The Daily Novel

George Orwell’s 1984 has arrived - for smokers. Today an army of thought police will be out on the streets, into our parks and into our pubs to tell smokers how to live their lives. They will fine them if they dare to break the new national law against smoking in any public place. They will fine them if they break the new laws many Councils are introducing to fine smokers as much as a hungry pounds if they dare to litter the streets by crushing a cigarette but under their boot. But they will also accost them if they are smoking in parks, still totally legal and ask them to stop. Not even the most zealous of those scientists who are pushing some very dubious statistics about passive smoking have argued that smoking in the open air harms anyone other than the smoker.