On Ceefax....here's a few....

"Not once in 43 years have I heard any complaint in a pub about smoking.
As usual fanatics have made mountains out of health and social molehills.
A draconian law that contravenes the right to free association is not on.
Smoking/non-smoking only clubs and pubs are perfectly feasible but the control freaks don't seem to want that - why not?"

AG, Leicestershire.

I agree with the above about Pubs and Clubs having a choice about whether they want to be no smoking or smoking!!!!
Plus all the time I've been going in Pubs I've also never heard anyone complaining....it's only since the ban has been talked about have people been complaining!!!!
The reason the powers that be don't want to give people a choice is simple....the fines they will be dishing out are just another Stealth Tax just like all the Speed Cameras!!!!

"BY, Cheshire (26/6) says he has spent 40 years suffering second-hand smoke in pubs. Why not have a few beers at home with other non-smoking pals, as I have done for the last 10 years.
We take it in turns to visit each other every week, with a monthly get-together with our wives - occasions when we can choose our background music with the TV off.
BY reminds me of the old saying about the dog howling while sitting a on a thorn, but too darned lazy to move over."

JM, Renfrewshire.

BTW....BY, Cheshire wrote in the other day saying he can't wait for the smoking ban to come in.
I do the same as JM....go round other peoples houses to have a drink etc and people come here!!!!
Plus it's much cheaper than going out especially when you can get 54 cans of John Smiths from the Supermarket or 60 Bottles of Stella for £20.
The Pub and Club trade is going to be hit really hard methinks!!!!
PS....I've never heard that saying before but I like it!!!!

"What a martyr to the cause you are BY of Cheshire (26/6).
All those nasty smokers have been ruining your drinking but you've managed to carry on for 40 years nonetheless - well done!"

NH, Oxfordshire

Well said Mr.NH!!!!

"I'll tell you what doesn't make sense - the fact that if I'm seen peacefully drinking alcohol in the street, and only risking damaging my own health, I face arrest.
Yet it's entirely legal and within the law for smokers to 'go free', walking round town, blowing their 2nd hand filth into other peoples faces, inflicting potentially serious illnesses and denying our 'human rights' to breathe without having this disgusting, intrusive habit imposed on us."

CS, West Yorkshire.

I wonder if CS drives a car and makes me breathe all the toxic filth that comes out of it while I'm walking the streets!!!!
And you shouldn't be able to drink in just any street....I've never known anyone attack another person for smoking too many Tabs but I've seen it done plenty of times by people who've drunk too much!!!!


Please discuss!!!!

I think I'm quite pleased about the smoking ban. It's a bit off when you go out for a meal and people at the next table all light up just when your dinner arrives, innit. (Tho I expect I used to do that myself in me smoking days...you just don't realise, if you're a smoker, how it puts other people off.)
I don't think it's significant that no-one ever complained before about smoking in pubs. You might not like something, but if it's legal other people have a right to do it and you feel you have no right to complain about it.

On the other hand, if pubs and clubs really lose custom over this, I'll be agin the ban. Pubs and clubs is very important and if they die out life will be even more sterile than it is already. So, er, I'm not sure what I think, as usual.......

BTW....BY, Cheshire wrote in the other day saying he can't wait for the smoking ban to come in.
I do the same as JM....go round other peoples houses to have a drink etc and people come here!!!!
Plus it's much cheaper than going out especially when you can get 54 cans of John Smiths from the Supermarket or 60 Bottles of Stella for £20.
The Pub and Club trade is going to be hit really hard methinks!!!!
PS....I've never heard that saying before but I like it!!!!


I think that letter half way down contravenes the PoolieKev laws on words

Even though I smoke I can see both sides of it. A while back I sucessfully stopped smoking for a few weeks and happened to go into a pub one night (I don't much). I was shocked at how much the stench of stale fags was overwhelming.

what about sweaty feet and smelly bums?

Smoking in roomy, well ventilated pubs is OK by me.
But smoking in crowded pubs is not.
And smoking in restaurants is just plain uncouth.
And yes I've always complained about it.

Where does that leave me?

I don't think you ought to have said that. Now someone will invent a deodorant non-user tax.

I agree smoking in Restaurants is bad.

Smoking in pubs? I'm not so sure.

The ban has been in place over here for 2 years.
Plus points: Clothes, hair etc don't stink in the morning. Not breathing 2nd hand smoke.

Minus points: There's a lot of truth in what Mutley says about the smells. The smoke used to pretty much mask everything. Now the pubs smell of stale beer, cheap perfume etc, and peoples breath when they're drinking is usually terrible!!

I think they should have given (well ventilated) smoking areas a try.

Only beer probably.

Smoking is compulsory in China.

did anyone see the paper the other when a pub is becoming a embbacy for a god for saken island in the carrabian to get around the law as the government cannot inforce it on foriegn soil they are also exempt from high tax

also does anyone know if there will be a smoking ban in the house of commons bar i bet there isnt

The Woodcutter?

well the landlord has been made a Sir by the owner of the island so who knows

right, I'll need to see everyone's Equatorial Guinea passports at the door from now on

yep the palace of westminster is exempt.put that in your pipe and smoke it,though obviously only in the privacy of your own home

I actually agree with ADG on this one, and I'm a non smoker. There seems to be a need for mass control in this country. It is ridiculous. Soon free speech will be banned and the internet will no doubt be government controlled eventually, a free country - you're having a laugh.....

my job is working on high speed trains out of london into the southwest,smoking was banned on our trains(they are the ones where you can open the windows) for ten years plus,and people are still having a fag on there,mainly when drink has been taken but not always.From sundays smoking is banned on all stations,not just covered stations mind ,all stations so they won't even be able to take advantage of a few minutes in the station. now if you are off on your jollies to cornwall with at least 5 hours to kill with no station to smoke on,not even somewhere like liskeard in the middle of no where with no cover on the station,what do you think they're gonna do?

The problem is many non-smokers think this will all end with smoking, and it works for them so they're for it and don't really think about it too much because it's just a little bonus that doesn't directly affect them.
Smokers are bias obviously, but because it is an issue that directly affects them they tend to dig a bit deeper than the soundbites and find a rotten core of lies and bad science proposed by the antis, whose ultimate agenda is the erradication of tobacco from our society.
Not a bad thing. People should live healthy lifestyles and take of themselves and not smoke and eat right and drink in moderation and exercise. But the moment you take that "should" and start enshrining it in law you start down a dangerous path. Make no mistake, we're on that path now.
The bans are already expanding to outdoor areas. In Scotland you can't smoke on a train platforms - other commutors must be releaved by this as obviously the exhaust from the 4000 tonnes of deisel train that's no doubt going to arrive late isn't as bad as someone having a cigarette.
In places there's talking about banning smoking in cars if you have children in the vehicle - it's only a short hop from that to banning it in the home if you have children.
One town in USA has made it illegal to smoke everywhere EXCEPT your own home. So if you have an apartment and kids and smoke better be prepared to leave and on and on it goes.

The next obvious target is alcohol. People might think it only affects the user but that's not the case. Irresponsible drinkers affect everyone. They lead to increased violence in the area, police time, not to mention drunk driving.

And what about fat people? You might think, hey fat people are only a danger to themselves. You wouldn't be saying that if you every got stuck next to them on a plane for 11 hours.

The point I'm trying to make is as unreasonable as some might think the examples I'm giving are, think of the reaction you'd have gotten if, 20 years ago you'd suggested that maybe bars should be smoke free.

This is becoming a dictatorship, what's next? no drinking? are they going to control everything we do?

As Yakov Smirnov would say: What a country!!". Why should anyone open a business where the people can tell him how to run his business? If I invite you to enter my house, I set the house rules. If you are invited to enter my place of business, you set the house/business rules. That makes a lot of sense. NOT. You are invited to do business with me, the same as you would be invited to my house. You have the right to refuse either invitation.

And what exactly is it you think cars are spewing out into the air that no one can avoid? Pure Oxygen? And before you feed me that "but we don't run cars indoors" line; consider this......where do you think the air inside comes from?

Every gallon of petrol you burn when driving puts more poison into the air (and notice how some exhausts face the pedestrians large vehicles etc-talk about blowing smoke in someones face) than hundreds of cigarettes (and that's just one car and one gallon of fuel) and you think cigarette smoke is doing all the damage?

It already is.

The leader of the BNP was taken to court over a speech he made. However distasteful his views are, he should still be allowed to say what he likes in a "free" country and let us decide. The Government is slowly but surely eroding all instances where people have a choice in what you can do and say. They call it the nanny culture but it's more than that, the "war on terror" will see rights eroded even more in the name of national security. Black boxes in cars, ID cards, CCTV, microchips in bins. The snowball is getting bigger and gathering pace. The present Gov are obsessed with knowing as much as possible about everyone.
I've got nothing to hide you may think, but one day they will want to ban something you enjoy or decide you're not recycling enough or there's too many fish & chip wrappers in your bin and you could be getting fat. and by then it will be too late.
And don't think the other lot will abolish any of this when we finally get sick of this lot because they're all the same.

rant over

time to go and live on the Moon

http://www.rathergood.com/moon_song/

It does make me chuckle when people get on one about 'oppressive' Communist China and the Human Rights records, and child exploitation, and all the other bollocks that people talk about this country. All the mandarins are in your town halls and Westminster dreaming up new ways to generally fook you about. Little that they do is well thought through and so many things that they do and you pay for are simply unworkable. Most of what they do has no value to society either. Breathing other people's smoke might be unpleasant, so why not stay away from it?? Some people who don't smoke actually don't give a shit. You only ever hear the loudest voices.

How many people who's wages you pay through Council Tax actually do not help your in your daily life?? Here's a 'for instance.' You get some rain, like even the deserts do on occasion, and people start dying. Whole areas are under water, people's houses are flooded. That surely matters??

Who's out there co-ordinating the recovery operation?? No-one. The woman in charge shrugged her shoulders and turned away.

What's all this 'you' and 'us', then Kev?
Surely people in power are pretty much the same everywhere...not much to choose between them, I'd say

Well I can't say I'm actively participating after seven months out of it can I?? And the stuff I'm hearing doesn't make me hanker for home, it makes me glad I'm not taking part. I married a Chinese so I get to say 'we.'

Point is, in the regime here the individual has greater choices than the one in the UK, limited only by ability and/or desire. The public services are second to none I've ever seen. The tax burden on the individual is some 10%. Above all IT WORKS, and it's bullshit free.

Yes, well I can but admire you, going off to settle in a country which probably could hardly be more alien that UK, and making a go of it

But all I can say is that I've heard similar stories before. My sister emigrated to Canada ('In Toronto the way of life is so much better; the fruit and vegetables are more luscious, housing is so much cheaper' etc etc) and some other friends moved to Germany ('We couldn't live in Britain any longer with the political system as it is; in Munich everything works efficiently; the transport system is second to none etc etc') But they've all come back. Perhaps they got sick of having nothing to moan about......

They can't have been female friends of yours then.

Women ALWAYS find something to moan about!

It's usually peer pressure from people who never tried it. It always works out further from the UK to wherever you are than on the reverse journey. I miss Pools and they aren't even playing, so family aside, and there arent many of us, there's little to drag me back.

Anyway, I flogged my wellies on e-bay.

Just to give me a guide as to how long I have left here, how soon before they came back?

My sister/brother-in-law stayed for about 20 years and the Munich people probably less that 5. Now I come to think about it tho, neither lot made any real effort to integrate. They just existed more or less like little islands within the new culture.
How long have you been there Mr Head?