So the pro-smoking lobby have got David Hockney on side? He’s apparently been making a noise at the Labour party conference about the right to smoke in pubs –
“You cannot have a smoke free bohemia. Without a bohemia you pay a heavy price,” he said in an interview with The Independent. “Picasso smoked until he was about 98 and so did Matisse.” – right, and so did a fair few other people. However, millions more are dying across the world of smoking related illnesses. Most of them smoke, some of them don’t. Very few of them would smoke again if they were given the chance to start over. And as for a smoke-free bohemia – I thought artists were supposed to be forward thinking, blue-sky-people, envisaging the world that could be. etc. etc. Clearly Hockney is sold on some cliched view of Bohemia as Paris in the early 20th Century. You might as well say you can’t have a Bohemia without huge amounts of dog shit on all the streets – that’s been a feature of Paris for a long time as well…
Clearly Hockney has no idea what he’s talking about – no medical training, no background in social theory. He’s a painter (quite a good one). This quote from the article is telling –
Mr Hockney was taken to Brighton by Forest, a pro-smoking lobby group funded by cigarette makers. At a packed meeting he attacked the government’s plans alongside Joe Jackson, the 80s singer, and the chef Antony Worrall-Thompson.
Right, and what other areas of my life are going to be informed by the three stooges? What on earth have Joe Jackson and Worrall Thompson got to do with anything? I quite like Joe Jackson’s music (recorded, not live), but I’m not about to take tips from him about anything, least of all public policy. Forest are guilty of the most ludicrous of PR faux-pas. Three minor league celebs with no qualification to talk on any subject other than their speciality of art, music or food, pontificating about the right to smoke – PISS OFF, CRAP CELEBS! Nobody cares.
Smoking is rubbish – pointless, damaging, anti-social and expensive. The industry is corrupt beyond belief (it always astounds me when I meet leftie eco-monkeys who smoke – how on earth do they square that one???) and the health effects are a HUGE and pointless burden on the NHS.
Hockney’s comment on this is telling –
Did the artist worry about being hijacked by the tobacco manufacturers? ” No,” he quipped.
“I am glad of the tobacco manufacturers. I am a big customer of theirs. They make a good vegetarian product.”
So no concern about the other environmental effects of the tobacco industry, the human cost, the aggressive marketing to the world’s poorest nations, the covering up of health reports. So long as it’s ‘veggie’. You dickhead.
If I smoked, I’d give up after hearing that, for fear of being associated with a moron like Hockney. and If I owned one of his paintings, I’d probably chop it into 20,000 pieces and sell them.