'In this day and age, I can't see how a council can spend money on a smoking control department and compliance officers. It looks like a pointless job creation exercise.'Well, exactly.
One must wonder at the perverse mentality which perpetuates this waste of resources. We all know that the true agenda is to bully the public into giving up a legal and, for very many, an enjoyable product.
It ain't working, of course. Coercion has never, ever, been embraced in the entire history of human experience, and bullying is viewed with even less admiration. Since smoking bans have been implemented, throughout the world, the uniform result is a grinding halt to the previously regular reductions in smoker prevalence.
Dictatorial solutions, quite simply, turn people off and the message transforms from being caring into one which places the receiver as somehow inferior to the person issuing the orders.
Don't believe me? OK, just as an experiment, pick out someone in your local high street this weekend who is doing something which you wouldn't do yourself. Then approach them and tell them you are hugely more clever than them and that they should stop it right now.
Then, when you have extricated their fist from your face and booked an appointment with the dentist, tell me how effective it was.
We don't have to look far for more confirmation that anti-smoking nutjobs are addicted to this quite laughable failure of approach. On the same day that the Mail was reporting on Mr Isbister's laudable defence of common sense over public sector arrogance and waste, the Times carried yet more evidence that progress stalls the more bullying is used as a tool.
The number of cigarettes sold in the UK in the year to the end of March was 44.2 million, the first time the figure has not fallen year-on-year in a generation.Which kind of suggests that the legions of state-paid tobacco controllers are an indefensible waste of public expenditure.
Especially if they are being paid for a job which they are quite incapable of performing to any degree of competence.
Yesterday, magistrates threw out the case because the council had failed to follow correct procedure. Despite spending thousands, it seems the council and its lawyers were unable to ensure they had correctly applied the law.Treble P45s all round should be the order of the day. Unfortunately, the big three are quite happy to continue funding such nonsense, while they scrabble around talking of public sector cuts which are sorely required, but which they will never deliver unless they stop being such righteous morons.
Meanwhile, incompetent Nottingham council officers are free to continue being inconsequential, and financially damaging, burdens on society without sanction.
Yes, you haven't slipped into the Twilight Zone, this really is 21st Century Britain.
6 comments:
What is the general concensus of opinion on what, if anything, is going to happen smoking-ban-wise after the Stasi are removed next week?
Anything on the grapevine? Or is it as I suspect? Hunters:1, Smokers:0?
Marvo: Tories and Lib Dems will do nothing.
Clegg: "Smoking ban? I'd leave it as it is," he says, without hesitation. Isn't that a strange stance for a liberal? "It goes right back to the liberal tests of harm, to John Stuart Mill. People should be free to do what they want but not when it harms other people,".
Cameron: "I’m just not a banner. But you know, I think the country has moved on, and people have accepted the smoking ban.”
With Labour, by the end of their fourth term, smoking will be banned in cars, in parks, beaches, pub gardens and your own home.
But will Tories and/or LibDems adjust our voting system so that someone else will be able to get in, or shall I resort to Plan B and just get the f*ing revolution started?
Slightly OT, but I spotted this this morning:
Ferrari accused of subliminal tobacco advertising
"Leading doctors" are said to be demanding an investigation into what they regard as "subliminal" tobacco advertising on Ferrari's F1 cars and the team's relationship with Philip Morris, manufacturer of Marlboro cigarettes.
Of course it's subliminal advertising, and bloody good luck to Philip Morris for it, too. This is what we've come to in the 21st Century. No personal jet packs or trips to the moon; no, we've got a crowd of bottom inspectors solemnly cogitating on whether a pattern of stripes on a racing car might be illegal.
Uncle Marvo
Start loading the muskets.
Nothing..Repeat..Nothing will be done about the total ban as long as
the vast majority of smokers,their
so called friends and yellow livered publicans remain in a coma
My task in life , with the help from a few chavs and assorted
nutters is to ensure the local
anti and non smokers get a good dose of discomfort when they try to have a nice night out.
Theres a thousand ways of bollocksing pleasant circles and
when the current army of hidden
malconted get of their arses and
start causing grief ,then we may see some movement
The Free Corps
A very good, well argued post Dick. Enjoyed reading that one.
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