Here comes unemployment…

Some companies are already refusing to hire smokers. No justification beyond ‘We don’t like them’ but hey, discrimination on that basis is just fine with our government.

Now they have invented a reason. Studies have Shown and Experts have Said that smokers are lazy. This is in addition to being smelly, stupid and generally toxic.

They studied 60 smokers and 50 non-smokers and asked them to wear a pedometer for a minimum of 12 hours a day for six days.

That’s it. A study of 110 people over six days. From there they extrapolate to the population of the planet and conclude that because the smokers didn’t walk around as much for six days, all smokers are lazy. This is what passes for a comprehensive study these days. Forger the scientific method. Personal bias trumps the truth every time.

This was in Brazil. If it was in the UK, the smokers would have walked more because they’d have had to go outside every time they felt like smoking.

No mention of balancing the study for occupation. If the non-smoker group included a few postmen and the smoker group included some computer programmers… there you go. I’ll bet that if you studied the walking habits of postmen vs. politicians you could ‘prove’ that politicians are incredibly lazy. Not that anyone really needs any proof.

It’s more junk. I’m not even going to call it ‘junk science’ any more – the ‘science’ has long since left the building. All that’s left is the junk.

This ridiculous study is going to be used to justify adding ‘Do you smoke?’ to every job application form – by law, no doubt – and gullible managers will be ‘advised’ that employing lazy smokers will reflect badly on their promotion prospects.

Nevr mind that, in Local Shop certainly, the smokers are among the busiest group and all are far better at handling stressful days than the non-smokers. It’s that taking five minutes to relax that does it, nothing to do with the nicotine or the smoke. No, we are not allowed ‘extra time’. I take my break time in 5 minute increments – I am not there long enough to need a single 20 minute break except on Fridays and Saturdays. On those days I am there long enough to be allowed a much longer break. I have never taken one.

When things are getting tense, the smokers will go outside for five minutes and come back relaxed. Nonsmokers could do this too. The smoking part is not compulsory. Just go outside, watch the birds fly around, take five minutes to put your thoughts in order and get back to work. Productivity and morale would both be boosted. Eight hours of continuous stress is very bad for you. Naturally, most managers would not even consider this because most managers are idiots.

The managers of Local Shop are fine with my incremental-break system. I take no more time than any of the nonsmokers, in fact it’s often less. That will change as the ‘smokers are lazy’ meme takes hold. Not at once, but there will be a drip-drip-drip from the antismokers, first on the public sector and then into the private sector.

The Daily Mail will ‘out’ businesses employing smokers and urge boycotts. This will backfire at first because there’ll be a lot of smokers looking to change jobs and it will be useful to know where to apply.

In the long term it will lead to ghettoisation. This is already under way in some areas with smokers being refused housing in case they taint the perfect ones. Soon you will see motor insurance forms asking if you smoke and if you do, that will put up your premiums. It’s been happening with life insurance for a long time. The one ‘loophole’ they’ll want to close is the pensions one – smokers get a better deal because we are not expected to last long after retirement. Some Expert somewhere is working on a Study that will prove that smokers simultaneously live longer and die younger. The drones will believe it.

The ban on smoking in cars is likely to happen. Already, ministers are talking about bringing it in by the summer. Behind the bluster, I suspect it’s a done deal. It will have nothing to do with children. It will be extended to all private vehicles using the ‘level playing field’ excuse. Even if your car is parked at the top of a mountain with just you in it and not a child in sight, you will not be allowed to smoke in it.

Note the wording that’s being used too – it will be an offence for a driver to ‘fail to prevent smoking’ in his own car. The same as was used to make publicans into unpaid enforcers. That gets away from the ‘driving without due care and attention’ part because it doesn’t have to be the driver smoking. When your child lights up in the back seat, you must take your eyes off the road, your hands of the wheel, turn around and snatch that clay pipe from his tiny wizened lips. In the interests of safety.

Every smoker shopuld get a scrapyard car, park it in the garden, SORN it, sell the engine and wheels and any other useful parts and be sure to take out the steering wheel and instrument panel. Maybe also the driver’s seat. Then you can smoke in it. It’s the driver’s responsibility to stop you but… there’s no driver.

This will all be irrelevant of course, once all smokers are excluded from housing and employment. We won’t be able to afford cars anyway. Then it will become illegal to smoke under a bridge or in a discarded cardboard box.

Then ASH and their drones will decry the wastrels cluttering up their world and demand a Final Solution…

I’m posting early this evening. I intend to turn off the internet for a few hours and power ahead with some writing. My plan was to tootle along earning just enough to live on until that pension kicks in – but that’s still six years away. I’ll need to become independent of employment sooner rather than later, I think. And there is only one way to make money from writing.

Staple your arse to a seat and write the damn things. Lots of them. Nobody can buy it if it’s not written.

One other rule – make sure the whisky and tobacco are within reach before using the stapler.