Cigarettes, Whisky & Wild Wild Women

I don't think the jury is actually out on this any more: Cigarettes are harmful. Be that as it may, until they are made illegal we should get off smokers' backs. The next small lurch towards making them illegal comes with the suggestion that vending machines might be scrapped. For God's sake! Either do it or don't do it. We have been dithering now for 40 years. If they are SO bad, ban them. It could be the tax revenues. Ciggies bring in a LOT more than the NHS spends on treating the harm that they do [my thanks to GC for this research]. Or perhaps it is just the JPs, GPs, VIPs and MPs that like a smoke. Probably.

If we ever do get round to banning smoking we can be sure that the guns will then turn on other targets. Alcohol? Motorbikes? Toy guns? Darts? Sucky sweets? ad infinitum...

Lad's mags are yet another pointless target. As if "Rebecca Loos Naked" in big letters wasn't a clue, the lesbimafia want everything from Nuts to Practical Mechanics stuck on the top shelf with a big sticker on saying... Well what, exactly? "You'll go blind" perhaps.

At 5'8" the top shelf is already out of my reach. Tall teenagers are OK though.

America: Vote with your eyes shut!

In the forthcoming election in the USA there remains the nagging doubt that the colour of a man's skin will be the deciding issue. Unbelievable.

Obama is manifestly the better candidate. His speeches are redolent of the best of Lincoln and King. He is clearly unafraid to face America's future, whatever that might be. McCain should cash in his chips now. He is not even close.

And yet.

America may still discard the best hope for a generation based on nothing other than the amount of melanin in a man's epidermis. The same chemical compound that gives a lot of us brown eyes, incidentally.

The turnout in American elections is always low. About half of the electorate can't be bothered to cast their vote, although every American seems to have the right to bellyache afterwards. It is interesting that the world's only superpower will cross the globe to defend someone else's democracy but won't cross the street for its own. Let's hope that bigotry and apathy are mutually inclusive.

Perhaps America should just take the next two weeks to simply listen to Obama and McCain. If so, Obama has a good chance.