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.

So a report has said that the print industry in the UK is not employing enough minorities and their workforces do not adequately reflect the make-up of the population.

This could be good news for ugly lassies trying to get a job as a lap-dancer as I’m convinced they don’t have a workforce that reflects the general population either!

Quotas need to be set so that the ugly and fat are not discriminated against by employers in the Adult Entertainment industry. And what about we blokes? There seems to be 100% discrimination against men working as lap-dancers, it’s a disgrace of epic proportions.

We’ve seen this kind of flawed thinking time and again.

Set quotas for women candidates in elections, more ethnic minorities in the Police, Fire Service etc etc.

Has it never occurred to the Diversity Police that perhaps members of the various minority groups they claim to be protecting may not be applying for jobs in these sectors?

We already have, quite rightly, very effective laws to protect people from racial or gender discrimination and if they need to be used then they should be rather than telling employers that they have to employ certain percentages of minorities.

And anyway why do industries have to have workforces that reflect society?

Should we make sure that we have the correct percentage of stupid people working as doctors? I suppose we’ve already achieved that with politicians.

I’m all for equal OPPORTUNITY but I can’t stand this kind of ignorant social engineering that ultimately sets one group against another by creating victims where there are none.