Viability of Licensed Premises Post Smoking Ban

[BigMouth]

GR. We will have to disagree, but from my own experience, giving up the weed is the best thing that I ever did. I hated being marginalised and discriminated against by others because of my habit, standing outside in the snow freezing my gonads off, because I wasn't going to be told to give up.

 

I hope that you will find reason to give up too. Don't let yourself get to the stage that I did, so determined to smoke that I used to have to take my inhaler half-way through a fag to have enough lung capacity to finish it off.

 

When you do I will buy you a pint in a non-smoking pub

[KOYAANISQATSI]

smoking kills people prematurely. It bungs up hospital beds and fills doctors waiting rooms.

 

Of course premature death would save on future NHS queues.

I for one wont be there stacking up the waiting room in my eightys, I'll have long coughed my last, making it to my eightys aint something I'm itching to do, I'm no looker at the moment but christ have you seen them eighty odd year olds, they're ghastly.

Winding up like the crypt keeper aint much of a prize for doing right by your body for decades.

Oh yeah, you still die, by the way .

[BigMouth]

^^^ Brilliant!!

[DeMascus]

Long Live Bill Hicks.

[Sudden Stop]

...is it within a government's remit to legislate to force such changes in to effect, isn't that an infringement of human rights and freedom of choice?

 

Public buildings that everyone find themselves in, regardless of whether they want to or not, fine and well, include all of those. But pubs and suchlike, where it is totally a matter of personal choice whether a person ever enters one or not, and the purpose of which is purely for entertainment and pleasure, the government had no business interfering with the choices of the individual.

 

What about the staff of these places? Are they not entitled to go to work and not be poisoned? Smokers can still choose to smoke if they want to, just go outside, but without a smoking ban the non-smoker's freedom of choice is taken from them.

 

I bet you are thinking: 'ah well, if you are a non-smoker, go work in a non-smoking bar.' But this isn't an option for a lot of people. Most people in the hospitality industry are low paid and take whatever work they can. I doubt many people aspire to work in a pub on minimum wage - most do it because it is better than the dole.

 

The government has a responsibility to ensure people aren't forced to work in conditions hazardous to their health.

[Ghostrider]

^^^ A valid point, but one that IMHO is not as vaild as it's talked up to be, and is played for far more than it's actually worth.

 

Yes, of course workplaces have to be made as safe as is reasonably practical for workers, but there comes a point that you are crossing a line between minimising the riskier and more harmful aspects of the job, and recreating the job as something completely new and different for workers' convenience.

 

There are many jobs, both minimum wage and otherwise, that few aspire to, but take because it's the best that's going, at best people tolerate them until something better comes up. Many of them, and also many other jobs across the board, contain aspects that could in one way be offensive and/or physically damaging to the worker(s) involved in doing them, and there is little that can be done to change that, as to do so would result in the job in hand itself not getting done.

 

Just as one example, if a person is made physically sick by seeing/handling human waste/secretions/blood etc, they needn't take a job in a hospital, care facility or mortuary. To change the job any is going to mean it doesn't get done, and to continue day on day throwing up everything you ate while you're doing it isn't going to do your health any favours either.

 

I'm a believer that a job is what it is, and you either take it or leave it at it's face value. It's a straightforward decision, do I sell my health/sanity/soul/whatever for these few extra £££'s and take it, or do I scrimp along on the dole a little longer waiting on something else. Only an individual themselves knows at what stage they will sell out, or not....

 

Just the same as hospital/care facility/mortuary work involves handing human waste/secretions/blood, pub work has always, until now, involved handling alcohol/drunk people/a smoky enviornment....If folks weren't taking pub work on the basis they accepted the health risks asscociated with it and were happy with that, but were mercenary enough to sell that risk for whatever the difference in £££'s was between dole and paycheck only, they certainly should have been.

 

I don't buy the "no choice" argument as regards anything, there are always choices in everything, to suggest someone had no choice but take a job in an enviornment they believed was destroying their health to me is absurd. What if, the job hadn't come up, what if, someone else had gotten it instead of them, what if...they'd have found a way to get by on the dole that bit longer, that's what. To whine about the health implications of the job conditions they knew about before the fact, after they've accept the position, sounds pretty hollow to me.

[DamnSaxon]

I don't buy the "no choice" argument as regards anything.

... Unfortunately HMG does, as regards everything, which is why we're no longer allowed to have a ciggie in any place with more than two walls, or a ceiling.

 

In Spain, under the same EU directive, bar owners are free to choose whether to run a smoking, or a non-smoking, bar, so there about 3/4 of places still allow smoking. In the UK, your only choice is no choice, even though we're always being told that "consumer choice" is the only important thing.

 

It's enough to drive you to drink. Perhaps that's the idea.

[DamnSaxon]

A further thought I forgot to put in that post: apparently the smoking ban is costing the average pub about £1500 p.w. That's going to put a lot of them out of business, and there are already several housing estates round Nottingham with no pub at all.

 

It's enough to drive you to drink at home. Where's me glass?

[BigMouth]

A further thought I forgot to put in that post: apparently the smoking ban is costing the average pub about £1500 p.w. That's going to put a lot of them out of business, and there are already several housing estates round Nottingham with no pub at all.

 

I keep hearing that so many pubs are going out of business yet I have actually see any go out of business. How much does a death cost?