An Irrational Anger Rant

[Rich Pearson]

I’m sorry but the Angry Thread simply wasn’t big enough for this.

I have today for the first time gone into a bar since the non-smoking laws have been enforced in England, and I have almost never been so f**king angry and frustrated in my entire life.

As I realised I had to go and stand outside the front door to have a cigarette with my pint, some large feller and his stick of girlfriend actually laughed at me. At first I thought I’d got something in my teeth or I’d put my trousers on backwards, but no no, I, along with several other people stood outside to have a fag, were being ridiculed and laughed at for being smokers.

I’ve been pissed off about the smoking ban since I first heard about the idea. I can accept that smoking is:

• Bad for health

• Considered by some to be unsociable

• Something people shouldn’t have to put up with if they don’t want to

• And can sometimes be unpleasant.

I’ve worked in a pub for over a year now and have never seen a problem or heard of anyone even raising their voices in anger over someone smoking near them. Perhaps they didn’t want to complain because stereotypically all smokers are drug addicts having an easy night or pimps with a 9mm in their jackets, whatever, there have always been smoking areas and non-smoking areas in pubs. When someone lit up in a non-smoking area, others often calmly and rationally pointed out their error and the smoker would oblige and relocate. If someone brought a child in, they were allowed to sit only in the non-smoking area, and never at the bar, which was no smoking anyway out of respect for staff who were non-smokers. We even had staff rotations of people who had to take food into particularly smoky areas. For f**k sake, everyone was existing together perfectly happily.

This guy laughing at me today, for some reason, got right under my skin, and I decided to ask him what was so funny as I came back in. His response was something along the lines of, “Don’t you know that’s not cool anymore?” before turning and chuckling to his insect in a blonde wig as though he’d just said the funniest thing ever.

I have never, EVER wanted to drag someone across a table so badly and just hurt them. The actual desire and intention to cause physical harm to this man was remarkably overwhelming. However, having never been in a serious fight before outside of family punch ups with my brother, and having some form of self control left, I let it lie, went to the bar, got another pint, and stood there fuming.

As I was sitting in my little cauldron of hate, someone beside me started talking animatedly to the bartender about how wonderful it was that there was not smoke in the air.

“It’s so nice now without all them bloody kids puffing smoke in our faces,” this elderly woman was saying.

At this point I just gave up and decided to leave. People seemed openly pleased that a vast majority of the populations freedoms were being trampled on, and worse, that that these people were now being stereotyped.

On the way out dickhead and stick insect thought it was worth having one more jab.

“Going out for another fag, FAG?” and smirked wildly at his ability to mix homophones and homophobia in one sentence.

My next actions were incredibly uncharacteristic of me and quite irrational, but I was angry and really couldn’t have given any less of a damn.

“Now look f**khead, if you didn’t like smoking in the first place, no-ones making you come into the f**king pub with us now are they?”

By the end of that sentence I was shouting and probably making a bit of a fool of myself in other people eyes, but I simply didn’t care. I walked off leaving the bloke and his woman to shake their heads and titter over their Smirnoff Ice’s, they having clearly come away with the upper hand.

Why am I telling you this story, because god damn than fat b*****d and his pathetic excuse for a skeleton of a girlfriend were right. They were f**king right. Smoking isn’t cool anymore. Just like illicit drugs suddenly weren’t cool 70 or so years ago, or hunting last year. And at my best guess, alcohol, meat, sex, swearing and whole bunch of other stuff will all be deemed uncool by people in government positions in roughly the next 100 years. I don’t even want to think about trials getting this kind of treatment. Because weather you like it or not, EVERYONE on this forum knows exactly what it feels like being unfairly persecuted, and you’re gonna be in the same boat smokers like me are now.

Eddie Izzard once said on the subject of the smoking ban in San Francisco, “Yes I notice there is no smoking in your bars, and soon there shall be no alcohol, and then no talking!” amid general applause and laughter, myself included.

But he’s right, and if you’ve ever seen films like Equilibrium, where people aren’t allowed to feel anything because that might cause them to hurt someone, or Demolition Man, where everyone lives in a perfect society that is almost totally incapable of dealing with any kind of violent crime, you’ll know exactly what kind of a future we are letting ourselves in for, and make no mistake, this is just the start. We will be repressed to the point of blind servitude, existing simply to keep existing, and with all the more idiots like those people I saw in the pub today who are already blindly agreeing, who can’t see that they’ve not only stepped up to the scaffold, they’ve put their own heads in the noose.

And you will ask me why this is so, and why the government would want to do this. And I answer: Because we MUST be the best.

The United Kingdom is one of the few nations on the planet (it may well be the only one) to have another name containing a positive adjective: Great Britain. This idea that the UK must be strong and great again has lead to us bending over backwards and sacrificing almost everything we have in the manic, screaming pursuit of creating this perfect society:

• One that stands tough against the forces of evil (Iraq, Afghanistan)

• One that helps out Allies in doing so (America)

• Where everyone is clean living and healthy

• And where all people are welcome

The thing is though, that list can be written out differently.

• Stands tough against poor helpless people who can’t even fend off their own ruthless dictators, and whose natural resources are the only thing they have left to bargain with

• Gangs up with equally narrow minded bullies in order to steal said resources from aforementioned poor people.

• Where everyone has no freedom to do anything but has been indoctrinated to do so without caring.

• Where f**kers from every corner of the globe can come to exploit us for the dumb suckers we are.

And in case you all hadn’t noticed, that last bit, that is exactly what we are. Britain is far from Great anymore. We are a global f**king laughing stock. People from all over the world know that they can simply drop everything and be welcomed here. And for the few that do come here and who work hard and keep their heads down, I’ve not got a problem with that. Its people who come here and, having had the red carpet laid out, start ordering room service and trashing the hotel room. I’ve heard of women in schools, complaining that other women were offending them because they did not have their faces covered. Or demanding that various British playground games such as tic, tac, toe and hopscotch, were too British and should be replaced with something more globally cultural. Let us not forget the July 7th bombings (I’m not going to mention 9/11 or Oklahoma except to say that I have nothing but contempt for Americans and if it hadn’t been innocent people I’d have been glad).

Want to hear some other crazy facts about our so called Great Britain? Ok Kids, well lets begin!

• Prison wardens were told that they were not allowed to make toast in the mornings in their dingy little kitchens, because the smell of it might offend the inmates, who lounge around wearing whatever they want sitting in front of plasma screens in what is effectively their own private youth club. How compassionate…

• Tax payers money is used to fund the expensive and fast cars you see government officials like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown being driven around in, which are so fast because according to government expenditure, they are required in case the must out-manoeuvre and escape terrorists who might be chasing them. Smart use of my hard buck.

• And the average Medical practitioner, who earns say £80,000 a year and helping sick people everyday, earns approximately 340 times less, than a man who kicks a football around a field. Fair and just.

But that is all besides the point. The point is, as many of the sharper ones will have noticed, that all this is circular. Much in same way that in the future we will exist simply to continue existing, so these people come from overseas to cause terror on us because we have stolen from them. In our rush to be the greatest and most powerful yet compassionate at the same time, we have fallen on our own swords.

And again why? Because we have seemingly all gone totally insane and decided to LET people stab us again whilst we are down, by giving in to every little thing that these people want.

A very good friend of mine, who perhaps smokes a little too much weed for his own good, remarked that the only people you can get away with being racist to these days is us. White people. English people.

I am:

• White

• A smoker

• Bisexual

• A trials rider

• Tattooed and pierced

Almost all of this list now offends, sickens or angers 90% of the population of this country, this apparent land of the free.

No protection whatsoever is offered by our so called government, our so called leaders chosen from among us. These people who are supposed to represent the English public have less in common with us than we do with people who live in other damn countries. Our values and morality, the way we refer to our pride of being British is being torn away from us in this b*****d desire between progression and domination.

And what is worse, we are not even progressing towards anything good.

Upton Sinclair, one of the great American novelists, was quoted stating, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

Former US Presidential candidate Al Gore recently appeared in a film called An Inconvenient Truth, where he put forward the thought: “Future generations may well have occasion to ask themselves, "What were our parents thinking? Why didn't they wake up when they had a chance?" We have to hear that question from them, now.”

These men are talking about not only global warming that was the subject matter of An Inconvenient Truth, but the way in which we THINK we’re looking at the bigger picture, but are in fact only looking at a big piece of an enormous picture through a relatively small hole.

Climatologists and related officials have come up with calculations as to the effect of global warming and other environmental detriments, and the results are frankly terrifying.

With a 6 degree increase in global temperature, which we are fast heading towards, the planet will almost no longer be able to sustain human life. The O-zone layer will simply not protect humans anymore against UV light. People won’t have to worry about skin cancer because they won’t have any skin to get cancer of. This kind of change will prompt radical and terrifying changes in meteorological patterns, causing giant “super-storms” of which the likes of Hurricane Katrina were only a warm up, and that the film The Day After Tomorrow so accurately represented. The planet will then effectively begin to fight back; fissures in the earth bordering the tectonic plates that create the crust of the earths surface will begin to shift uncontrollably and massive fireballs the size of cities will be vented through these seems out of the wildly unstable core and mantle of the planet. Anyone still alive after this will be subject to a nuclear fallout approximately 1 billion times that of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as the Earth begins to vent any leftover radiation and effectively, as a planet, dies.

Nothing will survive, not even single celled organisms, bacteria or ecological plant life. The very building blocks of a possible new race of ANYTHING will be eradicated.

So what does this have, coming back to the original point which is the infringement of humans rights to freedoms like being able to smoke in a pub? The point is that; it doesn’t.

We have gone so far along the route of destroying this planet that we have no way of going back. It’s hopeless. Officially hopeless.

So we can only hope to enjoy the time we have left. Which we seem utterly intent on not doing, and this is where my frustration is born. In that we KNOW that we have no hope left, yet we futilely struggle on. I was until recently incredibly angry about global warming and the lack of effort people put in to stop it, but I’m refreshingly unbothered about it, as I can see that it is quite simply the easiest way to destroy the greatest disease of all; humanity.

As Hugo Weavings character Agent Smith states in the Matrix, “You are not even actually mammals, you are parasites.” And in our attempt to create the great and good society, we have become our own becoming.

In this insane world where half is filthy rich and the other half starves itself through its days, where people are kidnapped and sold into slavery through prostitution or other physical debasement, where animals are given absolutely no rights and slaughtered without a thought but you can be sued thousands of pounds for calling someone a funny name, in this mad, mad world, we have all calmly and quietly united in our own demise without even knowing it.

And so I ask my own questions: why can we not take what we have and spread it equally? Why cannot we really make poverty history as Bob Geldorf commends us to, and really truthfully share so we may enjoy our last few years alive? Why cannot we have our own simple freedoms back instead of imprisoning those which others deem to have the right to judge as being wrong?

I see a world as Tyler Durden describes it in Fight Club; “In the world I see - you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.”

In this world we can actually, all, for once, be free. We can all live together, in some form of harmony, and be free. And you know, maybe I was wrong and we might then, in the world where we have forsaken Top Gear, Wetherspoons and Durex, where we leave behind Penicillin, Sony and Smirnoff, where we forsake absolutely everything and choose to make our own freedoms, maybe the planet just might survive. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

You have probably just read this and formed your conclusions that I am insane. You would be, in the broadest sense of the term; correct. 2 months ago I had a nervous breakdown which rapidly in a matter of minutes became a full on psychotic episode, a very real waking nightmare, which manifested itself in the form of a bottle of wine, a pack of painkillers, and a very sharp knife. So yes, you’re right, I am in some sense insane, and have always had difficulties dealing with the world we live in, and the beliefs I have listed above are very much ones close to my heart. I feel I simply wanted to get it off my chest, and tomorrow will probably feel totally unbothered by it again.

But oh well everyone, enjoy the end of all things to come.

Rich

Acknowledgements: Imdb.com, ESRC wages and distribution of wealth database, wikipedia.com.

[Ben Cox]

i see no rant

[Has anyone seen my shoe?]

Personnally I like the fact that the smoking ban has come in.

Like you said they dont have to come to the pub if they didn't like smoke, but why should they be put out by someone elses actions,.

I like coming back from a pub and not stinking, I dont want to sound patronising but your going to have to deal with it.

However that fat guy sounds a right knob, what right has he got to take the mick for a choice that you have made.

[trialsguru]

sorry but i cant be arsed to read that.

youre bitter that now you are only killing yourself and not the others around you that have had to put up with years of second hand smoke?

JOG ON MATE

[Rich Pearson]

sorry but i cant be arsed to read that.

youre bitter that now you are only killing yourself and not the others around you that have had to put up with years of second hand smoke?

JOG ON MATE

I kind of thought I'd get some kind of response like that and I understand what you're saying, I really do, but the reason its such a big essay is on a subject much bigger than the smoking ban or my personal choices. if you get a chance (only takes about ten minutes as I proof read it back to myself) do try and read it and I hope you feel you could post back and maybe see where I'm coming from.

I ceratinly don't expect to be praised for many or any of my views listed here and in fact probably suspect I'm going to get into rather a lot of trouble for it, but its something I feel strongly about and I merely intend to open peoples eyes to the kind of world we live in.

Rich

[minitrialer]

sorry but i cant be arsed to read that.

youre bitter that now you are only killing yourself and not the others around you that have had to put up with years of second hand smoke?

JOG ON MATE

If I was you I would read it before coming to any conclusion. It isn't your typical " I wanna smoke mate, WHEY EY "

I don't really have a comment on what you said to be honest, I don't agree with smoking, but then I understand that isn't really what the rant is about, it sort of snow balled. However I do agree that this country is becoming a push over and the mentality of most people today is very different to how it was say 50-60 years ago from what I hear/read etc. Obviously I wasn't alive so I can't be 100% sure though before any smart arse says anything.

[Has anyone seen my shoe?]

Yeah the rant did go off on a rather large tangent.

[Caleb]

in fairness im the only non smoker out of our group so to speak andwas takking the piss as yuou do before the ban came in place, but having a pretty shitty weekend decided to go to the local last night to find it dead, everyone was huddled outside the back of the pub under scaffolding smoking away, leaving me on my own to cheat at snooker, fun at first but got pretty tiring.

i used to moan about getting the smell of smoke soaked into my clothes but febreeze sorted that fine, plus your only going to smell like that next time you wear the clothes into town etc anyway . .

i do disagree with it now, no one really works long enough in a pub these days for the second yhand smoke to harm them, plus the fact the majority of people smoke these days, and at a guess 80 % of pub workers i know smoke so really wouldnt bother them? surely.

good rant nonetheless i wouldnt have the concentration to knock one of them up these days, still struggling to breathe from some dodgy drinks last night . . .

[ManxTrialSpaz]

sorry but i cant be arsed to read that.

youre bitter that now you are only killing yourself and not the others around you that have had to put up with years of second hand smoke?

JOG ON MATE

IF you had read that, you would realise that, that was not his point at all and you have just made yourself look like a fanny.

[Joe Sheehan!]

The smoking ban is good, full stop. Its protecting yourself and others from secondhand smoke and unwanted diseases. You may think i know nothing about this and if you do, youre wrong. I live in a pub, and have done for 3 years. smoke and secondhand smoke gets into my clothes, furniture, makes anything in my home that was once white yellow and is bad for the non smokers in my family. Your rant fuelled by the fact that you cant smoke is sad really, if you want to smoke, do it outside. end of.

When you smoke inside its selfish, inconsiderate and whatever else, and if you dont like the smoking ban, deal with it and smoke outside or just quit smoking. The latter will save you money and prolong your life which is good. The other will not.

Kinda obvious really.

[Has anyone seen my shoe?]

There is so much more content to his arguement then just the smoking ban.

[trialsguru]

IF you had read that, you would realise that, that was not his point at all and you have just made yourself look like a fanny.

sorry but that "rant" is completly about what i said, its only because he has waffled on about some sort of social downfall that you are blind to that.

i still fail to see (maybe becuase im a non smoker) that not being able to smoke for a couple of hours whilst you are "socialising" is going to cause you some sort of mental or physiological harm??!!

its funny that the only people making a real fuss about the smoking ban are the smokers.

am i to believe that putting your life at risk for a hit on nicotine is really worth while?

the world is like it is today through greed and greed alone.

manx trial spaz - its very easy to insult people for an opinion without even bringing your own into the debate. or do you not actually have one and just want to look cool on an internet forum?

im not saying this all to piss people off or what not, its just MY opinion.

[nmt_oli]

You absolute LEGEND Rich. I'm saving that!

After the first paragraph, i was thinking this is just going to be a long rant on the smoking ban, which i do agree with, however you dealt with so many issues there its not only a very good read, but outstandingly thought provoking.

Now, while i agree with you on the nanny state issue and lack of freedom, i as a non smoker see your point on the smoking ban but do not agree with it. Yes, everyone was getting on 'ok' before, but 9/10 times i asked someone to smoke away from me or put a cigarette out, i got shot down. Thats not right. I respect peoples right to smoke, its thier bodies. They don't have a right, however, to do so next to me, without even being so courteous as to ask if i mind!

Its bad enough having to breath smoke at home as my parents smoke, i don't want to have to do it when i go out as well.

Apart form that, i pretty much agree with your whole argument. Unless the human race to something on a properly massive scale, things are going to keep declining and the earth will fight back. Theres evidence of that already. Now, if there was a big movement thoughout all of humanity to do something, i would join in, but i'm not going to sacrifice what i enjoy to reduce carbon emmisions by a silly small amount in comparison to what the new industrial revolution in china is producing. If i want to drive around in my fast car with a big engine, i damn well will, i pay enough bloody tax for the privalidge. besides, my car currently is almost fuel efficient as a Prius! ahah! what a joke they are. My mini will probably be more efficient.

I have been through a lot with my family recently. My dad has been (and still is) struggling with manic depression, and my grandad who is very much a father figure has been diagnosed with alziehmers. my mum, and my uncles buisnesses are struggling into the bargain. this has shown me just how bad life can be. I am young, i have no major responsabilities right now, and im determined to have a f*cking good time this summer. Ive passed my first year, so have nothing to worry about till october the first. I have no job, and i only have 3 free weekends between now and october, thats how much stuff i have going on!

Take note people. As Rich has pointed out, by the time we're middle aged were going to have so little freedom, I think a little carpe diem is in order.

[Joe Sheehan!]

There is so much more content to his arguement then just the smoking ban.

I said his rant was fuelled by the fact that he cant smoke.

Anyway, i have read the whole thing, and understand about your episode and everything, but a lot of the points youre worried about are half arsed and dont really matter. In your lifetime, you will not be affected by ANY of these things, so stop worrying, theres no need mate.

[nmt_oli]

but a lot of the points youre worried about are half arsed and dont really matter. In your lifetime, you will not be affected by ANY of these things, so stop worrying, theres no need mate.

1) Hes' done a fair bit of research into those points for just a rant! id say there more than just 'half arsed'.

2) You may not have to worry about them directly in our lifetimes, but governments are making a half arsed attempt at stopping them, which filters onto us as a lack of freedom, so yes, we do need to worry.

Not sure if you got the point of his essay in the first place.

Edit: terrible spelling.

Edited July 2, 2007 by nmt_oli

[poopipe]

I am:

• White

• A smoker

• Bisexual

• A trials rider

• Tattooed and pierced

Almost all of this list now offends, sickens, scares or angers 90% of the population of this country, this apparent land of the free.

Me included - I f**king hate trials riders

er. I won't pretend I agree with everything you've said in terms of specifics (being a born fascist I just can't) but I do agree with the general theme and I fully support your long and seemingly educated rant.

well done.

ps. I'm curious, did you risk typing all of it into the new-post box or did you play safe and save it off in notepad first?

[Mark W]

I don't really get how not allowing you to smoke in an enclosed public space immediately leads on to them stopping you doing anything else? It's just one thing, in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, who have all had the ban in place for varying periods of time, it's not like people now have names instead of numbers, all have to have shaved heads, aren't allowed out after 6pm, can't feel feelings, etc. It just seems to be a knee-jerk reaction of English smokers to think "What next?" and then somehow draw some weird logical line to it being all freedoms that are at threat, which they are in some respects, but not as a result of the government just deciding to do it. There was a lot of public support for the ban, people in countries and cities where there have been smoking bans for a lot longer than the 2 days that English people have had to put up with it all seem to think it's working out OK. Smoking has a direct and potentially lasting effect on people who are around you. You can't deny the links between smoking and various illnesses and diseases (e.g. cancer), and how the whole "second hand smoke" thing means other people are being exposed to it as well. It's not just something you do yourself that doesn't infringe upon other people, in that it blatantly does. That is the reason that it was banned, not some over-arching desire from the government to eradicate any kind of joy from our lives. I'm tired as f**k and only really skim-read your post, so I've no doubt missed loads of bits of it, but that was the main point I wanted to get across, having had smokers bleating out the usual "This first, what next?" and "You know who else banned smoking? Adolf Hitler" lines...

[Joe Sheehan!]

1) Hes' done a fair bit of research into those points for just a rant! id say there more than just 'half arsed'.

2) You may not have to worry about them directly in our lifetimes, but governments are making a half arsed attempt at stopping them, which filters onto us as a lack of freedom, so yes, we do need to worry.

Not sure if you got the point of his essay in the first place.

Edit: terrible spelling.

1. The only real bit in need of research is this:

With a 6 degree increase in global temperature, which we are fast heading towards, the planet will almost no longer be able to sustain human life. The O-zone layer will simply not protect humans anymore against UV light. People won’t have to worry about skin cancer because they won’t have any skin to get cancer of. This kind of change will prompt radical and terrifying changes in meteorological patterns, causing giant “super-storms” of which the likes of Hurricane Katrina were only a warm up, and that the film The Day After Tomorrow so accurately represented. The planet will then effectively begin to fight back; fissures in the earth bordering the tectonic plates that create the crust of the earths surface will begin to shift uncontrollably and massive fireballs the size of cities will be vented through these seems out of the wildly unstable core and mantle of the planet. Anyone still alive after this will be subject to a nuclear fallout approximately 1 billion times that of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as the Earth begins to vent any leftover radiation and effectively, as a planet, dies.

2. As you said yourself, youre young, you have no major responsabilities right now, and are determined to have a f*cking good time this summer. you've passed your first year, so have nothing to worry about till october the first. You have no job, and only have 3 free weekends between now and october.

You seem to be focused on having fun, and enjoying yourself, which is the way to be really. KarsonLevoret should feel this way too.

I really dont want to sound like a willy, but nothing in this whole rant will really affect anyone we know.

I say have fun and enjoy life as it is.

EDIT: Spelling

Edited July 2, 2007 by sheehan

[ilikeriding]

smoking is down to personal choice, please dont complain

they dont ban fat people from resturants

trials is a risk in itself

you'd be hippocritical in critisising people for doing it

I totally understand that it is a very trivial thing in the grand scheme of things and the ban comprimises peoples freedom.

Edited July 2, 2007 by afroman

[Rich Pearson]

I said his rant was fuelled by the fact that he cant smoke.

Anyway, i have read the whole thing, and understand about your episode and everything, but a lot of the points youre worried about are half arsed and dont really matter. In your lifetime, you will not be affected by ANY of these things, so stop worrying, theres no need mate.

I used the smoking ban as a medium to demonstrate the lack of social freedoms we as a country are supposed to have. It does appear that the cannon text snowballed from there onto other matters but I did try and make an attempt to bring it all around together.

My epidsode has close to nothing to do with the basis of this rant except that it made me realise how fragile life can be. Yes there are things that will not affect me in my life time, but in the above text I clearly outlined that as far as I can see, there are only three real alternatives for the human race: Keep going like we are, crushing peoples freedoms and removing the idea of the idividual in some mad dash for the perfect society which will ultimately be destroyed by our own industry and technological progression. Fight back and try and save the planet by reducing carbon emissions whilst still staying technologically proficient. Or just give up, take the whole system apart bit by bit as John Lennon said and everyone ignored 'cos 'it was like, such an awesome song dude' and then we might have some chance of surviving in a world where everyone and everything, is truly equal.

Books like K-Pax demonstate how a scoiety like this can not only work, but can excel themselves to a point far beyond our own advances.

Rich

Poopipe: My comupter randomly likes to restart itself about 3 times a day. MSWord and saving every five minutes...

Mark: You make a good point as many others have done also, and as I hope I pointed out somewhere in all that crap I just wrote, I still accept the fact that I may be completely and utterly wrong.

[poopipe]

I think Rich's point is that it's an infringement on our right to choose. Historically speaking (over the last couple of hundred years at least) the English have been able to do pretty much whatever the hell they want and as a result it's something we've come to take for granted.

Personally (as a smoker) I have no issue with places banning smoking on an individual basis (i prefer to work and eat in a non-smoking environment for a start), what I object to is the rule being forced upon places (not people) that don't want it.

anyway. I've had beer and my thoughts are turning to knockers so I don't care anymore

[Mark W]

Personally (as a smoker) I have no issue with places banning smoking on an individual basis (i prefer to work and eat in a non-smoking environment for a start), what I object to is the rule being forced upon places (not people) that don't want it.

If it was optional, business-wise you'd have to be a total f**ktard not to allow smoking? There's always been the option of making your place, or part of it, non-smoking, and people have done that, but they're just making a bigger step with it?

Oh, and to look at it from the other way, it may infringe on smoker's freedoms, but gives more freedoms to non-smokers?

[br3n]

“Now look f**khead, if you didn’t like smoking in the first place, no-ones making you come into the f**king pub with us now are they?”

Works both ways, You dont like the law, you dont have to go "into the f**cking pub" yourself.

Everyone kicked off like this when it was banned on airoplanes, trains etc but you learn to accept it, I work in a bar, have done for 3 years and dont smoke. All my friends do and i have in the past, it doesnt bother me.

End of the day your comment on the government, the amount of money they get from taxes on cigarettes it doesnt make sense theyre doing it for themselves. Also, As for being the frist - we are not, we are decades behind countries like singapore.

As for the "fat blokes" comments, they did indeed sound a bit, well i'll say it.. retarded. Hes probably just a simpleton trying to show off. Not sure of his purpose but then again hes probably not sure either.

[Caleb]

got sent this earlier:

So much for the cigarette ban, 2 Asians already caught smoking at Glasgow airport "

not that funny now i read it out

[poopipe]

If it was optional, business-wise you'd have to be a total f**ktard not to allow smoking? There's always been the option of making your place, or part of it, non-smoking, and people have done that, but they're just making a bigger step with it?

Oh, and to look at it from the other way, it may infringe on smoker's freedoms, but gives more freedoms to non-smokers?

non-smokers have always been free to sit in the non-smoking area - or f**k off outside where the smoke doesn't bother them (i jest)

The approach I would have taken (and will, when I'm king) is to give tax breaks to places that ban smoking - or the inverse (ie. penalties to places that allow smoking) . That's your business incentive (and some free money to fill up gordon brown's jag) right there.