TomPhil

What you mean is that you are a lifelong involuntary smoker. Like me, you made the decision that you did not want to engage in the activity of smoking, for whatever reason, but now, through no choice of your own, you are forced to inhale those fumes anyway. It seems odd to me that, having decided not to smoke, you now support the "rights" of others to force you to do just that.

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mkpdavies

Again you just completely ignore the fact that he is not FORCED to use the landlords facilites at all.

How do you ever get to a position of such wilful delusion?

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Englishdan

But that is my choice. To inhale or not to inhale, my choice. So as I have a choice then so should the landlord, its his establishment after all, his business. If you dont want to use his smokey environment, then dont. I'm quite sure he, as a business man has weighed up the pro's and con's of the situation and decided that smokers spend more in his pub than nonsmokers. As a non smoker I have seen the "new trade" drinking their half of bitter and their good ladies downing a bitter lemon and talking about how wonderfull it is now the "government" has cleaned up the pubs for them, while ten smokers clutching their pints huddle together under a canvas out the back getting their kicks from nicotine. Some landlords had already set up no smoking bars and area's for non smokers but thats not enough is it. No you whining anti smoker brigade wont be happy untill the pubs have all been forced to shut for lack of trade. I've seen this kind of carry on in villages where the pub, because of lack of trade has been forced to close, then all of a sudden from out of the blue comes the "support our pub brigade", where were these people when the pub was gasping for trade. No the smokers over the years have kept the licencing trade afloat, and now people like you want to kill the trade completely.

tito

1st rate ********. It is absolutely tough if you want to go for a drink with your friends after work, but you can't stand cigarette smoke. You either tell them to choose another pub or you don't go. Socialising isn't a right.

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John Cooper

Depends what you mean by freedom. I believe people should have the freedom to work without being harmed by toxins.

If the evidence (I predict lots of people will ignore this if) shows that smoking is harmful then employers should not force people to breathe them in.

mkpdavies

So in other words. you believe that a man has no right to run his own business as he sees fit. You think people should be forced to run their businesses, just so that others can be employed by that person and to that employees personal specification.

You don't believe in freedom at all. As I said, I don't think many people do.

Why do you think anyone has the right to demand someone employ them on their terms? Why don't you think they should create their own employement, if the employment of another human isn't good enough for them?

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Englishdan

Its obvious that you have never worked in the mining, building or civil engineering businesses just to name but three, a couple more, fishing and shipbuilding. perhaps all of those should be completely shut down as they have life threatening jobs

mkpdavies

He beleives that some people are born to provide employment for others and on the employees terms.

That's a bit like a host for a parasite. Or even a form of slavery, just with the roles reversed with the Employer being the one forced to do things against his/her will.

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TomPhil

There are two groups of people likely to be affected (in an arguably negative way) by the smoking ban.

Smokers - I have no sympathy for smokers who complain about the smoking ban at all. If I were a smoker, I would like to think that I would still be arguing just as firmly on this thread in favour of the smoking ban.

One thing that everyone needs to understand is how their actions affect other people. How much more unpleasant would the world be if we all went round, completely ignoring how other people felt, looking solely after our own interests? To take a simple example, if I'm walking down the corridor, and there is someone walking behind me, and we come to a door, I will hold the door open for that other person. I consider how my actions affect that other person. Yes, it may take a few seconds out of my life. Yes, I may be acting completely legally by just letting it swing back in their face. But I understand that my actions (opening/holding/letting go of the door) affect other people, and modify my behaviour appropriately. Of course, that does not mean that I refrain from doing every single task for fear that it may possibly somehow have an impact on someone else, but if I can do something in a number of ways, and one will have less negative impact on others, then I will try to choose that option.

Smokers seem to think that they are exempt from this very basic requirement of politeness and courtesy. While I'm sure they would be very annoyed if the person in front of them deliberately left a door to swing back in their face, when it comes to engaging in their habit all thoughts of other people are obscured. Numerous times have I been talking to someone (in an open, public space) when they have pulled out a packet of cigarettes, taken one out, and lit it, letting the smoke blow straight into my face, without even so much as a word. This is extremely rude, inconsiderate and selfish. How hard would it be for the person to utter "do you mind?", and, if I did, walk at least a few steps away, or at the very least, give me the opportunity to do the same? But no, why should they care that I don't want to have to inhale smoke? This is the attitude that I am up against. An absolute, unassailable arrogance and selfishness that some (although not necessarily all) smokers possess.

Now back to the question at hand. Let's say I smoked, and I went into a pub. In the pub, I know, are likely to be a number of people who don't smoke, who may detest smoking, who may have asthma or other conditions that will be triggered by my lighting a cigarette. Now your "selfish smoker" takes the same attitude as you do. "I'm alright, Jack, what could I care if I ruin a number of other people's evenings, perhaps even causing some people asthma attacks? Why should I care?" Your normal, civilised, reasonable person, however, would say, "OK, so I want to engage in an activity that would cause a number of other people in here great inconvienience, perhaps even harming them. Is there a way in which I can still do this activity without inflicting such problems on them? I know, I could go outside. Yes, I may get cold and wet for a few minutes (and maybe not even that, given that, and I accept this may come as a surprise, it is not always cold and wet in this country), but at least I'm saving many other people in here from an very unpleasant experience."

If everyone acted in such a reasonable and thoughtful way, there would be no need for a smoking ban. But so many people don't. They place zero value on anybody else's interests, and are happy to inflict great inconvienience on them just to save themselves a minor one. It is because of this completely unacceptable and inconsiderate attitude that the smoking ban was necessary. It's a real shame, I agree, that it was. But smokers, or at least a percentage of them, brought it on themselves.

Pub landlords - I feel sorry for any pub landlord or owner who has lost their business for whatever reason (unless they brought it solely on themselves). Pubs close for a whole host of reasons, and, agreed, the smoking ban may not have helped. But pubs, like anything else, are businesses. At the end of the day, they need to be run in a business-like way. Any good business owner knows that if you do not change to keep up-to-date with changing circumstances, then you are dead in the water. How many examples throughout history are there of companies or industries that failed to change to match changing circumstances and thus went out of business? But how many examples are there of businesses that did change, and ended up far more successful than they ever were in the first place?

The resourceful business owner (pub landlord, whatever), should see the smoking ban as an opportunity, not a threat. "What can I do," he should ask himself, "to set my pub out from all the rest? What can I offer that will make people want to continue to come to my pub, or even to start coming to my pub when they didn't before?"

I'm not expert in the business of running pubs, but I do know that a lot of pubs have started offering food. Many non-smokers who previously chose not to go to pubs because they didn't like breathing in the smoke, may now take the opportunity to go out to their local pub and take advantage of the new non-smoking nature of it. Maybe they don't drink as much as the smokers used to (or maybe they do), but what do they do? Perhaps they'd like to bring their family for a meal. "Hey, let's be the only pub in the area offering kids eat free - that would bring loads of families in! Let's offer theme nights, let's offer quiz nights, let's start up a pub darts team, let's start hosting speed dating sessions, let's start showing live football, let's..." The best will adapt and get even better, and will survive. The more inferior pubs, those with poor management, will be sold to those who can run them better, or will close. That's the way the market operates. That's life. You can sit there moaning about the smoking ban, or you can move on, and say, "I might not like the ban, but I'm determined that I'm not going to lose out as a result of it."

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Now I don't apologise if the above does not conform exactly to your textbook philosophy, whatever it may be. Please do not quote me any philosophers who spent a great deal of time coming up with a really interesting theory that has never been tried in the real world. Please don't tell me that theoretically, it everything operated in a perfect manner, your theory would work very nicely, thank you.

There has already been so much hurt, death, pain, suffering and loss caused on this planet thanks to those who tried to impose on people a theory that worked very nicely on paper, but that just doesn't really work when applied to the real world. And many of those people were unfortunately so taken with their interesting theories that they continued to apply them for years, decades, even when it became more and more clear that they weren't working, and that they were causing a lot of damage.

So if my posts don't fit with your conception of perfect liberalism, or libertarianism, or whateverism, I don't really care. Because I live here, in the real world. When I argue whether a law should be kept or repealed, I look at the real effects, not at whether it fits perfectly into my book-learned interpretation of life. I'd love to come and live on your planet, where everyone has a complete unhindered choice in everything, where nobody's actions impact on anyone else: it sounds like a nice place. But it's not the place I live, and not the place that the laws we are debating apply to.

If I were ever to meet you, I hope that, on coming to a door in the corridor, I would not have to whip out a book and thumb the pages to decide whether the theory I followed permitted or mandated me to hold the door open for you or not. I'd hold it open for you, because that's politeness, that's not being selfish, that's thinking of others, that's what works here in the real world. And if I ever take up smoking, smoking ban or not, I won't blow my smoke in your face without your permission, honestly, wherever we may be. I'd do my best to carry out my activities without causing undue inconvienience to you. I may disagree with you on some things, I may agree with you on others, but let's try to live by a set of rules where we can all get on in the best way possible without causing unnecessary harm or unpleasantness to others. Sometimes it may mean us making small sacrifices to avoid inflicting larger ones on other people, but that's what sets us aside as a civilised society where we don't all run around killing each other.

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Millennium3

He's doing it to wind us up!