We ask you: will you go in the shop and buy a 34-year-old cigarettes in two decades' time?Outside the newsagent in the year 2044 lurk two men in their early thirties. They hold up a £40 note and ask you to get them a packet of Silk Cut. Will you?
Bill McKay, smallholder: “No way. Smoking will stunt their growth.”
Susan Traherne, accountant: “Absolutely not. The law is the law, and the law has an arbitrary cut-off point of January 1st, 2009. I would light up, blow a lungful in their jowly faces, and tell them to piss off.”
Martin Bishop, hare courser: “Not me. Instead I would point them to someone who would do so on principle like Liz Truss or Kemi Badenoch, both of whom I expect will be hanging out down the precinct.”
Jim Bates, lighting technician: “Smoking is illegal for those mid-life reprobates. But I would get them rolling baccy for a good old English spliff, because that tradition must be kept alive.”
Hannah Tomlinson, hairdresser: “Can’t they just tell the shopkeeper the fags are for their dads?”
Of course.
Read the depressing-but-true news that PM Rishi Sunak - supposed champion of the freedom to choose, hence the "Eat Out to Help Out" scheme he launched between lockdowns - and his Tory government have introduced a new bill in Parliament that is worthy of the worst of the Tony Blair "Nanny State" years; to make it illegal for anyone born after 2009 to buy cigarettes in their entire lifetime!
Shocking abuse of power. Even New Zealand didn't get their own version into law... [And Rishi's one only got through its first reading with the support of the opposition Labour Party anyhow.]
I despair.
My mother used to send me to the village shop with a note and a fiver to buy cigs. Please serve my son or whatever the fucking thing is with 20 St Moritz, 20 Park Drive, and a box of hamlet, much obliged. I got to keep the change!
ReplyDeleteOh, I remember St Moritz and Park Drive - but she smoked cigars as well? She must have had a voice like Phyllis Pearce... Jx
DeleteThe St.Moritz were my mother's "going out" ciggies the Park Drive and Hamlets were my dad's, both used to leave generous tabs in the ashtray, I remember seeing my sister smoking a Park Drive, tab end, using a pin.
ReplyDeleteHa! I remember smoking "tabs" - and that was even in the days before "King Size" or "Superkings" were invented... Jx
DeleteAn outrageous attack on personal freedom and liberty.
ReplyDeleteHear, hear! Jx
DeleteI seem to remember Park Drive as a rolling baccy. NZ, 1950s
ReplyDeleteAlso NZ 1950s...my mother was in the maternity unit for the (then) customary 2 weeks, having just had my brother. Dad was off work with a serious hand injury so I was "cooking" his meals and rolling his fags. I also had to fill his lighter.
So now you can do a "prison rolly" with one hand, Dinah? Jx
Delete£40 though! More likely £50.
ReplyDeleteI started smoking on St Moritz, and ended up being able to roll a fag with one hand. Vaping just isn’t the same.
Sx
I have no impetus to try and get a nicotine "hit" from some plastic device that smells like a Glade Plug-In, to be honest. Those addicts are worse than "real" smokers - can't even sit on a Tube or walk around a supermarket without taking a puff... Jx
Delete