Why the Neo Puritans are killers.

Just been reading an article on conservative home written by an MSP, Brian Monteith. In the article he takes the Government of today to task about their zealous continuation of labour’s anti-smoking campaign.

For example:

Whatever one thinks of Europe and its hunger for more and more regulations, this latest assault on the buying and selling of a legal product in Britain is entirely self-inflicted by our own government. Who would have expected a Conservative-led government to take Labour’s public health regulations that restricted the availability or consumption of tobacco and the campaigns that demonised smokers – and seek to make them even more punitive?

The Conservative Party had originally suggested that, if elected to government, it would not follow through with the removal from sight of cigarettes and other tobacco products that Labour had planned to introduce before its defeat in 2010.  With an eye on protecting the fragile incomes of small shopkeepers vital to local neighbourhoods, such a costly and invasive policy did not appear in the election manifesto or Coalition Agreement. And yet the Coalition succumbed to the tobacco control lobby, and soon carried on with the policy regardless.

Just goes to show that politicians of all colours couldn’t give a flying fuck about the voters who elected them. All they see is a bandwagon that has to be boarded.

However this is not the reason for the headline. That is caused by one of the comments underneath the post from Anna.

I'm close on seventy years old. In all that time the only health problems I've ever had were associated with sporadic attempts to abandon the dreaded death sticks. Mostly I realised for myself that I'd done it long enough and did the sensible thing. On the last occasion, at the anguished pleading of my then teenage daugher, I lasted five years. By the end of those five years I'd developed virulent psoriasis from stress, was three stone overweight, at severe risk of developing the type 2 diabetes inherent in my family and on such strong prescription anti-depressants that they themselves were sending me insane. Eventually the daughter who'd begged me to give it up begged me to take it up again. I did, thirteen years ago. 20-a-day later I'd ditched the anti-depressants, the psoriasis cleared up and I needed no more expensive NHS treatment. I rapidly returned to a healthy weight with no prospect of diabetes and I've never had a day's ill-health since.

Says it all really.