ODDS & SODS

Defending (cough) and (gasp) touting smoke-filled rooms The thing is, America is supposed to be about protecting the rights of the minority. Particularly that ultimate minority: the individual. The whole point of the Bill of Rights was to limit the government's ability to infringe on individual liberties like free speech and religious choice. It gives us property rights, due process, fair trials and all that.

"But many bingo organizers say what really hurt was the state's ban on indoor smoking in the workplace that went into effect in 2003. Although players are given breaks and may smoke outside the halls, a smoke-free environment has not done well for bingo." Florida Today

"Consumer representatives have accused publicans of being opportunistic and penalising teetotallers. Dermott Jewell, of the Consumers’ Association of Ireland, said: “It is opportunism at its most extreme and adds to the cost of a night out. We can only hope customers will resist it.” Times on Line - pub car parks

New York -AP, June 14, 2006) - New York City's health commissioner wants another increase in cigarette taxes because a survey showed that a two-year decline in the number of smokers in New York burnt itself out in 2005.
The survey by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene found that the percent of New Yorkers who said they were smokers actually increased slightly, from 18.4 percent in 2004 to 18.9 percent in 2005. - Drop in smoking stalls; city calls for tax increase

Churchill's cigar stubbed out by theatre smoke ban
"The truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it, ignorance may deride it, malice may distort it, but there it is." -Winston Churchill, HOUSE OF COMMONS, May 17th 1916.

No Pubs for the Lonely Irish

Keeping tabs on bingo
Eyes down, trade's down. Edinburgh's eight bingo parlours are shouting that the smoking ban is badly bruising business. Admissions nationally are five per cent down, income slumped by 15 per cent........................."we have to be concerned. It's a sign of the times when, soon after the ban started, 500 players nipped out of Gala's venue at Meadowbank for a smoke in the car park." Scotsman 15 June 2006

Is this a more reasoned approach to understanding medical conditions?

Stephen Fry appears to have an opinion about Smoking and Blair - from the Telegraph
"Fry left fuming by the Puritan Blairs"
Like most Left-wing luvvies, Stephen Fry isn't too keen on the Blairs, and the actor has a particular aversion to their nanny-state attitudes to smoking.
"I remember popping outside to have a cigarette during a dinner party right after Blair got elected," Fry tells me at a Maggi Hambling private view.
"I ran straight into Cherie Blair, and asked her if she would like a cigarette. She didn't even say, 'No, thank you' - she said, 'Absolutely not!'.
"So I asked her whether they would try to impose a smoking ban, and she said that they were definitely going to."
Sucking on a gasper, he continued: "We sent all the Puritans over to America, so that England could stay the way it is. These people are really just against all forms of pleasure."

FROM THE SCOTSMAN - Is there trend or Bias or ??????????? All the smoking news items since 2002