The SOCIALIST government of the United Kingdom under the misguided leadership of Tony Blair has voted to ban smoking in all public places. The 'Nanny State' has just increased its powers under 'the BANNING Prime Minister'!
How long will it be before the drinking of alcohol in all public places, which naturally offends Muslims, will also be banned? This is grist to the Islamic mill!
This is a disgraceful act by a government which deals in trivialities and not in the hard questions of the day. The hard question of the day, Mr Prime Minister, if you didn't already know it, is the growth of Islam in our country, not smoking!
When are you going to step down, Tony? The sooner the better! If your removal expenses are a problem, then I am sure there is someone out there, someone benevolent, willing to pick up the tab!
Read all about it HERE.
©Mark Alexander
9 comments:
Eyesallaround:
No, I certainly cannot blame Muslims for the smoking ban. And I wouldn't want to. One thing I could do for enjoyment when I lived in the Middle East was smoke! Just about everything else was banned!
Where I make the connection is here:
This God-damn awful prime minister we now have has spent his years in office banning everything in sight. His theory seems to be: If it moves or breathes, ban it or tax it!
That man has turned the UK into a very intolerant society in many ways: People have forgotten what the essence of Britain was - live and let live. Tony Blair has no idea of this concept! He's a do-gooding liberal.
Smokers are taxpayers too, and some provision should be made for them. But more than this, it bothers me GREATLY when I hear of a government wanting to ban everything. This is not the UK I was brought up in, it's not the Britain I came to know and love. This is an intolerant Britain which I don't like.
It's also a slippery slope. Once you start banning things because they disturb others, then there's no end to it! I could also write a list of things I'd like to ban. Let me think now: I'd ban tattoos; I'd ban body piercings; I'd ban foul language; I'd ban people going to fine restaurants who can't behave properly, who talk too loud, and who dress inappropriately - in short people who are unrefined; I'd ban people from entering the public arena if they haven't got any taste in clothes (because it is an assault on my senses); I'd ban all drugs (and enforce the ban!); etc. You get my drift. With this banning mentality, there's no end to it. Before you know it, we'll all be living in a police state, little different from living in an Islamic society - where just about all forms of enjoyment are banned.
I suppose I shall have to end up as a recluse, because there will be nowhere to go where I shall be able to enjoy myself. Have people forgotten the meaning of the term joie de vivre? Are all people turning into killjoys now? Is this the objective?
The non-smoking Nazis are the LIBERALS, and most of them are drunks, and potheads, so don't look for any bans in those areas
Yes, you said it: The non-smokers are like Nazis. You will do as I say, and if you don't, ve ave vayz of making you do az ve say! And so many of them are drunks and potheads, as you say. I wouldn't give you a dime for the damn lot of them! What a mentaility!
How right you are, Eyesallaround, about not looking for bans in those areas. Many people in parliament, the MP's, have dreadful habits! Further, Tony Blair, in his infinite stupidity, has declassified marijuana, so that now people can use it without going to jail. They can keep some on their person. So now you have the RIDICULOUS situation in which a person can smoke dope, but cannot smoke tobacco. How sensible is that? At least tobacco is a slow death. Dope, they have proved, can give a person schizophrenia or Alzheimers! In years to come, the funny farms will be full to bursting!
Now we have the ludicrous situation in the UK that a man may not smoke in public, and nor may he go fox-hunting, but he can walk hand-in-hand with his gay lover, and live with him, and get all the tax breaks! This is Blair's Britian for you.
Now I am not being homophobic. Not at all. I like to be fair to all. But you've got to admit that there is something quite anomalous - and ridiculous - in this situation.
Now, to bring the connection with Islam into the equation: In short, I feel that when you start to ban things, people eventually become inured to it all. And, as you know, most people are very compliant. Ergo: How long is it going to be before Muslims will start battling for the banning of drinking in public places, too, since the sight of someone drinking alcohol is offensive to a Muslim?
If you think that's far-fetched, Muslims have already tried it on in Scotland. This time, they lost the case. But there'll always be a next time.
If I were PM, I would free people up, as did Thatcher. I would NOT turn the state into my nanny! There should be a place for EVERYONE in society, and in PUBLIC places in that society. Anything less is unacceptable! Period!
You probably saw the post by the EU Referundum who is in agreement with you. He really drives home the point about over-regulation and the insane way things are enforced.
Freedom go to hell!
I am certainly not a liberal or a Nazi, but second-hand smoke is deadly, and you shouldn't have to avoid public places because of the unhealthy habits of others.
Doesn't Britain have separate smoking rooms in pubs? Is that what they have banned?
Heather:
They are banning smoking in ALL public places.
You might well dislike having to tolerate 'second-hand' smoke. But shouldn't I, as a light smoker, also be allowed to have my place in society, too?
Whatever happened to mutual respect and tolerance?
It has got to the point now that I do not like going out for an evening's pleasure, because there is nowhere I can enjoy a cigarette.
I used to like going to good restaurants to enjoy an evening with friends. I now usually elect to stay at home instead. Why should I go out to a fine restaurant, pay through the nose for the dubious pleasure, in order to be put through an endurance test!
I object - very much - to having to go outside in the cold night air - like a recalcitrant schoolchild - to light up. This gives me no pleasure at all, because I then have to leave my non-smoking friend(s) in the restaurant, sometimes alone (and they don't actually object to smoking anyway) in order to smoke a cigarette. This is not pleaasure to me at all.
I do not smoke because I "need" the drag; rather, I smoke for the pleaasure of smoking. It's a social thing, not a necessity - at least for me.
But above all I object to where all this is taking us. It really is a slippery slope. And I don't like it. What's to be banned next?
For some years, fine restaurnats used to segregate their restaurants into smoking sections and non-smoking sections. People could choose where they sat. Then they stopped that and allowed people to smoke in the lounge or bar. I can accept that. But what I cannot accept is that NO PROVISION is made for smokers. They wouldn't dare allow themselves to make no provision for Muslims. But when it comes to smokers, it's open season!
This prime minister disgusts me. Interestingly, he's an ex-smoker. The worst kind!
I am not suggesting that smoking is a good habit. It isn't. But I can think of all kinds of bad habits which other people have which I HAVE TO TOLERATE.
This is all so unnecessary, There should be provision for ALL people in a society. Straight people, gay people, smokers, non-smokers, etc.
If Blair were to come out with the idea of banning gays being affectionate with each other in all public places, there'd be one helluva hullabaloo. People would be crying discrimination. But it's okay to discriminate against smokers, for some inexplicable reason.
I say this: In this awful, corrupt world, a world full of sinners, if the worst that I do before I enter that big box for an eternity is enjoy a few cigarettes and a few glasses of whisky, gin, or wine, then I am not doing too badly!
People these days get up to far, far worse things - things which are far more injurious to their health than smoking tobacco. Society is getting things out of proportion. And aren't people so self-righteous?
I know what Churchill would about think about all this: He'd be disgusted! He had other priorities.
Surely we can find a reasonable way of allowing people like me to enjoy a cigarette or cigar, and allowing you to breathe clean, fresh air. Surely that shouldn't be an impossibility in an age when we can fly to the moon.
Heather:
I have just read that excellent thread you sent me. Very interesting! Pretty much similar to what I have been saying here this morning, isn't it?
Bld:
Thank you for coming over to visit. You are very welcome here, my friend. You seem to share many of my ideas. Blair has made a dog's dinner out of the UK. He is turning it well-nigh into a police state. I can think of no other prime minister in living memory who has banned so much, and in such a short time. Interestingly, the Queen is said to find him "vexatious". Vexatious indeed!
He behaves like an overgrown schoolboy. He looks like an overgrown schoolboy, too! So he must think like an overgrown schoolboy, too!
...I have been a "victim" of mislim racial violence...
I'm very, very sorry to learn this. I hope you are now well and truly over it; though I realize that the psychological scars will take a very long time to heal. Indeed, if ever they will altogether.
I hope you're wrong about Straw having his beady eyes on the Web. That would be awful. But I do think you are probably right.
Isn't this all redolent of Orwell's 1984?
I dread another Labour term of office, and that is coming from someone who was glad to see the exit of Thatcher, as her government had become arrogant and unlistening.
I dread another Labour term, too. The very thought of it is enough to depress the Archangel!
As for Thatcher, though, I have to say this: At least she freed the people up. She didn't ban each and everything that was in her sight.
I am interested in your book on British legends also.
No, Bld, that is a different Alexander. That's not my book, I'm afraid.
I can understand how your friend, Mark the Arabist, came back from the Middle East in despair with Arab culture. Believe me: Arab culture is HEAVY!
All strength to your pen, I wish you good fortune.
Thank you so much for your good wishes. Please keep dropping by. It will be a pleasure to read what you have to say.
Bld:
I thought I was a lone traveller
By the way, Bld, never think you are "a lone traveller". You are CERTAINLY NOT alone. Take comfort from that.
Mark,
I think they should leave an enclosed smoking area in pubs and bars for those who wish to smoke. There is too much government interference in our lives already. A short article from Townhall columnist Paul Jacob says it best:
~~
"The "smoking debate" exhausts me. Anti-smoking activists may oppose smoking on health grounds, but their attempts to stamp out smoking are making our political society sicker. How? I could repeat the "unintended effects" mantra, but maybe we should just call it "second-hand smoke." Smother freedom and democracy coughs up a lung.
On matters of health (and so much else), personal responsibility works best. This entails no small amount of freedom, including the right of individuals to choose their vices as well as their virtues. So the political question becomes not "Is this or that good for me, or you?" but "Where do my rights end and your rights begin?"
Smoking makes this fairly simple issue a little foggy because the exhaust coming out of the mouth and nose of a smoker isn't mere carbon dioxide. It's bothersome, and more poisonous."
~~
Once you start banning things because they disturb others, then there's no end to it!
Shortly after 9/11, some neighborhoods were disturbed by the sight of all the American flags. And the home-owner's association made those patriots take down their flags.
Hey, it bothers me to see the hijab on a bank teller's head. Can I then snatch that hijab from her pate?
I wonder what would happen with "smoking" and "no-smoking" pubs. Which would do more business?
Eyes: They (Muslims) LOVE to smoke their hookas.
NYC has a smoking ban, but the hookahs still smolder. Gotta respect Muslim culture, you know. (sarcasm)
AlwaysOnWatch:
Shortly after 9/11, some neighborhoods were disturbed by the sight of all the American flags. And the home-owner's association made those patriots take down their flags.
Hey, it bothers me to see the hijab on a bank teller's head. Can I then snatch that hijab from her pate?
Yes, I agree with you, AOW. One man's meat is another man's poison. There are so many things that I could let bother me. (I listed some of them above.) But I have to put up with them in the name of living and letting live.
It seems that many people have forgotten what that saying means. Surely there's enough room for non-smokers and smokers alike in this world. There's simply no need for these Draconian laws. Let the pub/restaurant owners decide whether they want smoking or non-smoking establishments.
There are many things I don't like. If I don't like them, then I simply don't go to places where the things I don't like are to be found. I don't try and make others do what I want. That's simply not on!
Yes, AOW: Isn't it crazy that New York City allows hookah bars, but disallows people to smoke tobacco?
The mayor of New York has a lot to answer for: He's a bigot with his own agenda! (He's an ex-smoker himself. They're the worst offenders. They give up, so they demand that the rest of the world gives up with them! Maybe, it's easier for them to keep away from tobacco that way!) As, indeed, are the British politicians which have voted for this total ban.
The sad thing is that many politicians in the UK have been found to take drugs and do all sorts of other illegal things. What right have they got to tell people that they cannot, under any circumstances, smoke a cigarette or cigar?
This is a form of fascism, too.
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