It's a drag...it's also class war
Our glorious, exalted leader, Sir Kier Starmer (a.k.a. the head prefect) has expressed a desire to ban smoking in a range of outdoor locations: Banning smoking in beer gardens is nonsense - pubs aren’t health clubs 30.8.24. Among these are areas outside pubs - that will be designated smoking areas, pub gardens and in some cases, the street outside. Ostensibly, this is to save the NHS money as well as saving our health and lives.
If Starmer wants to save the NHS money, he could start by taking a look at their bureaucracy which I can tell you as someone who's had the misfortune to have been at the tender mercies of their service this year, is incredibly frustrating to have to deal with. If it's about saving lives, then why the f**k is Starmer's government cutting winter fuel payments for pensioners? This World Economic Forum stooge couldn't give a shit about our lives, particularly if you're old and especially if you're working class.
As I've already mentioned, areas outside pubs look set to fall to this smoking ban. There are pubs and there are pubs. Since the 1990s, a fair number of pubs have effectively turned themselves into restaurants, with food being pretty much their main offering. Given that they attract a more middle class clientele, they're unlikely to suffer much in the way of customer loss if the ban on outside smoking goes ahead. Having said this, if our local food offering riverside pub is anything to go by, it may well piss off some of their staff. As frequent visitors to this pub, we have seen bar staff on their well deserved breaks standing outside having a quick fag as they try to relax before returning to the fray.
What the outside smoking ban will clobber are the wet led pubs who don't offer any food other than a few packets of crisps and nuts. Pubs where a fair sized chunk of their customers still smoke. These are mainly working class pubs. The ones that got hammered during the Covid 'crisis' lockdowns of 2020 and 2021. Some recovered from that but others are barely hanging on. A lot have been closing or are threatened with closure. A smoking ban that significantly depletes the customer base of these pubs will send many more of them to the wall. That will deprive more working class areas of venues where people can meet up, have a drink, a smoke if they want to, let their hair down and forget about the stresses of life for a few hours.
What the closure of these pubs will do is increase isolation and atomisation in working class areas. All because of a puritanical desire to control how us oiks behave. It's not just about controlling how we behave though is it? It's about reducing the number of places where we can meet and connect with each other. It's about taking away venues where people can have a moan about the government and, if they're riled up enough, start hatching plans to do something about it. That's what they really want to snuff out isn't it?
This proposed ban on having a smoke outside of a pub may well be a kite flying exercise to assess the reaction. So far, that reaction does seem to be splitting along class lines, with the middle class more inclined to support it. Just like they broadly supported the Covid 'crisis' lockdowns while berating those of us who were rebelling against them. They'll be wheeled out to berate working class customers standing outside their local boozer having a fag. This is yet another escalation in the culture wars where the middle class will yet again assume their stance of sanctimonious superiority.
This proposed ban may well be dressed up in the language of ostensibly saving the NHS money and improving our health but, with pubs being targeted, there's a heavy element of class war involved in this. We're only a few months into Starmer's administration and he's managed to piss off a lot of working class people already. This is only going to exacerbate matters. It's not just about taking the last bits of joy out of our lives, it's about further atomising and isolating us so we can be more easily controlled. The two of us behind this project aren't smokers but it's pretty bloody clear where all of this is leading. That's why this poxy ban has to be fought head on.
Tobacco duty more than covers the cost of treating smokers. The idea that it will save the NHS any money is nonsense.
I am that worst of non-smokers, a “born again” ex-smoker, yet even I do not support more health and safety totalitarianism dished out on soft targets like smokers. Stirrer, you hit the nail on the head with your analysis of smoking as a class issue. Personal experience can vouch for that: when I lived in Bristol (affluent, middle class, eco-everything) virtually everyone I knew was a non smoker. Since I moved to south Wales, I appear to be surrounded by smokers, all old working class. And yes, the health problems in Wales are so much worse than England- but not due to smoking. Think diseases of deprivation: obesity, alcoholism, drug abuse. As to the NHS, I have been banging on for years that the problem is the viral growth of bureaucracy. Chucking more money at the NHS is like chucking sugar in a Petri dish of yeast, it will just feed the administrative parasites (the managers, HR honchos, quality control bods, health statisticians, diversity officers and all those other leeches infesting actual patient care). We know how little Starmer’s “Labour” cares for genuine manual workers by their complete silence on the closure of most of the Port Talbot steel works, which will hammer in the final nail in the coffin for Welsh industry.