Why is it legal to smoke in public?

I don’t get it.

If you think about the list of things that we aren’t legally allowed to do in public - and the list is long, even if most Irish citizens ignore the entire list all of the time - it seems all the more strange that actively giving each other cancer is legal.

We’re making progress, it has to be said - what with the smoking ban and all - but if anything that only makes it more ridiculous. The government, backed up by a multitude of medical reports, stated categorically that passive smoking damages the health of those exposed to it.  So why doesn’t that apply when you happen to be outdoors? Not to mention the fact that it would be a lot easier to enforce a total ban on public smoking anyway.

Picture the scene:

You leave the house in the morning, stroll to the bus stop desperately trying to wake yourself with the freezing morning air. You get there, and proceed to choke on the smoke of the 15 year old supposedly rebellious schoolboy. The arrival of the packed, stuffy bus is somehow a relief.

Walking from the bus to the office, you get stopped at multiple sets of traffic lights, and at every one, somebody is ready to exhale their cancer stick straight into your face.

At the bus stop that evening, once again you are subjected to the hacking coughs of the addicts that surround you. Once you get home, it’s shower time, because you stink of the poison you had no choice about breathing through all day.

The standard response to ‘why should you be allowed to smoke in public?’ is usually “it’s my life/choice/business”. By that logic, why can’t I walk down the street spray pesticide on everyone who passes me by? Why isn’t that my choice? Even more importantly, why can’t I walk down the street without being exposed to carcinogens? Why isn’t that my choice?

California are getting there, but some day soon this is going to seem like one big bad joke. I like to hope that the next generation will have the advantage of being able to look back on this ludicrous era and say things like “ha how stupid were they, letting people smoke like that all over the place”.  What are the chances…?

Father Jack would be proud. Nobody else can be.

There are too many Father Ted comparisons to be in the slightest bit comical at this point. Why? Because Dermot Morgan et al were JOKING. It was funny because it was intended to be an EXAGGERATION of plausible reality.

Then, today, the priests of Ireland (or, to be fair, at least some of them) announced - on the front page of the Irish Times no less - that when the drink driving limit was lowered they would be in danger of being over it because of having to drink wine at multiple masses every day and then drive around to the next church.

It is hard not to immediately question that whole transubstantiation thing on a day when priests announced that they do actually get drunk on the blood of christ, because it curiously has all the characteristics of heavily alcoholic wine (apparently it’s fortified with extra alcohol?).

Admittedly the story has led to an interesting debate on the nature of this fairly fundamental part of the celebration of mass, but once again it has to be said the Catholic church are doing themselves no favours. Even if you’re being kind and trying to avoid the obvious jokes about drunk priests and such things.

The thing is, they made one fairly basic mistake. They made a statement with no purpose.  Press release - “priests say they may be over the limit”. Okay then, what is your solution? Clearly there is no intention of changing the vatican’s rules, so no non-alcoholic wine then. Clearly you’re not going to cut the wine thing out completely. So what, you’re suggesting that drink driving should be permitted if your blood alcohol level is raised by the blood of christ rather than, say, a few pints or a shot of vodka? Or do you want some sort of papal/bertal(tm) dispensation to get hammered and drive around ireland, no doubt causing multiple deaths while you’re at it, no the way to the funeral of yet another young person kiled by yet another drink driver (not you though, because it’s the blood of christ, so it doesn’t count???)?

In other words, all debate and educational discussion aside: What’s your point??

All Saints Day

When you don’t believe in organised religion it’s easy to forget about things like All Saints Day.

Or maybe not.

Today one of the most famous men in the world died. He was 92 years old, and very few people knew his name.

In the most immediate sense, he killed approximately 100,000 people. That is his claim to fame, or indeed some would say shame. They are wrong.

Paul Tibbets had a long enough illness to make practical plans, and in doing so he requested no funeral and no gravestone. Because he didn’t want to give protestors an excuse, or an opportunity. How sad - and how terrifying? - that a man of his age, more than sixty years later, felt that he could not allow himself or his family a funeral.

Given the way the world has gone in the last few years it seems all the more appropriate to question the responsibility that can be attached to the actions of any one cog in the wheel of war - for that is all they are when it comes down to it, mere cannon fodder (to recall a game named after a particularly unappetising perspective on war in general).

Paul Tibbets didn’t give the order to bomb Hiroshima. Nor anything like it. He was told to fly his plane, and he did. He was told it was for the good of his country, and, no doubt, civilization in general - “free nations everywhere” and all that. So he did it, and as he said himself, he has slept soundly every night since.

Who can say that he doesn’t have that right?

Who, in sixty years time, will be in that same position?