

Specifically, the ones caused by smoking. Commenting on reports that the government is seriously considering a ban on smoking in some outside spaces, he said “My starting point on this is to remind everybody that over 80,000 people lose their lives every year because of smoking. That is a preventable death, it’s a huge burden on the NHS and, of course, it is a burden on the taxpayer.’

Mmm. 80,000? Thats a wonderfully round number isn’t it?  Are all those deaths caused directly by smoking – cancer, lung disease or spontaneous human combustion – or were there other, more primary causative factors? Are we to believe that all of those 80,000 led lives comprised solely of healthy diets, plenty of sleep and exercise, had no stress or anxiety issues and basically lived the life of the idle super rich?

 And let’s not forget, we’ve been here before. Remember how in the dark days of Covid, the BBC would publish the daily death tolls from Covid on its website? But in much smaller print it would then confuse matters by adding that they were deaths that had occurred within 28 days of a COVID vaccination, essentially taking two possibly unconnected events – having the jab and then dying within 28 days of that – and using that as somehow evidence of a causative link. So it didn’t matter if you were hit by a bus, some masonry fell on your head or you were gorged by a bull, if it was 28 days after having had a Covid vaccine, it was Covid that did for you.

You may think that I’m making light of this, but perhaps Covid is more involved in smoking deaths than it might appear. ‘Almost 2.5 million Britons have not been screened, tested or treated for cancer because the Covid-19 pandemic has led to “enormous disruption” of NHS care for the disease, experts have warned.’, reported The Guardian citing figures from Cancer Research UK.

The article goes on to quote various studies, reports and estimates which all suggest that the then governments exhortation to the public about protecting the NHS may have had disastrous unintended  consequences. That a delay in getting diagnosed might have had resulted in treatment being started too late to be effective.  

Obviously deaths from cancer can be minimised, but the idea that death is preventable is a dangerous nonsense because, as Jim Morrison said, ‘No-one gets out of here alive.’ We are all going to die. It is the only absolute in life. Knowing this, we have a duty to ourselves to enjoy our brief period of life as much as we can without harming others. And if that involves smoking, great. 

Treat adults like adults. People know the risks from smoking. And if they still decide to do it, fine. Life is risk and it can’t be legislated out of existence. I don’t smoke. But if the government succeed in restricting smoking to an such an extent that it becomes a de- facto ban, then eventually they’ll ban something I do.

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In all the discussion surrounding te the recent rioting, politicians and the media have been quick to blame ‘far right racist thugs’ for the violence. As I made clear in my last post, the the term ‘far right’ is a term that is basically a nonsense, and if you thought that that idea was preposterous, this one proposes that the notion that to label all the rioters racist is in itself racist. 

First thing I need to do is to define what racism is. I’ll let the Oxford English Dictionary do that. ‘Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an individual, community, or institution against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.’  

I suggest that the white working class are a clear definition of of a minority racial group because they exist so far removed from the white middle and upper classes so as to be a distinct ethnic group in their own right. The speed with which the rioters were tagged as being racist by those in positions to do s not only underlines this, but also acts to distract attention from other, more pertinent factors. 

To label the rioters as ‘racist’ is to believe in the false assumption that all white people are similarly advantaged and share the same imagined ‘white privilege’. In this fantasy world, no social, economic or political differences exist between classes of white people, and that’s its only the colour of ones skin and not the contents of one’s parents bank accounts, the school one attended or one’s parents connections connections that determine life chances. The only white people who bang on about ‘white privilege’ are the ones who’ve done very well out of it.  

The media, always so keen to accuse someone of engaging in ‘dog whistle politics’, fail to realise that by rushing to judge the rioters as ‘racist’ they are themselves engaging in ‘dog whistle politics’. By doing so, they reassure the public that the rioters have no other motivating factor than simple racism and that they certainly don’t have any deep seated grievances that deserve to be discussed. Of course some of the rioters may hold some racist views, but to suggest that racism was the sole motivating factor that governed their actions is crudely simplistic and simplistically crude.

To argue that racism can only be directed by white people towards non-whites is in itself racist, because its a belief predicated upon nothing more than skin colour. This absurdity is only matched by the belief that there exist no religious or cultural tensions between different ethnic groups. The outbreak of violence in Leicester in 2022, between British Muslims and British Hindus bears this out. 

Indeed, I’d go further and suggest that the white working class man provides a necessary function in todays Britain; he can be safely be ignored or vilified as and when politicians and the media find it useful. Hence the incredibly reductive narrative that the rioters were racist and thus any concerns that they might have can dismissed. 

I don’t know if any of their concerns were valid. But in a culture that is worrying obsessed with denouncing ‘white privilege’ will anyone be bothered to find out?

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Plonker is reportedly an Arsenal fan, which means that he can’t like football that much, but in advocating a smoking ban he’s going for the quick win rather than playing the long game.

There exist in in health the same differences that there do in life, depending on how rich or poor you are.

Earlier this year, a study by the Institute of Health Equity at University College London, using Office for National Statistics figures, found that between 2011 and 2019, over one million people died people died earlier than they would have done if they lived in areas where the richest 10% of the population reside.

According to the Health Foundation a woman born in Wokingham can expect to live 15 more years in good health than a woman born in Blackpool. A man born in Richmond upon Thames can expect to live 17 more years in good health than a man born in Belfast.

This shouldn’t come as a shock. Analysis of health funding by the British Medical Association found that more is spent by the NHS per person in London than anywhere in England. (Health being a devolved matter).

There’s loads more depressing information available online about regional health disparity, the links between longevity and poverty, none of which should surprise anyone.

But yeah, ban smoking. That’s easy. But fixing the entrenched social causes of ill health, properly resourcing the NHS and thinking how those two might be linked, that’s hard. That requires the grown-ups to start acting like gown-ups as opposed to just pretending to be.

And if smoking were banned tomorrow, where would the almost £9 billions it generates in tax revenue come from? This government repeatedly tells us that the public finances are in a parlous state, so why do they want to make them even more so?  Less tax revenue because of doing one thing means having to other things to create that lost revenue. 

But don’t think about that and certainly don’t think about Nazi Germany. Not renowned for its public health measures, Nazi Germany led the first anti-smoking campaign in modern history and was the most powerful anti-smoking movement in the world during the 1930s and early 1940s.

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