SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES

Yes, smoking is bad for you. Yes it's not a nice habit. Yes, it must be a pain in the ass for non-smokers to have to breathe it in. Yes, I agree small children and innocent animals should not be subjected to noxious fumes.

Yes I am a smoker and hell, yes I enjoy it, as is my right and choice.

However ...........

No, I don't smoke in rooms with non-smokers. No I don't smoke in non-smokers cars. No, I would not dream of lighting up in a non-smokers house unless I had permission, and even then I feel guilty and never smoke all of it.

BUT

If you come to my house you will have to stand in the garden while I smoke. If you come in my car you'll have to either bring your own oxygen tank and a mask or hang your head out of the window. If it's freezing bloody cold outside though you'll just have to choke or find alternative transport.

From 26th March, in Scotland, smoking will be banned in public places. Fair enough if that is what the majority want.

But, you bunch of wazzocks, make your minds up about where I cannot light up. Then I can avoid them like the plague.

The story so far is this,

You can be arrested for smoking in a pub, but once you're in the back of a police car you can light up. Particularly if you are an informant. Mind you I think many policemen should be exposed to noxious fumes, if only to hide the stench of their own corruption.

You may not smoke inside a Caledonian Macbrane Ferry to the Islands, but you can smoke on the Rosyth to Zeebrugge Ferry. Something to do with the 3 mile limit maybe? However having been on the Cally Macbrane Ferries many times in the past, I do not recommend lighting your fag on deck halfway across the Minch unless you want scorched eyeballs and a brand new hairdo.

Company cars are exempt, but it is banned in vans and tractors. Imagine being a farmer and having to be out all day ploughing and you can't have a fag in your own tractor.

Police Interview rooms are exempt as they are not classed as public places. So the police just interview each other do they, in their interview rooms?

There is to be a ruling that you will be requested to refrain from smoking in your own home if being visited by a member of a public body such as social workers, home helps, housing officers etc. If by some misfortune I need to be visited they can talk to me through my window, with me on the inside and I don't care if'its minus 5 on a February morning and throwing down a blizzard.

It is also banned in public parks. Oh please, are you frightened of the trees getting a cough or something?

To those non-smokers reading this and curling their lips up in distaste at my habit, I have one question to ask you.

Do you drive a car? Yes? Well I never. Have you thought how much pollution and noxious fumes you are pushing into the atmosphere. And for those non-smoking mothers out there, that throw their hands up in horror when someone lights a fag within 200 hundred yards of their child, have you thought of the lethal gases you are subjecting your child to when you push them down the street in a buggy which is the same height as the exhaust pipes on those cars going past you one after the other. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there you know. You know there is electricity, you know you cannot see it but you don't go and stick your finger in the the plughole do you?

So to all those non-smokers who make such a fuss, check out the rest of your lifestyle before you criticize mine.

To the smokers in Scotland. If your out and about and gagging for some nicotine, get your self arrested and make a good job of it, so you can carry on with that packet of 20 in the interview room.

I bet no-one will have the guts to ban it in one particular public place - prisons - no-one will want the nice little criminals to suffer will they?

I would also like to say, that I don't drink but I don't object to alcohol, though I can't stand falling over drunk people. Smoking does not terrorise families, cause people to beat each other and innocent people up or cause drivers to maim and kill people. If I go out though I have to put up with loud mouthed drunks, walk around their great piles of steaming vomit in the street and foot some of the tax bill for the damage and misery they cause. Where is my choice in that?

Kats