A really rather wonderful scientific result:
Bar staff have seen huge health benefits from the ban on smoking in public places, a study by the Tobacco Control Collaborating Centre in Warwick – funded by Cancer Research UK – has found. Researchers tested the air quality in 40 pubs, bars and restaurants across the country and measured the level of cotinine – the metabolic byproduct of nicotine – in the blood of those who worked there.
Quite amazing how you can measure the effect of smoking in public places by measuring something on private property really, isn\’t it?
Whilst I’m rather ambivalent on the smoking ban, I think that one of the positive effects has to be on the health of people employed in bars and pubs, who may not have access to alternative employment very easily.
Like it or not, Tim, a pub is a public place*. The clue is in the name.
*Yes, it’s a privately-owned public space (shudder at the thought of a pub run by Gordon Brown)
Like it or not, Kay Tie, a pub is a PUB! I live in London, and I’ll wager that any health benefit a bar worker has gained through the smoking ban will be immediately lost the moment they step outside and breathe in the lead-filled air.
Tim’s point is valid as well – this law has nationalised private property and it will come back and bite us on the arse.
But my main point is… IT’S A FUCKING PUB!
I don’t get it. We know that loud music deadens hearing, yet clubs and pubs can play it. We know that fatty food clogs the arteries, yet still pubs serve it. We know that booze smacks your liver for six and increases the incidence of violence, yet still it flows forth. Yet I can’t smoke in these places because of the health and mine and others. Who goes to these places to be healthy? It’s known that they are bad for you, if you don’t like it, don’t go.
“Like it or not, Kay Tie, a pub is a PUB!”
Yeees, nice tautology, but gibbering aside, what’s your point? Tell you what, I’ll give you a dictionary definition of pub while you take the sedatives:
pub |pəb| Brit.
noun
a tavern or bar.
• Austral. a hotel.
verb [ intrans. ] [usu. as n. ] ( pubbing) informal
spend time in pubs.
ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: abbreviation of public house .
That last bit, after “of” and before “house”. You see it? Yes, good. That word, if you look carefully, is the one that was used in the report (“public spaces”). Yes? Excellent. We are making progress. At this rate you’ll soon be able to feed yourself and maybe even the restraints can come off.
Public houses used to have private bars (do any of them still?). If we revived them, then the literal-minded Kay Tie could have no objection to people smoking in them.
Can the staff smoke in public schools?
Kay Tie, what about working mens clubs and other private clubs, do you consider those public spaces as well?
“Like it or not, Tim, a pub is a public place*. The clue is in the name.”
That is a non sequiteur. Does that mean public schools are public then? Or that the Inns of court are inns? Or the houses of parliament are houses?