TV chef Antony Worrall Thompson joins campaign for limited pub smoking
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Independent Minds
Celebrity chef Antony Worrall Thompson today joined a campaign to amend the current smoking ban to bolster the pub and club industry.
The TV chef joined MPs from the three main political parties in calling for the comprehensive ban to be relaxed to help establishments losing revenue, laying off staff or facing closure.
One of the changes the group hopes will be considered is the adoption of the Spanish model - where venues with limited floor space can choose to be smoking or non-smoking, but venues larger than 100 square metres can have a designated, fully-partitioned, smoking room.
They are also proposing that smoking of tobacco be allowed in venues that can secure a licence by ensuring an agreed level of ventilation and air quality in all areas.
It is also hoped the Government could allow some discretion for local authorities in determining the nature and extent of smoking regulations.
The campaign is calling for urgent consideration of the changes to halt a decline that has seen six pubs closing every day, according to the British Beer and Pub Association.
Worrall Thompson, patron of the smokers' group Forest, said: "The smoking ban has had an extraordinarily detrimental effect on pubs and clubs, and you can understand why.
"They used to be bastions of adult entertainment where young and old could meet and chat over a pint without the health police looking over their shoulders.
"Modern ventilation systems combined with separate rooms make it perfectly acceptable to smoke indoors. The legislation as it stands is excessive and I would like to see it amended."
Greg Knight, Conservative MP for East Yorkshire, David Clelland, Labour MP for Tyne Bridge and John Hemming, Liberal Democrat MP for Birmingham Yardley have all pledged their support to the campaign.
Mr Knight said: "I fully support this campaign. Britain's pubs and clubs are at the heart of every local community and the UK approach of banning indoor smoking everywhere is damaging the viability of many licensed premises where people wish to smoke.
"Pub landlords and club committees know best what their customers want and they should be allowed to provide smoking rooms if there is a demand."
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Comments
"Of the 75 published studies of ETS and lung cancer, 70 percent
did not report statistically significant differences of risk, 17 percent
claim an increased risk, and 13 percent imply a reduction of risk"
http://www.jpands.org/vol14no2/marlow.p
Exactly Stevej, The recession is not the reason I do not want to go to the pubs anymore, it is the smoking ban, I know I am not alone with those thought either.
By the way, even ASH accept that the smoking ban has contributed to pub closures, their own researchers (AC Nielsen) state that the percentage is 50%. You know better though, I take it.
As for pubcos owning pubs. I think you'll find that they own the property, but the business is owned and run by private individuals. Get angry at corporate if you like, but that's not really the point here.
Its not just in Spain and Germany where dunces do not reign over their people, in France I regularly find myself in smoky rooms, in Japan most public places such as restaurants and bars smokers have their space with no impact on non smokers, in the U.S.A in many states when it gets late the smokers light up and no one seems bothered, the Irish ingeniously have three walled rooms with an incomplete ceiling to take advantage of a deliberate loophole in the law. So why the Zero tolerance approach in England where we more than others believe ourselves to be tolerant ? Who cares lets just fix it!
Lighten up. Enjoy it, all of it, we'll definitely be dead, yes some sooner than others, perhaps we ll leave a tolerant culture in our wake and enjoy the freedom we make for ourselves and others along the way.
I've been saying this from the outset of the ban and am so very glad someone seems to be pushing for a viable solution which, if the sanctamonious non-smokers would stop preaching their hypocritical nonsense (heart disease, is, afterall, the biggest killer in the country - where are the bans on cheese, or grotesque and unnecessary pictures of dying fat peoople - and other high fat goods? I can only assume the anti-smoking brigade wouldn't condone a ban on those) then perhaps a compromise can be made to satisfy both parties, rather than shunning us smokers outside like unwelcome lepers.
July 1st 2007 and the economy was peachy. Pubs started closing then and the pub shares dived dramatically. Nothing to do with the recession, closures pre-dated it by a lengthy margin.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg
Then try and find genuine, peer-reviewed scientific evidence to support your propoganda.
Otherwise, please shut up and let adults and business owners decide for themselves.
If you cared at all about health, you would do well to study the harmful effects of diesel exhaust emisisions, especially at pushchair height, on our high streets.
It might be fun to debase science in your revenge on smokers, but to deflect attention away from real killers is disgraceful if not a crime against truth and humanity.
If we allow this then every one will be inhailing the smoke regardless to whether you want to or not!
By asking people to step outside to smoke none smokers have the luxury of breathing & smelling sweet fresh air.
Smokers are welcome to smoke but I dont want to share it with them.
The campaign is seeking an amendment which ... and read this very carefully ... which would allow pubs to provide separate smoking rooms for their customers should the owner so choose.
This is the crucial bit. You, personally, are not required to go into such a room. It's called choice, both for the owner of a business, and the customer. Brilliant concept in a 'free' country, doncha think?
Good grief.
If you don't like smoking, then you can choose to go to non-smoking pubs or non-smoking areas. If you smoke, then you choose to do the opposite. If a landlord doesn't want smoking in his pub, then he doesn't allow it. It's very simple. It's called choice. It caters for everyone's health and safeguards the hospitality trade.
A few years ago the government told us that Iraq had WMDs. Which we later found out to be lies. More recently the government told us they were going to be "open and straightforward", which again, we have found out to be lies. Then they told us that their expenses were all legal, with the exception of the odd mistake here and there. More lies? Now they vote in a Speaker, just to rile the opposition. Can anyone say with hand on heart that this is a government to be trusted, a government we should all believe?
The answer to anyone of any reasonable intelligence at all, is of course not. Then why on earth do so many people believe them on the nonsense they spout about passive smoking?
Wake up for Christ sake before it is too late. You are being conned by a bunch of liars and con-men. There is no proof whatsoever that passive smoke causes anything, and I challenge anyone to prove otherwise.
The problem with smoking is that smokers dont keep it to them self, If I choose to eat chocolate, I get fat.........you dont get fat by standing next to me!
The proposal is not to repeal the ban - it is to amend it. There will still be choice for everyone, so you can still socialise in your non-smoking pubs. Everyone is catered for.
BTW, have you not read the propaganda - fat people make their friends fat! You may not believe it, I don't either - unfortunately the health zealots do.
Sweet FA seems to think he/she will be inhaling other people's smoke whether they want to or not. Why on earth would you be doing that Sweet FA? If a pub or bar had a sign on the door, stating they allowed smoking, and you didn't like smoking, then why would you be going in there? Surely you would be better off going to a pub which did not allow smoking? Simple really isn't it?
Also, if you think the air outside a pub, which is usually contaminated by vehicle fumes, is so sweet and fresh, then why don't you stand out there to inhale as much of it as you can, by the sound of things, you seem to prefer car fumes to tobacco smoke? Also of course by doing this you won't have to share anybody else's tobacco smoke will you?
That is a very good point, pthurgood. The comments here say more about the lack of ability, in some (or these days, many), to actually read and digest information, than it does the issue at hand.
One wonders whether the school mantra of 'always read the question before answering' has been properly bedded in for many UK citizens. Going off at a tangent generally ended in a fail when I was at school, perhaps it is different now. Would explain a lot.
gordon-crawley
As for those who say the fall in business in pubs is nothing to do with the smoking ban - what planet are you on? I only smoke two or three cigarettes a day ... but I NEVER go to the pub nowadays - why would I pay good money to stand outside in all weathers? What kind of hospitality is that?
An amendment that allows smoking and non-smoking venues is by far the best choice - then those who dislike smoke won't be inconvenienced in any way, and those of us who have had our social lives decimated by the Ban will get our lives back.
People should have the choice to go into a smoking or non - smoking pub.
I run a pub and have had to let three people go due to the effects of this unfair and unreasonable legislation.
As a matter of interest, where are all the non smokers that were going to start comming to pubs after the ban ?
Give me back my right to earn a decent living !
1. Sell your pub.
2. Buy an off-license, or something that could be converted to such, with living accommodation attached.
3. Ensure easy access between the shop and living accommodation and fill the living accommodation with sofas and tables.
4. Transfer your existing license and sell cigarettes, alcohol and snacks out of the off-license.
5. Make friends with your regular customers and stay in touch with your previous friends whom you served at the pub.
6. Once they have made a purchase, invite your friends into your living accommodation where they can drink, smoke and socialise with your other friends.