Thousands of council workers are to police the new smoking ban. Herr Flick would have been proud.
Thousands of council staff are being trained to police the smoking ban in bars, restaurants and shops in England.
Ministers have given councils £29.5m to pay for staff, who will be able to give on-the-spot £50 fines to individuals and take court action against premises.
Not content with generating over 3,000 new offences, our totalitarian masters are to send local council workers into pubs and clubs to police the ban.
A ban, I might add that does not apply to those who have passed it into law. I’m struggling to find an expression worthy of such a bunch of controlling, hypocritical, vicious evil thugs that comprise this hateful government, but am failing. The English language is insufficient to describe their outrageous cozenage.
Listening to the radio this morning, I heard it stated that they will photograph or video offenders to use as evidence. The perps will then be hit with a £50 fine. Terry Wogan quipped that this is a replacement source of revenue for the lost tobacco tax that will be an inevitable consequence of thousands of addicts being “helped” to kick the habit. Ah, the old carrot and stick. The trouble is this government hasn’t grasped one simple principle; that tobacco being a legal drug is used by people who choose to smoke and do not necessarily want to kick it; nor do they necessarily want the patronising offers of “help”. Some of them smoke because they like it and it is no one’s business but theirs. And, whether we smoke or not, some of us do not want a modern Gestapo or Stasi spying on our every move and reporting minor transgressions and verboten activity to the state. Didn’t we fight a war to keep the Fascists at bay? Looks like the fifth column got through after all.
Indeed, so incensed am I by yet another example of the state seeking to spy upon us I am almost tempted to take up the habit just to spit in their eye. Unfortunately, I dislike smoking. Less, however, than I dislike the state and its odious minions.
This, people, is your tax pounds at work, all twenty nine and a half million of them.
Is it against the new law to strike matches simulaneously with sucking sweet cigarettes?
Best regards
Hi Longrider:
Well, you could light up, hold the cigarette (although I’d use a cigar–more masculine), and let the ash fall without, as Bill Clinton would put it, ‘ever inhaling’. I guarantee the Nosey Parkers would come running. Indeed, they might trip over the Fat Polizei, the M&S Stazi, and whomever else might be in the neighborhood. An actual, real police officer might even show up.
Yours is one of the few blogs to directly attack this Government, and I commend you for it. How we ever reached a situation in which a bunch of second-rate lawyers and time-serving jobsworths have gained so much power over their betters escapes me.
But if you think of it, we have simply substituted one form of aristocracy for another–and give the old regime this: they were generally very tolerant of private activities so long as you didn’t ‘rock the boat’.
In fact–this is an astonishing thing–the late 18th and early 19th centuries were arguably MORE free in some respects, at least regarding social behavior, than our society today. None of this ‘regulation’ of every human activity: so long as you didn’t spook the horses, or rob/murder/maim others, you were pretty free to run your shop, booze it up of an evening, and smoke to your hearts content. You could even ogle women in the street without being served an ASBO.
In essence, we live in a state which is demonstrably authoritarian, and now verging on outright totalitarianism. The only cure, so far as I can see, would lie in forming a new, genuinely libertarian (or free-market conservative) political party, and gaining enough clout to vote it into power.
Perhaps a formal, written Constitution would help, too.
However, I suspect the only practical answer will be to emigrate, removing oneself from this Government’s jurisdiction entirely. And an increasing number of Britons are doing just that….
Here’s a thought. I’m not sure, but Nigel Sedgwick’s comment (above) may be referring to this:
See if you can find ‘joke/gag’ cigarettes–the type that look real, and when you puff they emit a realistic cloud of ‘smoke’ (I think it’s actually chalk dust?).
Then, stand on a high street corner, one foot propped back on the lamp post in the best James Dean style, puffin’ away.
To finish the ensemble, you could buy yourself a bottle of ginger beer–the dark brown glass is eerily similar to real beer–and be sure to hold it in such a way as to obscure the label. Take big swigs; repeat.
I once did this in front of my workplace; the reaction was quite funny, to say the least.
The Health Act 2006 dos not just apply to tobacco:
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/ACTS/acts2006/60028–b.htm#1
There is also a power to take samples of substances for analysis.
However I cannot see any legal justification or powers for Directed Surveillance for covert photography of smokers and non-smokers.
The idea of enforcing the smoking ban and regulations on no smoking signs to licensed premises, office buildings, factories etc. may well be workable.
Applying it to individual alleged smokers in no smoking areas is fraught with difficulties, not least the lack of any powers for “authorised enforcement officers” under the Health Act 2006, of stop, search of people or vehicles, or arrest, or the power to demand the name and address from a suspect who are definitely not Police Constables.
However, Police Forces are not listed as “Enforcement Authorities” under the Health Act 2006 statutory instruments, so a Police Constable cannot issue a Fixed Penalty Notice for smoking in a non-smoking area.
Applying the smoking ban to workplace vehicles also does not seem to have been thought through properly – which Local Authority is responsible for a moving vehicle, especially one which travels between different Local Authority areas ?
What about UK ships, boats and aeroplanes ?
What about UK military naval vessels and aeroplanes ?
What about foreign ships, boats and planes ?
How is any of this proposed snooping on individuals, which amounts to Directed Surveillance under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, in any way Proportionate for a non-criminal offence Fixed penalty Notice set at £50 (discounted to £30 for prompt payment) ?
See
Snooping on smokers and non-smokers in a public place