That’s why I put inverted commas around the word “ban”. Noone has actually stopped smoking because of this law; all that’s happened is it’s moved out onto the street. So now you can’t walk down the pavement in a straight line anymore, and pubs that were once little boxes of smoky conviviality behind closed doors are now stale-sweaty cenotaphs inhabited by a few lone non-smokers each apathetically minding the pints of another three people standing outside.

It’s made the world uglier, that’s for sure.

On the bar staff point - in my experience bar staff are disproportionately likely to be smokers themselves (why on earth would you apply for that particular low paid menial job from all the others if you didn’t like the atmosphere in a pub ??)

Partial bans have worked well in other countries - in Portugal for example, bars below 100 sq mtres can chose to be smoking or non, larger ones have to be non smoking. It’s only because our legislators made this absurd connection with serving food that the partial ban didn’t happen.

Yes - that’s why they’re doing it, although this seems to have escaped the attention of all those going on about the rights of bar staff.

Smoking bar staff want to set up a smoking bar co-operative. They can’t, what with this being illegal and all. Thus endeth the debate over whether the smoking ban as presently constituted infringes liberty or not.

Next week on liberal conspiracy: why freedom is really slavery.

Either that or you can apply for a limited amount of smoking licenses for your premises. But if the partial ban that was first proposed was seen as unworkable than that would be no different.

Sunny Hundal @ 30: “Employees who are not allowed to make the choice to avoid smoke-filled workplaces don’t have choice. ” If the aim was to improve employee _choice_, then the government could have forced workplace ballots amongst bar staff; maybe with some form of locally sponsered job swaps for minority (non-)smoking workers, repeated every few months - or after a certain percent employee turnover - if necessary.

That the ban was done for the benefit of bar staff is surely not (entirely, at least) true, as otherwise the ridiculous smoking shelter rules wouldn’t have been included; whilst it’s funny for me (as a non-smoker) to see smokers suffering through winter hail, it serves no purpose other than to de-normalise smoking. If you regard that as a good thing, then great: say so. Don’t hide behind the bar staff’s lack of ‘choice’ previously, because whilst they _might_ have had a choice previously (as mentioned above, non-smoking pubs did exist), they _certainly_ don’t now. And that includes the 25%(?) who have to nip outside to smoke now, too.

Anecdotally, I ‘d say I haven’t met anyone who has confessed to having given up smoking because the feds have made the enterprise so damn difficult. It seems that most people do it for health, and a few people to save money (which I concede is related to the government’s attempts to stamp out smoking, but these folk are few, even on the arse end of the economic ladder). Perhaps more importantly, I imagine there aren’t that many young non-smokers who turned their cheek on that first tab for no other reason than the fact that the government doesn’t condone it. Again, I think the reduced rate of new smokers emerging is down to choice based on education and peer-influence.

So I wonder if, by getting all heavy handed, the authorities aren’t simply stymieing a natural, self-imposed movement of the populace towards a non-smoking environment. If, in fact, the slow removal of smoking culture from our society might actually be a rather fine example of libertarianism in action; people figuring something out for themselves without the need for Daddy to step in and start waving his belt about.

You contradict your position with your examples. Carrying bricks up ladders is potentially dangerous for people walking about below, but the government hasn’t banned it, it has simply required that employees be given approriate safety equipment to mitigate the risk. Equally, it is not illegal to work down a mine, you just have to have the right gear. If the smoking ban issue were one of employee rights, the law need simply require employers to offer staff safety equipment, as they are required to do (I believe) for staff who work in loud environments such as night clubs. I notice the liberals around here aren’t advocating the banning of live music in ‘public’ places to protect the hearing of bar staff. Quite right too. A pity the liberalism can’t be more principled, though, and extended to things you don’t yourselves like.

It does seem to me that most of the liberals in this conspiracy are actually rather authoritarian.

If somewhat asks you “Do you mind if I smoke?”, the correct answer is “not as all, as long as you don’t mind if I piss in your beer”.

Smoking should be (like sex) completely unrestricted amongst consenting adults in private. So with respect to #23 you are perfectly right. Set up a private (members and guests only) club for smokers and it should be allowed to operate.

As for the harming of health through passive smoking, the links were never firmly made, as can be seen in an article in the Guardian recently reporting the connection between obesity and cancer. The direct quote read: ‘whilst there is no direct link between smoking and cancer…obesity…’

Does no one else see that ‘Health Reasons’ is being atteched to anything that the government decides that they no longer want us to do…which is usually anything fun.

Meanwhile we have commercial companies bring out ’scientifc reports’ telling us what we should and should not be doing, which strangely change every five minutes minutes depending on what they want to sell us.

If the government really cared about our health they would have banned drinking….a far more dangerous and destructive pass time than recreational drug taking, either ban them all or non…the inconsistencies can give us no faith that our best interests are being served!!

Sunny has gained no additional rights from the smoking ban - merely an increase in choice. I have lost the rights I previously enjoyed and have no choice whatsoever.

In an age when - thankfully - discrimination on grounds of race, gender or sexual orientation is illegal it appears that smokers are the only group the rest of society is able - in fact actively encouraged - to discriminate against.

What was the harm in having - as they do in several European countries - separate smoking and non-smoking areas or some establishments smoke-free and others pro-smoking?

And please don’t tell me it is a staff issue. Vegetarians usually don’t work in slaughterhouses. Teetotallers are thin on the ground in breweries.

Sam Kelly’s point is a good one. Today, after a two-hour journey in a non-smoking train in which I had to endure aural pollution from people who apparently are unaware their mp3 players have a volume control which goes down as well as up, I lit up a fag in the open air at the other end. My colleague - also a smoker - told me that if the fag end was stubbed out on the ground we were subject to instant £80 fines. The only alternative I could see was a litter bin. So to avoid an £80 fine we had to run the risk of setting a bin on fire!

That’s a false dichotomy. Sometimes pure arbitration and compromise are good, sometimes someone is just wrong - and sometimes people are well-intentioned but are heading into a morass anyway.

The role of government is to prevent collisions -and- to introduce other relevant data - to internalize the externalities, to make sure the books add up and all useful factors have been taken into consideration, and to stop the three legged race that most conflict-of-interest situations turn into from lurching into a local minimum and staying there.

To give a voice to the voiceless, without our having to buy it or riot for it.

Erm, no. As Donald points out, this is also about power. Employees who are not allowed to make the choice to avoid smoke-filled workplaces don’t have choice. People like myself who hate smoke filled bars/clubs etc don’t have much choice either. So the govt has moved along with public opinion…. and rather like the seatbelt debate this one will soon be dead too.

but to have two posts in a row celebrating restrictions to liberty doesn’t really bode well for the conspiracy, does it?

I think you’re mixing up liberalism with libertarianism. I don’t know about others but I support govt intervention when it is justified (including abroad). I’m not against govt intervention for its own sakes.

Really? And where do I do this? Here’s the problem: where there is a conflict, the role of government is to prevent collisions. This it can do by compromising between two parties whose interests conflict. But those of you who support the smoking ban don’t believe this - rather you think the role of government is to decide who is right, support them and criminalise any opposition. Call this anything you want but don’t you dare call this liberalism. I wish you well in this enterprise, I really do - but to have two posts in a row celebrating restrictions to liberty doesn’t really bode well for the conspiracy, does it?

The present smoking regulations represent just one messy compromise among many. It’s worth recalling the ban is in fact wider than that promised in Labour’s 2005 manifesto, the Government having accepted a back-bench amendment. Presumably MPs took a rational decision that the votes of anti-smokers now outnumber those of smokers.

It is of course possible to suffer the effects of passive smoking in the open air, and I would expect (alas) that the ban will be extended to open spaces around pubs and cafés (forecourts, gardens) within a few years (in fact local authorities already have the power to do this).