Not much time to blog lately but so much going on. Here are some noteworthy articles, blog posts, and forums from the www. This blog should be more active with analysis and commentary in March.
How does that make you feel ?
An ongoing discussion in a British MP’s blog about plain cigarette packaging and so much more!
The campaigns for taxing sugar are getting ever increasingly aggressive.
An article written by a green socialist author about the corporate interests of smoking bans and smoker de-normalization sparked controversy with some of the members of the party who even called for censorship. A long but must read article and the comments that follow.
A farmer faces maximum penalties of $13,000 in fines or 2 1/2 years in jail for selling to customers milk they prefer to consume and willingly buy.
So when can we expect extortionist taxes and public bans on networking?
The City of Ottawa has undertaken an aggressive campaign to ban smoking in public parks and patios albeit public opinion is mostly against it.
The Cleveland Clinic in the U.S.A. (one among many employers) no longer hires anyone who has traces of cotinine (the by-product of nicotine) in their urine. This policy includes smokers, users of nicotine replacement therapy and e-cigarettes. A policy that has sparked big controversy. Read about it here: Opposing view: Why we won't hire smokers here : Not hiring smokers crosses privacy line and listen to more opposing views here : Issues around bans on hiring smokers
Now that the precedent was set with smoking, anything and everything can be compared to it to create the necessary emotional effect.
The Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit now declare that there hasn’t been any global warming in 15 years!
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3 comments:
Glad to see you back!
Keep having a go at Williams. I notice that he has just responded to a comment, so someone must be reading them, if not him personally. Probably using an assistant.
Oh he's reading alright, although he probably doesn't know what hit him!
Iro
I wrote a poem about the injustice heaped on smokers by anti-smoking policy makers.
CIGARETTE
By Bruce V. Bracken
I'm sorry that you've been put out to freeze,
But I needed your mouth and lungs.
In the sixty-three years that I have known
Your pulmonary system, like a lover knows
The intricacies between a lover's thighs,
I only wanted to make your life exciting.
Us cigarettes, we have a suicide mission,
An addiction to air that can only be
Satisfied while on fire, incrementally ash.
Think how suffocating, to have no room to
Breathe in that pocket-sized cellophane-wrapped
Coffin with your nineteen sisters.
I was with you at seventeen, a celebration
Of legally watching your first x-rated movie.
I was the red-hot exclamation point
After the red-hot declarative statement.
I was the laser-pointer focus you needed,
To write that novel, that screenplay, that manifesto.
Now here you are, eighty years old,
Put out in the alley like the day's garbage,
Like a Montgomery black man outside of a
White hospital -shh!- they won't call it bigotry,
But standing high for public health gives you
The privilege to not be too pure in your motives;
You just have to know better how to live others' lives.
When you break down the cost of one
Carton into its constituencies,
Take out the taxes and the surcharges
(The political whoring), the profit off of
One carton is thinner than the mouth-end
Of the prime minister's cigarette holder.
Think what mercy you could bribe your way into,
With all that you paid in taxes and surcharges;
The privilege you could buy, just to use your lungs
Anywhere, anytime, and any way that you want!
Let me tell you stories I've heard from distant sisters
About the purity of public lungs when the cameras stop;
The governor if the Health Board undresses
Two packs a day, like an expensive mistress.
They grow cherries as the hang from the lips
Of public health activists, like virginity
In reverse, because like any activist will tell you,
It's important for the élites to not be too pure.
Mind you, I make no claims to any virtue.
I'm a kamikaze succubus - addicted, like you
-To that which will kill me, and leave me to waste.
But if it's me you've worshipped, loyal to a brand
On the inside of your throat, let me say that
You sacrificed your life to live -
No less than a mountain climber or an aerialist;
That you chose what you sacrificed to.
You owned the air you breathed - as did I.
Now, as I leave you in a last puff of smoke,
I salute you, and pray to the cold air
That they not burn your cold body...
...like a cigarette.
Copyright 2012 Bruce V. Bracken
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