I'm afraid I've been rather ill recently, only a little 'flu type thing, but enough to ruin a weekend and put me off work for a day and a half. Still, I think I'm better now - and just in time to have another little rant about the crassness of the politicos whose life's work seems to be to irritate the hell out of me.

Banning smoking in public places is just laughable. It's going to be almost as difficult to police as the Hunting Ban and a damn sight more likely to be flaunted by those affected.

1. If the Govt. really wanted people to quit, they'd ban fags - QED.

2. The Govt. makes too much cash from the duty on cigs {and other tobacco products which have been proven not to be anywhere near as detrimental to health} to risk losing such nice income, which is handily more or less guaranteed due to the addictive nature of the substance.

3. If people do play by the rules, we'll see far more people clustered around doorways having a smoke in a non-enclosed public space. This will lead to either more of those little ciggie bin things needing to be nailed to walls, or a lot more butts lying around on pavements.

4. As for passive smoking, well, it won't reduce it by much - but I strongly suspect it will just shift it to a different and less vocal group of 'victims' {I use inverted commas since there are still various campaigners who claim the validity of passive smoking research is not entirely beyond reproach} i.e. the children of smokers, who will no doubt be forced to breathe second hand smoke at home as their parents don't want to go to the pub because they can't smoke there.

I was going to sit down and scribe a massive essay going over the issues brought up by this Danish cartoon fiasco. But every time I tried it just descended into a vitriolic rant, so I've been thinking and have decided to use some simple and fairly tame sentences to record my impressions of this whole stupid business.

1. The cartoons have been justified by the ridiculous reaction to them
2. World faiths MUST realise that they will only have the respect they earn, and when people committ acts which the majority of the international community dislike they will lose that respect.
3. No system of values is above another - our freedom of speech is no more or less valid than the Muslim credo of not producing pictures of their prophets. However, in the west we have freedom of speech so the Muslims will just have to lump it.