It has been a busy few days what with Association meetings, deliveries and good news at work on future contracts.
However the most startling news has been the growth in people coming back to us from the Lib Dems. The reception on door steps has been good but the returns on surveying against how people pledged at the last election has shown a marked increase in those happy to declare they will vote Conservative.
I am fed up with this nanny state Government. Means tests, form filling, telling us to do this and to do that, the monitoring, the evaluation, the target setting etc etc etc. But now it has reached a point of no return.
Last week the Government told us we were all eating too much salt. This week they are launching a campaign to stop us eating sugar. One almost wonders what the point of being alive is if there are pleasures that we can no longer enjoy.
I do not smoke, and I never have. But there is something idiotic about trying to ban smoking in public places. I have been in the US where smoking is banned in roof top retaurants and where one side of the street is for smokers and the other non smokers. The reality is that this suppression, like that of hunters, should not be what Government is about. But it is the contradictions that are the most striking. Whilst some talk of banning smoking the Government encourages drinking by extending opening hours; is there a difference between smokers lung and drinkers livers? Someone, not sure whom, said that 'all actions have a consequence' and I am afraid that sometimes Government would be wise to heed this advice. For every decision to give up one habit there is always the human desire to start another. Habits are comforting and sometimes people need a comfort zone. So 'leave our sweet teeth alone!'
Still, one thing did make me laugh. The Lib Dem spokesman on health claimed that the Government was ignoring binge drinking that was damaging health and fuelling violence and saying that the Government needs to do something about it. What was the Lib Dem solution? - "Clear labelling with numbers of units should be mandatory." What are they talking about? If they have nothing to say it would be better to say nothing!
4 comments:
I strongly disagree with your comment about banning smoking in public places - and I think your comments ignore the drive behind the bans. The fact that smoking has a direct impact on other people who are forced into passive smoking.
Part of the ban in other countries has been to protect those who work in traditionally smoky environments such as pubs and clubs. I have friends who work in clubs who over the years have suffered more coughs and lung related infections than the average person, no doubt made worse by the smoky environment they work in. These people are often casual workers and underpaid for the work they do, and being sick means they don't get paid.
I have visited New York since the ban, and I can say after many nights out on the town that most New Yorkers I met were fine about it. There were designated outside spaces for smokers, and the no smoking inside rule meant that asthmatics like me weren't forced into running outside every few hours for air and a gulp of inhaler. It also meant that I left clubs with my clothes and hair not stinking of smoke - and woke the next morning feeling much healthier than if I went out in smoky clubs. I ask you - how can that not be good!
I think what you say has a grain of truth.
I am instinctively against that which is illiberal and seeks to impose the will of the many on the few. I think the issue about smoking is the "public" place problem. If restaurants, bars and clubs want to enforce a no smoking ban then that is for the management of those places; speaking personally they would get my custom. Whatever else one may think of South West trains they have banned smoking on their trains. It did not need Government legislation to do it. You can still smoke on platforms and those who object to it have room to move away from those who smoke.
That for me is the issue; we should provide choice. The choice would extend to bar staff as well. If they wanted to work in a non smoking pub then they should have that option, although one could argue they have the option not to work there to start with.
So I think we both agree in a way. Banning open air smoking is ridiculous and the customer is clearly driving public buildings to non smoking regimes.
I very much agree with your issue around stinking clothes and hair although when I think back to when I started going to pubs the world really has moved on!
I agree that people should be given a choice.
However, I believe you're implied approach to let the market decide is flawed. Despite a non-smoking majority of people living and working in The City of London, there is only one smoke free pub there. Despite it doing a seemingly roaring trade, Wetherspoon shares took an immediate hit when they announced a future smoking ban in their pubs. Whether or not banning smoking would raise or lower profits, a self-selecting group of decision makers and lobbyists believe smoking bans would be bad for business, thus denying people choice and actually frustrating market forces.
Would you consider backing a change to current licencing laws encouraging publicans to give people the choice they desire?
Licences could come in two flavours: smoking and smoke-free, and the proportion granted of each decided at local government level (within limits set in the legislation).
That way, people would have real choice and no one has to go down the road of draconian measures to ban smoking in whole towns, counties etc.
You make an interesting comment here.
I will need to check but I do not believe there is anything currently stopping a pub from saying they are non-smoking. I may be mistaken but I think Wetherspoons had done or have tried this.
I think we are probably in agreement that the issue here is choice. As a non smoker I should be able to drink without smoke around me but equally that should not prevent someone who chooses to smoke the right to do so. I know that sounds like a contradiction but maybe using the Licence Laws to provide a balance between the two is not the right thing as ultimately the pubs operate under a profit incentive that could not be regulated in such a way.
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