"Ban exemplifies everything that is wrong with Labour"

Friday February 1, 2008

Rod Liddle hates the smoking ban more than the Iraq war

“This week,” writes Rod Liddle in The Spectator, “we have been bombarded with statistics about how the smoking ban, introduced exactly six months ago, has not remotely damaged the pub trade, but has resulted in millions upon millions of people giving up smoking – so that cancer is now a thing of the past.

“Only an imbecile would swallow the statement that our pub trade has not been catastrophically reduced as a direct result of the smoking ban. If you doubt this for a second, look at your local pub: what do your eyes tell you? In the summer and autumn, the pubs were indeed a strange sight to behold — almost entirely empty inside, everyone crowded on the pavement either to smoke, or to talk to their friends who smoked.

“As winter bit down, the crowds outside the pubs dispersed, but there were no greater numbers of people sitting at the tables inside. They were all at home, drinking and smoking, sticking large needles into effigies of [government minister Dawn] Primarolo and the former health secretary Pat Hewitt.”

Full article here:
The Spectator/Rod Liddle/Smoking Ban