The new Stasi
I came across a little item yesterday.
It was at the bottom of a post by Dick Puddlecote, almost as an aside to the main topic. It was a passing reference to Aberdeen Council going Smoke Free.
We have heard before about places going "smoke free" [but presumably not banning cars or cooking?] but this one is that little step further, pushing back the boundaries of freedom by another few yards.
Normally "smoke free" areas are around places like hospitals where they stick up little pompous signs and employ some pimply job seeker to strut aroundin a uniform, whinging at any smoker they can find.
Not so Aberdeen Council….
Advisory signage is in place and extensive work continues to ensure employees across all services and locations, as well as partners, tenants, visitors and residents understand and follow the policy. Individuals are accountable for monitoring implementation of the policy on-site and staff must report anyone not complying. Pocket-size prompt cards are available to help staff approach someone smoking on site in a non-confrontational way. For smokers, reusable pocket ashtrays are available and support to stop smoking has also been offered.
"Individuals are accountable for monitoring implementation of the policy on-site and staff must report anyone not complying"?? So the Council are now demanding that individuals and staff do their policing for them? Using staff is dispicable enough but individuals? In other words, tenants and others are now being ordered to dob their neighbours and friends in it? Someone has been reading up on Stasi tactics?
"Pocket-size prompt cards are available to help staff approach someone smoking on site in a non-confrontational way"? So someone who would normally be happy to mind their own business now has instructions on how to stick their noses into someone else's business? Or is it that when a smoker is about to tell them to mind their own fucking business, that a wave of the little card causes to smoker to become all meek and apologetic?
These evil little swamp-rats want to put smoking "out of sight, out of mind and out of fashion". They want to replace it with informers, distrust and enmity. By introducing such policies, not only are they bringing smoking to the forefront of people's minds but they are turning worker against worker and trying their best to breed a coterie of informers, busybodies and sneaks. Fucking wonderful!
Aberdeenshire Council is taking this positive step to show that smoking is now not the norm, hoping to reduce the appeal of smoking, especially to the younger generation, so that it becomes a thing of the past.
It's not about health.
It's about hatred and control.
I hate swearing.
Little fuckin shits.
Just when I think they cooudn't possibly sink any lower, they prove me [once again] to be wrong. They really are evil.
What these evil little swamp-rats are doing is making smoking a symbol of rebellion. Smoking is now a quick, easy and highly visible way of giving Big Brother the middle finger. So is leaving butts everywhere. Fuck 'em!
Smoking is becoming "cool" for the rebellious, from teenager to pensioner. And we all know who's to blame!
Makes you wonder why smokers aren’t protected under the “hate crime” banner.If you happen to be anything but Caucasian,have secret yearnings to be gay or lesbian,believe in anything except Christianity ,the new laws protect you from anyone daring to even think yet alone hold any differing views.Yet smokers are treated like lepers even when they contribute billions in taxes for the luxury of being abused and kicked around by present day Nazis,who then demand others do their dirty work for them.The most depressing aspect is that these imbeciles actually think that they are in the right and have the authority to act against smokers in this way.Two World Wars and our society has degenerated to this .
Smoking bears quite a few similarities with religion. Both are "lifestyle choices". Both can be changed or dropped by an individual if he or she so wishes. Neither are essential to life. Yet freedom of religion is heavily protected while smoking is heavily penalised. Religious discrimination isn't tolerated yet discrimination against smokers is actively encouraged. Does that make any sense?
These evil little swamp-rats want to put smoking "out of sight, out of mind and out of fashion".
Think you've just about got it covered there.
They don't want to see us. They would rather we didn't exist. Maybe they should pluck their eyes out?
I coughed up £4.95 for my last pocket ashtray.
If they’re giving them away, that’s incentive enough to light up!
Take up smoking a pipe. Very little ash. No ashtray required except for pure fine ash. Tap a pipe out on the pavement ad there is nothing there for people to scream about.
I've just been to my local hospital which has numerous, very expensive signs forbidding smoking anywhere in the hospital grounds, and I've scattered over 2 kilos of fag-ends around the car parks, the entrances and the Ambulance entry bay.
Makes the buggers think.
Fuck 'em all!
Two kilos? Jayzus but you're a fierce heavy smoker! Fair play.
I’ve always rather liked someone’s idea, mooted some years ago, of importing small numbers of old cigarette-ends inside these ghastly “smoke-free” utopias and leaving them in places like the loos or in unmonitored corners, trodden on as if recently-smoked. All the better if they’ve got really twitchy about it and installed highly-expensive smoke detecting equipment. They’ll spend hours (and get into endless arguments with smoke-detection companies, who will be called out time and again to test and re-test their perfectly functional equipment) trying to work out why all their fancy smoke-catching gizmos have so obviously failed. And the “no-smoking” signs will get gradually bigger and bigger and bigger until, eventually, they’ll cover a whole wall and be regarded by even the most dedicated anti-smoking visitor to be comically huge and OTT. And still those butts will go on appearing … after all, no-smoking rules aren't the same as no-littering rules, now, are they?
Here is a better idea for you….
How about producing aerosol canisters containing the rich smell of cigarette smoke? Walk into a crowded area and give the nozzle a squeeze and then stand back and watch the resulting panic as they frantically search for the evil smoker.
The more I think about the more I think it would work. They couldn't ban the aerosols without banning perfume, air "fresheners" and a load of other aerosols. And there is no smoking [or vaping] involved?
The Council have issued an order but have forgotten what an order is. It is a request to complete a service upon expectation of payment.
Thre is a simple response. Since minsitering to smokers is not in their contract, they (the workers) must give notice that they will accept this additional work but that in the absence of a pay rise or consultation they will be setting their own terms. Then start sending invoices.
"I have completed your order (ie a service which you have requested) ie I have given a card to a smoker after approaching him in a non-confronataional way. Herewith enclosed my invoice for services rendered."
If the workers have any sense thay'll issue cards to each other – several hundred a day – then charge the council for completing their order. This is a better approach because in the Council's inhumane and psychopathically callous opinion they should attempt to preach the evils of tobacco to – for example – a bereaved father who's standing outside a hospital calming his nerves with a smoke after hearing his son's been killed in a motorcycle accident. I would charge my employers a thousand pounds for this service of completing their order which would require diplomacy of superhuman skill, and also sue for the probable subsequent dentist's bill.
Maybe set up a little club of council smokers? They can all [repeatedly] snitch on each other and present a massive daily bill each to the council? Like a lottery syndicate?
Exactly, they could spend the day handing each other the same card back and forth at a tenner a time.
Smoking tobacco is unpleasant for those who do not smoke it. That's most of us.
And how often do you experience it? A few seconds per exposure as you walk down the road?
There are a lot of things that are "unpleasant". Perfume, noisy mp3 players, umberellas poking you in the eye, people yakking out loud on their phones. All those things I find unpeasant but I'm man enough and tolerant enough to put up with them. I am certainly not narrow minded enough nor mean spirited enough to demand they be made illegal anywhere.
” Pocket-size prompt cards are available to help staff approach someone smoking on site in a non-confrontational way”
I propose another pocket-sized prompt card with the succinct non-confrontational message "Piss off, please". Maybe have two, one with a yellow background to be shown first and then a red one only to be used if they ignore the first….
It would be multi-functional for use in other situations such as when one is sitting quietly in a hotel lounge reading one's book, with the other-half also quietly reading, and some thoughtless individual comes along plonks herself next to you and dials up several members of her family, one after the other on her mobile, her voice at fog-horn pitch telling them each that she had no signal yesterday. Obviously, we were delighted to hear her news.