Ain’t democracy and the free market a splendid thing.
Oh yeah and nanny governments are nifty too.
That does’t mean they’re not entitled to a safe working environment. You can say, applying for a job as a fireman/woman/person carries with it inherent risks to your life - surely you can’t equate that to applying for a barman (etc etc)… they have every single right in the universe to have a safe working environment and their customers have every right to a safe environment where they can enjoy themselves - if some customers choose to damage their health, let them do it but they don’t have the right to affect mine.
And I should point out that its nothing to do with an allergy to smoke; its to do with all the other health risks associated with smoking. My point is, if anyone wants to harm themselves by smoking, off they can go and do it, no skin off my nose but why should I allow them to affect mine? I have the right to not inhale their crap just much as they have the right to exhale their crap as long as its away from me.
No, we don’t. That’s what gets to me. I know landlords, barstaff and customers who’d be perfectly happy to run, work in and drink in a smoky pubs. We would not make any non-smoker come in against their will. But that’s not allowed.
Honeydew - why the arbitrary distinction between workers? Indeed, all those in favour of the ban’s implementation - what about my hypothetical trawlerman? Or, say, crane driver, or building site worker? Why should bar staff receive more protection than them?
Furthermore, why aren’t the owners of Johnny Fox’s allowed to clean their own Happy Smoking Bus 12 hours after the smokers have left, yet the people who work for hotels have to endure a room that could have had someone smoking in it 10 seconds before they enter? Why are the rights of bar staff more important than those of hotel cleaners?
Bear in mind when answering that the Irish pub situation is for the workers only. The customers’ rights are not the motivation - just a by-product.
Am I on your ignore list now jjimm? I addressed that already.
Sorry, I inadvertantly skipped a few posts.
This comes down to an arbitrary definition of ‘unnecessary’, then. It is accepted that working a trawler is a dangerous environment; it was, until very recently, accepted that working in a bar was a smoky environment. I’m sure too that there are hundreds of improvements that a trawler owner can make to a boat that would improve the safety of the workers, but they’re not being asked to. There’s an arbitrary line being drawn.
They have every single right to work somewhere that doesn’t expose them to that risk. Personaly I am a huge wussy. That ruled out several ocupations; firefighter, police officer, sky scraper window cleaner. I also have a squiffy tummy. That ruled out; doctor, nurse and rubbish collecter. I am really really crap at maths. That ruled out; engineer, mathmatician (and anything else you need maths for…I was never clear about why I needed maths). I can’t draw, dance, sculpt, paint or play a musical instument. There goes being an artist.
I can put up with smoke and I am good with chit chat and I was efficient behind a bar. So I could be a bartender and I was in my yesteryear.
If I believe that a workplace has a danger I am not willing to risk, or if I believe an occupation is not one I am suited to surely I would be mad to apply for a job doing it.
If you can not be tolerant to alcohol and smoking don’t work in a pub. The customer is always right after all 
There is an onus on the employer to make the workplace as safe as possible. Thus any risk that ‘comes with the territory’ is acceptable but anything that the employer could fix is not.
In your hypothetical example of a trawlerman above, it is acceptable for an employer to ask the employee to go to sea on a small boat, to handle nets and tons and tons of fish because these are part of what being a trawlerman means.
It is not acceptable for the employer to ask the employee to work for example during a large storm, or on a boat that is clearly unfit to be in the water or in any other circumstance that could be avoided without huge economic risk (IIRC the law doesn’t define what the economic risk has to be before the risk is acceptable, that’s left to the justice system to decide).
As a further example it is acceptable in my own job that my employer ask me to sit at a computer desk all day, but it would be unacceptable to provide me with only a stool to sit on, they must provide a chair that provides for my back support needs. Similar patterns exist for most jobs from building site crane operator through fast food worker to health professionals.
In my opinion the Irish government looked at smoking in the workplace, made a judgement call that workplace exposure was a risk that wasn’t necessary to businesses’ survival and went from there in a logical fashion. For the record I completely agree with them.
Please note that I am not a health and safety officer and if your company has one you should ask them about this area as they would know far more than I.
The government has changed the definition of the job environment. IMO this is different to removing risk for which the employer has responsibility.
Anyway, the problem I have is that there are several compromises that could have been made. As it stands, the law does not accommodate smokers in any way - e.g. the rule that means the shelter erected where my wife works has had to have a panel removed because some nonsmoking gobshite complained that more than 50% of the open structure was walled. :rolleyes:
That’s an interesting point, let me think about it. As I said before I’m not in any way a health and safety guy.
Well, the real question here is why do we have to accomodate smokers? To be rather blunt about it if your addictions interfere with other people’s ability to do their work expecting them to change to accomodate you is rather odd. The only reason this debate is happening at all is because smoking is cuturally ingrained. If smoking was invented tomorrow and someone came into your workplace and said “It’s my right to light this tube of vegetable matter on fire and distribute its foul smelling vapours around your workplace” you’d rightly thing they were mad and tell them they had no such right in the first place. All that’s happening here is that the government have decided that historical curiosities like the acceptability of public smoking have to end sometime and that there’s never going to be a popular time so it might as well be now, all in one go.
The only compromise that was needed (for pubs…not anywhere else) was already available. The ability for anybody with enough cash and the willingness to take a risk to open a non smoking pub.
Keep non smoking airlines ( I can just never visit Europe again 
), keep offices smokefree (just give the poor smoking bastards somewhere undercover when it rains) but leave the pubs alone. When we are on our own time why can’t we have a fag and a drink at the same time?
Well, we’re talking about 25%-30% of the entire adult population. Furthermore, there is no legal onus to erect any kind of shelter - the example I gave was a kindness from the employer that some horrible little jobsworth snitch decided to ruin.
Yes, but it is culturally ingrained.
Which is authoritarian in the extreme. Drinking causes untold harm too. So do lots of other illogical, culturally ingrained historical curiosities.
Don’t get me wrong: as I have said, I agree with the principle. Furthermore, it’s working for me: I don’t miss it as much as I thought I would, and I’ve cut down drastically on a night out. But it’s the uncompromising and inconsistent manner in which it has been introduced is pissing me off.
[QUOTE=counsel
Well, the real question here is why do we have to accomodate smokers? To be rather blunt about it if your addictions interfere with other people’s ability to do their work expecting them to change to accomodate you is rather odd. The only reason this debate is happening at all is because smoking is cuturally ingrained. If smoking was invented tomorrow and someone came into your workplace and said “It’s my right to light this tube of vegetable matter on fire and distribute its foul smelling vapours around your workplace” you’d rightly thing they were mad and tell them they had no such right in the first place. All that’s happening here is that the government have decided that historical curiosities like the acceptability of public smoking have to end sometime and that there’s never going to be a popular time so it might as well be now, all in one go.[/QUOTE]
You answered your own question. It is culturally ingrained. This is not something new. It is something non smokers have to cope with till all us smokers die or smoking is banned and we both know which one will happen first.
In my opinion the fact that it’s culturally ingrained doesn’t mean we shouldn’t change it, there are countless examples of things we have changed, from the role of women in society and so on down to far more trivial matters. The manner in which we approach the change is indeed open to debate. It is my considered opinion that we are better off just making a clean break rather than dragging the whole change out over several years. If we chose the latter there would have to come a point at which smoking just stops and it would be at that point we would be having this exact same discussion.
I agree on the uncompromising, but don’t see the inconsistant. My previous post as to differing workplace risks covers how I feel on that point.
This is not correct though. The logical conclusion of your argument is just to outlaw smoking altogether. But since we’re still allowed to smoke in our own homes and outdoors (although we’re not allowed to do this on any premises designated a ‘place of work’, even if every single person there - including employees - want to smoke there, and including company cars and vans and trucks driven by single-occupant workers) the government is indeed ‘dragging the whole change out over several years’.
For an example of inconsistency, please see above example about hotels and the Happy Smoking Bus.
Actually I would agree. In many ways I think smoking should just be made illegal.
Of course the crime rate would go up sharply till we all calm down from the withdrawl, but if the govt is not willing to say “this is a Bad Thing and it is now illegal” then they should not be able to charge tax that (in NZ anyway) could cover the whole health budget! ( I pay $11.20 for a packet of 20 Winfield…my air hostess friend brings me a duty free carton, 8 packets, for $25).
If they are not willing to make it illegal then they should not make it illegal to smoke pretty much everywhere.
They can’t have it both ways. If it is soooooo terrible make it illegal. If they want to continue to take the tax benefits (tax was incresed to put us off after all) then allow us someplace to indulge while they continue to milk the cash cow.
At the end of the day, no matter how much they harp on about health benefits, smokers make the govt money. It will never be illegal. smokers will just feel more and more like todays lepers.
The day I tell you what to do in your own home will be a long time coming. I fully support your right to smoke at home or indeed anything you want to do that doesn’t hurt anyone else. I am ambivelent about smoking outdoors in public areas, I’d prefer if people didn’t, as it’s unpleasant, but feel that it’s not actively harmful and therefore can’t support a ban with the logic I use to support the workplace ban.
I don’t see how the previous sentences support the last one rather than its logical negation.
The hotel issue is (IIRC) due to the fact that a hotel room is the private space of the occupant for the duration of his or her stay. Disallowing smoking there would have conflicted with existing law on this topic and smoking was therefore allowed. As there was no other choice, the rooms still have to be cleaned by someone, the inconistancy arises here because having it arise elsewhere (hotel rooms are suddenly not private spaces) was worse. I don’t think in practice that anyone is going to be cleaning hotel rooms 10 seconds after a smoker vacates, they’re more likely to come back to that one. The happy smoking bus I don’t know the facts of, but if you are correct that they have been disallowed from cleaning it 12 hours after use (and I do not doubt you) that is indeed stupid. One question though, are they claiming that they can’t clean it because of the laws as a publicity stunt or has a government representative actually told them they can’t?
Well thanks for that. Now what about laying off telling us what we can do voluntarily and electively without affecting others, in a place that happens to be defined a workplace: e.g. the company car example, or me down Murphy’s Bar where Mr. Murphy and I are the only people there and we both want a smoke; or indeed when Mr. Murphy goes upstairs and can’t smoke legally in his own flat because it has a door that adjoins the pub?
Fair enough, though I maintain that the ‘unpleasantness’ is merely an arbitrary antipathy to a particular strain of burning leaves; combustion engine exhaust is far worse, as is airborne industrial effluent.
See my first response in this post.
Happened to me 2 weeks ago in Co. Wicklow - I was checking out having just had a fag, while the cleaner was waiting to come in.
For interest’s sake, here is the famous Happy Smoking Bus.
I totally agree that the Government changing their position to allow smoking in hotel bedrooms etc was stupid - if they’re going to do it, do it right. However, I for one wouldn’t want to be a prison officer in Mountjoy the day they took the cigs away!!
Where I work, there seems to be an arbitary distinction also and it shouldn’t be due to the nature of my workplace - but it seems to be the case (this point has been made to the relevant people in the light of protecting the employees rather than denying the rights of other individuals).
I do think that pubs etc should provide better facilities for smokers also and some account should be taken of the littering problem (which makes the outside of pubs look really awful).
I should point out that I come from a smoking household (I’m the only one who doesn’t smoke) so I know all the arguments made about it - but I still think that my health or that of the people I care about (ie asthmatic fiance) shouldn’t be affected by others choices - if they want to choose to harm themselves, that’s fine by me but not if, through their choices, they are harming me too (and believe me, I’ve made this points at home too!!).