That begs the question; what do you consider ” reasonably priced” ?

I suppose what I really meant was “priced similarly to the average bar”. I didn’t like being charged a premium for clean air. There were, at the time, two non-smoking bars to my knowledge: Arcadia and Oxygen. They were the two of the most expensive bars I knew of, and Arcadia was far out of my way.

I don’t mean “If there was a reasonably priced bar anywhere in Leeds then it would be okay” but I personally wouldn’t care so much. Realistically, if it doesn’t affect me personally somehow, the plight of smoke-breathing bar staff ranks pretty low on my mental ‘World Problems Priority List’.

I oppose smoking bans for one simple reason ; they prevent consenting adults from enjoying a legal product inside privately owned buildings.
It`s that simple really… consenting adults, legal product, privately owned buildings.Are you opposed to this idea?

That is a good argument, and obviously in principle I agree, but you being pragmatic about things, the ideal is not always the right thing to do and in this case the fact is that there’s no way to survive without an income and there’s often no way to get a suitable income without a job, so these ‘privately owned buildings’ are ones that people have no choice but to enter and I think it’s reasonable based on that to make a few inconsiderate people stand outside rather than fill them up with smoke.

When you patronized pubs before the smoking ban, were you really worried about your health?

Not especially. I hated that I couldn’t wear the same coat to work the next day. But then, I spent a few hours there a few nights a week. (I was a student.) That’s not the same thing as working there and having the repeated exposure that comes with working there.

Sorry, I`ll get to the point now. I oppose smoking bans for one simple reason ; they prevent consenting adults from enjoying a legal product inside privately owned buildings.
It`s that simple really… consenting adults, legal product, privately owned buildings.Are you opposed to this idea?It seems that many are these days. If you truly are, then, enjoy, it`s your world now lad.

One final question…. When you patronized pubs before the smoking ban, were you really worried about your health?

Also, the advert below it is currently showing a lovely picture of a smoking shelter.

There are countless teams, clubs, leagues, organizations and groups one can join that exist completely away from pub life.

That’s true unless you’re stuck in a job that only ends at 7PM. Then you’re at home or in the pub. Or a bar. Or a club. Or…

What would you consider a reasonable number of non smoking venues?Would it be a hard number,like five per square mile? If so, after the number of non smoking venues is reached, could some smoking pubs attempt to do business?Or does it have to be a percentage?If so can it be less than 100 per cent?

You’re going to try to draw me into some ridiculous quota-based suggestions here, aren’t you? Put it this way: if there had ever been a non-smoking pub within practical walking distance of my house, or even a reasonably priced non-smoking pub or bar anywhere in Leeds I probably wouldn’t care so much about the ban. There wasn’t.

A ‘hard number’ would be a masterstroke, though — you’d have rural councils being required by law to open pubs in the middle of the country for the benefit of one farmer.

You then say we should assume that people can`t just get another job.Why should we assume that? People can and do get other jobs. When was the last time you where served a pint by a sixty-three year old barmaid,looking forward to retirement after slinging drinks for forty years?

Well, for the record it was last Thursday, but that’s in no way relevant.

The example I gave was, as I recall, students. I know a lot of students, postgrads and mature students, and none are in their sixties. Bar work is ideal for students: it’s not too hard, there’s a lot of it near (and in) universities, and the hours fit in neatly around even a 9-5 lecture timetable so it’s generally about the only thing they can practically do. It would seem to me fantastically harsh to say “we want 50% of young people to go to university”, and then take away their grants, and then fill the only workplace they can reasonably enter to get some money back with carcinogenic gases. I don’t think you can justify that by arguing that some people enjoy the carcinogenic gases.

Finally you say that opening your own pub is the least practical idea ever.Why?

Oh my god.

First, I’d have to get a big loan to buy the place. Then I’d have to look into how to run a pub. I’d have to look into all the various employment rules (although not for some reason the one about having toxic gases in the workplace which was perversely suspended for pubs). I’d have to hire staff and learn how to pay wages. I’d have to quit my job, which I like, and I’d have to find a location. And after all that, I may very will lose all my money — there are very few independent pubs around and there must be a reason for that. And then, presumably, I’d have to get all my friends to go to this new bar instead of their usual haunts, or else I wouldn’t be able to get any benefit.

If you really think that’s a practical alternative to just putting up with the smoke for a bit, then you’re so utterly moronic that it doesn’t seem worth engaging with you.

Oddly enough, I`d love the chance to service the other 20%, but it`s no longer allowed.It`s illegal for me to even try.

Is it? My word, I hadn’t noticed.

You then say we should assume that people can`t just get another job.Why should we assume that? People can and do get other jobs. When was the last time you where served a pint by a sixty-three year old barmaid,looking forward to retirement after slinging drinks for forty years?

Next you claim that the law forbids slowly killing people even if they don`t mind.This is true unless you`re the government. Despite many different campaigns explaining,in detail, how deadly smoking can be, they still allow the sale of tobacco.( I realize of course, that this isn`t your fault)It`s the ” slowly killing people” part with which I take issue. The science simply can`t support such a statement. The best(or worst) you can say about second hand smoke,using only the most damning studies, is that it can increase the risk of contracting a disease that might kill you.

Finally you say that opening your own pub is the least practical idea ever.Why? This is the essence of the free market.With an 80% share of the market you`d think a non smoking pub would be a goldmine.Oddly enough, I`d love the chance to service the other 20%, but it`s no longer allowed.It`s illegal for me to even try.

Well, that’s ridiculous for a start. Working in a pub for three years, I can tell you that this isn’t the case. The only two smokers in our staff is the barlady that nobody likes and the landlady. In the first two years of working there, the whole staff had to put up with leaving our shifts with clothes that stunk of smoke. This was after *work*, so we didn’t even get the chance of having a fun night drinking. The reason why the landlord (who has never smoked) didn’t ban it was because, well, that would have been an even MORE rubbish idea, and we would have had the shitest income any pub has ever seen.

Back in the day, you couldn’t really ban smoking from a pub without putting a sign above the door stating “Abandon All Hope Ye All Enter Here”. This was because a lot of people who go to the typical “old man’s pub” are, in the majority, old men. Old men like to smoke. It’s true. I’ve never seen an old man with a nicotine patch. Not in my area anyway.

My favourite thing from the whole affair is one old man coming up to me in August and yelling “Ooh, it’s a bloody disgrace this government! Taking away our right to smoke! What will they do next? Not allowing us to BREATHE?”

…

Every single non-smoker in an environment where smoking used to be permitted was there by their own choice

That would be true were there a reasonable alternative. Socialisation is a basic human need, and in the absence of a reasonable number of non-smoking venues, we’re not there by choice.

If staff don’t want to work in an environment where they will have to breath in smoke, then that’s a matter between them and the management.

That would be true if smoke was harmless or people worked purely for pleasure. You have to assume that people can’t just get another job. Bar work is easy to find and to do, and it’s a common resort for students who need work with strange hours and short contracts. They’re not there by choice.

what adults willingly do on private property is frankly none of the government’s business

That would also be true if smoke was harmless. Regardless of whose property you’re on, the law of this country doesn’t allow you to kill people, however slowly, just because they don’t mind. And if it did, you’d need a lot more “consent” than the absence of a sign.

If there were no non-smoking pubs in your town, then why did you not approach your friendly bank manager with a proposal for a business opportunity, and open your own pub?

Congratulations: that might just be the least practical suggestion ever.

Smoking is a filthy habit, but what adults willingly do on private property is frankly none of the government’s business — and especially when that private property happens to be a members-only club.

I believe it should be entirely up to the publican / restarateur to decide whether or not smoking is permitted in their establishment. If, as suggested by the number of people gushing things like “At long last, I will be able to enjoy a drink in a pub without smelling like an old ashtray” pre-ban, there is genuine customer demand for non-smoking establishments, such places would be successful.

Because the truth is, smokers were never forcing non-smokers to breath their second-hand smoke. Every single non-smoker in an environment where smoking used to be permitted was there by their own choice: customers already knew before they went in, from the absence of “No Smoking” signs, that smoking would be permitted; and staff could always have asked about smoking policy during their job interview. If you were warned but did it anyway, whose fault is that?

If there were no non-smoking pubs in your town, then why did you not approach your friendly bank manager with a proposal for a business opportunity, and open your own pub? There was never a law that you couldn’t eject customers for smoking.

If staff don’t want to work in an environment where they will have to breath in smoke, then that’s a matter between them and the management. They can always withdraw their labour (maybe even go and work in one of those non-smoking bars that would have sprung up like mushrooms when the non-smokers decided to do something about it); and if the management can find anyone to replace them, well, more power to them.

I’m pretty sure that quotes found on someones site are still those person’s quotes, and not the site creator’s.

That quote is from an email Hitt sent me.

So if one science fails to prove you right, use something else?

Yes. If the first science had proved me wrong then I’d have said “oh, then I’m wrong”. It didn’t; it (arguably) failed to answer the question at all. You can’t prove a null-hypothesis simply by failing to reject it. So you try another method until you find one that works. I’m astonished that you would consider this contentious. I cannot being to fathom how your mind must work.

Too bad modern medicine doesn’t share your position, huh?

That would indeed be a problem, were it true. Presuming you looked at a reputable journal (which is at best moderately likely from a Google-meta-analysis), then if those studies weren’t valid then they wouldn’t have been funded, accepted by an ethics committee or published.

let me rephrase your words a little more clearly: “A smaller RR is not evidence, but it is still evidence”. err, what?

Congratulations on inventing the most obvious straw-man argument ever.

which is not what an epidimiological study means at all.

Surely all I did there was to quote the result of the experiment?

to use your dice analogy, that’s like throwing a die 6 million times, getting a six 1,250,000 times, and announcing to everyone the die is loaded.

Good analogy. Let’s apply standard stats to that, shall we?

Right, the number of sixes is predicted by the binomial distribution, and the odds of getting a quarter of a million excess sixes can be calculated. Once calculated, though, it can’t be easily displayed because it’s so close to zero. This is called a p-value. It is quite different to an RR and this one is so low that there is not a scientist on Earth who wouldn’t upon seeing it immediately reject the null hypothesis that this is an unbiased die. This analogy perfectly demonstrates my point that a low RR can be statistically significant if you have a large enough N.

What was your point, exactly?

and I shall quote Hitt right back at you ”

I’m pretty sure that quotes found on someones site are still those person’s quotes, and not the site creator’s. i actually had another friend who was skeptical about the seemingly high required RR. we googled a medical jounrla, and looked at the studies. sure enough, they all fit the criteria, with ones with LOW RR being announced as “inconclusive”

“What this means is that if you take that threshold then it is impossible to assess the risks of second hand smoke using epidemiology.”

So if one science fails to prove you right, use something else?

“My position is that this does nothing to invalidate the epidemiological studies that have been done.”

Too bad modern medicine doesn’t share your position, huh?

“What it means is that when we look at a conclusion like “our paper suggests that passive smoking increases the risk of cancer by 25%” you have to think “but is that because of the smoke?”. A smaller RR is not conclusive on its own but it is still evidence. ”

let me rephrase your words a little more clearly: “A smaller RR is not evidence, but it is still evidence”. err, what?

People who are exposed to environmental smoke seem to get cancer 25% more often

which is not what an epidimiological study means at all. to use your dice analogy, that’s like throwing a die 6 million times, getting a six 1,250,000 times, and announcing to everyone the die is loaded.

http://www.apathysketchpad.com/blog/2007/09/24/dave-hitt-is-still-a-twat/

Look what Hitt’s done now: http://www.davehitt.com/blog2/2007/07/19/the-20000-tax-increase/

Here is the title and first paragraph of this entry:

The 20,000% tax increase.
No, that is not a misprint. Congress is trying to implement a tax increase that will be 20,0000% in some cases.

The extra B is for “BYOBB”. The ironing is delicious. And other decreasingly relevant Simpsons quotes.

I expect he’ll fix it soon enough.