A Liverpool anti-smoking group with the backing of the city council has called for an ‘18’ certificate for all films in which smoking is depicted. The British Board of Film Censors has rejected the demands, saying that such a ban would be “heavy-handed”.
However, Mr Andy Jobsworth, chair-perchild of SmokeFree Liverpool and the city’s head of Public Protection and Paperclip Procurement, argued that “one or two – whoops, of course I mean one in two - children between 11 and 18 who witness smoking in movies actually experiment with – and therefore start – smoking themselves. Then, of course, they suffer a horrible, lingering death after callously murdering all their friends and relatives, as well as anyone they have ever met.”
Mr Jobsworth said that if the BBFC would not act, then Liverpool might use the licensing laws to ban films locally. He did not rule out pulling down TV transmitters to save children from the pernicious influence of Dot Cotton, removing lemonade shandy from supermarket shelves because it lures innocent children into inevitable alcoholism and horrible, lingering death, and banning kissing, which invariably results in teenage pregnancies. And horrible, lingering death.
“We are also banning the evil Radio 4,” screamed Mr Jobsworth from his rubber cell in the Town Hall basement. “I have incontrovertible evidence - from no less an authority than Wikipedia - that this irresponsible organisation shamelessly promotes reasoned discussion of topical issues, which can lead impressionable people to the fatal conclusion that thinking about things is an acceptable mode of behaviour that will somehow not lead to a horrible, lingering death.”
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