From Australia:
MONASH Mayor Geoff Lake and Health Minister David Davis have faced off in the debate about extending state-wide smoking bans to cover outdoor dining areas.
Waverley Leader reported that Oakleigh restaurateurs had rejected the idea of a smoking ban in outdoor dining areas, saying it would damage business.The story behind this particular abuse of authority is that a local Aussie Mayor is rather pissed off that businesses - who pay his wages - have objected to a law which would ban outdoor smoking on their premises, despite their paying the Mayor's council for the privilege. You see, the traders are concerned that their customers will cross the border to less fascist jurisdictions, thus avoiding being denormalised. This won't do, of course, hence our unfriendly tosspot of a Mayor demanding state-wide action.
Mafia eat your heart out.
But the reasoning behind it is justification for this blog which I could quite simply not afford to buy.
Monash Council has been campaigning to get the State Government to introduce a Victoria-wide ban on smoking in alfresco dining areas. Cr Stephen Dimopoulos told Waverley Leader in June he had been contacted by seven or eight families in recent months who wanted smoking in outdoor dining areas banned.And why is it that these seven or eight decide they have the right to dictate to everyone else? Well, the linked article doesn't say. It just mentions that they don't like it. How's that for evidence-based policy, huh?
Commenters to the original piece are very clear though.
Readers have again joined the debate online, overwhelmingly responding to the restaurateurs concerns by saying that smoking bothered them.It "bothered them". That's it.
So it really isn't about protecting bar staff then? It's only been about a bother? For businesses that it is very easy to avoid if you don't want to be 'bothered'?
And that is enough these days for an ignorant public to dictate to people who have invested their entire life into their businesses?
There is no 'science' or 'evidence' because this Mayor doesn't bother to quote any. Perhaps because even tobacco control gave up on trying to 'prove' second hand smoke outdoors is dangerous a long time ago for the obvious reason that only the most stupid would believe it.
Remember all that agonising back in 2006? You know, the delicate balance between mythical harm to others and free markets, liberties, property rights and all that jazz? It's all a distant memory now, isn't it. These days the effete amongst us are finally admitting it wasn't about health and openly demanding laws to punish something they find a trifle inconvenient.
Smoking bans have never, ever, been about health. They have, however, been a brilliant avenue for driving sympathetic prohibitionist thinking towards bans on alcohol, sugar, fast food, fizzy drinks and many other popular staples which happen to offend pompous middle class superiority complexes.
In the case of e-cigs, of course, it doesn't even matter if the smell isn't there either. Just something that looks like smoke and a self-absorbed anti-social moron is enough. Liberties be damned!
The world on a stick and a unicorn for Christmas now apparently require urgent action and aggressive pursuance by idiot politicians.
H/T Angry Exile
