Those sickos are at it again...
Today in the House of Commons, MPs will vote on a smoking ban. I thought about writing to my MP. But as he's a commie, I decided not to waste my time.
It seems to me that this issue is a clear-cut example of government's obsession with attempting to control the minutiae of our private lives, or to put it another way, "Why does the government keep touching me in my no-no place?"
The fiddlers always advance the same arguments.
First: "People want smoke-free bars." But if that were true, surely somebody would have opened one. It would have been very popular and made a lot of money. Others would have followed suit. We'd now have many smoke-free bars. The market would have provided a service that lots of people wanted to pay for. That's how the market works. The fact is, that hasn't happened. Ergo, not enough people want smoke free bars badly enough to use them in preference to bars which allow smoking.
Faced with this rebuttal, the next argument is "Won't somebody think about the workers?!" Let's set aside for a moment the wealth of evidence that most of the "passive smoking" or "second-hand smoke" studies are actually bad science and look at what's being proposed. The fiddlers are saying "We believe that it is the job of government to regulate risk out of a field of employment." Were that really their aim, we'd soon see the closure of all North Sea oil rigs, mines, steel plants and so on, the banning of deep sea fishing, the abolition of the armed forces etc etc.
Then comes the predictable "It's for your own good", like that was any business of theirs. We're adults, why would they want to treat us like children? Followed by "Smokers cost the economy money", a blatant untruth even if we pretended for a moment that government, any government, could ever have any money of its own.
So why all the lies? As well to ask why a very few, very sad people always choose to go to the shops via the route that passes the playground, even though it's the long way round.
It seems to me that this issue is a clear-cut example of government's obsession with attempting to control the minutiae of our private lives, or to put it another way, "Why does the government keep touching me in my no-no place?"
The fiddlers always advance the same arguments.
First: "People want smoke-free bars." But if that were true, surely somebody would have opened one. It would have been very popular and made a lot of money. Others would have followed suit. We'd now have many smoke-free bars. The market would have provided a service that lots of people wanted to pay for. That's how the market works. The fact is, that hasn't happened. Ergo, not enough people want smoke free bars badly enough to use them in preference to bars which allow smoking.
Faced with this rebuttal, the next argument is "Won't somebody think about the workers?!" Let's set aside for a moment the wealth of evidence that most of the "passive smoking" or "second-hand smoke" studies are actually bad science and look at what's being proposed. The fiddlers are saying "We believe that it is the job of government to regulate risk out of a field of employment." Were that really their aim, we'd soon see the closure of all North Sea oil rigs, mines, steel plants and so on, the banning of deep sea fishing, the abolition of the armed forces etc etc.
Then comes the predictable "It's for your own good", like that was any business of theirs. We're adults, why would they want to treat us like children? Followed by "Smokers cost the economy money", a blatant untruth even if we pretended for a moment that government, any government, could ever have any money of its own.
So why all the lies? As well to ask why a very few, very sad people always choose to go to the shops via the route that passes the playground, even though it's the long way round.