Very occasionally I mention smoking.

While I touched on the subject a couple of days ago, I feel compelled to return to it again as this is a special occasion.

Yesterday I was mooching around and came across an article which was highlighted by Dick Puddlecote amongst [many] others.  The reason it's special is that I laughed out loud when I read it.

People in Wales who work from home are to be banned from using electrofags while they are working.

Why?

What possible reason could there be for this move?

Imagine the scenario – you are beavering away at your desk in the back room, with no one else in the house and you take out your electrofag for a quick puff and immediately you are breaking the law?  Even more idiotic, you have knocked off for the evening and the missus and yourself are quietly watching television when the phone rings – it's a call from a customer, so instantly you have to fling your electrofag into a bucket of water otherwise you could land in court?  Presumably your misses can carry on vaping away, or maybe not?  The proposed ban doesn't mention the wee woman.

Why?

Apart from giving me a laugh, what justification could they possibly have for this surreal suggestion?

Now the only reason I can think of for this strange behaviour is that the Welsh gubmint have discovered that electrofags can somehow affect all the electronics around them.  So you spend your day producing a very impressive Powerpoint presentation to send on to your client, and as soon as he opens it he is immediately enveloped in lethal vapour which has somehow infected the files.  If you chat to a client on the phone, then sneaky little electrofag zips into the phone line and your client promptly develops cancer.  Even if you use a mobile phone, that impish electrofag is not to be outdone – it simply modulates itself onto the carrier wave and your client is toast.

But there is a problem here.

There you are, slaving away on a programming project and diligently not vaping in case you infect your code or get caught by the Vapour Patrol and end up in prison.  You decide to take a quick break so you spark up your electrofag and do a quick bit of surfing for porn.  How does your computer know that the porn is not work related?  Surely you are going to infect all your favourite porn sites, because your computer thinks you are doing some research for that payroll project you're supposed to be working on?  Will the rest of us have to install anti-vapour software to protect ourselves?

I confess I am baffled by that one.

Things are a bit simpler here in Ireland.  Here there is mention of a ban on smoking at home altogether.  At the time of writing, nearly half the people say that's a brilliant idea which just goes to show how the Irish love to be state controlled and to be ordered around for their own good.  The Irish are proud to be insane whereas the Welsh are still trying to prove it?

On a saner note, here's another soothing eighteen minutes of our John explaining why us saner people in Ireland object to being classed as second class citizens because of our sanity.