Andy D72
I smoked for 35 years and then gave up 15 years ago. My reasons are mine and no business of anyone else. Smokers all know the risks they are taking without having to be reminded at every opportunity. I don't like the smell of cigarette smoke and I try to avoid those doorways where smokers now have to gather, but I don't and I won't sneer at them or regard myself as somehow superior or more intelligent/sensitive than they are - just because I quit. They choose to smoke. I choose not to. End of.
I once stood outside an abattoir on a frosty November morning, watching the steam rise from a huge bin of fresh entrails as a smiling man with blood up to his elbows separated the sinews while carrying on a conversation with me - as if he were just shelling peas. You don't forget that in a hurry (it was around 1982, at a company called Nottingham Animal By-Products).
I'm 64 years old. I
know where food comes from. I'm not stupid and I don't need to be made to feel as if I'm somehow complicit in all the sins of the meat industry as I seal a steak or grill a chop. Although I can easily understand it I have no interest in why you gave up eating meat, Andy, and the fact that you did will not change my eating habits one iota. As Andy Nightingale so rightly said, I don't mock others for their choices and I don't expect to be patronised, questioned or lectured about mine.
As for 'veggie bashing', I believe all I said was that in my own experience vegans are a nuisance when one is buying a round of cream cakes or drinks. And Jason Gillespie? Round here we'd call him a gob on a stick.
Fried haloumi sandwich, anyone?