The human right to smoke

Each time I take my monthly Aer Lingus flight between Gatwick and Dublin, I buy a carton of Silk Cut cigarettes for a dear family member who enjoys the odd few fags. As Ireland is in the EU and Britain is not, duty-free purchases are on sale – so the gaspers are cheaper.

But when the next Labour government arrives – and there will very likely be one next year –cigarettes will be en route to prohibition, with a view to a total ban within six

Do I feel guilty buying these ciggies, complete with their graphic photographs of diseased organs and ghastly afflictions caused by smoking?

No. I’m acquiring this tobacco product for someone mature enough to make her own decisions, who moderates her smoking sensibly and with consideration to others.

Hasn’t the universal cry of feminism for the last 40 years been about women being free to choose what they do with their own bodies? Isn’t the ongoing mantra all about ‘consent’? So if individuals ‘consent’ to smoke cigarettes, why should the Government restrain them?

Ah, but I am told by the New Puritans, cigarettes harm other people, and smoking-related diseases place a burden on the National Health Service. But cigarette taxes also contribute hugely to the national exchequer (not, admittedly, when you’re dodging the said levies on a duty-free flight). And if smokers do die earlier, then they are relieving the NHS of the long-time care of the infirm old.

We of a certain vintage have known many contemporaries who have been felled by dementia, strokes, pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer, Parkinson’s, heart attacks, brain tumours and more, who never put a cigarette near their lips. As Oldie founding father Richard Ingrams has written, you have to die of something.

Yes, we’re all aware ciggies are bad for your health, although, in the past, they’ve often been seen as beneficial for social life, camaraderie and sharing a moment together. I don’t actually recommend taking up the old coffin nails, but it would be intolerably bossy to ban them.

The obituary can be a fine way to understand European history, as evidenced by the obits of Maximilian, Margrave of Baden, 89, a German aristo who was Prince Philip’s first cousin. His mother, Princess Theodora, was Philip’s sister.

The German cousins were banned from the 1947 royal wedding on account of wartime sensibilities, but later Theodora became Elizabeth’s favourite sister-in-law.

Like others of his ilk, Max von Baden fell on (relatively) hard times and had to sell the exquisite contents of his BadenBaden castle. But he turned to cultivating his vineyards, which dated from 1366, and produced a ‘fine white Riesling’. A civilised vocation!

There are two new road signs at the exit from Dover docks – one on the highway towards the A2, the other on the stretch towards the A20 – saying ‘Welcome to England’, accompanied by a single Tudor-rose design.

Is this a warm touristy welcome? Is it suggesting that people might not know that, after crossing the Channel, they are now in England? Is it a sly hint to distinguish England from Scotland or Wales? Is it a retreat from the imperialist history perhaps more indicated by ‘Great Britain’?

Since poetry alludes more usually to

England than to Britain – as in ‘Oh, to be in England/Now that April’s there?’ – is it just more poetic?

The Government (and maybe most people) believe that Northern Ireland would be better off if the schools were not segregated between Catholics and Protestants – as 90 per cent are.

The snag is that these religiously segregated schools are often rather good. Three Catholic schools – St Mary’s Grammar in Magherafelt, Co Derry, Aquinas Diocesan School and Our Lady and St Patrick’s College, both in Belfast – emerged as the top-performing schools of 1,600 surveyed in the UK.

Understandably, parents want to keep sending their kids to these academically outstanding schools. It helps, too, that Northern Ireland retained its grammar schools.

I also wonder if faith segregation isn’t sometimes a spur to competitive excellence. It’s said that a famous nun in Northern Ireland, invoking the dark humour of Belfast, used to say to her girls, ‘There’ll be murder if those Protestant boys [in the nearby competing academy] get better A-level grades!’

In an ideal world, everyone should learn in an atmosphere of peace, love and inclusion of all. But I’m not sure that most parents (or grandparents) prioritise such an ideal over the benefits of their poppets’ education.

Phew! It seems I’m in the clear with Prince Harry, who accuses media scribes of persecuting his mother.

Princess Diana said to Max Hastings at the Daily Telegraph, ‘Why can’t you write nice things about me, like Mary Kenny does?’

I had rather taken Di’s side in my 1990s Daily Mail dispatches, especially after she told me she’d really like to have been a nurse. I thought that a sweet Florence Nightingale aspiration.