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Dingo
Barsoom
United Kingdom
258 Posts |
Posted - 29/04/2007 : 19:13:48
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| So would many other things LTNS. Who is going to enforce this stuff? |
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n/a
deleted
240 Posts |
Posted - 29/04/2007 : 19:27:46
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| We all have a resposability in our society, I'm sure that in the long run even the smokers will be please. |
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long time no see
Earthsea
United Kingdom
6321 Posts |
 Posted - 29/04/2007 : 19:36:05
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quote:
Originally posted by Dingo
So would many other things LTNS. Who is going to enforce this stuff?
Well it will not be Real Police
they are far too busy with paperwork. |
Edited by - long time no see on 29/04/2007 20:23:14 |
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Dingo
Barsoom
United Kingdom
258 Posts |
Posted - 29/04/2007 : 20:02:07
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Yes you are right.
Part of my worry about this topic and many others.
Power to the unaccountable. "Ticket city" £40 or £80 or maybe a criminal record. Don't forget any arrest involves dna and the rest. There is a wider picture here. I thought you would be on to it LTNS. |
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Miriam Binder
Earthsea
United Kingdom
5244 Posts |
Posted - 29/04/2007 : 20:07:14
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| And whether you like it or not, no one is going to be able to totally sanitise the world. At best they will bring everything down to the lowest possible denominator. |
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin |
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long time no see
Earthsea
United Kingdom
6321 Posts |
Posted - 29/04/2007 : 20:22:14
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I will Arrest TB
if he Smokes in a Enclosed Area. |
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Tombstone Blues
Discworld
1898 Posts |
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long time no see
Earthsea
United Kingdom
6321 Posts |
Posted - 29/04/2007 : 20:33:26
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Give Up Smoking for the sake of the children.
Why is it Smokers are bleedin' Selfish! |
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Tombstone Blues
Discworld
1898 Posts |
Posted - 29/04/2007 : 20:35:59
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Why are motorists so selfish?
How many children a year do they kill?
Would Iraq have been invaded if its principal export was tobacco? |
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long time no see
Earthsea
United Kingdom
6321 Posts |
Posted - 29/04/2007 : 20:41:02
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Smokers are being denied Surgery.
Source: SkyNews Live. |
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n/a
deleted
240 Posts |
Posted - 29/04/2007 : 20:53:14
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| I see smoking bans make smoker poets. I like the one it say 'smoking harm if you don't give your mates one' I follow my grandad advise when I was giving up to carry always an open packet of cigarrets and invite my friends and other people that smoke, it seems a cruel method now but make a lot of sense when I was giving up and it worked for me. |
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long time no see
Earthsea
United Kingdom
6321 Posts |
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Archer
Alagaësía
25 Posts |
Posted - 30/04/2007 : 12:36:41
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well im just happy my quit date is tomorrow :D so ban no worries for me! lol!...unless i relapse...but touch wood i wont.
im not sure how long this ban will last though....think about it everyones going to be standing outside puffing away, your not gonna have many places to walk without getting smoke blown in your face.... and oooo imagine all those fag ends on the pavement!...cos theirs no ashtrays outside, so im sure it will be a lovely scene...espically as its summer as well! so everyone will be outside, cos no ones gonna think "oh no point going to the pub ill have to stand outside everytime i want a cig" cos its summer they wont care, and will all go outside.
oh yea and then we will also have alot more drunks on the street, they will be getting wasted in the pub and troot outside for a cig, maybe even sneak their pint out, smoke their cigs as they stumble around abit, before heading back into the pub, no doubt only to return back outside 20 mins later, for another puff.... lets hope none of us live next to a pub!. |
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Archer
Alagaësía
25 Posts |
Posted - 30/04/2007 : 12:40:35
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hmmm also may i ask will they be banning aeroplanes too??
cos each take off leaves the equivilant of over 3 mill (or is it 3 thousand...one of the two!) lit cig smoke!, so i presume those are gonna be banned too??
and cars! espically the cars that spray smoke and/or Black smoke at you as it passes.
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Borninhove
Calaspia
878 Posts |
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moon23
Calaspia
649 Posts |
Posted - 01/05/2007 : 09:16:38
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quote:
Originally posted by Borninhove
Ve haf vays of making you stop!
This is what happens when smokers canno't do the decent thing themselves and not pollute other people's air.
Clean air whilst enjoying a pint. I can't wait. |
http://www.moon23.wordpress.com
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Control Panel
Discworld
1158 Posts |
Posted - 01/05/2007 : 12:39:39
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| Wasn't it Kipling who said that a woman is a woman but a cigar is a smoke... |
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long time no see
Earthsea
United Kingdom
6321 Posts |
Posted - 01/05/2007 : 14:17:34
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Dingo
they can fit those Talking cameras (Public Enclosed Spaces)
the One Officer can tell Tombstone to put his Toxic Fumes Out
or get a £1000 fine.
Life In The City. |
Edited by - long time no see on 01/05/2007 14:28:19 |
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Miriam Binder
Earthsea
United Kingdom
5244 Posts |
Posted - 01/05/2007 : 14:23:03
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| Wouldn't you need a toxicology test first? |
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin |
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long time no see
Earthsea
United Kingdom
6321 Posts |
Posted - 01/05/2007 : 14:25:08
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quote:
Originally posted by Miriam Binder
Wouldn't you need a toxicology test first?
No in Tombstones case Just the Arrest and Fine.
Sign Of The Times.
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Tombstone Blues
Discworld
1898 Posts |
Posted - 01/05/2007 : 21:04:32
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| Just back from Amsterdam - what a civilised place, smoking everywhere. |
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long time no see
Earthsea
United Kingdom
6321 Posts |
Posted - 01/05/2007 : 21:08:34
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quote:
Originally posted by Tombstone Blues
Just back from Amsterdam - what a civilised place, smoking everywhere.
Drugs every place as well.
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Tombstone Blues
Discworld
1898 Posts |
Posted - 01/05/2007 : 21:11:01
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| Not that i noticed - you obviously have more interest in these things . . . |
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long time no see
Earthsea
United Kingdom
6321 Posts |
Posted - 01/05/2007 : 21:21:55
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I never said You would Notice.
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Tombstone Blues
Discworld
1898 Posts |
Posted - 14/05/2007 : 06:04:59
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Christopher Hitchens in the guardian:
'If I had wanted an encapsulating anecdote for my argument, it would have been provided by our glorious secretary of state for health, Patricia Hewitt, who commented on recent events in Iran: "It was deplorable that the woman hostage should be shown smoking. This sends completely the wrong message to our young people." Yes, I think that just about expresses the anti-tobacco mentality. It is all-enveloping and all-inclusive, utterly patronising and completely, laughably literal-minded. It is the same solemn certitude that, in the United States recently, airbrushed Franklin Roosevelt's cigarette-holder from the street-signs in his home town, and forbade a condemned murderer in Florida his request for a last cigarette on the grounds - perfectly logical, really - that death row was an absolutely non-smoking facility.
It seems almost quaint to recall the long opposing tradition, whereby British stoicism and endurance - whether it involved PoWs or men in the trenches, or people on long night-shifts or arduous stints at the coalface - were almost exemplified by the consoling fag or baccy or snout. Don't you know this stuff is really bad for you, and even for those around you? Are you aware, my good man, that smoking can shorten your life? I trust you appreciate, madam, that inhaling during pregnancy may affect your unborn child? Have you not perused the studies, which conclusively show that "passive smoking" can have deleterious effects on perfect strangers?
Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I do know all this, or at any rate am perfectly prepared to act as if it were all true. That is why I do not object to smoking being banned on aeroplanes, in hospitals or in offices. But it has been a long time since any non-smoker has been forced to breathe the same air as a smoker. The upcoming general ban - Ms Hewitt's triumphant legislative monument - crosses a completely different line. It is no longer "about" the protection of non-smokers. It is "about" state-enforced behaviour-modification. Another and more old-fashioned name for it is prohibition.
Question: is a bar or pub or restaurant "a workplace". Yes it is, in a way, obviously, because people have jobs there. But is this not a slightly reductionist definition of a place of hospitality? You as a customer or patron do not have quite the same relationship to the management as you do, say, to those from whom you buy your groceries. When you enter your local, you are a guest and the proprietor is the host. Much depends on an atmosphere of mutual cordiality. Well, then, if the owner likes his pipe and you enjoy the odd cigarette or cigar, why should anyone else be involved in the relationship? Those who do not want to be around any smoke have plenty of places of their own to which to resort, where the rules are different.
Ah, but what about the staff? They have to put up with what you and your host are puffing, don't they? Surely this is an issue of workers' rights? But that is true only if you assume that a person seeking a job as a waitress or barman, and allergic to smoke, can only find a job in a smoker's paradise. How likely, really, is that? If places of hospitality were plainly demarcated as "smokers welcome" or "no smoking", it is hard to imagine that all involved would not be able to find their way, unaided by the government, to the place that suited them best. Isn't it a bit boring to have to point this out?
Of course it is boring. It is supposed to be boring! The reason for the easy victory of people such as Hewitt (who I had pegged for a little authoritarian frump even when she ran the old National Council for Civil Liberties) is that they do not feel boredom at all. For them, attending a committee meeting that will find ways of closing the last loophole and abolishing the last exemption or anomaly is an experience akin to the sensual. Soon, soon, they moan softly to themselves, the rules will be absolutely the same for everybody. No exceptions. At long last - zero tolerance!
Just ponder the implications of those last two words for a second. They say, without any ambiguity, that tolerance is to be despised. Forget all the usual babble about "inclusiveness" and "diversity". If you want to toddle round to the Rat and Goldfish and have a smoke and a drink while you mutter over the newspaper, you can forget it. There are people who have taken you into account, and weighed and measured your situation, and who have other plans for you. What a pity that you had better things to do than attend that committee meeting where your private pleasures came under scrutiny. Bet you wish you weren't so easily bored.
So this is another of those battles, not just between the literal-minded and the broad-minded, but between the quantifiable and the unquantifiable. There are those who think that everything can be accounted for and adjudicated, and those who do not. Somebody once wrote that the gods do not subtract, from the span of a man's life, the hours spent in fishing. For me, the life of the angler is an almost flawless example of how not to have a good time. (The same goes for the life of those who delight the chivvying of the fox, and who try to make an antic sport out of the sordid necessity to cull rural predators one way or another.) But I would prefer not to disturb something for which I have no sympathy and no comprehension, and I have no very strong compulsion to tell people who do not threaten me what they may not do. For all I know, these fatuous recreations may hold a magic key of consolation to others. I am told - persuasively enough - that some years have already been subtracted from my own span by the smoking habit. That's tough. But as Calverly put it in his Ode To Tobacco: "I have a liking old,/ For thee, thou manifold/ Stories I know, are told/ Not to thy credit."
There have been moments of reverie, wreathed in smoke and alone with a book, and moments of conversation, perfumed with ashtrays and cocktails and decent company, which I would not have exchanged for a year of ordinary existence.
What does Hewitt know of this and by what right does she presume to arbitrate it? I have probably written more books than she has recently read, and I object, mildly but very firmly, to her having any say in my personal decisions. I object to her poisoning my relationship with my favourite bartender, who must now pull a face and regretfully decline, and furthermore act as an enforcer, lest he be fined. Now I cannot go there again, can I? And I do not much want to. One small defeat for me: one giant triumph for Hewitt. The little sum of human happiness - the public stock of harmless pleasure, as it was once defined - has been radically reduced. And who is better off for it? Nobody had to come to that joint if they didn't want to.
Speaking of joints and suchlike, I can be sure that I am reasonably objective about this, because I have absolutely no use for any narcotic except tobacco and alcohol, but know many smart people who seem to benefit from, say, marijuana. I have got nothing out of this weed except heartburn and nausea but I accept the word of friends that it works for them. I also know many people whose nausea - from chemotherapy - has actually been cured by it, thus prolonging their lives. More important, I know that any government which considers itself qualified to decide on what people can ingest will either fail to enforce its will or will have to adopt tyrannical and arbitrary measures in the attempt. Or both. We are currently throwing away our chances in Afghanistan, for instance, by insisting on burning what is, for many inhabitants, their only crop. All the profit will therefore be diverted to the warlords, when (until Afghanistan recovers its old vineyards) we could be buying the opium and using it to make painkillers. A win-win. But instead, all the stupidity and bureaucracy of Richard Nixon's "war on drugs" (such a success, like its counterpart wars on poverty and, more recently, "terror") have not only persisted but have now mutated into the smoking ban. The voice of the workhouse- master is heard in the land. Stub out that wicked cheroot, and improve yourself while there is yet time! Mens sana in corpore sano [A healthy mind in a healthy body]. And, since we are to be spared no cliches in either English or Latin, get used to the idea of the government acting in loco parentis
I have to say that I am not so much alarmed and depressed by the swift and total nature of the ban as I am struck by the ease of its victory. I haven't actually lived in Britain for some time, but I would have expected a bit more resistance to such a crude extension of state and schoolmarm power. Is it really true that people do not mind having the cigarette snatched from their hands, everywhere from the boozer to the night-club to the billiard hall? Are they aware how soon the other shoe will drop, and that people will be told (as they already are being told in some parts of America) that they may not smoke if they live in public housing or use public parks or public beaches? I say it at the risk of embarrassment, but if people have become this accustomed to being told what to do, then I think we have lost something else that cannot quite be quantified.
The victory of the control-freaks, and of people who just know they are right, is an old story. Various restraints inhibit me from overusing the word "Nazi" or "fascist", which ought never to be employed except against those who live for violence. But I did notice a wonderful moment in the brilliant German film Downfall, about the last days of the Third Reich. Those in the Führerbunker who found the situation becoming a little too tense, and who wanted a drag to relieve the strain, were required to step outside into the garden, amid the rain of Red Army shells. A good way to prolong your life. And several historians have described the moment, just after the suicide of Hitler, when the surviving occupants could and did gratefully light up out of sheer relief. How amazing that we now have a minister who would quite humourlessly say that it was the latter group that was setting the bad example.'
Well put. |
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long time no see
Earthsea
United Kingdom
6321 Posts |
Posted - 14/05/2007 : 07:11:06
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We Ain't On about Perfect Strangers
as he puts it.
We are Talking about Pubs and Cafes.
Smoking Ban is the 1st of July. |
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flaming pie
Alagaësía
89 Posts |
Posted - 14/05/2007 : 09:48:16
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Guardian? - sounds more like the Telegraph to me. Patricia Hewitt may be a bit silly sometimes and does sound rather overbearing - as does Ruth Kelly.
BUT - smoking is very bad for you, and those around you, and everything being done to stop people smoking is a good thing. Just because some people lack the will or the will power to stop of their own accord - tough luck. It's time that smoking was confined to the dustbin of history. |
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Miriam Binder
Earthsea
United Kingdom
5244 Posts |
Posted - 14/05/2007 : 10:02:05
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| I have thought long and hard about it. I have wrestled with my conscience and given myself a good long talking to. I have taken myself to task and in hand and really given myself what for ... and now, I have decided that I am taking up smoking on the 1st of July! |
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin |
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long time no see
Earthsea
United Kingdom
6321 Posts |
Posted - 14/05/2007 : 10:12:24
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quote:
Originally posted by Miriam Binder
I have thought long and hard about it. I have wrestled with my conscience and given myself a good long talking to. I have taken myself to task and in hand and really given myself what for ... and now, I have decided that I am taking up smoking on the 1st of July!
Pathetic. |
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Miriam Binder
Earthsea
United Kingdom
5244 Posts |
Posted - 14/05/2007 : 10:16:52
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quote:
Originally posted by long time no see
Pathetic.
quote:
Originally posted by long time no see
Pathetic.
 And I love you too LTNS  |
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin |
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Topic |
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Smoking Ban
