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Smoke Screens Blog

BBC Proudly Displays Its Bias

By smokescreens.org on 01/04/2012 03:47 PM

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Tonight's Biased Bastards Corporation British Broadcasting Corporation's programme The Smoking Years was little more than a showcasing of the broadcasting company's anti-smoker attitude, which it now wears like a badge of honour.

Anti-smoker is no typo, and it isn't the same as anti-smoking. You can be anti-smoking and have no issue with the person at the other end of the cigarette, but The Smoking Years proudly narrated the programme like a wildlife documentary, referring to smokers as "creatures" concerned about their "habitat" and secluded to designated areas where "they are easily spotted". Almost certainly the narration was said with a good dose of irony, but a full hour of it started to wear thin, and with smokers hounded at every opportunity these days it must be a sign that the BBC knows it will get away with it. Should such terminology be used against other minority groups and the result would be a lot different. Bearing in mind that the BBC is still a public-funded organisation, it's a sign of the times and a staggering dismissal of millions of Britons that it can refer to a large portion of its funders in that way. We'll see how it pans out, but I'm willing to wager that it will receive few complaints. It's disheartening that Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross became national news for a rather prolonged period of time over what were jovial phone messages - immature and misplaced perhaps, but pranks nonetheless - but the odds are that barely a whimper will be heard in defence of millions of adult Brits who choose to smoke. As Patsy Nurse pointed out on her Facebook page, the "creatures" being openly ridiculed by the Beeb are living, breathing, honest to God people, with feelings, emotions and rights. And yet there they were, hung out to dry by a company they have no choice but to fund. There was no attempt to hide the contempt at any point in the programme, even the title, The Smoking Years, rolls off the tongue as though smoking is from a bygone era that only exists through nostalgia, because if people haven't yet given up, it's only a matter of time before those stubborn yellow-fingered creatures shuffle off the mortal coil. 

The programme trotted out all the usual diatribe - 1 in 2 smokers will die (actually 1 in 1 smokers will die, as will 1 in 1 non-smokers), and if nothing else highlighted how little the anti-smokers know about mathematics and statistics. Falling into the complicated pit that is statistics, and falling for the common mistake that one statistic is easily transferable, it was stated that in a poll 80% of people wanted a non-smoking section. Nothing wrong with that at all, but what it doesn't mean, and yet what was stated but a breath later, is that 80% of people don't like smoke. There is a world of difference between wanting an area to have a drink or a meal or travel by train, bus or plane without wanting to have the strong smell of smoke around you, and wanting to have it eradicated. From my own perspective, I dislike being around people wearing strong perfumes or colognes, especially when people mistake it for actual soap and douse themselves in it. Yet i wouldn't want it banned - indeed i wear aftershave myself, and it's not uncommon to partake in something and dislike the odour in other moments, just as many smokers will readily admit there were times in a smoke-filled pub when it was a bit too strong. Only a moron or someone with an axe to grind would state that wanting an area without a particular substance is the same as not wanting that substance around. 

If there is anything good to come from The Smoking Years, it will be more smokers - and indeed non-smokers - waking up to the realisation that the anti-smoking movement is not a health-driven campaign, but a vehicle for social change. Because while ASH and co. would like to have us believe we're divided between smokers and non-smokers, the plain truth is that the division is much more a case of reasonable, tolerant people, and intolerant people who throw a shitfit when someone does something they don't like. Which is exactly why alcohol and high-calorie foods are now in the same firing line as tobacco. Which is why those activists now freely talk of a "smokefree world" and using the "tobacco blueprint" to harass those who enjoy drinking and eating. Which is, in fact, why they openly state they want to denormalise smoking. There is only one blueprint being followed, and it's the Godber Blueprint, examined in more detail in the opening chapter of the revised version of Smoke Screens, which can be read here (the revised edition itself is not yet released, nor completed, so you'll have to make do with the current version for now). 

Will this be the start of the turning point for the public, or further entrenchment that smokers are sub-human punching bags?

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