Back when the smoking ban came in one of the things I mused about with my wife and others at the pub was how it would effect dance culture. The rise of the superclub with all-nighters like The End run by Mr C is what replaced the free party movement, and in July, with the advent of a smoking ban in clubs, I couldn't help but wonder if the pendulum would swing back.After all, club and dance culture is, and remains, a very drug oriented one. And where there are amphetamines, there will inevitably be weed and tobacco. A smoker who is off their box on a pill is going to smoke like a chimney. "Back in the day", to use a horrible cliche, I could easily get through 40 cigarettes in a night when on ecstasy, so I can't imagine that Club Land and the Smoking Ban go hand in hand.
Thus I came to the conclusion that partying, and more precisely, illegal partying would see a revival, and so it comes to pass. Never Stop The Party are now squatting in abandoned buildings to claim brief property rights. They are shamelessly stealing portaloos for their parties (and returning them clean afterwards), in order to host raves for the those that feel the authoritarian world in which we now live is becoming a little too much for them.
Yes they are breaking the law. And yes if they get caught they will pay the consequence. But you have to admire them for wanting to be free to party (as well as smoke). I bet there is another Criminal Justice Bill to tighten the law and stop them from having a good time.
15 comments:
strangely enough, in my ecstasy days, i found that my smoking would go DOWN to almost nothing , especially if i was on a really nice, memory sapping pill like an Adam & Eve or a Love Dove.
simply put, it was just too much effort to remember which pocket your ciggies were in so you couldnt be arsed reaching into to pocket, getting a cigarette out and lighting it. When your vision is so blurred and whacked out , lighting a cigarette becomes an almost impossible task.
but agreed on your general premise - i see underground illegal parties starting up again. There are indications from Ireland that under-21 smoking levels have actually INCREASED since the ban. Its a mixture of natural rebelling - but also the rise of "smirting" - flirting & smoking outside the pub.
i would love to be a teenager again - the opportunities for chatting up members of the opposite sex have rocketed since the smoking ban. expect high rises in sexually transmitted diseases and teenage pregnancies...
law of unintended consequences and all that.
Good, I'm all in favour, as long as they're not poisoning the fucking rest of us they can kill themselves quietly.
"you have to admire them for wanting to be free"
how can their desire 'to be free' be reconciled with the property rights of the other person/people involved?
"Good, I'm all in favour, as long as they're not poisoning the fucking rest of us they can kill themselves quietly."
Are you against the smoking ban then Bob? You seem to be suggesting that if people wish to consent to smoke in an enclosed place with each other than that is fine. So presumably you wouldn't have a problem with a Smoking Bar existing? Or would you be concerned in that respect about the "worker" even if they smoked and consented themselves?
how can their desire 'to be free' be reconciled with the property rights of the other person/people involved?
If you're referring to the smoking issue then it's obviously about consent. Is that what you were referring too?
Mr Piper "Good, I'm all in favour, as long as they're not poisoning the fucking rest of us they can kill themselves quietly."
Gentlemen and (in these EnLightened Times) Ladies
Ah ... mmm .... how tough and macho ... but just ponder pour un moment - "they" just don't kill themselves Quietly
"they" commonly have wives and children and grandparents and (with the recent emancipation of Ladies into domineering and smoking) husbands .... err and partners and ex-wives
* "they" (like Aids=patients) take a long & expensive time a-dying, lasting sometimes for over 15/20 years
* living reduced & breathless life-styles
* dismayed relatives watching a gradual & dolorous decline, until the breathing and the heart stops
* and even the National Health Service's apparently unlimited funding under this Dreary Government (inshallah, may It rule for ever) is exhausting, under the twin blows of having to give palliative treatment to such avoidable illnesses and the breathtakingly wilful dysfunctional mismanagement of the NHS (all those puir wee GPs - the more you pay them, the less they do)
AND btw
Parents should not have to bury their Children - how many Parents have had to bury their Children and are going to have to bury their Choildren because of that obnoxious Poison, which the otherwise sagacious Mr Dizzy so lightly describes as Ecstasy
Ecstasy is not just an entertaining freedom-loving Enjoyment - it kills people and damages minds
I have the honour to remain your obedient servant etc
G Eagle
There has only ever been one serious trial bout the effects if passive smoking .It s was in the US and tracked 60,000 people over a generation. It found no statistically significant evidence of health from passive smoking . ( C Booker)
The amount in the air is tiny and bar staff are not dropping like flies. The Insures know best and their rate for industrial accident and illness for bar staff is about 0.3% ,the rate for a builder would be about 0.75% now and a scaffolder , from example , 3%( premium as calculated on wage roll). A ever multi dimensional risk landscapes are torn out of context mystified and outright lied about . DO we stio building , football drving for aliving . These are choices .The usual excuse for crazy illiberal idea is that it falling in line with Europe , as if that was a good thing In this case we are way ahead and its interesting that we are more coercive in this area than most.
I trace this back to the working class temperance movement and strong association of low church Puritanism with Labour . This was born from the plague Gin and spirits ,available for the first time to the poor, in the Nineteenth century, wrought on new urban populations . A historic catastrophe I unlike any other countries experience of the demon booze hard to imagine now and comparable only with the worst drugs excesses of well known blogger Dizzy.
This is why we and the US are out ahead of the prescription pack( of fags ) for once and behind the little cuckoo clock fascists of the continent . It is the spirit of Labour as ever that is the root of all evil and a deeper schism between the roundhead and the cavalier in which ,we cavaliers , gorgeously garbed in romance and plumes of magical smoke , are hunted to extinction. Behind it is the old Labour wish to kill the pub that hated sub state meeting place where people say terrible things to each other like . “ I liked it better the way it was “…..Perfidy!
It is clear that smoking is not the only motive because Pubs are not allowed to make the Garden comfortable with heaters and TVs….
So Piper`s remarks is incorrect facially and shallow in its understanding . It must be awful for him having me wandering around this place knowing more than him about absolutely everything . I only hope if he finally loses it and wishes to kill me he passive smokes me to death.
All The best
G Eagle that is a feeble argument . The NHS is financed by smokers and risk takers of all kinds. Think of the implications of what you are saying .Corollary pain attends all risk. 20,000 people seriously injured or dead a year from motor accidents ...and their weeping relatives . Answer. ban driving obviously. Refuse medical care to those with points naturally . Relatives and their weeping is no business of the state . What next a rule against being sad ? Hitler ( Godwin’s law prize please) banned the minor key from Music …is that what you think another 3000 new rules will achieve. The end of sadness?
Insanity. Ought to be a law against it , and any one who does not take the trouble to be sane should be denied therapy !!! This means you G Eagle
This could easily transcend into a debate on which are the most harmful drugs. Booze, Ecstasy or Tobacco.
The government banned smoking for our own good.
I love the government and want them to look after me, right down to the detail.
I want the government to ban us from unhealthy foods, alcohol, television, the internet, doing anything risky and from doing anything else which might affect how useful our organs will be in the event of our death - our bodies are, after all, just shells and the state should be able to dictate how we use them and how they recycle us - it's good, it's green and it's best for us.
The government only wants what's best for us all and I can't understand why some people seem so intent on making them out to be evil, stalinist, control freak scum...
What is it about smoking that drives the fanaticism of the smokists? Their zeal seems to me to be grossly over stated. Weird.
wonderfulforhisage wait until your favourite vice falls under Cyclops' spotlight...
Zorro
Meneer Dizzy
“[The perceptive & sagacious Herr NeuMenschia] will give you a very pretty notion of me and will teach you and your discriminating Visitors not to believe a word I say
I am particularly unlucky in meeting with a person so well able to expose my real superficiality in a part of the [blogoshere] where I had hoped to pass myself off with some degree of credit
However, as is usual after Herr N's comments, this Eagle is much better informed and greatly appreciates the incisive robustness of his observations
... but lingering suspicion still nags ...
... what contribution did passive smoking play in Mr Roy Castle's much-regretted death from Lung Cancer ...
Perhaps (although one is always reluctant to admit it) Monsieur Roberto Pipero has "une pointe"
Tot siens
G Eagle
wonderful, it's not the smoking that does it. The fact of the matter is that the smoking ban has been implemented all over the UK successfully in that there are very few examples of breaches - whether you or I or anyone else thinks that's a bad thing is totally academic.
The zeal you see is from the odd person who sees the smoking ban as an insiduous step towards the state deciding on what we can and cannot do. In Glasgow they hand out Gold and Silver certificates to people who agree to not smoke in either particular rooms or their entire home. I can't vouch for other areas.
That's madness.
I'm perfectly happy to obey the law on smoking. I don't like it, but I accept it, in the same way I accept the law on speeding, drink driving or leaving the house in the nude - I might be happy to do it, but others are not and the majority gets to decide.
What I can't abide is the way this law was brought in. There was a perfectly acceptable compromise (and all politics really is, is compromise) that would have allowed businesses to run establishments that allowed smokers to indulge themselves. There are places in the UK where it's acceptable to drive at high speed or go naked, and drink driving works under a limitation system.
This was ignored for the 'greater good'. Only facists and nazis used to create laws that completely ignored the need for freedom to choose.
So if you want to call me weird for wishing to have a choice in how the place I live is ran, you go ahead, but when something you do which the government decides is ant-social comes to the top of the agenda, don't come crying about it.... deal?
"What is it about smoking that drives the fanaticism of the smokists? Their zeal seems to me to be grossly over stated. Weird."
ha ha ha..... pull the other one, the only fanaticism i've ever seen is from the anti-smoking lobby.
fucks sake - lets get down to basics - this is about GOVERNMENT telling us what or what not to do. and i am fucking sick to death of it.
Ecstasy is not just an entertaining freedom-loving Enjoyment - it kills people and damages minds
Bollocks.
Do you have indisputable proof? I know the answer to that, and I know that you wish you could say 'yes'.
The police managed to kill proportionally far more citizens in car chases last year than MDMA did (not necessarily in car chases, but through poisoning). I'm going to enjoy wheeling that statistic out for some time to come...
Anyhoo, the effect of smoking in a clubbing environment is such that clubbers are taking to clandestine smoking in venues, largely because the fuckwits who implemented the smoking ban failed to look at the implications on licensing. So, we now have a situation where venues licensed until, say, 6am are stopping people from leaving the premises at, say, 2am because the venue license stipulates such restrictions. Clever, eh?
Winter will be interesting...
What's your bag, musically, Dizzy?
Post a Comment