A jaundiced view of life from the darkest recess of the saloon bar...
Taken from Sp!ked, musician Joe Jackson explains why it's time to extinguish this illiberal, undemocratic, junk science-inspired legislation.
What is needed is not just the repeal of the smoking ban and other illiberal laws, but a return to healthy scepticism about the claims made about various risks, fairness and tolerance towards others with different habits, and a large dose of common sense.
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"The era of big, bossy, state interference, top-down lever pulling is coming to an end." (David Cameron, 2008)
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." (H. L. Mencken)
"The final nails have now been hammered into the coffin of the freedom to smoke in enclosed public places. This piece of legislation must be one of the most restrictive, spiteful and socially divisive imposed by any British Government." (Lord Stoddart of Swindon)
"Raising taxes on alcohol to prevent problem drinking is akin to raising the price of gasoline to prevent people from speeding." (Edward Peter Stringham)
"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." (C. S. Lewis)
"People who deal only in 'craft' beer do not care about some dirty old pub and the dirty old people who are in it and the dirty old community that it holds together." (Boozy Procrastinator)
"The simplest way to explain the behaviour of any bureaucratic organisation is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies." (Robert Conquest)
"A Puritan is someone who lives in mortal fear that somewhere, sometime, someone is enjoying himself." (H. L. Mencken)
"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming 'Wow! What a Ride!" (Hunter S. Thompson)
"No pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home at Weston-super-Mare." (Kingsley Amis)
"When you have lost your inns, drown your empty selves,
For you will have lost the last of England." (Hilaire Belloc)
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Curmudgeon,
ReplyDeleteI'm 100% against the smoking ban and always have been, even though I'm not a smoker. I'm far more concerned in car exhaust pollution to cigarette smoke. And of course the thousands of jobs lost in the industry and the closure of many pubs.
But......
You will certainly know that many people, including myself think we should all just go into pubs and light up. I remember the publican who did just that and the public bailed him out when he was arrested and fined. The only problem that then happens is the councils make the choice on who gets their pub license when it comes up for licensing renewal every year. They have the power to simply say no.
So in effect we also have to smash the local councils as well. It's a hideous law that leads to far greater implications to our liberty and removal of them, but as long as councils have the power to refuse licenses to perfectly good publicans with their best interests at heart, we're not going to beat it. After all, why do you think most publicans haven't flouted the smoking ban? They know just what I've said in that their license would most certainly not be allowed next June licensing court.