Capital Summertime Ball 2024

[demonhorse]

July 2007 you mean? I think it's something good the government has done for a change.

[Lucinda]

I think it's a good idea. I hate coming back from the pub stinking like a smoker, and I also hate it because it makes me cough for about 3 days afterwards. Smoking is banned everywhere on campus and in winter in particular it is an incentive to people to quit, or at least not to take it up. I know a lot of people who won't be happy about the smoking ban, but I personally think it's better for everyone's health and enjoyment.

[sebdevlin]

Its about time it was banned in public places. As said before i can't stand coming home stinking of other peoples smoke. I work in a bar when not at uni and it will make for a much more pleasant enviroment if people want to smoke then that there choice but i don't have to breathe it

[goldengirl]

What do you think, should it be banned?

In Scotland the ban has been in for a while now and you have no idea how much more pleasent it is to go on a night out and not come home smelling like an ashtray!!

Only downfall is having 1 smoking friend whom we must take in turns to chum outside for a ciggy! Especially in this blooming freezing cold when you have already paid your £1.50 to have your coat looked after in the night club! :bah:

Bought him a hypnosis stop smoking Book / CD for his Christms tho!!! (& a coughing ashtray just in case!) lol I love IWOOT!!!

[neil]

I can't stand the smell of sewerage: which is why I've never applied for a job in the sewers. Seriously, why would anyone who hates the smell of tobacco smoke apply for a job in a pub? It's crap pay, unskilled, with virtually zero chance of promotion; and you end up smelling of smoke, which you claim to hate.

Don't anyone give me any of that crap about not being able to find better work; there's always work for those who can be bothered to look for it.

Of course, there are those who would like to take their kids to the pub and who love them too much to see them made ill from other people's smoke. Well if they really cared, even slightly, about their kids they wouldn't take them to a pub to let them run around while they ignore them and get drunk — smoke or no smoke. How about being a real parent and taking them somewhere they would like, to do something together that they would find fun? Pubs aren't meant for kids, and you won't find many people smoking at the 'Jungle Gym' or the swimming pool (and if you can't afford to take them to these places you shouldn't be wasting your money on alcohol).

Of course, there are those pubs which actively try and attract the families by installing ball-pools and bouncy castles. If you want to ban people smoking in those pubs, go ahead; be my guest; few would complain. Although those pubs should be closed down anyway as alcohol and childcare isn't exactly a better combination than smoking and childcare. The kids should be at home, where you want smokers to smoke — but as long as it's someone else's kids, and not yours, it's OK isn't it?

The human rights issue! Why should you be forced to breath other people's smoke? Well, there have never been any laws that force people to drink in pubs; there have never been any laws which force people to work in pubs; there have never been any laws which force people to even enter a pub. You have never been forced to breath other people's smoke.

So maybe 'forced' isn't the right word you were all looking for? Maybe you're just saying that if you wanted to enjoy a night out that you would have to 'endure' the smoke? Or something to that effect? Well, the answer to that isn't for the government to force councils to force landlords to force their customers out of their pubs, forcing them to lose their customers, and potentially lose their businesses and livelihoods. If the government were to force councils to meet a quota, a certain number of the licences which they could issue being issued with the stipulation that the licensed area was to be smoke free, there would be very little trouble. Besides, if the smokers are, as some have said, a minority, the landlords will be fighting to get their hands one. Then again, if the smokers were a minority, the landlords would have made the decision to ban smoking themselves, a long time ago, because they have never been forced to allow smoking in their pubs, and they certainly wouldn't want to lose 90% of their customers for the sake of the other 10%. Either way, if non-smoking pubs were provided there would be absolutely no justification for an outright ban — especialy in private clubs.

But of course, some of your friends smoke, don't they? And some of your friends don't care one way or another about the smoke. So they'll go to a smoking pub, and leave you to go to another with all the other militant-non-smokers. At least you'd be in the right place to make new and more suitable friends (you wouldn't want your kids to see you associating with smokers, would you?), and I would be able to enjoy a drink and a smoke without having to put up with people harping on about the damage I'm doing.

And good luck during the summer, sat indoors in the heat while your kids, that you're ignoring while you drink, run around the beer-garden, through the clouds of smoke — which I have half a mind to be blowing in their direction. Or maybe you wont be sat inside? No, you'll plonk yourselves down in the middle of a crowd of smokers and bitch and moan about being forced to breath their smoke. I know! Why don't we force all the smokers inside the pub? At least that way we could protect the darling children.

[goldengirl]

lol at Neil, you were on your soap box for quite a while there. Do you feel better now that you have got that off your chest?

[demonhorse]

I can't stand the smell of sewerage: which is why I've never applied for a job in the sewers. Seriously, why would anyone who hates the smell of tobacco smoke apply for a job in a pub? It's crap pay, unskilled, with virtually zero chance of promotion; and you end up smelling of smoke, which you claim to hate.

Don't anyone give me any of that crap about not being able to find better work; there's always work for those who can be bothered to look for it

I'm gonna ignore that last line because SOME people CANT find better jobs because theyre either underskilled themselves, or because asshole employers don't give them a chance, simply based on the fact they don't have 12 degrees...

[Lucinda]

The pub isn't the only place people smoke anyway. They smoke in clubs, in restaurants, in the street, in shopping centres.... am I supposed to avoid all of these places just because I enjoy my lungs functioning normally and not full of tar and carcinogens?

If you want a beer and a cigarette, go do it in your own home. As for smoking over children, don't even get me started on people who smoke over their kids. It is effectively child abuse and can lead to asthma and other problems through their whole lives.

[matt_32510]

I still think it's wrong people have the right to do what they want, if you want to smoke you should be able to smoke, if you want to drink you should be able to, where ever you are, it's just this country telling you what you cant and can do, I dont have a probelem with people smoking if they want to thats fine but just because I don't like it doesnt meen they should be banned from doing it.

[Serin]

I still think it's wrong people have the right to do what they want, if you want to smoke you should be able to smoke, if you want to drink you should be able to, where ever you are, it's just this country telling you what you cant and can do, I dont have a probelem with people smoking if they want to thats fine but just because I don't like it doesnt meen they should be banned from doing it.

I totally agree. My parents smoke and I hate it but the whole idea of banning people from smoking in public, in my eyes, is fascistic: the state has no right to intervene in these matters and I also believe that all illegal drugs should be fully legalized.

[Ema]

Its amazing how they ban things like this right near my birthday! :-p

The Ban isnt going to affect me cos I dont smoke,but I know of people who it will.

[demonhorse]

all illegal drugs should be fully legalized.

they would be if the government were allowed to tax them

[neil]

I'm gonna ignore that last line because SOME people CANT find better jobs because theyre either underskilled themselves, or because asshole employers don't give them a chance, simply based on the fact they don't have 12 degrees...

Yeah, cos you need 12 degrees to fold and stack clothes in top-shop don't you?

And funkyseaweed, how about if you want a beer without a cigarette you do that in your own home? It wouldn't give your kids cancer. Funny thing is though, I haven't seen anyone smoking in a shoping centre from as far back as the early 80s, or in a restaurant either (unless you mean those funny ones that typically sell more booze than food - aka a 'pub'). smoking in the street; you're never going to stop that with anything short of criminalising tobacco, and that aint gonna happen any time soon.

The point is that most of the arguments people use to justify this are pathetic. Kids shouldn't be in pubs. If you take your kid into a pub, social services should take it off you.

If you don't like loud music, don't go to a gig.

If you don't like getting wet, keep out of the sea.

If you don't like scousers, keep clear of Liverpool.

If you don't like smoke, stay out of the pubs.

It's simple. You have the choice to not be surrounded by smokers - exercise it.

[Lucinda]

I don't like smokers, but I like going to gigs. Lots of people smoke in restaurants and shopping centres, even where there are no smoking signs. Jobs really aren't that easy to come by. I've got 3 top grade A levels and I'm currently working towards a degree but I still would be unlikely to get a job in TopShop because I have no experience of these kind of jobs.

I like to go to the pub for social reasons, not to sit in a cloud of smoke.

I do think though that it might be a better option rather than banning smoking in all pubs to have more non-smoking pubs.

[neil]

Top-shop is beside the point, it's another low-skill job that anyone can master in a week, probably a lot quicker than you could master serving at a bar. The point of it was, that if someone is desperate enough to work in an environment that they believe is dangerous and filthy then they would ceertainly be desperate enough to get a job in a call centre, or mcdonalds, or sweeping the streets. There is a world of bad jobs that anyone could get if they were desperate enough. Only good jobs are hard to find, and apparently working in a smoky bar isn't one of them. And they will probably have to apply to top-shop soon anyway, if they're that desperate for money, they'll need 2nd jobs when their hours behind the bar get cut-back.

But no one is forced to work in those conditions, it's free-choice.

I've lived in Australia for the last couple of years, and they imposed a smoking ban in all pubs over a year ago. My local pub went from having around 600 customers on a friday and saturday night, to a couple of hundred. The couple of hundred that are left are all crammed into a small beer-garden, sometimes overflowing onto the car park (cigarette butts thrown everywhere and the pub wont clean it up, it's not their property), and the inside is mostly empty, exept those ordering drinks to take back outside. The customers that left have all moved on to small dingy pubs, because they have bigger beer gardens to smoke in.

[Jamie]

IMO people have the right to go anywhere and not be surrounded by smoke, its the choice o the smoker to smoke therefore they should not affect others....

[demonhorse]

Yeah, cos you need 12 degrees to fold and stack clothes in top-shop don't you?

Ever TRIED looking for admin work?

didn't think so.

When I was looking, they wanted like Uni graduates for the most basic receptionist type jobs.... incase you hadn't noticed I was EXAGGERATING slightly in my post to make a point....

[Kelly]

Woah, just caught up with this thread. I need a fag now.