By Colin Grainger
And so the festering corpse that is the smoker ban continues to infect, continues to poison, continues to kill.
How many businesses have to catch its virulent and fatal disease before someone with the authority to affect change does something?
Take a look at the linked report. On the face of it, we have just added 15 good people to the dole-queue. Dig a little deeper, and we find that the disease has infected a great many more people. The 350 weekly visitors, the 40 or 50 tradesmen and women that depended on the bingo hall for a living, the cab companies that got customers there and back home safely, the local bus company that also transported customers, the nearby pubs that people went to for a swift drink before going in, and for a swift pint before heading home. Now we're at around 500 people affected. It gets worse. The Chancellor of the Exchequer loses around £780,000 per year for each bingo hall that shuts down. Anyone want to guess where the shortfall comes from? Could it be the already beleagured taxpayers, perhaps?
The report tells us of additional pub closures in Fleetwood, and they finish off by telling us that Gala and Rank between them have closed a further 15 bingo halls.
Let's do the sums.
In terms of people, and their lost jobs, destroyed social lives, and those that depended on the bingo halls, we can estimate around 7,500 lives affected by this useless smoker ban. And that's just the bingo halls. This is in addition to the 40 pubs we lose each and every week.
And the tax revenues? From the sixteen closures mentioned it is around £12.5 million per year. Again, who picks up the tab for that? And in the current climate, is it really wise to wave bye-bye to this much needed revenue?
The report notes that one culprit is internet gambling. The smart money says that the popularity of internet gambling soared about ten seconds after the smoker ban was enacted.
This is not rocket science.
Deprive adults of a place to gather socially, and smoke, if they choose to, and the result is as plain as the nose on your face,
Closure after closure after closure.
If you were tasked with closing as many pubs, clubs, cafes and bingo halls as you could, there is no finer way to achieve your mission than by enacting a vindictive, spiteful, unnecessary, unjustifiable smoker ban.
Good work, HMG!
Thank you, Zealots!
Those employees are protected now, eh?
All the way to the bloody welfare office.
Link To Story>>
