Fight Against Government Suppression
Much as I personally hate smoking, I wish Britain's newest political party, FAGS, every success. The smokers' equivalent of UKIP was launched by Hamish Howitt, who last night was served no less than seven separate court summonses at his Happy Scots Bar in Blackpool for flouting the recently introduced law banning smoking in enclosed public spaces.
Fight Against Government Suppression is of course right to remind people that the government broke its manifesto pledge to restrict the ban on private clubs and pubs to those serving food. When the issue reaches them, as it surely inevitably will, I suspect that the more liberal European Court of Human Rights will also delight in taking the opportunity once again to assert its supremacy over our federal national Parliament. However, the real issue is actually nothing to do with smoking — it is about enforced uniformity. Which is why I hope FAGS becomes so much more than just a single issue party.
For there are so many ways in which we have all been suppressed by NuLabour's nanny state-cum-police state mentality and the fight against government suppression needs to be waged on all fronts. Take the recent issue of the Sexual Orientation Regulations. Mr Howitt claims that his non-smoking customers may go next door to his smoke-free karaoke bar. Quite so. Just as the Catholic adoption agencies suggested that they could continue their previous practice of directing homosexual couples to the non-Catholic adoption agencies next door. Just as doctors who do not wish to carry out an abortion may, at present, point some of their patients towards other doctors who are prepared to assist them. But in modern socialist Britain, we must all conform to the one model. One size must fit all. As the Shadow Attorney General Dominic Grieve put it in the current issue of The Difference, the Government appears to believe that "greater diversity needs greater restrictions of freedoms, so that all will conform to a Government dictated framework."
No, enough is enough. We should not be forced to conform. We should all be treated with respect and have the freedom to choose.
A loyal opposition is a necessity in any community."
Karol Wojtyla, Archbishop of Krakow (Pope John Paul II)
5 comments:
Mr. Hamish Howitt is correct in his fight against the Government on this human rights issue. We trained as pub managers in the mid 1980's. We were told that the saloon bar was legally our living room and we could bar anyone we wished from it. If we were taught correctly then Mr. Howitt, and any other landlord, should be free to allow smoking in his/her living room if so desired.
We used to have designated rooms in pubs to smoke, extra carriages on trains for the smokers etc. but it seems that the do-gooders are getting their own way again. You don't see a smoker being hauled off in a crash wagon late at night for fighting or attacking people because they are out of their heads - Oh! No! just the people who have been allowed extended hours to drink themselves into a stupor. Are the smokers costing the country millions of pounds a year in police, ambulance and A & E expenses? - No!!! Who is paying for all of this mayhem in the tax they pay? The smokers who are paying.
I smoke and I have no intention of stopping just because I am being dictated to by others. I have always carried my own ashtray in the form of a small tin, my cigarette is extinguished into it and it goes in my pocket. I do not pollute other peoples environment so don't invade my space, is the message I give these people. It always seems to be the same, a little seed is sown, caught onto and grows out of all proportion. This 'nanny' state can stay out of my face and my life. They will have spies in our homes next! Or is that what digital everything is in aid of for the future???
I am sick and tired of being told 'Where, when, what, and how' by what is becoming a nose poking, dictatorial country. Are these peoples lives so boring that they have to stick their noses into everyone else's business. Why can't we have 'Smokers' pubs and cafes and 'Non Smokers' pubs and cafes?
The ban on fox hunting is another bone of contention! The townies are now complaining that there are far too many foxes in their areas - Well, excuse me while I have a good laugh at that one. What did they expect. Foxes breed several at a time - each one grows up and has more - do the math! When a fox kills a farmers lambs or chickens they are killing his bank balance. Foxes don't kill just to eat. Let loose in a chicken coop they will kill them all and eat only one. It is the same in a field of lambs. They will kill several and only eat one. This Government would like to see the back of farmers in this country. Their bureaucracy is making it intolerable. If all the farmers stopped farming, who would garden the countryside? Or do they think the countryside gardens itself!
There are many topics I could deal with here. These faceless people do not see into the future and the consequences of their actions, they just want their own way regardless.
We are no longer a democratic, independent, self sufficient country. It has all been eroded. Our country is, in all sense of the words, 'been shoved down the toilet'!!!!!
I received the June issue of The Difference Magazine yesterday. Having read the article about Mr. Robert MacDonald I feel that if there are 3,000 readers could we not set up some form of donation system. If every reader gave £1 we could help him get his wife and child over here to safety. It is alright writing and talking about it. LET'S DO SOMETHING PRACTICAL! LET's MOVE THIS MOUNTAIN! With just £1 each we can touch his life. NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE!
I don't think I agree with "The Difference", nor Elizabeth Samways, on this one. I am surprised by this stance of “The Difference”. Firstly, the health risks are well-known, and we have responsibility to respect our bodies, not abuse them. Surely the law should reflect this.
Second, it's a clash of 'rights' between the right to smoke in public buildings and the right of non-smokers not to have their health threatened, nor even to have their hair and clothes reek from the stench of fumes from smoking, let alone dangers people working in such conditions. Actually I understand it, that the main motivation for this law is to protect employees. People have to work to earn money and so should be able to do so without being exposed to the risks associated with passive smoking. Let smokers ruin their own health if they wish, as long as their habit doesn’t affect anyone else who doesn’t want to be exposed to the risks or have the stench forced on them. Even if smoking were permitted in public places, and even in some pubs, so that those who don’t like smoke can go to non-smoking pubs, it should be banned from most places of employment.
This cannot therefore be compared to the sexual orientation regulations. The Catholic adoption agencies in refusing to put children out to adoption by gay couples threaten no-one’s health, nor do B&B owners who wish to deny a double bed to same-sex couples – they are only acting according to their conscience as to what they want to permit in their own homes. Similarly, hunting foxes with dogs harms on-one.
Philips arguments are spurious. Your clothes smell of fags after a night out? Do you wear the same clothes two days in a row? Is the Anti Smoking law merely an excuse not to do the laundry? Public Health? 10 people a day die on the roads of this country. If the issue was protecting public health then surely everything that affects public health should be banned. Responsibility to my body? backward religious nonsense. I can do what I want with my body. Employees rights? You go into a pub and you know what you are getting. Its like joining the army and campaigning to get people to stop shooting at you.
This law has absolutely ruined my social life. Conversations are interuppted, I cant go to a club because half the night is spent queuing to go outside for a cig. Its an example of petty political correct points scoring, political parties pandering to minority pressure groups. 25% of the population smoke. If they tried to impinge on 25% of the populations religious or sexual rights, there would be uproar.
Saw a great sign outside a pub on the way home tonight (pity I was driving or I could send you a picture):
"Warning - Staff may become stroppy or violent as a result of the smoking ban - Thanks a bunch Labour"
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