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Monday 21 September 2009

Violence against the smoker…it gets worse and worse!

0_285_427_http---offlinehbpl.hbpl.co.uk-news-OKM-CC6505C4-F5C1-D028-A36364891AE558CA
Warning: video contains scenes of graphic violence Link to this video
An NHS trust in Birmingham has recruited the photographer Rankin to help with a new hard-hitting viral anti-smoking ad, part of a multimedia campaign that launches today.
Rankin has co-directed the ad with Chris Cottam, which shows a smoker suffering an assault from an invisible assailant as he walks down the street.
"Smoke and your body takes a beating," a voiceover says at the end of the minute-long film. "Fight back. Quit now."
The video will be shown on a mobile exhibition unit that will tour parts of Birmingham and also offer tests of patients' lung ages and carbon monoxide levels.
Rankin and Cottam's ad is also being distributed virally on YouTube and other websites as part of the marketing campaign surrounding the initiative.
The theme is also taken up on posters and leaflets that feature three different men who have been beaten up, with the slogans "Smoking: GBH to your insides", "When you smoke, it's your insides that get beaten up" and "Cigarettes attack you. But in ways you don't always see".
This campaign is being run by the Dr Foster agency, which was able to secure Rankin's services free of charge.
NHS Birmingham East and North is hoping the campaign will get through to "hard to reach" smokers – specifically white males aged 35-55 in the C2DE socio-economic category – living in the most deprived parts of the area.
"People have been seeing stop smoking ads all their lives and everyone knows it's bad for them. It's old news," said Joanna Mawtus, creative director at Dr Foster.
"Unless we give people a new perspective on it, they're not going to take any notice. We think this idea does that.
"In testing, people thought the images they were being confronted with were hard hitting, but also acknowledged that it's what they need to see in order to change. They're quite shocking, but then so is the damage smoking causes."

Never, in my entire 56 years on this earth have I seen such putrid, outright hatred in one video made on behalf of the righteous!  If I were anything other than a smoker would I be allowed to make this statement on film???

Update: Courtesy of Dick Puddlecote and YouTube here is the video:
Courtesy




24 comments:

Pat Nurse MA said...

It's time this hate spreading stopped! I am sick of my tax money being used against me in this way. Campaign for the end of the bigoted smoke free quango which has only one aim - to eradicate smoking and smokers by any foul means possible!

Unknown said...

Here here Pat, this is the worst anti smoking video I've ever seen! Could I make the same video about Moslems, black people, Jews etc? Seemingly it's ok to vilify smokers and smoking by any means possible...this stinks worse than second hand smoke!

budgie said...

And, of course, this theme could be applied to passive smoking as well.

The one good bit is that he is more or less admitting that most smokers are ignoring all the previous campaigns, which have already wasted vast amounts of taxpayers money.

Belinda said...

Don't forget that the display ban campaigns among others are trying to persuade us that kids unthinkingly follow the example set by the media. Now they present images of violence against smokers - are they allowed to be shown before 9pm?

One of the Guardian comments included the memorable term 'wankifest'. Very apt.

Dick Puddlecote said...

Quite unbelievable. Words really can't convey how sick the makers of this video are.

Nicked it for my blog and found the YouTube embed link.

Unknown said...

Was looking at downloading it Dick but was in too much of a hurry to say how I felt about this filth that I neglected to research YouTube...get it done my son!

BTS said...

Do you reckon they'll let me have the rest of his pack..?

Anonymous said...

This is the very same trick they pulled in San Francisco, only except by advertisement they did it by editorial comment.

They had an attorney who was anti-smoking propogate the idea that outdoor smokers deserved to be beaten physically and that as an attorney she assured everyone "no court in the land would convict her".

After that then all the newspapers, SF Chronicle, Asian Weekly, Guardian, others all launched vicious attacks against outdoor smokers calling them vile and susceptible to physical attack by non-smokers - and thus ushered in the era of outdoor smoking bans.

Since that time I have personally seen it gotten to the point where smokers have been verbally accosted on street corners and physical violence threatened. I have also seen that everyone turns away from it and pretends it either doesn't happen or is totally normal - thanks to what the news media has manufactured.

Having it done by way of free television advertising is even worse. At least in bankrupted CA the state-paid anti-smoking advertisements don't actually come out and condone violence against smokers yet - but they have done the same damage using media editorializing to the same effects and ends.

Walk down many streets in SF, CA, and not only is outdoor smoking banned by law, it has been banned by local small businesses who plaster so many no outdoor smoking signs you will trip over them walking down the sidewalks.

I personally believe this is one of their tactics, to incite violence against smokers - and whoever is doing this knows full well this is what they are doing too - out of total meanness of heart and contemptible hatred.

This to me is no different than the launching of Krystalnacht by the Nazis, only updated to fit the format of modern post-WWII society.

If the non-smoking public buys into this then the Nazi philosophy of service to the state and physical, material world trumps that of spirit has truly taken hold again - and when the worse things come to be - there will be nobody left to defend those caught next in the cross-hairs of what is rapidly becoming the one-world dictatorship everyone purports not to want - but is tacitly agreeing to and augmenting, as per their silence.

"Won't happen here" and "doesn't affect me" is unrealistic, unjustifiable and is actually abetting the effort unto which everyone will eventually fall victim.

If that is still something the majority of people refuse to see then I personally see no reason to believe what is the worst feared for this world will in fact become very much the established truth, very soon.

And anti-smoking was the method, the intial seed, from which the rest of it to follow thus came.

Anonymous said...

Nanny spoils smokers night out.
Smoker spoils nanny's night out.
Easy,simple and fair

Think about it.

Cake Burner

Anonymous said...

Utterly sickening. This seems to somehow condone violence being directed at smokers.
This must be stopped.

C Bellwood said...

How condescending, coercive and quite honestly this advertisement demonstrates the level of intellect of these mindless people to deploy such paternalistic scare (bully) tactics that have not worked in the past and will not work now...perhaps when they start to treat us as free thinking intelligent individuals then we will listen to the discussion. Perhaps they can now make an advert of young teenage women being raped by young men in the most vicious manner and the consequential rest of their lives spent raising 'delinquent' offspring....given the 'crisis' of the increase in teenage pregnancies and the costs to the health service...this makes as much sense as that advert...hypocrisy as the state promotes smoking in very covert ways and then piously claims to condemn it. I say that they have shot themselves in the foot with this advert, let them continue as the backlash will be greater than the effect of their scaremongering nonsense. Personally, I detest bullies!

Anonymous said...

The same kind of bullying could also be used to change behaviour of any other sort. What people wear, what they read, what they say.

arry potta said...

Our education system says that bullies should ALWAYS be reported and never allowed to get away with it. Or does that only apply to children?

Anonymous said...

Who actually do we make a complaint to. This video is sickening.

Belinda said...

Advertising Standards, the Health Trust, your MP. I'm just making suggestions.

Anonymous said...

The people who are coming out with this propaganda surely have underlying mental issues? They are sick, they use the "children" sick, frightening them to death and to socially engineer their parents, hmm let's think what dictator has done that before.
Sorry John, I do not want the video, it would be like asking the rest of the Country not to thieve, like the mps.
mandyv

Anonymous said...

Sorry I should have said, I do not want to watch the video, what I can see, is enough for me.
mandyv

Barking Spider said...

Didn't watch the video, didn't need to or want to! I'm one of those "hard to reach" bastards who just gets more and more pissed off with every awful campaign advert. They can try to justify this video however they want - the fact remains they are inciting people to violence - truly fucking vile!!

Alex said...

Complaint sent off to the ASA and my (useless) MP...we'll see what happens...

Max D said...

How about:- Watching Jeremy Kyle and/or similar shows turns you into a "look at me, look at me, the world's against me" tosspot (although, likely to be a smoker, granted. Hey, we;re all oafish slobs after all......)

Debt advisory ad's and those from those c***s at Ocean Finance and so forth? Borrow more. screw your life up, get an ulcer or worse.

Or the X Factor or Britain is Dogshit? Instant fame, gratification followed by villification. Obscene..........

Or:- "I'm loving it" - eating battery farmed chicken bits (which all the fluffy furry bunny loving non-smokers are always bashing on about) but don't worry about the alleged animal cruelty or what this food is doing to my insides.

Or Coca-Cola or Red Bull or any form of alcohol whatsoever!(don't worry!Drink Aware will save all the broken, busted alchys and their families and their tattered ruined lives....I know; I've been there....)

All of the above are fine, passed by the ASA and helping the Great British Public. I have nothing further to add other than FUCK you Brown, FUCK you darling and FUCK your duty. Ban it or deal with it! Stop taking my money and making me feel like a 5th rate citizen.

The next non-smoker who tut-tus me and sucks their teeth when I am having a fag at the bus stop, well.........I will then become the poster boy for "Smoking cigarettes incites violence toward the no-smoker"........so we would have gone ful circle then.

Ashtrayhead said...

This is a link to the NHS trust responsible for this video. There's a contact e-mail address in there too:-

http://www.benpct.nhs.uk/_home/index.aspx

Anonymous said...

I have made a complaint to the ASA.

Anonymous said...

anon- This happened last week to a smoker, smoking outside a shop -
http://www.boston.com/news/local/vermont/articles/2009/09/18/dispute_over_cigarette_leads_to_vermont_stabbing/
Dispute over cigarette leads to Vermont stabbing.
September 18, 2009
SOUTH BURLINGTON, Vt.—Police say a Vermont nail salon manager upset with a man smoking outside of his business stabbed him after they started to fight.

mandyv

Anonymous said...

Why hate smokers? Easy, because they can choose to change to non-smokers. BUT someone could justify hating blacks because they could become white. After all, Michael Jackson proved it! Ability to change does not justify bigotry.

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