Simon Cooke, The View from Cullingworth, posts on the fact that an Early Day Motion (EDM) has been raised in which it calls for the Chancellor to suspend the beer duty escalator to help reduce pub closures.
It is generally acknowledged that what hastened pub closures more than any other factor was the blanket smoking ban affecting all enclosed public places. It should also be remembered that when originally proposed the ban on smoking in enclosed public places in England had exemptions for clubs and pubs not serving food. (BBC)
Simon Cooke has discovered that of the 97 signatories to this EDM (at the time of his post) 47 of those signatories were MPs who had voted to ban smoking in pubs - and he lists those 47.
We are constantly informed that smoking is bad for our health - and that may be so; however, I would suggest that there is a greater risk to the population's health when one considers our system of democracy which allows our political elite to dictate to us as they do, wherein they demand our obedience in everything that we do, say or speak. This greater risk is one that our political elite both national and local together with their sycophants at every level and in every organisation, would do well to remember.
As Boris Pasternak has Yurii say in Doctor Zhivago, "Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike... Our nervous system isn't just fiction, it's part of our physical body, and it can't be forever violated with impunity."
Change of URL
14 years ago
