Thursday 8 August 2013

Cry Me A River

Still incredibly busy at Puddlecote Inc so, in the absence of time to write anything tabloid myself, do go have a read of this article on the BBC website about the plight of anti-smokers compelled to use smokey beer gardens. Arm yourself with a hanky in case you shed a tear or two for the poor dears, won't you?
"Sometimes it's like stepping out into a mist," complains Barbara Harpham, national director of Heart Research UK and a strong advocate of the anti-smoking laws.
Just yer average impartial pub-goer, then.
"The majority of people don't like smoking but when they go outside it's imposed on them."
Imposed on them in the sense that they are strong-armed to the pub against their will, before being whipped with a cat o' nine tails out of the legislated safety of the plush interior into the smoke-filled danger of the garden. Doesn't your heart just bleed?
It's a situation that frustrates those who would rather dine or drink in unpolluted fresh air.
I bet you're welling up by now, aren't you?
"If people want to smoke outdoors they should be able to, but you don't want kids going where there are people smoking," says Harpham.
Because there are simply no other places for a poor obsessive anti-smoker to take kids in the summer except a pub beer garden, of course.
As a result, she says, families are often deterred from visiting pub gardens or dining outdoors lest those on adjacent tables set a bad example.
Never heard of a blindfold?
Her solution is for outdoor smoking and non-smoking areas.
Who can say fairer than that, eh? Just a small concession. Even though one could argue we have had legally defined smoking and non-smoking areas for six years now, otherwise known as outdoors and in-fucking-doors!

I was so emotionally moved by this heart-rending account that I took to Twitter to express sympathy.


Or, as the Daily Mash put it today.
Non-smokers told to shut up and stop being so utterly pathetic
Well, quite.


17 comments:

Carl Minns said...

"If people want to smoke outdoors they should be able to, but you don't want kids going where there are people smoking," says Harpham.

If you don't want your kids to see adults at play don't take them to a pub. Simples!

Crossbow said...

Perhaps it is time for a switch? The non-smokers can have the outside, barely habitable for 10 months of the year, and the smokers can return indoors, where they can be hidden from the kids.

It's a win for everybody, surely?

Xopher said...

What a load of BBC Bullshit and --- at the end ----- What the fuck is an "unreconstructed tobacco lover"????
AND --while I'm asking -----How is that different from a reconstructed one, a constructed one or simply a tobacco lover or a smoker????

Sam Duncan said...

“The majority of people don't like smoking”


Is this, in fact, the case? Not all non-smokers are anti-smoking, you know.


Yes, okay, I suspect it probably is too. But are there any figures? Can Harpham be sure? Or is this another of those nobody-I-know-votes-Tory situations?


And anyway, isn't it odd how the majority only matters to these BBC types when they're part of it? Try telling them that the majority of people don't like EU membership and see how far it gets you.

nisakiman said...

Christ, DP, I think I'm going to top me'self what with feeling so bad about the privations of the poor dears. Oh diddums...How awful for them....

Rob said...

Who fucking dines in a pub beer garden? I am 40-odd veteran of pubs and I simply cannot recall ANYONE eating anything in a beer garden other than out of some sort of packet.

Dick_Puddlecote said...

For anti-smoke obsessives, logic is a thing that other people do.

Dick_Puddlecote said...

Yep, I'd vote for that. Problem is, the words 'concession' and 'tolerance' don't appear in the anti-smoker dictionary. On the flip side, they have 23 different phrases for 'I want'.

Dick_Puddlecote said...

Most people couldn't give a shit about smoking. That's why ASH and the plethora of tobacco control industry professional spongers have to rely on theft from the taxpayer.


As for the BBC - tax spongers themselves - they do what the Guardian tell them.

Dick_Puddlecote said...

Perhaps we should start a charity to raise funds for tissues with which to wipe away their precious tantrum tears.

Dick_Puddlecote said...

I'd be surprised if Barbara Harpham visited a pub for more than 5 times a year, let alone dine in the garden. I expect she commented over the phone while sitting at home creaming over re-runs of Jamie fucking Oliver.

Smudger said...

We can joke now, but it's going to happen. It's bound to happen. Like a zombie army, these fuckers can't be stopped.

The Thought Gang said...

An excellent idea. You fill out some NHS/Council/EU grant applications, and I'll find a feng shui master to reconfigure some grade 1 Soho office space.

JonathanBagley said...

They conveniently ignore the fact, implied in the article, that many of these beer gardens and outside seating areas did not exist before the smoking ban. Utter c*****.

Adam Haseman said...

They have the fucking cheek to call smokers selfish, yet
they want it all their way when they want to sit outside.
I wonder how they'll feel if someone entered their house and started laying the law.

Churchmouse said...

This is the argument the French Health minister Marisol Touraine (Socialist) is using in proposing that smoking and e-cigarettes be banned from more open-air space:


1/ Don't set a bad example for other French by smoking.


2/ Don't set a bad example for the children. (Yves Bur, the UMP -- conservative -- parliamentarian who came up with the French smoking ban wants it to extend to any home with children.)


3/ Think of the litter!



This year, there are a few more beaches which have gone non-smoking. I don't know about parks, but that's another area that is always mentioned in these discussions. It's pretty certain, though, that there will be no more smoking behind the plastic sheets (baches) at the front of restaurants. Even open-air restaurants have withdrawn nearly all their smoking areas -- at least where we were. Cafes, happily, remain unchanged in the outdoor areas.


France now has a vociferous group of anti-smokers online and on-air.

John Mallon said...

Dick,


I researched the fresh air angle in Ireland to discover that, nowhere does our Country guarantee the right of (so-called) fresh air. There is not even an accepted definition of what fresh air is. Certainly there are pollution laws governing certain substances and the resulting air quality including stated threshold levels and safe levels of exposure. But, the Irish State does NOT grant the right to fresh air, anywhere on the Island.


So there is NO right to it whatsoever. Is it the same in the UK ???