BS: Heart attacks drop by 25% -smoking ban

Subject: RE: BS: Heart attacks drop by 25% -smoking ban
From: Rasener
Date: 24 Sep 09 - 08:24 AM

Do you mean this type of shag SL? Don't look if you get embarrassed easily.

http://outdoors.webshots.com/photo/2074644600066601062ARpFkf

Subject: RE: BS: Heart attacks drop by 25% -smoking ban
From: nutty
Date: 24 Sep 09 - 11:15 AM

You are missing my point TV

People who smoke are likely to die earlier.

Extra health care needed is balanced out by extra income collected via government taxes

Old people dying means less pensions, benefits or care costs to pay

More work for young people

People in work pay taxes

The population in general benefits from letting people die.

Subject: RE: BS: Heart attacks drop by 25% -smoking ban
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 24 Sep 09 - 11:33 AM

Mmmmmmm - now I understand how you came by your Mudcat name! :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Heart attacks drop by 25% -smoking ban
From: Rasener
Date: 24 Sep 09 - 12:00 PM

LOL that was a good en BWM :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Heart attacks drop by 25% -smoking ban
From: Les from Hull
Date: 24 Sep 09 - 12:30 PM

Backwoodsman - you don't win an argument by abusing other people. You are obviously not going to listen to any reasonable argument. If you are going to make a valid point, make it properly, instead of impugning other people's sanity. Anyway, I presume you have never heard of TR Malthus.

Mind you, now that pubs are smoke free, anybody notice you can smell farts and body odours much more. Not to mention people drowning in cheap perfume, a real olfactory assault.

Subject: RE: BS: Heart attacks drop by 25% -smoking ban
From: nutty
Date: 24 Sep 09 - 12:51 PM

Backwoodsman - Population figures show that we now have more pensioners than old people - so you need to put forward a reasoned argument to refute mine

Subject: RE: BS: Heart attacks drop by 25% -smoking ban
From: nutty
Date: 24 Sep 09 - 01:11 PM

Correction

more pensioners than Young people

Subject: RE: BS: Heart attacks drop by 25% -smoking ban
From: Rasener
Date: 24 Sep 09 - 01:55 PM

So what are you suggesting Nutty? That we build gas chambers and send all the old folks there when they reach a certain age?

I would have thought it was better to put a restriction on how many children are born into this world.

Maybe stop giving benefits to women who are having kids just so that they can get benefits.

Its no good looking at the old, you need to look at what the young are doing and maybe all the people coming into this country who we can't sustain and even worse if they keep on shagging and producing children at a level we can't support.

Smoking has nowt to do with your arguments.

Subject: RE: BS: Heart attacks drop by 25% -smoking ban
From: nutty
Date: 24 Sep 09 - 02:08 PM

Nowhere in my comments did I suggest such a thing TV.

Having recently buried an elderly mother who survived her husband by 30 years - I know what is required in caring for the elderly - yet the politicians and medics are hell bent on getting the population to live longer.

Death is a natural consequence of life and personally I would rather die a young smoker than an old dementia sufferer but it has to be a personal choice. And while everyone is applauding the decrease in heart attacks - who is considering the consequence of this.
Certainly not people in this thread.

As for stopping people from having children - China is at present beginning to have to face the consequence of that.
Young people pay the taxes that keep the old people cared for.

Subject: RE: BS: Heart attacks drop by 25% -smoking ban
From: Rasener
Date: 24 Sep 09 - 02:12 PM

I wished my parents had passed away 6 years ago. They lived until they were 91 and 93. My mother died this year in nursing care all alone, almost blind, unable to walk or do anything for herself.

I would rather that people could decide when they have had enough, legally.

Subject: RE: BS: Heart attacks drop by 25% -smoking ban
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 24 Sep 09 - 04:04 PM

Les, nutty - sorry, I thought the smiley gave it away, it was a leg-pull. Ah well, sense-of-humour-bypass surgery I guess, maybe it's reversible? :-) :-)

"You are obviously not going to listen to any reasonable argument"
I've yet to hear a reasonable argument in favour of lifting the ban on smoking in public places. But the argument that allowing, or even encouraging, smokers to kill themselves and their other victims is 'beneficial' in a socio-economic context, and therefore justifiable, is morally bankrupt and completely unconscionable in 21st-Century civilised society (IMHO, of course - YMMV).

"Anyway, I presume you have never heard of TR Malthus"
You presume wrong, Les. I studied economics for three years in the late 60's as part of my professional examination course.

And now I'm gone.

Subject: RE: BS: Heart attacks drop by 25% -smoking ban
From: Rasener
Date: 24 Sep 09 - 04:21 PM

Eh, I am confused. My last post was directed to Nutty. What you on about Backwoodsman?

Subject: RE: BS: Heart attacks drop by 25% -smoking ban
From: nutty
Date: 24 Sep 09 - 04:31 PM

But the argument that allowing, or even encouraging, smokers to kill themselves and their other victims is 'beneficial' in a socio-economic context, and therefore justifiable, is morally bankrupt and completely unconscionable in 21st-Century civilised society (IMHO, of course - YMMV).

Yet that is what the Government are doing with drinkers .....
Ban alcohol and the incidence of liver disease would plummet.
or
Ban underage sex and there would be an immediate drop in deaths from cervical cancer.
or
Ban cars and road deaths would be non existant,
Allow people to live for ever and society would collapse

All I'm saying is look at things in the longer term and they have very different outcomes.

Subject: RE: BS: Heart attacks drop by 25% -smoking ban
From: Smokey.
Date: 24 Sep 09 - 04:55 PM

Backwoodsman - Thanks for your reply. I suspect Hockney is more bothered about keeping his name visible to the great unwashed than he is about 'rights', however nonsensical that concept may be. I'm a smoker, but I don't feel I have any more right to pollute someone's air than they have a right to clean air in the first place. I wasn't in favour of the ban, it was effectively taking away the freedom (not the right) to smoke in pubs, and to me that was as wrong and as ridiculous as it would be to take away the freedom to drink in pubs. The only tangible end result was that it made one minority group of people happy and pissed off another. For one group to gain at the expense of another's freedom is the thin end of a very unpleasant wedge, in my opinion. I would much prefer to keep my pollutants away from others by choice and through good manners rather than legislation apparently based on highly spurious grounds. The abuse of statistics being bandied about on the subject of the potential harm to others caused by passive smoking is downright laughable to anyone who is not already biased on the subject and actually understands such things. However, I'm perfectly willing to keep my fumes away from anyone who genuinely thinks they will die from them, and more than happy to remove myself to another location.

Subject: RE: BS: Heart attacks drop by 25% -smoking ban
From: Les from Hull
Date: 24 Sep 09 - 05:05 PM

Villan - the confusion is - there's more than one person called Les in this thread.

Subject: RE: BS: Heart attacks drop by 25% -smoking ban
From: Rasener
Date: 25 Sep 09 - 02:36 AM

Thank goodness for that Les from Hull

Les from Market Rasen :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Heart attacks drop by 25% -smoking ban
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 25 Sep 09 - 03:32 AM

nutty - smokers constantly sidestep the issue which is at the heart of the ban.

If I drink myself into oblivion every day, the only person whose health and well-being I'm adversely affecting is me. If a girl shags around and gets cervical cancer, the only person whose health and well-being she's adversely affecting is her. If I live on McDonalds, clog up my arteries with cholesterol and have a heart attack, the only person whose health and well-being is adversely affected is me.

But (and it's a huge 'but'), if you smoke in a room full of people, not only are you affecting your own health and well-being, you're affecting everyone else's in the room. That's it - the reason for the ban - not to prevent smoking, but to prevent non-smokers from being forced to smoke, FFS!

I, and very many others, choose not to smoke. If you smoke in my presence you're forcing me to smoke, despite my choice not to. Why is it so difficult to understand that other people's health and well-being have to take priority over the 'right' that smokers perceive as theirs to smoke anywhere and everywhere?

FWIW, I'm in agreement with you about road traffic. But, whereas the blight of inconsiderate smokers was easy to fix, the road traffic question is infinitely more difficult and will take a long time to solve (if, indeed, it ever is).

Subject: RE: BS: Heart attacks drop by 25% -smoking ban
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 25 Sep 09 - 04:08 AM

Backwoodsman:
Your arguments don't always make sense. "If I drink myself into oblivion every day, the only person whose health and well-being I'm adversely affecting is me. If a girl shags around and gets cervical cancer, the only person whose health and well-being she's adversely affecting is her"
If a girl shags around (as you so nicely put it) she is at risk of contracting, & passing on, several nasty communicable diseases. Her lifestyle choice may well have serious consequences for her partners, up to and including death by AIDS! This is hardly a matter of "the only person whose health she's adversely affecting is her"

Subject: RE: BS: Heart attacks drop by 25% -smoking ban
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 25 Sep 09 - 04:19 AM

Nigel, I'm sure I don't really need to explain but, in response to your diversionary 'red herring' action, I will.

I was answering a specific point made by nutty about promiscuity and cervical cancer. Of course I'm aware of the other risks but, as nutty was being specific, I stayed withing the same boundaries.

Not by any chance a pissed-off smoker are you? :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Heart attacks drop by 25% -smoking ban
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 25 Sep 09 - 04:20 AM

Within, not withing. Dyslexic K/B.

Subject: RE: BS: Heart attacks drop by 25% -smoking ban
From: Smokey.
Date: 25 Sep 09 - 06:28 PM

Backwoodsman, I think you'll find that the vast majority of smokers who were pissed off at the time of the ban have now got over it and moved on.. I recommend we all do that. It's not going to be reversed, not least because there will never be enough public pressure for them to do so. Whatever your beliefs on passive smoking, you are safe; no-one is going to 'force' you to smoke.