The Department of Extrapolated Statistics
Now hear this! I am immortal! You are stuck with me for ever and ever! No matter how old, wrinkled and ’sufficiently decrepit’ I become, I will not die, my arthritic old fingers will never be prised from this keyboard; our ‘dead parrot’ government has said it is so.
I am not alone, there are 70,000 other souls who have taken advantage of this once in a lifetime offer, we could ‘fill Old Trafford football stadium’ or ‘875 double decker buses’, although having been made immortal, I would hope that we find something better to do with our time – seducing the entire Old Trafford football team on the top deck of a double decker bus, for instance.
It works like this, you see. The Department of Extrapolated Statistics says that if you quit smoking for a month you count as having ‘Quit’ – and it was exactly a month to the day that I sat on the floor nursing yet another sprained ankle and decided that the next three weeks immobile with just a packet of frozen peas for company was not to be endured without nicotine. You may struggle to see me through the hazy smoke, you may only know I am here by the heady scent of ‘Eau de Tabac’, but here I am, firmly in the ‘Quitters’ statistics.
And yeah! for I did once, in the last ten years, telephone the NHS Stop Smoking Service for a leaflet, so that makes me one of the beneficiaries of the ‘UK’s cutting-edge smokefree policies’ (quote!) and free to announce this morning, like 70 year old Patricia Miles of Brighton:
“I am so thankful that my local Stop Smoking Service made me one of the 70,000 lives they saved.”
All I had to do was to stop smoking for 28 miserable days, make one phone call, and I have joined the 7% of the population that this behemoth of a Quango claims to have ’saved the life of’. It is a bargain.
Light my fire, baby, I’m off to make the most of it.
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1
September 22, 2009 at 2:11 pm -
The problem is that, according to the NHS, any death of a smoker is “smoking-related” – you could struck on the head by a tortoise, a la Aeschylus, and you would still be part of that statistic. The other issue, of course, is what is going to happen to all those “Smoking Cessation Officers”, once Utopia is reached and all we poor sinners repent our evil ways – answers on a postcard to:
Ve Haff Vays Of Making You Qvit,
Department of Health,
London,
BO1 1OX. -
2
September 22, 2009 at 2:16 pm -
3
September 22, 2009 at 2:20 pm -
Can I add up all the hours of not smoking at work, in the restaurant, on the train, in a non-smoking Range Rover on a long return journey and while asleep to make 28 days?
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4
September 22, 2009 at 2:23 pm -
5
September 22, 2009 at 2:28 pm -
Unintentional administrative error coupled with creative can’tcounting should be a safe bet. I’ve just got to make the phonecall and get my little leaflet. Sorted.
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6
September 22, 2009 at 2:50 pm -
Where were these leaflets when I needed them in 1986?
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7
September 22, 2009 at 3:21 pm -
Who really thought the country would get to this? They don’t even pretend to adhere to rules or conscience any more. It is as if they are proud of their opportunism, utilitarianism and deception. Unless a judge or lawyer says you are a liar then in never really happened.
I am an atheist but feel life would be far easier with the concept of a supreme arbiter. Much harder to persuade people that profit for themselves at our expense is wrong when there is no living or eternal comeback.
I knew Labour was always going to bankrupt us and increase unemployment. That comes with the territory. But this spiralling down and down faster and faster is just terrifying.
Please some sanity or/and decency from somewhere somehow.
I always suspected lefties would like to be somewhere else or change Britain beyond recognition and not once for any moment have I felt any member of this government really accepted what a privilege representing this nation is.
The greatest gift in the world was to be born of this country. I have been robbed of my birth rite and I know exactly by whom.
Rant over… for now.
It seems I am slowly moulding into Travis Bickle and can feel a Whitehall-based massacre coming on. -
8
September 22, 2009 at 3:22 pm -
I think the above was meant for the Baroness Scotland thread, but it fits them all.
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9
September 22, 2009 at 3:54 pm -
“in a non-smoking Range Rover on a long return journey”
Mmm Im intrigued How did you manage that?
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10
September 22, 2009 at 6:42 pm -
All the petty mis-regulation, it’s enough to trun you to drink,hic.
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11
September 22, 2009 at 6:59 pm -
“in a non-smoking Range Rover on a long return journey”
Mmm Im intrigued How did you manage that?
Three in a row whilst strapped to the roof rack in-between service stations?
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12
September 22, 2009 at 7:34 pm -
If you die as a result of the stress of being Baroness Scotland, who has probably never smoked in her life, is a fitness fanatic and lover of all things new labour, would her death be called corruption related??
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13
September 22, 2009 at 8:45 pm -
So that’s why the ’stop smoking service’ is so utterly useless – it’s t0 keep up the tractor production statistics. Why quit once when you can do it every 29 days!
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