H/T Smoking Lamp and Rose for this Telegraph report:
Smoking ban in beer gardens and al-fresco dining areas rejected by ministers
13 April 2017
“A smoking ban in beer gardens and al-fresco dining areas has been blocked by the Government after ministers warned they would infringe on people’s freedom and lead to pub closures.
The proposals to extend the ban to outdoor areas were have been included in a list of demands by councils and health authorities in London which has been supported by Sadiq Khan, the Labour Mayor of London.
However the Government has rejected the plans and condemned “Labour’s municipal killjoys” for making the proposal.
Marcus Jones, a minister for local government, said: “We already knew that Labour councils charge higher council taxes and levy more red tape.
“Now Labour’s municipal killjoys have been caught with a smoking gun, trying to ban adults enjoying their local pub garden. If implemented, these ill-founded proposals would lead to massive pub closures.”
“Conservatives in Government will be vetoing these Labour Party plans. Ahead of May’s local elections, local voters have a right to know the bad and mad ideas that are being peddled by Labour councillors.”
There’s a similar report in the Sun:
SMOKING could be banned in pub gardens under secret plans.
The move, led by some Labour councils, would mean the £200 fine on lighting up inside boozers would be extended outside.
Premises would be threatened with closure or clobbered with the existing £2,500 penalty for allowing smoking inside.
Tories last night pledged to block the latest proposals, saying they would trigger job losses.
Documents show Labour-run Haringey Council in North London has been pushing for smoke-free areas to be extended to “alfresco dining areas of restaurants and pub gardens”.
The motion is backed by Labour-led local government organisation London Councils, representing 32 boroughs, plus the capital’s mayor, Sadiq Khan.
These days I believe that the 2007 smoking ban was a declaration of war not just on smokers, but also on the drinkers in Britain’s pubs. It was part of a vast cultural war that was being launched by the Labour party (assisted by the illiberal and undemocratic Lib Dems) against Christianity, marriage, history, science, language, and everything else that makes up English culture. In fact it was part of a much wider cultural war on Western Civilisation in every country in Europe and in the Americas. It was part of a global war on civilisation everywhere.
Labour-run Haringey Council wants to close down Haringey’s pubs and restaurants. What else are they trying to do with £2,500 fines? No other conclusion is possible. This is what they want to do. It’s not going to be an “unintended consequence”. It’s going to be a deliberate, fully intended consequence. And when they’ve closed down Haringey’s pubs, they’ll then start closing down every other shop that sells anything remotely English as well – like meat, bread, clothes, shoes, furniture. For if they are to eradicate British culture, that is what they must do.
I was suggesting a few days ago that the UK Conservative government was tiptoeing away from the war on smokers that the Labour party had launched on them in 2007. I think today’s news is more evidence of it: the Government has rejected the plans and condemned “Labour’s municipal killjoys” for making the proposal.
If, as some people think, the government will stop at nothing to reduce smoking, it would have welcomed these proposals as another much-needed step towards a healthy, smoke-free utopia. But they didn’t. Instead they called their advocates “killjoys” – which is what I’ve quite often called them, and what they actually are.
Is it at all likely that Marcus Jones, Minister for Local Government, was actually speaking purely for himself, and not for the UK governement? Has he been contradicted by Jeremy Hunt in the Department of Health, or by Theresa May? I can’t find any reports of it. The latest piece of news today is that Jeremy Hunt has…
“…launched an investigation into Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust.”
Nothing about Haringey there.
There can be no doubt that some people in the UK government would like to ban smoking outside pubs as well as inside. But there can equally be no doubt that there are some people in government who don’t want any such thing. Governments aren’t monolithic organisations made up of people who all think and speak in the exact same way. They are made up of lots of individual people with all sorts of different ideas and beliefs and hopes. They are, in short, made up of ordinary people.
Frank Davis 
It strikes me as a way to write in stone the 2007 inside smoking ban. Basically they are saying: ok ok, you win, you can smoke outside. see? we are reasonable. now lets keep things as they are and don’t complain anymore about what was done in 2007.
The whole thing has the unmistakable stench of ‘Europe’ about it .
Lets be quite clear here. If we do not fight to the death any attempt to stop us smoking in pub gardens or outside pubs we are finished.
Also so is the pub as a last bastion of all the values many of us hold dear.
Well it doesn’t seem like the government is interested in banning smoking outside pubs, judging by its response to the proposal. But even if smoking was banned outside pubs, I don’t think we’d be finished.
We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
At last they have openly admitted what we all knew, that banning smokers “lead to massive pub closures”
Which is a step forward.
Well, it’s good that they openly admitted an outdoor smoking ban “would infringe on people’s freedom and lead to pub closures,” but they conveniently ignored the effects of the indoor bans. Are we supposed to believe that the indoor bans had none of these negative effects?
If nothing else, they’ve put their collective foot in their collective mouth and further exposed the hypocrisy.
A small victory, and one to cherish. What I’m afraid of is that the joyless, anti-everything banners won’t take it lying down.
Labour are bloody awful bastards these days, failing utterly to represent the people they initially represented all those years ago. No wonder they’re such a shambles when they keep on coming up with nanny state bullshit like this.
The trouble is currently they are unelectable and will be for the next couple of elections, but these bastards will get their time in power again at some stage, and then they can ram this utter nonsense through. God I truly despise these Labour puritans.
“against christianity”
No. It is against the classical word values, those oc the Hellenic religion, which give science, art, history and everything else which makes Civilization. Christianity does not give these, and besides which christianity exactly are you talking about? The protestant, which is a pseudoreligious heresy and a complete denial of Sacrament? Because the american blogs, that put forward such a monstrous claim, in their ideological campaigns against the US Democrats, refer exclusively to this.
I do not wish to be mistaken for the advocate of a faith I do not have or support – but I cannot not point out that it is only Orthodox christianity, that actually is christianity and retains its genuine and original form [Not that it was ever meant to be a religion, it was simply made as a path, to deal with certain problems at the time.]
What produced civilization in some countries n Europe was NOT christianity however, but the Hellenic worldview and values, along with its gifts of art, music, theatre, mathematics, medicine, architecture etc. etc. It took a long struggle to force some of these to be incorporated into christianity (e.g. the war between iconolaters and iconoclasts, which eventually was won by the iconolaters, therefore painting and sculpting was also forced upon the christians, ending their madness against idol depiction).
It is wrong to attempt to give credit for the gifts of civiization, to those who did everything they could to destroy them. Of course Americans, whose country is founded upon the puritan protestant beliefs, might be excused for their monstrous claims since they lack experience of the classical worldview and values. But such american views should not be transferred here, in this continent, where the foundation is totally different.
The founders of the (United States of ) America were a mix of Deists, Christians and for all I know agnostics, and the first entry in the bill of rights is freedom of religion. Some were tobacco farmers, some drank to excess, none were puritans. As far as puritanical instincts go, I’d agree that American history (not unlike your own) has seesawed between eras of uptight conformism and liberal relaxation, purism and hedonism. What seems to be sweeping the West these days, both your West and mine, is a weird unfathomable mixture of the two in which, for example, a man can piss in a women’s bathroom but can’t have a smoke there –unless, perhaps, it’s medical marijuana.
Oh, and the founders were students of history and well steeped in the classical values. What contemporary Americans (and contemporary Brits) have made of their enlightened heritage can’t be laid at the feet of the founders
PS: And one more thing. It was VERY good that christianity “values” (of whichever version) retreated since the 60’s and onwards. Young girls were being murdered -yes, murdered!- by their own kinsfolk for having a lover, prior to the retreat of christianity. Forced marriages stopped, murders and beating stopped, women stopped being treated like filth if they weren’t …virgins until marriage, and stopped being considered third rate garbage, that wasn’t destined to receive education or go to the university. They were able to dress as they wished (without being slandered and attacked), contraception and abortion became again gradually available (as it was in antiquity – yes, both existed then), and things got better and balanced.
It wasn’t any ‘retreat of christianity’ that caused the contemporary mess, but th spread of scientists and scientificism that broke loose and begun to experiment on people, for enforcing unnatural ‘modifications’, programming, and social and political control. The nazi era beliefs re-emerged among the winners of WWII, who naively believed they could use these pseudoknowledge and erroneously-interpreted pseudodiscoveries for…. “doing good”. Once more the saviour/messiah syndrome getting in the way of true evolution.
We are under a general cultural attack. I’m not going to pick and choose which cultural values I’m going to defend. I’ll defend them all.
Taken a look at the 46 councillors at Haringey and note there are none affiliated to either the Tory of UKIP parties. They’re either Labour or Liberal
And from their appearances as well as (in some cases) their religious beliefs, that relatively few of these councillors have ever set foot in a pub, betting shop, bingo hall or tobacconist.
https://www.minutes.haringey.gov.uk/mgMemberIndex.aspx?bcr=1
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The Daily Express has been more forthright in their interpretation of this subject. In the article they state:
“The proposal appears to be the latest scheme dreamt up under Jeremy Corbyn’s far Left leadership of Labour.
As part of plans for a pan-London Devolution Health Agreement, Labour-led London Councils and the Labour Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, have been asking the Government to give them a range of new powers.”
http://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/791722/Labour-plan-smoking-ban-beer-pub-gardens-restaurants-Jeremy-Corbyn-Sadiq-Khan
As one might expect, the comments are “choice”, with some individuals insinuating that it’s simply a Labour plot to control us, while others don’t hold back, with fairly crude statements about Muslims and the fact they don’t much give a dash about pubs (or bingo halls, or places of mixed leisure).
Of far greater interest to me are the comments that link tobacco control with ISIS. That’s the sort of connection I believe will continue to gain support.
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Also in the comments are a small number of individuals who claim to support the proposed ban on smoking in beer gardens and outdoor eating areas.
I suspected some of them to be your standard issue troll – and yes the comments on the Express article are remarkably similar to those on the Telegraph one.
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On a slightly more sobering note. Cameron stated he saw no need for a ban on smoking in cars and at one stage he didn’t quite see the merit of plain packs.
The question remains if tobacco control will continue to worry this thing until it becomes law? That was the strategy with plain packs and cars.
__
On the face of it, by painting it as a Labour thing, designed to kill jobs and freedoms and such, they are – by implication – acknowledging that tobacco control is indeed a political animal that would prefer a Labour administration. (That’s something I’ve harped on about for years).
And they’ve also acknowledged that smoking restrictions have killed jobs full stop.
—
Taken a look at several media outlets that carried the story. None are in disagreement about the decision.
That said TC and the Health Talking Heads simply do not give a flying fart about public relations or popularity.
My conclusion is this is their testing the waters. Expect a whole series of peer reviewed studies showing it’s a terrible risk to human health and no business anywhere else in the world has gone out of business on account of alfresco smoking bans. (Time perhaps for Velvet Glove to dig out examples that prove otherwise)
Oh and the Scottish administration’ll grab this with both hands. Partly because “the Tories” rejected it and partly because they get a real kick out of abuse of power.
No bar! Smoking ban in beer gardens is blocked by the Government over fears it would spark pub closures
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4410814/Smoking-ban-beer-gardens-blocked-Government.html
209 comments so far.
Cameron stated he saw no need for a ban on smoking in cars and at one stage he didn’t quite see the merit of plain packs
They used Lynton Crosby as a stick to beat Cameron into submission, bear in mind that Cameron was already in a weak position having to share power in a coalition government with the illiberal Lib Dems.
Theresa May has no such problems.
Cameron challenged over Lynton Crosby’s business links after plain cigarette packaging is shelved
12 July 2013
“Labour and Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston argue that the Tory strategist, whose company has close links to the tobacco industry, is to blame for the decision.”
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/07/cameron-challenged-over-lynton-crosbys-business-links-after-plain-cigarette-packagi
Conservatives dismiss Lynton Crosby tobacco link ‘smears’
14 July 2013
“Labour’s questions on whether David Cameron’s elections adviser tried to influence policy on tobacco packaging amount to a “smear”, the chairman of the Conservative Party has said.”
http: //www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23305924
Cigarettes and plain packaging: Cameron ‘makes U-turn’
28 Nov 2013
“Labour previously accused David Cameron of “bringing big tobacco to the heart of Downing Street” by hiring lobbyist Lynton Crosby as a key election adviser.
Mr Crosby denies having “any conversation or discussion” with the prime minister on the issue.”
https://www.channel4.com/news/cigarettes-plain-packaging-smoking-cameron-lynton-crosby
David Cameron urged to support car smoking ban ahead of vote in Commons
9 February 2014
“Pressure grows on prime minister amid new questions over adviser’s links to tobacco industry”
“Monday’s vote on whether to ban smoking in cars carrying children under 18 is being held after the House of Lords backed a Labour amendment in favour of the move.”
https: //www.theguardian.com/society/2014/feb/09/david-cameron-car-smoking-ban
Cameron was already on thin ice over a previous appointment.
Cameron apologises over Andy Coulson appointment
24 June 2014
“Prime Minister David Cameron has apologised for employing Andy Coulson as his director of communications.
“I am extremely sorry I employed him. It was the wrong decision,” he said.
He spoke after the ex-News of the World editor was found guilty at the Old Bailey of conspiring to hack phones between 2000 and 2006.”
Mr Cameron appointed Coulson as his media chief in July 2007 – six months after he had quit as NoW editor on the day the paper’s former royal editor was jailed for four months for phone hacking.
Coulson said he took “ultimate responsibility” for that scandal, even though he maintained he was unaware of any phone hacking by his journalists.
Mr Cameron took Coulson into Downing Street after becoming PM in 2010, only for him to resign in 2011 amid growing allegations about phone hacking during his time as editor.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27998411
From the Sun article quoted by Frank (emphasis mine):
Whoops. Forgot to close my quote.
Wow! This is the closest I’ve heard to date to some form of official recognition of what we on here and others elsewhere have been saying all along. I guess that politicians, being politicians, are never going to come out and say (about anything, not just smoking): “Well, that was a really, really bad policy. Let’s reverse it,” because having virtually all, to a man, voted for the ban, their pride won’t let them admit that they voted the wrong way. But to have them using the very same arguments against anti-smoking campaigners’ demands as we used – fruitlessly, but, as it turned out, correctly – before the indoor ban came in does indicate that at least some politicians are only too aware of exactly what caused the sudden and catastrophic downturn in the pub trade. Maybe they’re not quite as wilfully blind to what’s happening all around them as they make out!
What’s even better is that the antis can’t even argue this time around that lots and lots of non-smokers will flood into pubs to replace the smoking customers, because that’s exactly what they said before the indoor ban, and these politicians have clearly rumbled the fact that it never happened.
The very existence of pubs is anathema to the left , the very idea of people meeting in a non controlled area away from their prying eyes and ears fills them with horror ,and the fact that people might actually enjoy life instead of constantly being harangued by the health lobby concerning their dietary and drinking habits is even harder to bear for the busybody statist tendency who simply cannot keep their noses out of our business.
You have to laugh, if only in a very cynical way as they’ve pulled this kind of stunt so often.
Recent ban on smoking in cars with children receives backing from majority of Scottish smokers
“THE recent ban on smoking in cars with children has received backing from the majority of Scottish smokers, a poll suggests.
Anti-smoking charity, Action on Smoking Health (ASH) Scotland, said that the YouGov survey showed recent legislation and initiatives around smoking and public health were proving “popular” with smokers and non-smokers alike. The survey, which was released by ASH Scotland today, was carried out online, with a total sample size of 1,088 adults in Scotland. It found 91 per cent of smokers supported the ban on smoking in cars with children present.”
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/health/15226288.Recent_ban_on_smoking_in_cars_with_children_receives_backing_from_majority_of_Scottish_smokers/
ASH Board of Trustees
Peter Kellner
“Peter Kellner is a political commentator and President of YouGov”
http://ash.org.uk/about/ash-board-of-trustees/
If 91% of smokers really supported a ban on smoking in their own cars with children present, then they wouldn’t be doing it in the first place and there was no need for yet another law restricting even further the places that they are still allowed to smoke.
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