no more coughing hacks

01Jul07

Today at 6am another great British stereotype went up in smoke. England’s enclosed public spaces and workplaces became officially “smokefree”, following the recent examples of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. This means that the legendary hard-drinking, chain-smoking English pub regular will no longer be able to fill the air with acrid smoke as he props up the bar, and pubs may actually turn into pleasant places to be. Eastenders will certainly never be the same again. And what of that urban launderette experience of some pillock lighting up just when you’re folding your smalls?

That said, despite all the trumpeting about this being the best thing for our nation’s health in a generation etc, the Knackered Hack — who heartily approves of just about everything that’s healthy and life-enhancing — has his reservations. One of the founding principles of Knackerd-emia is to “do the opposite”*; in my case, most particularly to do the opposite of my nemesis, Michael Bloomberg, who allegedly tried to summons the Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards for smoking on stage at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Where’s the satisfaction in that?

The smoke-a-holic Fleet Street journalist, puffing away over his latest scoop, will certainly become a thing of the past. And I wonder how many great stories would never have been written without the influence of what Dennis Potter called “the little tube of delight”? Beryl Bainbridge famously claimed that she suffered from writer’s block when forced to quit.

Smoking gangs outside office buildings are well known these days for being hotbeds of inter-departmental networking, so smoking therefore scores really high on our collaboration index.

It does look like the road to hell may well be paved with good intentions, as well as a heck of a lot of cigarette butts.

*For more clarification on our “do the opposite” policy see our earlier post on Scott Page’s work.

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