See link at end for observers response to many similar complaints to mine.
Just a quick one. Firstly smoking is bad for you. Smoking has however been part of culture for almost 500 years. In a slight but absurd way the Observer has re-written this history, in one of the Guardians groups famous wall charts, put out to tie in with the start of the Formula One season they show interesting cars from the sports history. They are all there Maclarens, Ferraris and Tyrells, all with their sleek lines and gaudy paint work covered latterly with sponsor's logos. All except the cars formerly known as Marlboro Maclaren and more simply John player special these have had the names of tobacco sponsors omitted. This bizarre form of censorship is presumably so kids don't put cigarettes firms on their walls. In terms of modern obsessions this is strange as the Parmalat Brabham is shown, Parmalat are Italy's largest processed food producers, one of the cars (another Brabham) also sports a Martini logo and another Bitburger , a brand of beer. So it's OK to show binge drinking pushers and artery cloggers but not the peddlers of gaspers. It's pathetic. I speak from personal experience when I say even though the JPS Lotus was the best scalectrix car we had, looked cool and won loads of grand prixes I was never tempted to have puff. Sadly I can't say the same for cheese and vermouths alcoholic cousins.
All I would say in response is that the Observer should had explained this all in advance. As this is an intersting part of culture rather than blandly censoring their publications. I would like to see if they would omit walter rayleigh from a tudors wallchart as a tobacco sponsor! Not that in this touchy world a wallchart on the tudors would get printed.
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