The Mayor of London : Ken, Boris or what's his name?
I stopped going in pubs years ago because I could not stand the smoke. I have now been able to stick my head back in the door. Depending on where you go, it is stale beer and sweat. You can't win. The London mayoral election does not effect me. I suppose I would vote for Boris, on the basis that I would vote for anyone to get rid of Ken, but it's the choice from hell.
Now a worrying story from Recess Monkey. Boris voted against the smoking ban in the House of Commons. I can understand that on the basis of a non-paternalistic, libertarian approach. Recess Monkey implies...well, no, he more or less states that Boris may have other reasons for his vote. Other reasons that may mean London pubs once again being smoky. Still, maybe that will be a compensation for the thimbles in which some of my collegues think wine should be served.
Labels: Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, Recess monkey
11 Comments:
hmm, £5k for a speech is hardly likely to influence him. Besides, it's consistent with numerous other statements he has made which are essentially libertarian (on car seats, people's diets, and so on).
In any case he has no power to override national legislation.
thanks
www.worldgames1.com
As a non smoker, and who appreciates the smoke free environment we now have, I can still think that this measure was wrong.
You have no particular right to go to a pub, which is a private place of business. If the owner thinks it is a good idea to have a non smoking environment, then that should be his decision. He is the one paying the bills after all.
It is our choice to go or not to go.
Incidentally, if it was such a good idea, I wonder why nobody had opened a smoke free bar before...
The new problem is now that some of your colleagues are bleating about glass sizes !
The safety nazis will never stop.
Perhaps he just likes smoking a cigar now and then. I do.
"I stopped going in pubs years ago because I could not stand the smoke. I have now been able to stick my head back in the door. Depending on where you go, it is stale beer and sweat. You can't win."
In other words it's not smoke you don't like, it's pubs, just like most non smokers, who are responsible for the death of the traditional british pub, which are now restaurant/cofee bars that serve alcohol. Congrats on creating the blandest, most conformist society in Europe.
Oh, Dr Crippen, you take Boris Johnson too seriously!! He's a lightweight, somebody who would be far better suited to a constituency out in the sticks, somewhere like Chester whose sometime MP was Gyles Brandreth.
Yes, Boris is probably paid by the tobacco industry but so are many doctors paid backhanders by the pharmaceutical industry.
If you are using the argument that so-called "passive" smoking kills a thousand or so people a year, then, as you are a doctor, I would understand why you are in favour of a blanket ban on smoking in public places. (That the statistics in support of this proposition have been manufactured using meta-analyses of data, some of which is over 40 years old, is neither here nor there.)
However, Johnson's point is the one I support. If a private club, individual owner of a bar/restaurant or some other facility where people have to make a choice whether they enter it or not, decides they want to offer an environment where people can smoke if they want to, then why shouldn't they?
Smoking tobacco is not against the law. Johnson's point that giving local councils the ability to allow certain establishments to be "smokers" seems perfectly reasonable. After all, didn't we use to have smoking and non-smoking carriages on trains?
I thought that "choice" was the mantra we all had to follow these days.
Is this fuss all about nothing? Could someone not be appointed to fulfill most mayoral duties? Are we losing perspective?
See my blog http://houlscerosis.blogspot.com/
Smokers revenge is coming. We've spent all winter outside freezing to death, catching pneumonia because we're too drunk to realise how cold we are while standing outside, while you non-smokers sit in the warmth inside grinning smugly. Soon it shall be the summer and you will all want to come and sit outside in the basking sunlight but you'll only be able to do so surrounded by us - the evil pariahs of society - puffing away on our cancer sticks. Mwah ha ha ha ha h
I enjoy the desperation of ZanuLabour. I find their fear exquisite.
First they tried the Boris-is-a-toff. The only problem was that people knew and generally didn't care. Then they tried Boris-is-a-Nazi - which only stopped when polls showed that people from ethnic minorities weren't being put off voting Ken because they thought it was bollocks.
Probably next week they will be claiming that Boris is conspiring with the GPs to destroy the NHS by opposing diagnosis by dustmen and polyclinics.
I look forward to seeing this bunch of scum unemployed. Hopefully they will come down in life far enough that they can't afford BUPA.
Does the Mayor of London have the right to opt out of UK statutory laws?
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