Yes, I know, doesn't happen too often, but next Saturday evening I'll wishing I was in England. More specifically I'll be wishing I was in The Vaults at The Bull Hotel in Stony Stratford, because it'll be about 11 in the morning there, just in time for Dick Puddlecote's Day Out in response to this authoritarian gonad, a man who's bought into the concept of denouncing one's own parents that was practiced in some of history's worst regimes.
As I've often said I am not a smoker, having given up a while back, and I don't much like the smell of tobacco smoke. I am, however, a libertarian and very much against smokers being persecuted in my name, as well as concerned about when the ban-it-all brigade will get round to attacking something I do like doing. As such I take Niemöller's lesson to heart and stand with the smokers (and the drinkers since they're also in the firing line these days). I can't get to Stony Stratford next weekend - a hundred miles might have been possible but ten thousand is just out of the question - but I'd hope that some freedom loving fellow non-smokers will turn up and support Dick Puddlecote and company.
This is not about them and us, smokers and non-smokers. It's about them and us, nannies and adults, controllers and the controlled. Pick a side now because I have a nasty feeling it's going to get uglier as more freedoms are stolen from us, and do please go along to stand by a smoker in Stony Stratford on the 16th.