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Whoever it is, it seems as if they could have real problems enforcing the ban in working men's clubs, which as I understand it anyway, are owned by the membership collectively - who do you throw the book at in a situation like that, the bar manager being, in effect, an employee? A fine of a few thousand quid isn't going to make much difference to organisations that often have a few thousand subscribers (all jointly legally liable,) if they're intent on ignoring the legislation.
Also, if we're talking about 'estate' pubs, isn't this bill going to worsen police/community relations that are often already, to say the least, a bit shaky? An inquiry into a serious crime isn't going to get too far if the investigating officers have to start fining people for smoking the minute they walk into the nearest local.
It seems like a very poorly thought-out piece of legislation again, this, in the traditional Nu Labour style - What would have been wrong with giving local authorities the option of allowing smoking in, say, ten or twenty per cent (for the sake of ASH, the fractions I suppose could be rounded down,) of the pubs, bars, clubs and restaurants within their remit, subject to an approved application for a license? This is already the way that it works with booze - would the creation of a kind of aggravated cig license really have been all that much trouble? Wouldn't that have been an acceptable compromise?
As with getting a late drink in a bar that wasn't a strip joint or a night club before the changes in the alcohol laws though, there will be pubs where the management, and the police, just turn a blind eye, and they will be very popular, and things will continue much as they were if you happen to know where they are, these places, and it seems a bit silly to pretend otherwise.
There was a way of protecting the public at large, both customers and employees, from the bad effects of teh fags, while not infringing civil liberties, or, perhaps more importantly, simply wasting police time, but this wasn't it.
Chuck in the ID cards and the 'glorification' of terr'ism business, and this has been a terrible week for Britain. |
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