“Weird” Is Not Recognising Mistakes Via the Engineer, it seems that the Mirror is doing its utmost to stem the tide of Labour votes leaking to UKIP by exposing the party’s “weirdest policies”.
Personally, I don’t reckon number 5 would appear very ‘weird’ at all to working class people, but then the Mirror isn’t staffed by them is it?
5. Changing the smoking ban to allow smoking indoors
UKIP says they will “amend the smoking ban to give pubs and clubs the choice to open smoking rooms properly ventilated and separated from non-smoking areas”.
Weird? Sounds eminently sensible to me as I suspect it would to Labour’s core working class voters.
This is interesting because it’s a divisive political topic but also because practically, it’s quite hard to ensure that there’s no risk to non-smokers in pubs.
Indeed it is divisive. No matter how much the tobacco control cartel try to pretend it’s a dead subject, it never will be. The Mirror admitting the ban is still divisive – a full seven years later – illustrates how barmy and unfit for purpose it was in the first place. Quite understandable really, since the ban we have had inflicted on us was never asked for by the public and is still opposed by more than support it.
As for there having to be “no risk to non-smokers in pubs” – let’s set aside this daft idea that pubs should be as risk-free as a health clinic for now – surely “smoking rooms properly ventilated and separated” would do precisely that for all but the insane. Those who really believe they are going to suffer health problems from someone smoking in a different room are the weirdos, not UKIP.
Would pubs really want to invest money in creating new rooms specifically for this?
Only in a socialist-leaning ban-friendly newspaper can the suggestion that pubs might not want to spend money translate into there having to be a law against them doing so. Would it not be common sense – and therefore not weird – to allow them to choose how to spend their money themselves?
Especially six years after the smoking ban, as our smoking culture has changed and e-cigarette use is on the rise.
It’s seven, dear, but let’s not split hairs. And as for invoking the rise of e-cig use, that’s precisely why the smoking ban is an abomination, because if it weren’t for the rancid, vindictive con artists at ASH and the extremist smoking ban they connived to impose in order to justify their grant money, there wouldn’t now be a rising tide of bans against e-cig use despite there not being even the vaguest hint of evidence to justify it. Especially in a separate bloody room!
Hmmm, who really would like to come out of the rain and cold to smoke in pubs?
Is this satire?
Probably thousands of working class smokers in each and every previously safe Labour stronghold who have increasingly started voting for UKIP, that’s who.
Still, all the while Labour and their press supporters – such as Sophie who wrote the Mirror piece – continue to think policies which even one of their own describes as “aimed at the latte-sipping, chino-wearing, light Green, inner-city left” are winners, working class votes are going to continue to be shipped to UKIP all over the country.
If Sophie’s sophistry was designed to put people off UKIP, though, it doesn’t seem to be working as the poll under her article shows.
It seems staggering to me why the upper middle class privileged toffs on the left continue to be determined to punish the poor, ignore the public, and alienate their core working class vote.
Now that’s what I call weird.
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I am not a member of UKIP (I have been a member of the Conservative party all my adult life), but this is clearly a sensible policy – I hope my own party “steals” it (although, sadly, I doubt we will).
As for the Daily Mirror – yes they want their Labour Party voting readers to not vote UKIP, but this story (that UKIP would allow smoking in pubs again – at least in a special room) is more likely to convince readers to vote FOR UKIP. So an own goal.
The destruction of British pubs was basically a two punch operation. First a Conservative government (under the delusions of court enforced “competition policy” nonsense, based on the “Perfect Competition” fallacy of mistaking a university blackboard for real life) forced breweries to sell most of their pubs (thus cutting off the pubs from less expensive beer – crippling them). Then a Labour party government came along and banned smoking (basing their action on the idea that a business is “open to the public” and is therefore a “public place” and that “public” means “a matter for the state – in relation to regulation” a fallacy that goes back to the Roman Empire, confusing “open to the public” with “public as in state”).
Indeed the other four policies are also perfectly sensible (the medals for “all” service men are actually a return to campaign medals and so on), and likely to be popular – as the poll shows.
I could name many other Departments (on top of Culture, Media and Sport) that need abolishing – cutting government spending is not impossible, it just needs a decision not to be bound by the fashions of the academic-media-political elite.
Culture Media And Sport needs to go, but in the same vein so must OFCOM, and neither must be replaced with anything else. Public Health England is on the “abolish on the 1st day of a libertarian government” list as well. These organisations, and many others, must be told to simply down tools and cease operations the day after the election. The staff should be told to not report to work, and only allowed access to retrieve personal effects. And then all the departments’ works and records should be destroyed.
Re the conclusion –
“It seems staggering to me why the upper middle class privileged toffs on the left continue to be determined to punish the poor, ignore the public, and alienate their core working class vote.
Now that’s what I call weird.”
– go back nearly a century and read GK Chesterton’s analysis of the alcohol prohibition movement (in both the US and UK). He says clearly and emphatically that it was intended to deny drink to the poor man and not to interfere with the rich.