this is not the hamster you're looking for (flightstothesea) wrote in

otf_wank,
@ 2008-02-19 14:07:00

smoking bans are just like fascism!
Some of you may be familiar with a man by the name of Charlie Brooker, who writes for the Guardian's "Comment is Free" section (he also has a TV review column called "Screen Burn"). He's acerbic and misanthropic and generally reasonably funny, though if the comments on his articles are anything to go by, he was funnier at some undetermined point in the past.

This week's article is about the proposed £10 fee for a smoker's permit, the form for which is deliberately complex. This has a lot of people up in arms.

Comments for the article start out well enough, until anonymousdibs claims that There really is nothing in this world nicer than the sound of a smoker whining.

And just like that, we go from zero to Godwin's in 10 comments:

First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.

-Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Take heed, non-smokers.

Unfortunately, you can't link to individual comments, so you'll have to scroll to get to the choicer bits of stupid and funny.

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	wrongly_amused 2008-02-20 07:47 am UTC (link)
	To be fair, it would be nice to walk out of a building on a rainy day without nearly coughing up a lung two feet out of the door. This being said, the second campus I attended had designated smoking areas on adjacent spaces between doors that weren't attached to any pedestrian areas, and I was cool with that. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

hallidae
2008-02-20 08:03 am UTC (link)

I haven't lived in the dorms here at all, or been in another class building for almost a year, so I don't know what it's like for the rest of the campus, but at least at the art building, the teachers and students are really good about staying away from the doors, so I don't personally know why the hell the administration's getting its tail in a knot. Especially since it took them more years than I'd like to count to go "Ohshit, our buildings aren't safety code compliant!" and do anything about it. ::still waiting for them to figure out that the art building is still on the "Repair" List::

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