You are loved, you are cared for

[altariel]

So the smoking ban is one of those things where I'm brought face to face with the limits of my own philosophy of civil liberty. Because I'd defend to the death my right to die in a ditch in complete anonymity, but I see no good reason why some b*gg*r should be smoking at me while I do it.

Someone on the news (possibly our Malory Towers headmistress health secretary) made a comparison with the seatbelt legislation that came in whenever it was. What's interesting about that is that I remember Liberty spokesgnomes being out in force during that debate, and I don't think I've heard a peep from them over the smoking ban. Of course, they're very preoccupied at the moment trying to prevent schemes like stamping barcodes on all new born babies or eradicating tedious bits of red tape like trial by jury.

Just before Life on Mars there's a programme on benefit fraudsters that I keep on missing. Has anyone seen it? Is it all: "Remember! Responsible citizens shop their neighbours to the authorities!" I'd like to see a jolly and informative programme that says: "Remember: Reponsible citizens groove at the political process!" That would surely be a challenge for a documentary maker.

Comments

[steverogerson.livejournal.com]

What I want to know is why do we have to wait well over a year for the smoking ban to take affect?

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Lets people get through what they've got in the cupboard?

[hafren.livejournal.com]

I've always felt that just as the freedom of action of Joe Soap's fist stops well short of my nose, so his freedom to smoke stops short of my husband's asthmatic lungs. When we were last in Ireland it was a wonderful sesne of freedom to be able to go into pubs and cafes without him starting to wheeze. as for private clubs, hell, people have to work in them and they don't always have a choice of jobs.

[matildabj.livejournal.com]

I think that's where the civil liberties thing ends for me - as Altariel says, you have the right to die in a ditch in complete anonymity, as you have the right to kill yourself slowly with tobacco. But you don't have the right to drag anyone else down with you.

I was in Ontario in 2004 when the smoking ban came into effect in Toronto, and my response then was that I didn't think it was workable. But as I heard someone on the Today programme this morning say, in a year's time we'll wonder what all the fuss was about because it'll be so popular.

[snowgrouse.livejournal.com]

DAMN STRAIGHT.

It is not a human right to POISON OTHERS. Grh.

[communicator.livejournal.com]

I have a feelign smokers dont' realise how unpleasant the smell and the acrid smoke is for everyone else. Also the amount of litter and how intrusive it is everywhere. My brother smoked and gave up, and said that it was only as a non-smoker that he realised how unpleasant butts and smoke are - when he was addicted he associated them with pleasurable activity and didn't see they were intrusive.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I think smokers have paid for so many of them being unwilling to compromise. For a couple of decades I've been saying wouldn't it be nice if there was one room in every pub for non-smokers? And maybe some did, but I never seemed to find them, and now they're being forced to hand me the entire pub.

A few years ago, I was at the Lancashire (County Cricket Club) AGM, when there were alternate proposals up for banning smoking - one from the committee, going for a partial ban, and one from an ex-smoker demanding a complete one. The ex-smoker, who had the zeal of a convert, did make a hash of his case, going on far too long until the audience would have done anything to shut him up. And I was thinking of voting for the partial ban anyway. Until a smoker got up and made a taunting speech about how people who couldn't cope with a little smoke in their faces shouldn't be allowed to watch cricket anyway, at which point I lost my temper and voted for the full ban.

I really think they have no idea. First, there's the unpleasantness of the smoke and dirt; when I used to live in London and travelled up to Manchester to see my mother, her first words would be "Oh no! You had to sit in the smoking compartment?" And of course I never sat in the smoking compartment; the smell came from working in an office in which some people (not those sitting near me) smoked, and my clothes still stank after a four-hour smoke-free journey. Then there's the short-term, trivial effects on health; I frequently have a 24-hour streaming cold the day after I've been in a smoky atmosphere, which the doctors tell me is simply an allergic reaction. It's a nuisance having to mop my nose all day until it's sore, but at least it always clears up by the second day. Then there are asthmatics like Hafren's husband, who suffer something more serious. And then there are the ones who get lung cancer. And I get so angry that all these years so many smokers have insisted that their rights outweighed ours.

[edge-of-ruin.livejournal.com]

For me, it's the protection of bar staff that wins me over. These are often people with very little clout who can't just up and find a job elsewhere.

Hope the teaching goes O.K.

[mikekellner.livejournal.com]

I quit for good 14 years ago, and it is one of the best decisions I ever made.

I am torn over smoking, because I really do not want to tell people how to live their lives, yet I do not want to have the smell of tobacco in the air, or on my clothes. Smoking is outlawed in the workplace here, and it also gets very cold in the winter, and I truly feel sorry for the poor addicts I see standing outside office building doors, puffing away. On the other hand, I would hate to have to go to work and have the air be filled with tobacco smoke every day.

I know as a smoker, I had no idea how offensive it could be to others. Now, I can tell who smokes when they pass me on the street or stand near me in a store from smell.

I hate tough choices. If everyone could just be sensible like me, the world would be much easier to manage.

mk

[mikekellner.livejournal.com]

Just a question, to increase my understanding of the situation....

I assume cigarette prices are quite high in GB. Here they are about $3.50, or £2.00 for a pack of 20. From what I understand, most of that is tax, that the actual cost of a few ounces of dry chopped leaves rolled in paper is quite low. Therefore, with something like 50,000,000 smokers buying a pack a day, the revenues to government are enormous.

We do grow tobacco in the US, and the government has farm subsidies for them like it does for all farmers. Politicians never met a farmer they didn't want to give money to, especially in election years.

Therefore, the US and state governments are in the hypocritical position of trying to stamp out smoking, while making vast sums from smoking, and paying farmers to grow tobacco.

I was just wondering if a similar have it both ways situation exists in Britain?

mk

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I honestly couldn't tell you the price of a packet of cigarettes in the UK. Here are some comparative prices in Euros, dated 2003. E3.7 is about $8, or about £4.50. I don't doubt for a second it's a massive source of revenue for the government. Not sure how much tobacco is grown in the UK (!), but there's certainly a lot of money surrounding tobacco advertising.

[gair.livejournal.com]

A pack of 20 cigarettes costs around £5 here (maybe a bit less for horrible cigarettes: I think Marlboros are around £5.25).

I wish I had Father Ted on DVD so I could screencap & icon the bit where Ted's trying to give up smoking & some guy's cigarette smoke forms the words lovely fags...

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Sadly (and oddly) googling 'father ted screencaps' only delivered me pictures from Return of the King.

I'm tinkering with a picture of Blake so that I can have an icon with "My fandom does not glorify freedom fighting" on it.

[gair.livejournal.com]

See, that's because you rock.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Here is my current effort:

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

We've had a similar ban in NZ for a while now, and it works very well. People hadn't been able to smoke in offices for years, but now it's all restaurants (before there was a smoking area, but in small places that was totally unworkable) and pubs and presumably other places. I now enjoy going to the pub and go a lot more than I used to, and so do a lot of others. The bar staff are very pleased too at the improvement in their health and working conditions. Now if only we could eat at the pavement tables where all the smokers are now...

I wouldn't mind how they killed themselves if it didn't affect others. I think banning something like that is akin to banning drunken driving.

Also, a while back (under National), we also had a 'dob them in' campaign to get people to shop those they thought mightn't need a benefit, and it was very unpopular; they stopped it after people objected.

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

Heh, most appropriate place for this icon ever.

I'll come at this from another point of view: I'm a smoker. Moderately heavy and unrepentant. And I've been at it long enough to remember when you could smoke in airplanes, in some shops, at some jobs (I've had some where I smoked at my desk, literally). So the last 20 years has been a process of being always pushed into smaller and smaller corners. The funny thing is, I bitch about of course but I don't truly mind for the most part. I understand the health reasons, I understand the unpleasantness of the smell to many people. I would never smoke in a non-smoker's house or car without explicit permission and I have no problem taking it outside.

Truth is, I enjoy those little five=minute breaks from work every two hours or so. I like having an excuse to step outside and look at something besides my desk and talk to the other people doing the same thing (the majority of my department--it's the newspaper biz!)

What I would like, though, in exchange for my disproportionate tax contribution (as Mike pointed out) is to be able to keep at least one kind of space, and geez, you'd think it would be bars! In 20 years as a lounge lizard I've hardly met any bartenders who didn't smoke themselves, and when I go out to Chicago music scene-type things...well, let's just say that's one of the last social enclaves left where smokers are a strong majority. I think I will definitely go out less when the smoking ban goes into effect here, because it simply won't be as much fun. Why pay cover charges and expensive bar prices just to stand outside like I do at work? A band's gonna have to be really, really good to get me to do that--and just to hang out with friends? I guess we'll all be doing a lot more entertaining at home.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Thanks for being so good-humoured about my early morning grump of a post *g* Good to get another perspective. Isn't there a Stephen King short story where all the people who go outside to smoke (the Ten O'Clock People) survive by all being outside of the building when whatever horror it is hits? I do think that probably one reason why I never acquired the habit of seeing much live music is because of not wanting to be in smoky places - but I suspect my behaviour patterns are set now and a smoking ban won't alter that.

One of the saddest sights I ever saw: stopping over in LA on a flight between London and Sydney. A fellow passenger falls out of the plane and asks one of the airline staff where she can smoke. "Honey," it's explained to her, "this is the state of California."

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

Oh, I didn't find it particularly grumpy. I hear worse things said about smokers 100 times before breakfast. :)

Isn't there a Stephen King short story where all the people who go outside to smoke (the Ten O'Clock People) survive by all being outside of the building when whatever horror it is hits?

I haven't read this short story, but all my New Yorker friends had it as gallows-humor conventional wisdom that the vile habit must have saved many lives on 9/11/01.

[sherlock1.livejournal.com]

Actually the plot was a bit grimmer than that. Something to do with the nicotine causing some kind of chemical imbalance in the brain that meant that smokers were the only people who could see that half the people they worked with were actually horrifically disgusting aliens. To the non-smokers, they looked like other human beings.

It's one of his short stories that I wish he had expanded into a novel! Speaking of which, are you planning on getting "Cell" when it comes out next week? Entertainment Weekly had up the first chapter, and to say it whetted my appetite would be an understatement!:
http://www.ew.com/ew/report/0,6115,1150884_5_0_,00.html
Very cinematic.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I like the way my subconscious suppressed most of the plot of The Ten O'Clock People.

That is a really cool start to Cell! And I loved the illustrations that grew in horror as the pages went on. Is it another online project, or one of yer actual books?

And would you finally like to see some of My Dreaded Novel?

[sherlock1.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's a proper print novel, out very soon. Apparently it's not a door stopper this time.

I would love to read some of the Dreaded Novel! Please send it through asap. I'm going to be cheeky and email you a v. brief prologue to Twisted Wing that I've written in a vain attempt to persuade the reader to wade through the introductory guff till the first murder!

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's a proper print novel, out very soon. Apparently it's not a door stopper this time.

Ooh, good! I do tend to like his shorter novels more, I have to say.

And please send the prologue along! I shall email my chapter 1 over.

[jomacmouse.livejournal.com]

I can't seem to find it on the SMH's website, but I'm sure one of the news bulletins broadcast on Triple J this morning said that one of the Australian political parties is calling for a ban on smoking in private cars when there are children present, and that police should have the power to pull over cars where such a thing is taking place. I shall have to chase that one up...

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Hm, now that seems to me to be going a bit too far, it is a private space after all. I can see an argument for not smoking at the wheel of a car, like not using mobile phones. I think I'd rather the police were policing something else.

[jomacmouse.livejournal.com]

Ahah. I found it here (http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,18165343-1702,00.html). But it's a state party branch doing the calling, and police are a state matter, so the likelihood of all states even considering it are remote. (And besides, any such call is going to be swamped by reporting on yesterday's vote, without a division being taken, to strip the Federal Health Minister of his powers of veto over the drug RU486, and allow the Therapeutic Goods people the right to judge whether a patient should have access to it. There'll be several days hullabaloo over that...)