1 Year of Smoke-Free Living

It is now 1 year since the smoking ban started in England on 1 July 2007. It is good that about 400,000 people have given up smoking. But what a shame that so many still smoke and try to justify it, quoting such things as civil liberties.

But why do smokers think that they are free? They are slaves to the tobacco companies, spending a fortune every year on a drug that will eventually kill them, and making the shareholders of tobacco companies very rich.

The freedom is when a person is no longer addicted to smoking, plus the freedom for everyone to eat or drink in a smoke-free environment.

The scientific facts clearly show that smoking kills. It is not only the smoke that the smoker breathes in that is damaging, but also there is the smoke from the cigarette and that which is breathed out, that can harm other people in the vicinity of the smoker.

We really do need to consider a programme of phasing out smoking altogether. All those who still smoke should be given help to quit, which can be paid for through the taxes raised on smoking. I realise that the British Government makes a lot of money from the tax they add to tobacco sales, but this money should be used wisely. If everyone gave up smoking, then although the taxes from tobacco would cease, there would be less expenditure by the Government on getting people to quit, on treating smoking-related diseases, and if the taxes were being used just for getting people to quit, then as more people quit, there would be less people still to treat.

Although people have a right to smoke, they do not have a right to smoke in places where smoking is banned by law or by the owner/occupier (e.g. a private home). Everyone has the right to be enslaved to large corporations if they so wish. But everyone also has the right to enjoy life without being adversely affected by those who wish to be slaves to smoking.

I have never smoked in my life, and never will. I made the choice not to when I was a young boy, and I will never change that choice. I will not choose to endanger my own health or that of others in such a way.

If you are a smoker, then you owe it to yourself to at least consider how much of a slave you are and whether you wish to continue in this, or whether you would prefer to be free.

The best choice is to choose life.

Metric is not so foreign, more English than the Imperial system

In a bit of a blow to those who want to cling on to good old British Imperial measures like pounds and ounces - it turns out it was an Englishman who invented the "foreign" metric system.

Or so claims Pat Naughtin, a metrication specialist from Australia, who carried out his research at Wadham College in Oxford, at Trinity College in Cambridge, and at the Royal Society in London.

He says John Wilkins, founder of the Royal Society, first published his ideas for a metric measure in 1668 → 120 years before the French adopted the metric system.

Wilkins' system was complete in that it was based on decimal numbers (10s, 100s, and 1000s) and its measurements were to be based on an internationally agreed 'universal measure', which would become the basis for other measures.

Our modern measuring methods now use all of Wilkins' ideas: we use prefixes to go from millimetres via metres to kilometres, we have a universally agreed definition of a metre, and a litre of water has a mass of a kilogram.

Although Wilkins did not use the word 'metre', its use became common after Tito Livio Burattini translated Wilkins 'universal measure' to its Italian equivalent, 'metro catholico' and, it seems that this was later translated, and shortened, to the French word, metre.

(From a Press Release issued by the UKMA)


Metric was invented by a good Christian bishop, rather than an atheist or someone of another religion. I have found that many well-meaning christian people have erroneously thought that imperial was better than metric and that God invented the imperial system. Yet the imperial system is almost totally pagan in its origins, whereas metric is christian.

“Bishop John Wilkins among other things:

• Was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.
• Was Warden of Wadham College, Oxford.
• Married to Oliver Cromwell’s sister.
• Wrote “the first book in English on cryptography”.
• Was one of the Chief Founders of the Royal Society, the UK’s most important science academy.

Let’s hear it for rational polymathic Bishops who have no trouble reconciling a rational faith in a rational God with a rational outlook on the rational world.”

(Quoted from the Wardman Wire blog)

Further commentary can also be found at Metric Views.