clipped from www.independent.co.uk “Smokers’ groups and manufacturers have condemned government proposals to clamp down on cigarette vending machines and packets of 10 in an attempt to stop children and young people smoking.”

The NannyNazis are rapidly running out of ideas in their campaign to “de-normalise“ smoking.

These latest ideas are just fucking daft. They won’t have any effect on youth smoking, other than to make it more appealing. It’ll be a challenge to get your hands on a packet of fags - and the guy with the fags will get “respect”.

I’ve never once said that smoking is a good thing, indeed I think we should use all the available existing laws to stop young people from buying tobacco.

We have good enough laws in place - just enforce them. Any retailer found to be selling fags to minors should lose their licence to sell tobacco - no questions, no appeals just take the licence away. And the same goes for drink, by the way.

Scotland has increased the legal age to buy tobacco to 18 - good I say.  But once you reach 18 then you’re free to choose whether you smoke or not - in exactly the same way you decide to climb mountains or not or drive very fast motor bikes or not.

These are all risky activities but we should all have the choice about which risks we want to take in life.

As far as banning fag-machines is concerned I couldn’t give a fuck! They’re a complete rip-off anyway and I’d be delighted to see the greedy bastards who operate them out of business.

No branding? So what, I don’t smoke the packet so a plain white one is fine by me. Actually leaves more room to doodle on it - unless they cover it with pictures of dying people or diseased organs.

Many great inventions started as a scribble on the back of a fag packet!

Hiding them under the counter? Sounds OK to me…

…Or am I supposed to feel like a dirty old pervert when I go into a shop and surreptitiously ask for 20 in a plain bag please!

This is de-normalisation at work.

So no, I’m not one of the pro-smokers complaining about the latest ravings. I don’t care - these measures are bound to be completely pointless and will do nothing to stop youngsters seeing smoking as ‘cool’.

And anyway, how will they roll a decent joint with out some baccy.

Maybe they’ll just skin-up with pure grass instead - looks like it’ll be easier for them to get a hold of than tobacco.

…not as we do!

Fucking typical, the leeches sitting in Strasbourg and Brussels only managed to keep their own smoking ban going for a month before giving up and ordering “sealed” smoking rooms for the European Parliament.

Why?

Because the ban, only implemented on 1st January, was widely ignored!

Well there’s a message for all we sheep who quietly went to the slaughter in Scotland last year. Perhaps if we’d all just ignored the ban then the idiots who rule us might have seen sense and implemented a more equitable law.

Absolute bans are always bad and we should have gone for a system whereby owners had to declare their premises as smoking or non-smoking - one or the other. A simple plaque outside the main entrance would have left the patron with a choice.

So England, not long for you!

You’ll soon get used to the sterile, empty pubs (before they close down), the huddles of piss-heads standing on the pavement and the stench of Body Odour so bad that many pubs and clubs in Scotland have to pump perfume into their air conditioning to make the place bearable!

Oh yes, so far we’ve seen a net increase of about 5% in tobacco consumption in Scotland - what an achievement!

We used to protest about things when I was a lad - now we just seem to accept anything from the dolts we vote into our parliaments. Time for a change methinks!

EU legislators disobey own smoking ban | Oddly Enough | Reuters.co.uk

Well, that was an unqualified success then, wasn’t it?

The NannyNazis have managed to take smoking out of an adult environment, namely pubs, and increase the number of children being exposed to smoke in the home. Well done! And no doubt the amount of unregulated drinking in the home has also increased.

And just to cap it all the number of fags sold has increased by 5%!

Cigarette sales rise 5% - Times Online

For me this isn’t about smoking, it’s about freedom to do as you want as long as you don’t hurt anyone else, it’s about choice. Smoking is obviously not a smart thing to do but then neither is playing rugby or climing bloody mountains!

The legislation, if needed at all, should simply have made publicans declare their premises as smoking or no smoking and the market would have sorted this mess out.

If there was such a market for non-smoking bars and pubs why didn’t the industry impose their own smoking ban?

So it looks like the Great Scottish Public have stuck two fingers (OK one if you’re a yank) at the nannying, intrusive tactics of the bunch of fucking morons who seem to run this country.

OK, we know that our masters have fuck all to do and here’s their latest little breeze. It’s being proposed that alcohol companies should not be allowed to sponsor music gigs and festivals as this is contributing to binge drinking - my arse!

The whole point of going to a festival is to get off your face and have a couple of days away from these interfering wankers and I don’t see many festival goers suddenly deciding to go tee-total just because the festival isn’t sponsored by a drink company. “IrnBru in the Park” anyone?

When will they realise that the answers to society’s problems will not be found by banning things?

As for the binge drinking thing - I remember well (quite well) my teens in the 60s and 70s and we were binge drinking then - so what’s new?

So just get off our backs and get on with doing the things we want you to do - fix the roads, sort out the bloody awful health service, bring back the belt in schools, hang fucking child murderers…