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.
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4 comments:
Well said Colin. All too often the politicains and media just look at the headline closure figures - what about the secondary industries that have been affected as well?
They definitely can't see longer than their nose.
Good job you can and millions of others to remind them.
Just for a moment think of the jobs the Government have created/saved.
We have an enormous and expensive smoking cessation empire bought and paid for by the taxpayer.
Pharmaceutical companies can maintain employment levels through the direct promotion of their ineffective products by Government advertising.
Many of us can suffer immediate dismissal for failure in our jobs but these people can work at an acceptable 98% failure rate and be commended!!!
By sucking up to the Government and protecting their 'truths' the BBC can be sure of funding and retaining jobs. The ITV companies may be having a tough time but by accepting Government as its second highest advertiser they must toe-the-line to retain jobs.
We have whistleblowers losing their jobs when they reveal uncomfortable truth so surely the alternative is secure employment by supporting Government lies and misinformation.
So-called Charity workers with the single task of creating a so-called sound basis for Government wishes are solely dependent upon Government funding for continued employment.
I'm sure you can name many more propaganda based secondary industries and each one of these is an insult to those citizens whose needs, wishes and efforts are ignored by 'those who know best'.
I take it that freedom2choose.blogspot.com was unavailable. Who's got it?
Pity it's illegal to advertise tobacco. It would be great to see a strip of cigarette ads down the side. I wonder if it's possible to reproduce old tobacco adverts as "items of historical interest"? Would it, for example, also be illegal to reproduce a photo a Times Square in New York in 1960 in which there were a few prominent billboards advertising tobacco?
Just wondering...
Idlex - We must accept that Government now censor and hide historical fact to fit its idealisms.
They even think it is their right to censor citizens by ignoring our rights, opinions and even our existence.
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