A website here blowing all those ASH and government (same organisation really) anti-smoking ‘facts’ out of the water. Here’s an interesting bit about the effect of the ban on our pubs: The financial analysts Goldman Sachs – hardly a “pro smoking organisation” – recently stated that the smoking ban has reduced average pub profits by 10% . Scottish & Newcastle, the UK’s largest brewery estimated a 8% fall in beer sales in January and since then beers sales in the UK have fallen to their lowest level since the Great Depression. But most devastating to the ASH version of events are the statistics for pub closures which accelerated dramatically in 2007. The trade journal The Morning Advertiser blamed this squarely on “the savage impact of the smoking ban and spiralling costs” and the figures require little comment:
2005: 2 a week 2006: 4 a week 2007: 27 a week Those non-smokers who were, apparently, driven from pubs by all those nasty smokers, better hurry and get back before the pubs are all gone.
Tag: Health
Lettuce Kills your Sense of Humour
Here’s an amusing column from Jeremy Clarkson, but what’s even more amusing is reading the humourless, righteous, blinkered and nutty replies. As one of the saner people there commented:
I must admit that I am truly, truly saddened by the nearly complete lack of anything approaching a sense of humor in so many of the posters. Apparently, vegan diets are disabling that part of people’s brains. Seriously, people, lighten up a bit.
Back in Good Old Blighty.
Ah, back in the land of politically-correct wank and bureaucracy for less than 24 hours and already I want to turn round and climb on the next plane out of here. My hackles started to rise in Stanstead Airport where apparently some new legislation applies which dictates that ‘No Smoking’ signs must be placed no more than twenty feet apart, though some variation of their contect is allowed: Smoking is illegal, Smoke here and we’ll take you to a political correction cell and beat the soles of your feet with a rubber hose. However, my hackles really stood up upon sight of the big blue ‘UK Border’ sign with its pale zit-encrusted officials gathered underneath. Beyond the sheer fucking arrogance of that I just knew that beyond it everything was going to go further down hill. I wasn’t wrong. After going into shock for a while with the cold, the endless roundabouts and traffic, we finally got home to immediately put on the central heating, which took about five hours and probably a new mortgage to take the temperature up to somewhere bearable. For the night, hot water bottles were dusted of cobwebs and filled. Today, since the car was in cobwebs for a while too, it was necessary to get an MOT. As we discovered on our last return trip here everything costs no less than £50, and this was no exception. Whilst the MOT was being conducted we headed off down the pub … another mistake I won’t make again. No smoking of course, so the four customers and one of the two bar staff were outside smoking whilst a pub capable of holding hundreds had one person inside. Outside we put our cigarettes out in ashtrays filled with water which was not there to stop the ash being blown about by the hot meltemi wind. The glasses weren’t out of a freezer, since that was hardly necessary. On our way away we noted that the pub seemed as ragged, run-down and as fucked-over as the country it occupies. No money to repair the damaged toilets or paintwork; that was all spend on the unused wheelchair lift to convey chairs over the three steps into the restaurant area.
Smoking Wheezes.
Picture the scene: it is a grey cold and colourless day and we focus on an old lady motoring down the pavement on her mobility scooter and gazing miserably at the big CLOSED sign outside the local bingo hall. Then, suddenly, she is on a Caribbean beach, she is happy, wearing sunglasses and bright clothing, her mobility scooter painted in bright colours too. Everything is palm trees, pinacolatas and sunshine. And why? Because she played Lotto Bingo, obviously. Hey, isn’t it nice to know that after driving numerous bingo halls out of business with the smoking ban that the government is cashing in? The other smoking wheeze (excuse the pun) from our government is to force shopkeepers to take cigarettes off display and hide them under the counter. This is to discourage under-age smokers, apparently. Funny, I thought it was against the law for anyone under 18 to either buy or smoke cigarettes. Again, in the typical New Labour manner: more new legislation and laws rather than ENFORCING THE LAWS WE ALREADY HAVE!
My First Admittance to Hospital.
Subtitle: Brought Down to Earth with a Thump.
In my youth visits to the hospital were either grudging attendances on sick kin or occasional visits to A&E. One time I enthusiastically picked up and eraser thrown at me by a work-mate then as I stood found myself lifting a cast-iron engine block mounting cube (a lump of metal you bolt an engine block to on a surface table for marking out or measurement – it takes two people to lift it) with my head underneath one of the mounting studs, which subsequently slid down. I noted the lump of scalp on the end of the stud, slapped a hand over my forehead and fled to the toilets where, in the mirror, I was greeted by the sight of a flap of my scalp lifting on each pulse of blood. In recent years my visits to hospital have become more frequent and come to involve death; you get older and more people you know get seriously ill and sometimes die. Like Alan Wood in the dedication in Cowl, and like my father last year. However, I’ve never needed to go beyond A&E for a problem of my own. Last Friday I thought to myself damn, my bottom is sore, and wondered if I was paying the penalty of my drink-sodden lifestyle with piles. Over the weekend the pain in my arse grew, unrelieved by haemorrhoid cream, but I managed, much to my surprise, to get an appointment with the doctor’s on Monday. To be fair the doctor was probably misled by my mention of piles and probably, having to deal with dim patients was why he asked me three times if I’d had them before (I hadn’t) and if there was any blood (there wasn’t). He also didn’t get to inspect matters too closely since, after his first attempt, he had to peel me off the ceiling. He prescribed a cream, but it didn’t do any good. Now here’s where the bottom humour starts to wane as soreness turns to pain and then PAIN. After a day in bed I got to see another doctor on an emergency basis. He tried the anal-inspection routine then after digging my fingernails out of the wall came to a conclusion: pain like that was probably due to an infection, probably an abscess. He prescribed strong painkillers and antibiotics and, if things weren’t getting any better within 48 hours I would have to go to hospital where, under general anaesthetic, they would probably have to open drain and pack the abscess. The pain killers kicked in for a while, at least enabling me to get out of the car, but thereafter it seemed I might just as well have been eating Smarties. You know the expression ‘writhing in pain’? … well I certainly do now, only I was writhing the top half of my body and my feet because any movement of my middle section resulted in an invisible demon shoving a soldering iron up my arse. I was making noises too – little grunts and groans were escaping no matter how much I clenched my teeth. Coughing was to be avoided at all costs, because the demon swapped his soldering iron for a red-hot poker at that point. I spent a night like this, seeing every hour on the clock. In the morning Caroline called up the second doctor who immediately referred me to hospital. Just a case of getting there. I could no longer sit in the passenger seat so lay down in the back then upon arrival walked from the car park with the alacrity of a 100-year-old. After signing in at A&E where I was referred a long wait ensued, during which I was unable to sit down. Next an assessment nurse saw me and was sensible enough to forego bottom inspections and admitted me. I have to wonder if her job is to increase efficiency or slow down the admission procedures, just to keep things within those government targets. After a further long wait during which I stood supporting myself on the arms of two chairs I was taken into a cubical to be checked over by a junior surgical doctor. This involved her asking me numerous questions, delivering homilies about my smoking straight out of the New Labour Book of Truth, then she proceeded to part my buttocks and subsequently remove my hands from her throat. I jest, of course, but right then I wanted a pump-action shotgun beside me: “You touch this without giving me drugs and I spray your head over that wall!” Some of the next bit comes second hand, because I can’t really remember much of it. I ended up on my side on a bed, behind A&E, Caroline departed and I was wheeled down to a ward. Despite my pleas to allow myself to sort myself out a nurse had to be helpful, then backed off when her tugging on the under sheet pulled on one buttock and I shrieked. Another nurse, aware that I wasn’t having a little joke about how much this was hurting, helped me change into a gown, confining that help to pulling off my socks and shifting my pants and joggers out of the way. Now came the wait for surgery, obviously nil-by mouth. I lay there listening to the moaning and whining all around me. The guys either side were in to have various limbs lopped off whilst those in the beds opposite had recently lost large portions of their insides. I felt a bit of a fraud, but the demon was still there with his soldering iron and I was venturing into delirium territory with the electric bed nearby sounding like rain on the roof and everything seeming a bit weird, a bit out-of-kilter. Pain is no fun at all, but neither is the discomfort of lying in one position for hours on end so, despite this stirring the wannabe electrician demon into action, I had to move to relieve aching back, neck, buttocks and dead arms. At about 9.30 in the evening I did this again and noted that the demon must have been taking a tea break. Then I realised something was cold and wet and reached down to find a couple of slimy buttocks. Managing to shift myself I saw brown and pink plasma soaking the under sheet. I called over the nurse who changed things for me and I was actually able to stand beside the bed while this was being done. He then put down some nappies on the bed for me to lie on, and I was able to lie on my back for the first time in three days. No surgery that evening – too busy – so I was able to eat a sandwich and have a cup of tea. I was told I would be able to have breakfast and something to drink, but nothing more afterwards because I would probably go under the knife that afternoon. Sometime after midnight I fell asleep until about six in the morning whereupon I found that someone had dumped a cupful of strawberry sauce and custard underneath me. I got rid of the soaked nappy in a surgical waste bin and grabbed another gown. When it came to being washed I used the ward shower. I ate breakfast, felt a lot better, and began to question whether surgery under general anaesthetic was a good idea now, but it was difficult to find anyone who had a clue about what was going on. Finally one I assumed to be the consultant, with his train of juniors in tow, turned up. One of the juniors (the politically-correct anti-smoker) checked me over. She used rather more caution with my buttocks this time, which was a bit stable door. The diagnosis was that nature was taking its course and I was done there. No surgery. All I needed was a dressing on my bum and the needle taken out of my arm, which took six hours to get accomplished… My impression: a lot of competent dedicated people running around working their butts off, along with the usual slackers you’ll find anywhere. But mainly it was an impression of disorganization, people doing the jobs they knew but phased by anything that fell outside of that, buck passing and ‘not my responsibility’. All the signs of crap management, which is odd, since under Labour the NHS is now oversupplied with managers.
I wonder what they do?
Hospital MRSA.
Our Health Secretary will apparently say, “Today I am setting out how we will equip the new regulator with tougher powers, backed by fines, to inspect, investigate and intervene where hospitals are failing to meet hygiene standards.” So, apparently, this is going to help crack down on MRSA, but who I wonder is going to be fined? Is it going to be the Nigerian illegal immigrant mopping all the floors and wiping down all surfaces with the same bucket of dirty water? Is it going to be the doctor who failed to wash his hands after taking a dump? Or the nurse whose education now tells her more about how she should treat the Nigerian cleaner than about hygiene? Is it going to be the wanker politicians who so overloaded the NHS with red tape, targets and useless bureacrats to deal with all this that there’s not enough money for a bottle of Domestos? Is it going to be the waste-of-space hospital managers who sit quivering in their offices? No, of course it isn’t. The dirty hospital will be fined, the guilty parties will continue trousering their inflated salaries, more red tape will be generated, the doctors and nurses will be wasting their time filling in paperwork, and stumbling over a new strata of ideologically correct bureaucrats incapable of dealing with the real problems and, because the hospital budget has been reduced, patient services will be trimmed down, hurried, cut. And where will the money from the fine go? To another hospital? Well maybe a small portion of it, after most of it has been hoovered up by the twats administering it all. End result: microscopic change in services, huge amounts of money wasted.
Article 6: GM Hysteria.
GM Hysteria.
Jayson and Michelle Whitaker were initially refused permission to have a designer baby by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. Apparently it was ‘unlawful and unethical’ to save the life of their three-year-old son with a bone-marrow transplant from this second baby. Thankfully, sanity finally prevailed, and now the deed has been done.Putting aside questions about who comprise this ‘Authority’, whether or not they were elected (or another fucking quango), and what right they have to make such life-and-death decisions, it can be seen that this is one of the sillier examples of the hysterical fear that has gripped this country for too long, of ‘interfering with God’s work/nature’. The biggest bugbear is ‘GM’, though in the Whitaker case all the parents were doing was selecting the right child, not altering its DNA. ‘Unlawful and unethical’ in all cases such as this are vague terms modern hysterics have now transposed with the vaguer ‘against God or Nature’. These are applied to everything from Human fertilisation to GM crops. But first, let’s look at human DNA. As our medical technologies advance it is becoming increasingly obvious that most of the diseases killing us now are due to faults in our own DNA or in themselves need studying and tackling at a genetic level. Cancer, though in some cases having a viral or bacteriological cause, propagates by copying errors in the genetic blueprint. To truly defeat it we need to learn how to correct or completely delete those errors, straight chemical intervention mostly just delays the Reaper. The AIDS epidemic that is killing millions is caused by a virus that actually uses the T-cells of our immune system to propagate itself. Again straight forward chemical intervention does nothing more than delay the process. Real results are coming from us taking apart this virus and our own DNA so as to learn how to tackle AIDs. Cutting-edge genetic research is the answer – not reliance on God or Nature. The subject of GM crops is another one to get people banging their tambourines. Along with my acquisition of a garden came the beginning of a whole new vocabulary. I can now use the words hellebore and aquilegia and actually know what I’m talking about. I now also have a use for epithets, which I use less commonly in my writing, as prefixes for the words slug, snail, ant, and aphid. What, you ask, has this got to do with the GM debate? In reply I can tell you that I recently took part in the slaughter of the innocents. Two handfuls of slug pellets yielded me two litres of dead snails which I duly transferred to my council-subsidised composter. My garden, I’ll have you know, is just about big enough to get the Queen’s head on. Beyond it is a field in which it would fit many thousands of times. A friend of mine is a farmer and he applies slug pellets from a spreader on the back of a quad bike and my few handfuls, I know, translate into sackfuls for this purpose. The environmental cost of this is but a small proportion of the whole. Thousands of gallons of potent herbicides and insecticides are poured onto our land every year. GM crops need few of them, their yield is greater, therefore less land has to be used to produce the same amount of food. When are the hysterics going to realise that in this case we are already in a deep and poisonous hole from which GM just might drag us? The arguments against GM range from the apparently cogent to the plain silly. Tampering with the human genetic code will produce Midwitch Cuckoos who’ll take over, and consign old humans to the waste bin. Rubbish: it will result in years to come in the eradication of hereditary diseases, of faults, of people dying young or living lives governed by pill bottles, injections or the next pull on an inhaler, and it will be a slow process. There’s the idea that some super plant may wipe-out or displace established species. We’re already doing this with herbicides, and compared to what the natural world produces we are amateurs. Do the hysterics visualise armies of triffids marching across the English countryside? Get real. What we’re having trouble with, is what nature produces. What the hell is so frightening? Could GM produce poisonous plants, killer insects or animals, virulent and fatal diseases … er, nature already seems to be doing a pretty good job in those departments. Really, anyone who thinks that genetic modification is going to produce monsters that billions of years of evolution has not already produced is, frankly, an idiot. Nature or God, however, do provide us with natural and godlike things. There’s famine, plague, and other disasters that belittle our paltry attempts at the same. More species have been wiped-out by nature than we are ever likely to wipe-out. While we piddle-about with out little wars and exterminations nature comes along and puts us in our place. In the first world war we killed millions. The flu that came along after killed many millions more. Genocide? We’re rank amateurs. Black death killed twenty-five million, which was a third of the Earth’s population at that time. So, when you hear people ranting about nature and how we are playing God, please point out to them that we are not playing. We are trying to solve some serious problems and take control of our own existence. As for nature: we live in a world that is completely unnatural and, in reality, the only way any of us is going to get back to nature is when we’re buried in a paper coffin under a tree. ENDS.
Adjustments.
Couple of things I need to update here. A while back I slammed the latest series of Battlestar Galactica and that criticism now needs to be balanced. After the first few crappy episodes set on New Caprica, the series improved hugely with only one or two turds in the punch bowl (‘punch’ being the operative word here with an episode I can only describe as ‘boxing and relationships’ – one of those marking time episodes). Certainly I’ve been enjoying Battlestar lately, though I do feel the Gaius Baltar/ Number Six thread is flapping in the wind and the behaviour of the zylons has descended into the ridiculous. Where will it all end? Will it end? Smoking. Well, I’m still off the cigarettes, though I did lapse yesterday and have about three puffs on one. I have to say that the graph of cigarette cravings I put on here is complete bullshit. It’s claimed on the website that came from, and others, that cravings last only a few minutes and the worst of them are over after the first 72 hours. I got through the those first three days quite easily and it is now that I’m having difficulties. The few puffs I had yesterday (along with some nicotine gum) where the consequence of a craving that lasted hours. Writing and so forth. Been a bit of a struggle lately what with the outfall of a death in the family and this attempt at stopping smoking (maybe, like the guy in Airplane, I just chose the wrong time) but I’m still putting down those words. Line War is now approaching 100,000 words with the endgame building to its climax. Nothing much else to add to that really, since the writing life is hardly romantic and consists of sitting staring at a screen for hours on end until beads of blood appear on the forehead (bit too dramatic that, but I couldn’t resist it).
Begins Dusting off Surplice.
Okay, here I am four days after ceasing to put any nicotine of any kind in my body and six days after stubbing out my last rollie, so I’m past the 72 hours mark mentioned here. What have I felt thus far? Have I felt any changes? Hell yes.
Time since quitting | Beneficial health changes that take place |
20 minutes | Blood pressure and pulse rate return to normal. |
8 hours | Nicotine and carbon monoxide levels in blood reduce by half, oxygen levels return to normal. |
24 hours | Carbon monoxide will be eliminated from the body. Lungs start to clear out mucus and other smoking debris. |
48 hours | There is no nicotine left in the body. Ability to taste and smell is greatly improved. |
72 hours | Breathing becomes easier. Bronchial tubes begin to relax and energy levels increase. |
This is not necessarily in the order of the table here (snaffled from the ASH website), but not far off. Within a day my sense of taste improved, within two days it had improved frighteningly and I saw the barriers preventing me becoming as large as Ayres rock just evaporating in the sunshine. However, something else has improved to counter that: I enjoy exercise a lot more. This isn’t often mentioned in the preachy give up smoking sites and perhaps should be. Yes, heavy smoking can result in you being out of breath, but in that respect light smoking isn’t so bad really. What the light smoker does experience is a complete lack of an endorphine rush from exercise – it is just perpetual hard grind to him. Cycling and weight-training have now become less of a chore and more of a pleasure to me.
I am also loaded with more energy to expend and just don’t seem to get tired during the day. Also, come night-time, I am tired and fall to sleep quickly, which is unusual for me.
Another noticeable effect has been a sharpening of my senses. I see hear and feel things a lot more acutely now, as if a deadening layer has been removed from all my nerves. This can be both a good thing and a bad thing. It’s definitely a bad thing if you try drinking the same amount of coffee you drank while smoking. Fingernail marks in the ceiling and the like.
Cravings? Yeah, enough of them, but I’m being bloody-minded about my addiction: “No, bugger off you mindless shite! You will not make me smoke!” The problem with the organism is its lack of intelligence when it come to behaviourism. The organism will certainly make the connection between the burning pain and the blow torch applied to the testicles, but has difficulty making the connection between that asthma attack in the middle of the night and the cigar you smoked the day before (on top of all those rollies).
And I shall soldier on!
Born-again Non-smoker
I don’t know what the precise statistics are, but most smokers really want to be non-smokers though have some problems getting over an addiction stronger than that to heroin. I myself am an expert at giving up. I’ve tried just about every year since before I was thirty and have given up for periods ranging from a day to a year. Surprising as some may find this, having read my ranting about smoking bans, I do know precisely what has its claws in me and precisely what it’s doing to me.
I know that before I gave up last time I was starting to need asthma inhalers and within a few weeks of having given up did not need them again, until, that is, I started smoking again. I know that if I smoke below eight cigarettes a day the pain in the left side of my chest fades away, and if I smoke more than ten cigarettes it comes back hard. I know that out of every fifty cigarettes 
I smoke there’s about half of one I actually enjoy, the rest I smoke just to stop myself feeling the misery of withdrawal. Exercise hurts when I smoke, is a pleasure when I don’t. I find it difficult to lie on one side while in bed and sometimes, when I’ve got up to go to the toilet, I return to bed out-of-breath. I assume this is due to all the crap in my lungs spreading out while I was lying down.
I smoke there’s about half of one I actually enjoy, the rest I smoke just to stop myself feeling the misery of withdrawal. Exercise hurts when I smoke, is a pleasure when I don’t. I find it difficult to lie on one side while in bed and sometimes, when I’ve got up to go to the toilet, I return to bed out-of-breath. I assume this is due to all the crap in my lungs spreading out while I was lying down.I know that all these symptoms, and others, will only get worse if I continue smoking. The latest one I’ve been getting is ear infections that then work their way into my eustachian tubes. Obviously the fags are not responsible for the bugs concerned, but they create and exacerbate the weakness they exploit. Working at giving up I’ve been trying to chew a piece of nicotine gum before a craving hits – a 4mg piece can normally keep me off the fags past midday almost cutting my cigarette consumption by half.
Prior to my father’s death I contracted another of those ear infections and it just lingered. Over the last week it travelled by eustachian tube from left to right ear, with a nice sore throat stopover in between, finally arriving at crushing eyeball station to play golf with my tooth nerves and attach a compressor hose to my sinuses. I was getting heartily sick of this until I discovered the virus that had arrived was only a scout. The whole army came next and poleaxed me. Flu, flu-type symptoms, bad cold, man-flu, call it what you will. I felt as rough as a pineapple. One day I felt so cold I had the heating at over seventy and additional to my usual garb wore a jumper, Arctic fleece, dressing gown and woolly hat. My throat soon felt like someone had wire-brushed it and I sat in a chair wishing it would all go away.
For three days I chewed nicotine gum in the morning and smoked five cigarettes in the afternoon and evening. I blame paracetamol and Strepsils – without them I might not have been able to smoke at all. This last Saturday I wondered what the hell I was doing and chewed a second piece of gum in the evening and smoked nothing. Same again on Sunday.
But it’s the nicotine I’m addicted to – a fact that was brought home to me by this website from which I’ve borrowed the graph shown. So today I haven’t used the gum since I want to get those 72 hours behind me, and there’s no avoiding them. And the same from now on in … never give up giving up.