I've just been visited by a husband and wife team from the borough council's 'Environmental Response Team' ~ the 'smoking police' to you and I. I could not help but speculate what kind of domestic bliss such a coupling must be. The thought of a couple dedicating their professional endeavours to 'Environmental Response' is a new challenge. Do they, for example, sleep with their uniforms by their beds, like Batman and Robin, just in case of an emergency response? Do they have emergency beacons on their cars? Do they lie awake anticipating heroic scenarios where they save society in the nick of time? Do they wander past pubs and sniff? Can they help themselves? (I have often thought that EHOs, for example, could not possibly indulge in anything as disgusting and unclean as sexual intercourse because of the possible risk of infection). I don't know - and I digress.
It seems that someone has mischievously removed all the No Smoking signs from my pub. All of them. Well, all right, I didn't actually put them up but I've been told off. For the second time. And now they are going to tell the brewery. They are threatening prosecution.
No one has ever smoked, or attempted to smoke, in here since July 1. The signs are a horrible negative and unnecessary statement which I do not want to display.
For the past weeks I have studied with interest the debate about smoking in the press and on the net and particularly on the forum here. It strikes me that there are plenty of skirmishes around. Some licensees blatantly flout the law. Some are being quite discreet. The pro ban lobby argue that the ban is there, let's get on with business. The anti lobby argue about the unfairness of it and the need to mobilise. Throughout the debate is the question about what financial effect the ban will have on specific businesses and trade as a whole. Some claim almost evangelically how liberating and beneficial the ban is. Some talk of the desperate plight some pubs face, particularly in the bleak period around winter. Without doubt the seriousness of it is not being underestimated.
So when Mr & Mrs Environmental Response want to enforce such a trivial matter I want to put it up against the serious issues we face and try and make some sense of it.
I suppose both the banning of smoking and the obligation for signage are legal requirements. It is just that one is a stupid, unnecessary and over-reaction to a possible problem and the other is a dumb piece of signage.
And I was stupid enough to think this debate might go away. Any speculation as to when it might end?