As of 2007, no smoking in UK clubs...

[jim beats]

you people fail to see my point or just arent reading what i say. i'm tired of repeating myself over and over.

i give up on you people.

be complacent and let the government take your rights away.

I don't fail to see your point at all, I just don't think you have an argument to back it up... I tried to point out where I think the flaws are in your argument, but now you refuse to fill in the gaps.

I personally am not being complacent - I welcome this law with open arms because (in my opinion) it increases my freedom and rights rather than reduces them.

[jim beats]

i haven't read this thread from the start but what i will say is that
ultimately the market should decide. and not the goverment who have presented a very confused case for the ban. there has been no clarity in the argument.

Are you telling us the market should decide on matters of public health? Sounds a bit crazy to me...

[thc]

I don't fail to see your point at all, I just don't think you have an argument to back it up... I tried to point out where I think the flaws are in your argument, but now you refuse to fill in the gaps.

you and no one else has said anything reguarding my solution of letting the club owners decide. i think it's better for them to decide rather than the government. this way we have smoking and non-smoking clubs. you and everyone else has failed to address this.

[peripheral]

I don't fail to see your point at all, I just don't think you have an argument to back it up... I tried to point out where I think the flaws are in your argument, but now you refuse to fill in the gaps.

you and no one else has said anything reguarding my solution of letting the club owners decide. i think it's better for them to decide rather than the government. this way we have smoking and non-smoking clubs. you and everyone else has failed to address this.

no we haven't. we're saying it's right and proper to make a law that doesn't allow club owners to decide. jbeats is right in that 'i think it's better...' is not an argument...

[showguns]

I don't fail to see your point at all, I just don't think you have an argument to back it up... I tried to point out where I think the flaws are in your argument, but now you refuse to fill in the gaps.

you and no one else has said anything reguarding my solution of letting the club owners decide. i think it's better for them to decide rather than the government. this way we have smoking and non-smoking clubs. you and everyone else has failed to address this.

you're getting defensive. i adressed this on page 4.

ez

[thc]

what you said didnt really dispute anything. i dont see where "a line needs to be drawn".

and i wouldnt say defensive. just very annoyed and disappointed.

[peripheral]

thc wrote:
you people fail to see my point or just arent reading what i say. i'm tired of repeating myself over and over.

i give up on you people.

be complacent and let the government take your rights away.

and i wouldnt say defensive. just very annoyed and disappointed.

quite defensive, I'd say. crux of the issue is i understand your point very well, i just don't agree with you. key ingredients for a good discussion init...

[ufo over easy]

This topics been rinsed, I regret starting it...

[peripheral]

This topics been rinsed, I regret starting it...

trus

[showguns]

thc wrote:
you people fail to see my point or just arent reading what i say. i'm tired of repeating myself over and over.

i give up on you people.

be complacent and let the government take your rights away.

and i wouldnt say defensive. just very annoyed and disappointed.

quite defensive, I'd say. crux of the issue is i understand your point very well, i just don't agree with you. key ingredients for a good discussion init...

exactly.

[jim beats]

I don't fail to see your point at all, I just don't think you have an argument to back it up... I tried to point out where I think the flaws are in your argument, but now you refuse to fill in the gaps.

you and no one else has said anything reguarding my solution of letting the club owners decide. i think it's better for them to decide rather than the government. this way we have smoking and non-smoking clubs. you and everyone else has failed to address this.

from the old forum :

the way i see it, club owners should be able to decide, not the government. if a club owner thinks the majority of the people that come there will want to smoke, then they should allow smoking. if a club owner thinks the majority of the people that will come there dont want to smoke, then they should ban smoking.
this is NOT for the government to decide.

You're describing the current situation. Any club owner can ban smoking in their club right now. So do you know of anywhere I can clubbing without breathing other peoples smoke? I don't... Personally, I think I should have the right to go to a club and not inhale smoke. It makes me cough up blood in the morning, which sucks. I only know of one fully non-smoking pub, and the landlord decided to do it after one of his (non smoking) barmaids died of lung cancer from passive inhalation...

[thc]

well like i've suggested more than once, maybe you anti-smoking people should get together and protest outside these clubs to get the club owners to change their mind. your numbers seem to be greater than the smokers so it should be effective. but it seems you'd rather have the government enforce your will upon everyone.

[jim beats]

well like i've suggested more than once, maybe you anti-smoking people should get together and protest outside these clubs to get the club owners to change their mind. your numbers seem to be greater than the smokers so it should be effective. but it seems you'd rather have the government enforce your will upon everyone.

I answered that point on the other forum too. The anti-smoking lobby has been campaigning for years, and the number of pubs that have responded is aboslutely tiny. When I lived in Bristol, I can think of just one pub near me that had a genuinely smoke-free area... So now the government has responded where the pub owners failed. I agree your idea of self-regulation would be great if it I thought it was actually going to result in a reasonable number of smoke-free pubs, but time has shown it blatantly isn't gonna happen. If you're the government and you're presented with this situation, what do you do?

PS - and on top of that, self-regulation would cause some pubs to be exposing their staff to a greater health risk than others. It'd be like saying every building site could decide how safe it wanted to make the scaffolding...

[thc]

well there are some smoke-free clubs, why dont you go to those? maybe the ones you should be upset with are the DJs that choose to play at clubs that allow smoking.

and those employees dont have to work there just like customers dont have to go there.

[doomstep]

This topics been rinsed, I regret starting it...

nah bruv, it was a good topic ... it is a discussion forum after all.

Jim, I think its cute you beleive the govt.s agenda so readily, but find boomnoises comment and try to comprehend it ...

It is up to the market to decide which and how many venues are non-smoking, that is real democracy ... the will of the people express'd through their wallets. Standard. If there really was a clear majority of people wanting non-smoking venues they'd be there. The problem with lobby groups, unions, party politics is the great number of these people are on a moral crusade, at best, in which The Right thing to do is forced upon people who don't know any better ... bless us.

I'll just add that I see a very differant side to these laws, now active in Australia for close to a year, as I work in the manufacturing industry. Up untill last year the blokes at work were able to smoke inside the work shop, we've got countless furnaces running 8 hours a day, heating steel to well over a 1000 degrees C before being dumped into cooling oil, so cig. smoke was un-noticable and really the health hazards of inhaling heated airbourne iron particles far outwieghs any passive smoking concerns ... as well, as I noted in a previous post, the compromise reached to enforce these new regs. are laughable.

when the govt decide I can't move around freely, work where I like, write what I like etc etc, then I'll be concerned about civil liberties.

Do I really need to comment on that ? by that time its to late pal, your only choice is to pick up a weapon and start fighting ... & do you really think it happens overnight ? the slide towards totalterianism is gradual at first, thats why they call it the the thin end of the wedge ya get me ?

it's a trueness that in a few years no-one will give a monkeys bout smoking in public laws anyway.

yes, by then things will be much worse, like right now in Aust. our right-wing catholic health minister has had to have his right to tell women what to do with their bodies taken away from him as he is a stoopid prick

but any1 who thinks this particular law - which was a free vote in parliament without a whip and so not specifically tailored by the govt to encroach on liberties - is a real threat to their rights/signal of the advent of state control has been watching too much xfiles.

nah x-files is nothing bruv ( but you know cancerman was a badman cos he wos allowed to bun in Federal buildings innit) ... you could have at least accused me of reading too much Orwell

anyway ... thats me done on this issue, as much as I like a good blue some points of view are - in the end - unreconcilable, good to know which side of the barricades some of you will be on still

[rjv]

i think we've got much worse problems in the world than not being allowed to smoke in clubs, but yet people are only complaining about that.

fascism? gimme a break.

in the finnish parliament they voted yes for the non-smoking law as well and we had the same discussion. health fascism and all that.
"well if you don't want to be in a place where people smoke then don't go anywhere".
so that means that people who have serious problems with their lungs (tobacco smoke launching a terrible allergic reaction for example) should not go see their favourite band because some selfish fuckers want to feed their addiction?

have to admit it was a bit stupid for the parliament to vote yes for the law right now, because they just changed the non-smoking laws 2-3 years ago forcing the club/pub owners to build a smoker-room or set up proper air conditioning. and now when everyone's spent lots of money for the changes on their club and basicly for nothing, because soon the supadupa air conditioning and smoking only -rooms are unnecessary.

besides, is dubstep so shit you need to get stoned to listen to it?



(sorry, too lazy to read all the five pages, so i apologize for saying something that might've been already said.)

[jim beats]

Jim, I think its cute you beleive the govt.s agenda so readily, but find boomnoises comment and try to comprehend it ...

Please don't try to patronise me, it ain't gonna work foo. I'm not 'buying the governments agenda'; I'm just saying I support this particular law...

But on this subject, I think the governments agenda is to win votes, and I reckon this is a simple piece of populist policy. Anti-smoking campaigners have been lobbying for this for years, but it's going to cost the government nuff tax dollar (check the stats someone posted in the other thread) so they're not gonna give parliament the opportunity to vote on it unless they think it's a bona fide vote winner. I don't see any reason to go beyond this theory, because it all seems to add up to me. I have no reason to assume there's any conspiracy behind it, simply because this theory fits all the data - Occam's razor innit.

It is up to the market to decide which and how many venues are non-smoking, that is real democracy ... the will of the people express'd through their wallets. Standard. If there really was a clear majority of people wanting non-smoking venues they'd be there. The problem with lobby groups, unions, party politics is the great number of these people are on a moral crusade, at best, in which The Right thing to do is forced upon people who don't know any better ... bless us.

Too much to respond to here, but.... Why have a government at all when the free market will provide everything? Will the market really look after minority interests, or will it completely ignore them? (Btw, on the subject of whether people really want this law or not, I live in Geneva, Switzerland, and we're due to have a referendum on this subject this year - current opinion polls suggest it will be a landslide against smoking in pubs and bars )

Oh yeah, and the lobbyists we're talking about here may be on a moral crusade, but they're not "telling you what to do", they're "telling you what not to do to other people". Isn't that actually a reasonable thing to do (I mean laws against murder and rape are equally telling you what not to do to other people).

Why, in fact, do so many people interpret this argument in such an incredibly selfish way? I find it really depressing. Why assume the smoker has a right to pollute the atmosphere, rather than assume everyone has a right to clean air and good health? I don't see it as particularly clear cut either way, yet so many people think that everyone should have the right to do whatever the fuck they like, regardless of the effect it has on other people...

Anyway, I'm out of this thread. Hopefully in a few years you'll all realise this is actually a good thing. Maybe even start thinking about the consequences their actions have on other people.....

[peripheral]

This topics been rinsed, I regret starting it...

nah bruv, it was a good topic ... it is a discussion forum after all.

Jim, I think its cute you beleive the govt.s agenda so readily, but find boomnoises comment and try to comprehend it ...

It is up to the market to decide which and how many venues are non-smoking, that is real democracy ... the will of the people express'd through their wallets. Standard. If there really was a clear majority of people wanting non-smoking venues they'd be there. The problem with lobby groups, unions, party politics is the great number of these people are on a moral crusade, at best, in which The Right thing to do is forced upon people who don't know any better ... bless us.

I'll just add that I see a very differant side to these laws, now active in Australia for close to a year, as I work in the manufacturing industry. Up untill last year the blokes at work were able to smoke inside the work shop, we've got countless furnaces running 8 hours a day, heating steel to well over a 1000 degrees C before being dumped into cooling oil, so cig. smoke was un-noticable and really the health hazards of inhaling heated airbourne iron particles far outwieghs any passive smoking concerns ... as well, as I noted in a previous post, the compromise reached to enforce these new regs. are laughable.

when the govt decide I can't move around freely, work where I like, write what I like etc etc, then I'll be concerned about civil liberties.

Do I really need to comment on that ? by that time its to late pal, your only choice is to pick up a weapon and start fighting ... & do you really think it happens overnight ? the slide towards totalterianism is gradual at first, thats why they call it the the thin end of the wedge ya get me ?

it's a trueness that in a few years no-one will give a monkeys bout smoking in public laws anyway.

yes, by then things will be much worse, like right now in Aust. our right-wing catholic health minister has had to have his right to tell women what to do with their bodies taken away from him as he is a stoopid prick

but any1 who thinks this particular law - which was a free vote in parliament without a whip and so not specifically tailored by the govt to encroach on liberties - is a real threat to their rights/signal of the advent of state control has been watching too much xfiles.

nah x-files is nothing bruv ( but you know cancerman was a badman cos he wos allowed to bun in Federal buildings innit) ... you could have at least accused me of reading too much Orwell

anyway ... thats me done on this issue, as much as I like a good blue some points of view are - in the end - unreconcilable, good to know which side of the barricades some of you will be on still

I could have accused you of reading too much orwell, but I think:

a) that'd be trying to make myself look clever for the sake of it. eh? oh...
b) orwell would be posthumously mightily offended that his life's work was being referred to in an argument that essentially revolves around whether smoking constitutes liberty. so might the writers of x-files, come to think of it, but I don't really care about them too tuff....

franky, I think overuse of the words/phrases such as 'barricades', 'thin end of the wedge' 'pick up a weapon and start fighting' etc etc betrays your entirely laudable, if also entirely mistaken, conspiracy theory type outlook. it might be a useful viewpoint in relation to other topics/laws, but not this 1.

I'm also mightily offended at your suggestion that a woman's right to have some kind of governance over her own body (via abortion in this case) should be equated with a right to smoke. I can't see the common ground, myself, although sympathise with you on account of your dodgy health bod.

ps - don't call me bruv, either. offends my female sensibilities, get me?

pps - nuff respect anyway. I've been to port adelaide and it's bloody miles away from anywhere. and i moan about walking to brixton....

[thc]

well there are some smoke-free clubs, why dont you go to those? maybe the ones you should be upset with are the DJs that choose to play at clubs that allow smoking.

and those employees dont have to work there just like customers dont have to go there.

once again i am ignored....

[amen-ra]

There's fundamental points of differences in this room and i think they go somethin like this;

1. Some people see smoking as a liberties issue. I'd say smokin is more limiting that liberating

2. Some people want the government to define their rights. This works both ways- the governments giving me rights- im so happy. The governments taking away my rights- im so angry. Both parties are watchin government- free dat!!!

Next time a police officer walks up 2 your car while your bunnin a zoot treat him like he's weird and that sitting by the side of the road is standard behaviour (give it a serious go not no half-hearted shit)- you'll be suprised at what happens. As soon as u think "I aint got a right to do this" (i.e. what i'm doin is illegal in the governments eyes) he'll spot it and take u down.

Being free has nuttin to do with whether the government lets u smoke in some places and not in others- that's misunderstabnding the debate in stupid proportions