Speaking as a three-decade smoker who has been smoke-free for five years - right on, Sam!
Yes, that’s sort of the thing the powers that be have chosen to lean the smoking ban on. It doesn’t really explain why a taxi driver may not legally smoke (between passengers, I mean) in his own cab, though*. Now, yes, one could argue that it would be terribly sad if the next passenger had a fiendish allergy to, or hatred of, cigarette smoke, but it would not be the “workers’ health and safety” excuse. Nor can a lorry (truck) driver, no matter now long-distance,** smoke in his cab, just because it is a “workplace”.
I would have no problem with the smoking ban, had it not been made quite so far-reaching. I should have liked pubs to be left with a choice of smoking or non-smoking, because, one would assume if the market for non-smoking pubs was all that great, the thing would sort itself out naturally.
And it’s a long time since it was widely acceptable to smoke in the average office anyway, although I cannot really see why there cannot, as used to be the case, in large-ish offices anyway, be a smoking staffroom, and a non-smoking staffroom. And everybody would approve because you used to have things like, “yes, there is a common room for smokers but it is up five flights of stairs and there is no lift (elevator)”. Hah -we smokers got damn healthy in the winter in that place, I can tell you. 
- that’s the way it is in Scotland, anyway - I am not up to speed with the details of the new English ban.
** all right, all right, now someone can come and tell me that we don’t really *have * any “long” distances in the U.K.
I’m ***so ***glad you put in that wee asterisked note there, else I might think you were hoping for the Black Death to do a comeback tour. And wars and stuff. And syphilis and leprosy and all manner of good things.
If they banned smoking from all pubs that have been around less than 200 years, they’d only have a couple thousand you could still smoke in!
Does Mickey Mouse cause cancer?
Wait, don’t answer that. 
Through the “corporate social responsibility” programme at work.
Absolutely! Sorry, forgot to reply to your email. It’s gonna have to be August now, as I’m off on hols soon. But yes indeedy.
That’s interesting - is it something your company cooked up by themselves, or are they participating in some sort of organised scheme?
August sounds good for me too, as July is filling up. I’ll email you some dates later.
Well, the social responsibility thing is an ethos - one can bring a cause to the “CSR Officer” and if it’s deemed worthy, then the company will canvas for volunteers. A coworker of mine has the school as her cause, so asked if anyone could help at the fete.
It also allows one day a month, paid, to work for a cause, and has done bigger stuff too, like paid for employees to go and work on tsunami relief and so on.
Unfortunately it also loads so much work onto its managers that we don’t have time to do any of this good stuff, which is why a) I volunteered at a weekend, and b) resigned last week.
Resigned from the scheme, or the company?
Market bought crap? So you make your eau-de-cologne at home from scratch?
Four hundred years or so is probably enough to demonstrate that there is a market failure here. Otherwise the proportion of non-smoking bars would be roughly equivalent to the proportion of non-smoking people.
I think ‘market’ here means outdoor stalls, once a week in the high street. Perfumes sourced here tend to be at best cheap rubbish and at worst, counterfeits (e.g. 'Carlos Kline ‘Possession’), sometimes just containing coloured water or urine.
The company.
Yay!
Have you another job lined up?
Not necessarily. As far as I know, it was only in the latter half of the 20th century that it was particularly acceptable for women to go to pubs, so the smokier blokes would have dominated. Plus drinking and smoking tend to go hand in hand, so again it’s only since demand for gastropubs has emerged that smoking’s been an issue. I blame the char-grilled, olive-oil-drizzled, goats’ cheese brigade for ruining my disgusting, cancerous, throroughly enjoyable vice-dens.
This argument annoys me because it is, quite frankly, bollocks. Its one of those things that seems solid on the surface but is full of holes the moment you pay it any attention (like Intelligent Design or Liverpool’s back four).
The primary reason its bollocks is because its over simplifies the social sitution. Put simply, non-smokers don’t just hang out with other non-smokers and smokers don’t just hang out with their “own kind” - we all cross-populate. That, inevitably, has meant that unless someone has an actual allergy that comes into play non-smokers will always end up in smoking establishments because, quite frankly, its fucking dull spending a night in a pub with someone who keeps moaning about the fact that you didn’t go somewhere where they could spark up.
I dislike the (now incredibly smug) non-smoking evangelists as much as dislike the new breed of self-important smoking-is-my-righters, but at least the evangelists have a genuine point (even if it is buried beneath several layers of organic eco-logic).
Ultimately there is no positive argument for smoking in pubs other than a selfish one. That’s fine and dandy - nothing wrong with that as i’m suspicious of anyone who claims to be truly altruistic in wanting something - and it would be perfectly acceptable if it ended there. If it just affected you and myself and other non-smokers who have simply accepted that, whilst beer is nice in one’s own home and social gatherings are good over a coffee in Starbucks, drinkin’ and talkin’ are truly at their most awesome when combined into the giant japanese mecha-combo-robot experience that is a night in the pub (and that therefore passive smoking is a tragic but necessary consequence) then fine.
But it’s not about shitting on the rights of smokers or stopping me from coughing up a frikkin’ lung every Sunday morning, its about taking action to preserve the rights of those working in those environments to a smoke-free, healthy workplace. Quite frankly the fact that people like me now get our lungs back is simply a pleasant side effect (even though the next few months as pubs adapt to the need to deal with now non-smoke-cloaked unpleasant smells may not be).
Frankly i couldn’t care less what the Islington Set think about it all - most of the places they hang out in (when IKEA is closed) were largely smoke free anyway. Generally people who work in those places are slightly smarter than your average schmo as well and have always potentially had other work options should they have so wished.
The people who benefit from this are those poor sods who work in dodgy (in the nicest sense - i’m a big fan of dodgy) pubs and clubs throughout the country where changing jobs isn’t an option. These are bar staff, landlords and landladies who can’t work elsewhere (be it for financial or other reasons such as hours, location etc.) or who have been forced to make the ol’ passive smokers pact with the devil in order to carry on with the pub that is their life. They’re also musicians, DJs, stand-up comedians, quiz masters, karaoke kings and every other variety of pub n’ club entertainer for whom a smoke free workplace was never an option. Anyone who doubts that those people lives aren’t positively affected by this should probably take a long hard think about what Roy Castle would think about the smoking ban right now. Just think - if this had been in place 40 years ago we might all have been saved from 5 years-worth of Record Breakers hosted by Kris Akabusi.
In an ideal world a compromise solution would have been possible, but we don’t live in an ideal world - Real “Free Markets” don’t result in joy, happiness for everyone and freedom for all in the same way that Communism doesn’t. Both inevitably result in exploitation of the system by those smart enough to do it and of those who aren’t smart enough - or can’t shout loud enough - to fight back. The sad fact is that any compromise system would have inevitably resulted in very little actual change in the situation.
Hell, people blaming “the government” for the ban could actually do with stepping back for a second and remembering that the government proposed a compromise ban. The current total ban came about as the result of public and parliamentary pressure to reveal the full results of the actual report that led to the proposal in the first place (which revealed that the overwhelming majority were in favour of a total ban over a compromise) and a completely free vote in Parliament to change the proposal to a full one.
Thinking about it, this ban is probably the closest thing to a genuine piece of democratic legislation that’s come out of Parliament in that last 50 years!
I don’t know, I think things like voluntary non-smoking rules may start in places frequented by the “Islington set”, but they tend to trickle down the socioeconomic heirarchy. Hasn’t the general trend in recent years has been for fewer people to smoke, across the board (maybe not young women)? I wouldn’t have been surprised if we had seen fully or partially non-smoking pubs come about anyway without the need for legislation. Unless I am mistaken we didn’t need any laws for smoking in offices to become almost unheard of over the last twenty years.
OTOH, I don’t regard losing the right to burn tobacco leaves in enclosed public spaces as a particularly grave infringement of personal liberty.
So you’ve reduced 400 years to about 60. Still not exactly what I’d call a successful free market experiment. How much longer shall we try?
Now it is reported that MPs have been smoking in the toilets of The House of Commons.
Admittedly the ban did not extend to the house but MPs themselves voted to abide by it.
Arseholes, one law for the haves and another for the have nots
Yes. Yay!
Couldn’t be better really. Just off on hols (I have run up 400 hours of “time in lieu” and carried 17 days over from last year, so they have to honour it), and will come back to a bright and shiny new job.
Nice one. Going anywhere good? - (that is, somewhere it isn’t raining).