Here is a long and quite good article at the Wall Street Journal about the recent ban on consumption of alcohol on London’s underground metro system. The ban is one of the first measures of the new London mayor, Boris Johnson. On Saturday, with the clock ticking away before the ban came into force from 1 June, large numbers of young people – they seemed to be mostly a bunch of young students – were openly drinking, some playing lots of music, and generally whooping it up on the Tube. Yours truly and Mrs P. forgot all about the ban and so we got a bit of a shock when, on the Circle line, our cabin was full of these raucous, and already extremely drunk, folk. They seemed pretty good natured although I was already betting that the end would end in arrests. It did. Walking by High Street Kensington Tube station later on, I could hear the PA system blare out the message that the station was being closed. In the end, 17 people were arrested for crimes including assault.
I guess this proves Boris’s point for him. Some liberal-minded folk might claim that his ban on drinking on the Tube is nanny statism, not what one would expect from the fun-loving newspaper columnist, former MP and bon viveur. Mind you, defending the right of people to drink and get slammed on the Tube late at night is not the sort of freedom I am particularly inclined to go over the top for. It is not an obvious assault on private property rights as was, say, the banning of smoking in pubs and restaurants. The Tube, after all, receives tax funds and is not a completely private entity. If it were, then the owners could of course decide the matter. They might even ban it anyway to protect the bulk of people who find it possible to travel from A to B without holding a can of beer.
Whether the ban can be properly enforced or not is another matter. I expect a raging trade in small, easy-to-conceal hipflasks.
come off it, jonathan, you’re just showing your predeliction towards boris and the tories here. in the ten years i’ve lived in london and travelled on public transport i have never once experienced grief from someone wielding a can of beer. until saturday night when this largely good-natured but admittedly irresponsible free-for-all took place, the last time i saw someone drinking on the tube was a polish workman at 7am drinking a lager on his way to work. pissed people who can’t hold their beer getting on the tube at night and behaving like wankers is another story, and they rarely in my experience get on wielding cans and bottles. you can’t ban people from being wankers; public drinking on the tube is simply not a problem in london and never has been.
personally i find the eating of mcdonald’s and kebabs on the tube way more anti-social, but banning stuff like this is neither necessary nor cool. it legislates against good manners.
Wow, that is quite a big statement. I have been on Tube trains in the past, sometimes coming home from an event late in the evening and have seen people drinking booze; I have been on trains with football fans drinking and the atmosphere is pretty rancid, not to mention the spilling of booze on seats, the smell, etc.
Of course, legislating good manners is daft, and unlikely to work much. But to claim that the Tube and its users have been models of decorum and sobriety late at night is not my experience. Maybe you got lucky.
You have a decent point, but tell me this, what the heck does being “cool” have to do with the rightness or wrongness of a regulation?
sure, i’ve had some truly terrifying encounters with football fans (on intercity trains though, not on the tube) and i guess i’ve been fortunate to be equipped with the necessary social skills to turn those experiences into positive ones. most people don’t, and therefore it is frightening – i accept that. but i also think that running the football crowd chicken run is just one of those things that makes london the great teeming melting pot that it is, and it’s the crunchy that allows you to enjoy the smooth. i’m just really surprised to see you post rationalising a defence of a further erosion of our civil liberties, of our freedom to choose. i like most people choose not to drink on the tube (although i’m sure i have done in the past, albeit in a well-behaved manner). but i really think there are greater threats to me and my liberty than people who do drink on the tube. last night, for instance, in the broad daylight of 8pm, two thugs on BMX bikes set about a bicycle chained to the railings outside my flat with a huge pair of bolt cutters. it wasn’t my bike, but i really can’t suffer these twats making my street a dangerous place to live, so i stood up and opened the window and made my presence known. they scarpered. hours later, while i was asleep, they returned and threw racist insults and rocks at my window. i have no idea whether i’ll even HAVE windows when i return home from work this evening. i want to be protected from people like this, not from someone holding a can. banning the can is easy. tackling genuinely anti social behaviour isn’t.
All human conduct involving interactions with others results in the evolution (or establishment) of forms of order, rules if you will, Law if you must. Since we can observe this in the pack habits of wolves and other creatures as predatory as ourselves, it is pretty much irrefutable (though always under attack).
The provision of individual benefits through “public” facilities, roadways, transit, communications, etc. do not convey “rights” beyond the use in accord with the rules (however derived).
One can not choose which side of the roadway on which to drive, nor an unlimited state of dissipation in which to do so. That is a “public” facility.
“Dogs shall not befoul the transit cars (or the Queen’s footpath)” Is not a restriction on liberty, it is a condition of attaining the individual benefit of use of a “public” facility.
It is not a constraint on libertarian principles to recognize and accept that “public” conduct may of necessity at times differ from preferences in private conduct. In “public” the seeming “tyranny” of the majority must often prevail to preserve order. Order is essential to the preservation of the vital individual freedoms.
I think giddle is right. *Drinking* is never a problem on the tube. Drunkenness sometimes is, but that’s not what has been banned. You’ll still get drunk, rowdy football fans, they’ll just be slightly less likely to have cans in their hands.
I struggle to see what Boris stands to gain with this stunt. It’s not something I was aware people were crying out for.
JP,
You’re wrong. I have had a drink on the Tube. Me and me mates caused no hassle to anyone. I have also travlled home on New years Eve with a carriage full of drunken “revellers” all dressed as members of the Catholic Church. (The blokes in cardinals dress, the birds as nuns). It was fun.
It is also totally counter-productive. The sort of decent folk who might be heading “up west” (I lived in Stepney) and take a couple of Stellas with them because London prices are a bit steep don’t cause trouble and these are the people being penalised. Drunken yobs and morons are going to take no notice. Why? Because they’re drunken yobs and morons.
It is also criminalizing a legal activity. Drinking, like smoking, is increasingly becoming an (if you’ll pardon the word in the context) underground activity. That’s just not right. If the powers that be want to encourage binge-drinking then they are on exactly (apologies again) the right track.
What Rob said. My experience is that drunk people on the tube are pretty much invariably drunk already when they get on. This new law isn’t goint to change that.
Or perhaps something resembling stillsuits – with the catchpockets and the drinking straw, but without the waste recycling system.
Doesn’t it make much more sense to simply persecute anti-social behavior in public places, whether it is the tube or not, or whether drinking is involved or not? Not everyone who drinks will necessarily become a nuisance, and not everyone who is a nuisance is necessarily drunk. I just don’t get all this specific laws and regulations. Hate crimes also belong to this variety.
Of course, but allow people to drink on the Tube, then that just adds to the problem. Like I said, I am not sure how enforceable this is – but it adds to the general sense that public transport is not a pub on wheels.
I am sure you are right. Trouble is, I have seen people on the tube, drinking, pissed, lolling about all over other people, making a right bloody pest of themselves.
Drinking is also not legal everywhere: a driver behind the wheel of a car, for example, is not allowed to be over the limit. Similarly, if you are a passenger on a Tube train, and the owners of that tube train ask people not to drink alcohol, or have smelly foods, or spit on the floor, or whatever, I see no reason why that request cannot be made a regulation. Whether that is going to work or not is another matter, of course, since in the end we have to rely in 99 per cent of the time on the good manners of the public.
This is emphatically not a civil liberties issue. If I choose to travel on a transport network, I abide by the rules of the owners of said.
The legal restriction of drinking alcoholic beverage on the London Underground or anywhere else is a positive step towards the implementation of Sharia’h law in the corrupt society that has for too long now prevailed in London. Islam will help to further promote peace and sensibility amongst the good folk of London. Boris would know that Allah is great and all-seeing.
JP is mistaken on civil liberties. Once again, the people who were drinking on the tube and did not make a nuisance of themselves because they did not get drunk, or are funny when imbibed (unlike you, I have had some very funny experiences when going home late, or no particular experience at all), are being made to suffer for the ones who won’t care anyway.
Thats because the latter was not dealt with when being a nuisance, and I cannot see why they would expect to be dealt with now (And if they are dealt with, I want to know why they could not be dealt with before).
It is disapointing from Johnson because that is exactly the kind of policy I was not expecting from him at all.
Actually, JP’s argument is not much different from those who agree with the smoking ban because they do not like cigarette’s smoke.
It seems to me your love of civil liberties stops where you don’t like something…
It is different, because smoking ban applies to private businesses, the tube is not such a business.
Although the ban certainly smells and feels like the state telling us not to do something that is essentially private and harmless, I don’t infact think that’s the case. LU is a transport network that happens to be owned by by the public rather than a group of shareholders, and it’s run (ultimately) by Boris rather than by some guy in a suit we’ve never heard of. LU has enforced behaviour, just as some places force their customers to wear shoes or a shirt – or not to wear ‘site’ clothing, or whatever.
The London Underground (and bus) network is pretty well defined to me. It’s clear when you are getting in or off it. If you are enjoying swigging your wine from the bottle and need to travel, cabs will be an option, along with bicycle rickshaws, foot, stretch-limos and dodgy unlicensed minicabs. Take your pick!
This is really no different from rail companies banning feet on seats on the playing of loud music.
Now, personally, I don’t find anything more offensive about someone drinking beer on a bus than drinking coke on a bus. But then, I don’t find someone eating lunch in brogues more or less offensive than eating lunch in their socks. I think many LU customers are (perhaps wrongly) intimidated or disapproving of those who drink on trains and buses. I have no problem with LU catering to the desires of the majority of its customers at the expense of the minority.
Yep, I’m with Giddle on this too.
Drinking isn’t the problem; foul behaviour is the problem and if we’re going to be a civilised country (‘if’ being the word here) then we have to prosecute bad behaviour and leave well alone non-bad behaviour. You have to be crystal clear about what you’re really against and then target just that.
Drinking in public looks vulgar in my opinion. But you can’t arrest people for looking vulgar.
Gary
I don’t know how big a problem drinking on the Tube is, from over here in the States. However, from my general reading in British journals and sites as diverse as the Telegraph and the Guardian, public, falling-down, vomit-in -your-shirt-pocket drunkeness is a common feature of modern UK life. It is not so in the US.
Might this be the first shot by Boris in a “Broken Windows” strategy, as that pioneered by Rudy Giuliani of New York City? That idea was to focus on smaller, more annoying crimes that subtlely degrade the general tenor of urban life, and make larger crimes more acceptable. In New York they cracked down on solicitation by prostitutes, evading subway turnstyles, and obnoxious begging. The result was a general feeling by decent citizens that they were regaining control over their communities, one corner at a time. Perhaps London needs to do the same, one drunk at a time.
Might this be the first shot by Boris in a “Broken Windows” strategy,
Yes. That’s exactly what it is. I believe one of the proponents of that strategy is an official advisor.
With Nick M on this one.
What may have contributed a nasty edge to what seems otherwise like a reasonable form of protest against an unreasonable and wholly arbitrary restriction (and drinking in public places is being steadily banned above ground in parts of London, too) is the promulgation of unreasoning Boris-hatred among a certain cast of young metropolitan – who deems him a “racist bastard who has cancelled the Rise festival”, on the basis of rumour that there will no longer be a mayoral (taxpayers’) subsidy for the “free” event in Finsbury Park.
Yes, it is all about turning us into dhimmis. Twat.
JP,
I wasn’t claiming it was a civil liberties issue. I also full well understand the difference between the bloke down the pub having had a few sherbets and pilot of a 767 having imbibed them.
I just think it’s a daft, pointless law which will do no earthly good. My objection is essentially consequentialist rather than in principle.
OK, I lived in London and used the Tube a lot and never had a problem with people drinking. Now smoking is banned on public transport so I can’t light-up a Marlboro but if I get on the 192 bus (Stockport-Manchester) there is very frequently some lads at the back of the top deck smoking weed and they are never challenged.
Do you see my point? These sort of laws are never properly enforced. In exactly the same way having a fag on the bus will get otherwise law-abiding citizens into schtuck having a beer on the tube will get otherwise law-abiding citizens into trouble. The people who really cause trouble are the people who never get challenged. They aren’t challenged because they might get violent and they may well be tooled up.
Basically. It’s a law that will impact most on the least likely to cause a problem. My kitchen is full of lethal implements. Am I next because of that to?
BTW. Despite being a smoker I think it’s fair enough to ban it on buses.
This is essentially a law that will criminalise a further segment of society, at great cost to the taxpayer, with limited to no discernible benefit. The people who are drunk and abusive on tube don’t generally become like that because of the can of Carling they drink on board; they’re pissed beforehand, will get off to get pissed somewhere else, then get back on and continue to be pissed on their way home.
Back when llamas was just a cria, the ‘rag week’ of the institution of higher education that he attended included a cocktail party on the Circle Line, which took up an entire carriage. This multi-year institution was quietly tolerated by the Tube staff, noone ever got too-far-out-of-hand, and sums of cash were raised for worthy causes.
It would appear that times have changed.
llater,
llamas
Is it a violation of something to use (ride on without drinking thereon) the LU whilst under the influence of something?
Is public drunkedness a misdemeanor (bad conduct)? Why?
What’s the burble?
If this is about ‘broken windows’, it’s wrong. ‘Broken windows’ is not about passing more laws to enforce on the compliant citizens. It is about enforcing existing laws on the hardest cases, on the most offensive and egregious trouble makers first.
Rather than ‘broken windows’ this sounds more like ‘a fence post‘.
In his own way, the vicar was a ‘hard case’. So they didn’t enforce the law on him. These kind of laws are enforced on unpopular, non threatening people.
Mid,
I have blogged before on that very subject. It is related to PCSOs (Blunkett’s bargain basement coppers). They will haul you or me before the beak for accidentally littering but if you or me were being mugged or murdered would walk serenely past. Why because murderers and muggers tend to be armed and dangerous and you and me tend to accept. We tend to accept it because we’re not desperados and a fixed penalty notice is not worth getting tasered over.
Every single time I have seen a drunk on the Tube it has been on the Northern Line late of an evening. It’s unpleasant to have some guy burping and staring at you, but nothing moving carriages at the next stop can’t solve. To be honest I was more put off by the time I shared a carriage with a transvestite, but I don’t suppose they’ll ban that. Presumably sometimes the drunks may be less interested in quitely puking on the next seat and hoping no-one notices and more in stabbing someone to death, but not in my experience.
However, much more importantly, they don’t even have any staff on at this time in the stations so they leave the barriers open; the idea, then, that there will be someone patrolling the line to enforce this rule at the only time it’s really necessary is bizarre.
I would never drink on the tube, though not for any rational reasons. It’s illegal to drink in public where I live, but that’s never much bothered me; it just seems a little freakish to take a beer onto the Underground. I can imagine wanting a G & T if they had a little trolley like they do on trains.
Anyway, it’s a mildy silly law, that can hardly be said to violate anyone’s rights in any meaningful sense, but is indicative of the “fiddle here, fiddle there” approach to government that is wrecking this country.
I’m with Petronius on this one, and feel free to ignore me as I’m not a Londoner or, for that matter, British.
It is astonishing how much public drunkenness enters into British commentary. It simply is not so in the US. Here, if you are drunk, in public, and not headed immediately home while trying your damnedest not to act wasted, you will be ticketed if not arrested (except in New Orleans, which is the only US locale I know of to routinely permit possession of alcohol in open containers in public, and then only in very limited areas of the city). Is the standard so different across the pond?
Is the standard so different across the pond?
In short: yes.
Attitudes towards drinking are different between the UK and US. Pubs are most certainly not bars and while there are more bars in the US that are becoming like pubs, there is a difference to the perception and use.
On the other hand, it was nice to be back in London a few weeks ago and able to go outside a pub and stand on the street drinking and have policemen walk passed and ignore you. That doesn’t happen in Seattle.
I go to Science Fiction conventions. The UK cons tend to pretty much revolve around the bar where people will sit for the course of the weekend disturbed only by the need to eat, occasionally sleep and perhaps attend a panel or talk. The US versions are more content focused and will have a suite with lots of soft drinks and occasionally limited alcohol. The idea of spending hours in a bar was clearly an anathema to people I spoke to because, in their words, “doesn’t everybody just get drunk?”
That might be part of the issue. I’m used to slow session drinking if I go out. That’s what we did at University, it’s what I prefer now. I have been known to drink too much, but if I do it’s usually because somebody has introduced cocktails or shots into the mix and I’ll pay the price the next day (and, these days, the day after that too). I think there’s certainly a lot more mixed drinking taking place than there used to be. I don’t recall cocktails or shots being all that popular as a student in the 80s, although that might be due to price.
London is a relatively cheap city to go out drinking in compared to a lot of places. Even at $2=1GBP drinking Wine, Beer and Champagne is pretty cheap compared to an upmarket bar in “cheap” Seattle – and certainly much cheaper than San Francisco or New York. I was paying less than $7 for a 20floz pint of beer in a bar just of Covent Garden a couple of weeks ago. When we beat the French in the Semi Finals of the World Cup a bottle of Champagne in a nightclub off Leicester Square cost me $60 – much less than any of the bars around where I live.
All that said. The ban is dumb. Drinking on tubes was never a problem. Drunks were. Still will be.
Well, this is part of the New Prohibitionist subset of the progressive hegemony blah blah thing; as I’ve no doubt ranted many times smoking was just the trailblazer for the new style of prohibition; you don’t ban the thing, you just make it increasingly difficult to do anywhere and make its practioners pariahs.
The wellspring of much of this bollocks is the USA and that’s exhibited by the OH NOES open containaz! shock horror from americans, who are used to a more puritanical regime. The US’s famously awful attempt at alcohol prohibition barely needs mentioning; neither that they’re the primary drivers of that ridiculous “War On Drugs”. The Americans in turn are the way they are because they got lots of the religious loonies from Europe in the early days, who wanted to go to a brave new world and make sure they’d be left alone to not enjoy themselves.
Anyhoo, drinking is the new smoking, as is eating tasty food and no doubt before long maypoles, music and dancing in public. The WHO, odious bastards each and every one, have declared war on alcohol with new “international guidelines”. The press is full of beer scares. It’s time something was done. Etc.
We’re at the stage that we were with tobacco maybe 20 years ago; gradual encroaching restrictions and “advisory” poster campaigns. If the areseholes get their way, a decade or two from now you’ll only be able to buy a generic unbranded “beer” from a pharmacist along with your nicotine inhaler, and drink it in a field no less than one mile from any other human being.
I fucking hate these people, I really do. But there’s probably nothing we can do to stop them. Freedom is not for the likes of us. We just abuse it, you know.
When I worked in Stockholm for the summer, thirty years ago, the restaurants were split into those that served beer, those that served beer and wine, and those that served beer, wine and spirits. Bars and Pubs were non-existent and bottled spirits could only be bought in state licenced shops with no displays and an atmosphere like the all-night pharmacies in London where the junkies bought their prescription heroin at the time.
I’ve never seen so many drunks in a city. There were drunks on the train station when I left for work in the morning and drunks when I got back to the city at night.
I used to joke with my Swedish friends that the ‘suicide capital of the world’ meme that was about at the time was actually caused by the bureaucrats mis-filing the deaths caused by drunks falling off bridges, (Stockholm is a city of islands with lots of bridges; bridges over bridges).
Whether the attempt to socially engineer the Brits will be any more successful than the Scandi version, I have my doubts.
(I shall now return to counting my units. Two = good, three = bad.)
JP’s prediction of an increase in small easy-to-conceal hipflasks doesn’t make much sense if beer is used.
A few sips from flask little flask of beer will do absolutely nothing for the average beer drinker, accustomed to pints.
It would seem that a move to hip flasks would be accompanied by a move to whiskey or equal.
Is this an unintended consequence or part of Boris’ evil plan?
Peter Melia
JP’s prediction of an increase in small easy-to-conceal hipflasks doesn’t make much sense if beer is used.
A few sips from flask little flask of beer will do absolutely nothing for the average beer drinker, accustomed to pints.
It would seem that a move to hip flasks would be accompanied by a move away from beer to hard spirits.
Is this an unintended consequence or part of Boris’ evil plan?
Peter Melia
JP’s prediction of an increase in small easy-to-conceal hipflasks doesn’t make much sense if beer is used.
A few sips from flask little flask of beer will do absolutely nothing for the average beer drinker, accustomed to drinking pints.
It would seem that a move to hip flasks would be accompanied by a move away from beer to hard spirits.
Is this an unintended consequence or part of the Mayor of London’s “evil plan”?
Peter Melia
JP’s prediction of an increase in small easy-to-conceal hipflasks doesn’t make much sense if beer is used.
A few sips from flask little flask of beer will do absolutely nothing for the average beer drinker, accustomed to drinking pints.
It would seem that a move to hip flasks would be accompanied by a move away from beer to hard spirits.
Is this an unintended consequence or part of the Mayor of London’s “evil plan”?
Peter Melia
Anyway, Johnathan, I hope you won’t be annoyed if I remind you of a basic principle of liberty; if you turn a blind eye to restrictions on the liberty of others, you can’t complain when yours gets taken away. You don’t like people drinking on the tube, so you’re not bothered, and you’re in your article tacitly supporting the ban. Well, perhaps somebody else won’t like something you do, and won’t at all mind you being stopped from doing it. It’s a cliche now, but–
“first they came for the…”
Peter Melia,
I was tangentially involved with an event in which a promoter made a statement that there would be no beer for the first time in the event’s history. A substantial number of the attendees brought small, flask type bottles of hard liquor. Nobody attempted to bring in beer. They brought in and drank straight, hard liquor. Mostly high proof rum.
Whatever the organizer feared when the threat to ban beer was made was exceeded in spades by what replaced it. The irony? At the last minute beer was authorized anyway. Too late to change the outcome. It was a mess. I spent the next year in meetings trying to minimize administrative penalties against our organization.
I predict a substantial increase in the carrying and consumption of hard liquor by the usual suspects on the tube. How long then before the authorities begin ‘randomly’ (got to meet those quotas) searching people for concealed flasks? Except as Gabriel points out, the random searches will happen on day shift and . . .
I had no idea you were allowed to drink on the Tube. I might have moved to London had I known. I guess it’s too late now.
I predict a substantial increase in the carrying and consumption of hard liquor by the usual suspects on the tube
The trouble is, as a few have mentioned, very few people actually drink on the tube. Outside of football internationals I really am struggling to work out the last time I saw a person drinking.
Most people aren’t on the tube all that long anyway. The real problem at night is people carrying their liquor the conventional way in their bloodstreams.
Adding drunks to a closed environment which moves with a gentle swaying motion isn’t always pretty.
Public nuisance is an offense, always has been. We could start with enforcing the laws we have before bringing in daft new ones.
I’ll admit to a degree of hypocracy over this because I did and still do support the ban on smoking. Although, frankly, that seems to have been botched in terms of implementation the world over. The closed Seattle’s Cigar Bars FFS. Come on, I don’t smoke and sharing restaurant’s with smoker’s isn’t all that fun, especially inconsiderate ones, but for crying out loud. A Cigar Bar? Especially a nice one attached to a good steakhouse? What were they thinking…
Daveon, you support the smoking ban because you don’t like smokers in restaurants, and then claim it’s been botched.
First point; your view on smokers shouldn’t be imposed by the State. If you go to a restaurant, you’re going into a private business which should be allowed to choose what environment it wishes. For example, maybe I don’t like pubs with jukeboxes in, annoying noisy things. But I wouldn’t support the state banning them. It’s my choice to either put up with it, go to another pub, or do something else or stay home. That’s it.
The usual counter argument to this is “there aren’t any non smoking pubs so we have to enforce it by law”. But this of course just shows that there was no great demand for non-smoking premises. A minority have imposed their will on a majority.
As to “botched” it’s nothing of the kind; and if you think the smoking bans have been brought in with the intention of being fair you’re hopelessly naive. “What they were (and are) thinking” is simply to persecute smokers, to ban them from the public square. There is no desire or intention to be reasonable, and no desire to balance rights. It’s a crusade, a jihad. That’s what they’re thinking. They’re prohibitionists.
In other words, what you did and still do support is the wielding of state power by fanatical loonies. I hope you don’t enjoy drinking or tasty food, because the same loonies are after them as well, using the successful tobacco crusade as a template.
Daveon, you support the smoking ban because you don’t like smokers in restaurants, and then claim it’s been botched.
I have mixed feelings about this.
I don’t mind the smokers,. They’re people, much like any other. What I dislike is reeking of cigarettes after spending any amount of time in a bar. Having to wash every piece of clothing I was wearing and showering to get rid of the stench. For some reason, it doesn’t seem all that odoriferous while I’m actually in the bar, but once I leave and my nose starts to function again? Ugh.
I’d go out of my way to patronize a non-smoking bar, and I suspect a fair number of other people would, too. The problem is that there aren’t any. Not a one, prior to the ban, at least.
With that said, I oppose the restaurant smoking ban. For the government to tell property owners what informed adults may or may not do on their premises rubs me the wrong way- if they decide to regulate this, what’s next? But now I can go out and have a drink or three with friends and not reek afterwards, which is very nice.
Like I said, mixed feelings. :-/
a.sommer, there’s the thing. The businesses (bars) don’t run the way you want them to, so if you support the smoking ban you support the government forcing them to, thus forcing the businesses to service your needs rather than the needs of others they’ve chosen to service. The world has been forced to be the way you prefer it.
The actual real world experience of non-smoking businesses is that they don’t do very well. There seem to be a lot of people who claim they’d prefer them, but when provided at the same time as smoking establishments the people don’t actually go to them. And I think the thing is, that the majority of people don’t care that much; it’s not actually a major part of their decision. They choose on other facilities primarily and also on the inclusiveness of the smoking pubs, since anyone can go to them. There was simply no way the market was going to choose smoker-exclusive venues, so the health taliban imposed it, with the result of great harm to the business and many businesses closing, and a loss of pleasure for millions of ordinary people.
There’s also the simple fact that the regular drinkers pubs rely on are much more likely to be smokers than a population average. Health nuts who have a white wine spritzer or a mineral water and moan about the whiffy “stench” aren’t of interest to landlords because they don’t spend much money. Overwhemingly, the people cheering the smoking ban have been people who don’t, or don’t very much, go to the pub. Which tends to be a regular thing in “moral legislation”. People love to support regulations that don’t affect them very much; it makes them feel terribly moral while not having to suffer the prohibition.
you’re going into a private business which should be allowed to choose what environment it wishes.
It is often said that the rights of others to swing their fists ends at the end of my nose. Smoking doesn’t end at the end of my nose, with the best will and ventilation system it will always get up my nose and into my hair and clothes.
Secondly you’re conflating bars and restaurants. Bars which banned smoking didn’t do as well compared to restaurants, restaurants on the other hand. Well, most restaurants have had a voluntary ban in for a long long time, at least around London – and I generally didn’t go to restaurants for a while now that didn’t because I did have a thing for tasting my food. So, to a certain extent the market was working there.
However, the implementation was botched around what to do around pubs.
I find going back to the UK and into smoke free pubs both good and bad. I can’t stand the smell of smoke but pubs without the smell do seem a little odd. The system in Barcelona actually seems to work reasonably well, which, given it’s Spain actually surprises me a tad.
What if someone sets up a pub where people enjoy being punched in the nose? Think S&M club, for example. The point is, you and I, as non-smokers, don’t have a god-given right to enjoy spending time in a pub.
What is the system in Barcelona?
So if you don’t like it, don’t go to smoking establishments. You aren’t obligated to go in the Dog And Duck, and neither are you entitled to go there. It’s a private business. It’s saying “Dear potential customer, if you would like to drink beer among smokers, a jukebox and with a big TV in the corner, please come in. I not, don’t come in.” I’m sorry to get shirty, but how difficult is that to understand?
You do not have the right to march onto somebody else’s property then, once there, complain about the smell or any of the other conditions. They’re implicit in your choice to enter. If you don’t like a particular establishment’s ambience, then make a choice as to whether to go in. If your friends like it, and maybe what to have a fag too, then make a choice as to whether to join them or not. Nobody is forcing you to go in. It’s the same as if a pub sells curry and you don’t like the smell of spicy food. It’s your choice whether to suffer it or not go in. But no, the statist’s answer is to start an anti-curry campaign and get curry in pubs banned, so the whole world is how they want it to be. Sigh.
If there aren’t any pubs offering a smoking (or curry) free environment then it’s tough titties. That’s how the free market works. If there’s actually any demand (which the evidence suggests is actually minimal) then somebody will open a smoke-free pub, and you can sit in there sniffing nothing but the odours from the loo. That’s as much, in a free society, as you can hope for.
You don’t want a free society, fine. But some of us still do. We’d prefer to be ruled by ourselves than a mithering gaggle of miserable neurotic asshats.
Daveon,
If you want a non-smoking restaurant or bar, feel free to open your own. If someone wants to have a bar and allow smoking, it’s not your bar to tell them they can’t.
That is, unless you see your home as actually being mine to clean guns at the kitchen table and leave the place smelling of Sweet’s 7.62, put my feet up on the table, let my dog sit (and shed!) on your sofa, etc.
I don’t like smoking areas. I quit about five years ago, and ever since then the smell drove me batshit crazy. Either I REALLY REALLY WANT one, or I get the mother of all headaches and become even less pleasant to be around than normal.
(sounds like a personal problem)
Why yes, yes it is. It’s not the bar owner’s task to change his bar to suit me. If he thinks it’s a good business decision to do so he can, but if not, then too bad so sad. I’ll drink at home instead. It’s his place, not mine.
1/4 of the UK adult population smokes.
In the village I live in there are four pubs.
The math isn’t too hard.
I am surprised that one of the first things that the Mayor of London tries to enforce is a ban on drinking in the tube. I disagree with this and add that it is not a priority for Londoners. Besides this, it merely illustrates the belief among state officials that banning things and restricting action is what they are elected for.