Control freaks
Continuing yesterday's theme, the EU's consumer chief, Meglana Kuneva, is proposing that self-extinguishing cigarettes should be made compulsory across Europe. They automatically stop burning after a few seconds if not puffed. I'm not a smoker but the idea of a bunch of bureaucrats telling people how often to have a drag on a cigarette infuriates me!
posted by Whispering Walls at 11:49 am
7 Comments:
What a stupid idea. I am not a smoker either,but as an asthmatic I was glad to see it banned in public places. I believe she was a Human Rights lawyer in Finland. That doesn't seem to fit with this nonsense.
Not sure if I have mentioned this - apologies for the repetition if so - but if you get a chance to go and see the excellent film 'The Lives of Others'. It deservedly won the Best Foreign Film Oscar, and is set in East Germany in the time immediately preceding the Berlin Wall coming down . It is a salient warning about kind of surveillance society we must avoid becoming. No freedoms, living under fear of upsetting the 'party machine' and always always always the sheer impossibility of escaping from prying eyes willing to snitch on you for breaking the rules.
An alarming wake-up call that there will not have been much point the Berlin Wall having fallen, if we re build that kind of society to the West of it, with an army of over enthusiastic bureaucrats and a law making machine which is hyperactive
As a fellow asthmatic, I agree with MM on the smoking ban. But this idea is crazy!
It proves once more that there are huge amounts of money involved in the tabacco industry.
I'll try to see that film
Yes, WW, you must see that film; it is excellent. "Das Leben der Anderen"
I've never heard anything so daft. Is there a market for such a thing?
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