Smoking ban

[travelling mr pastry]

Isn't it just a question of the harm it does to others? While drinking and eating fatty food don't have direct toxic effects on others, smoking clearly does. What you do to yourself is one thing but to inflict it on others is definitely another. If you had a relative who had died from a passive smoking-related illness as I have you may feel differently about it.

It's interesting that you mention a breathing ban in your list of 'what next'. Access to non-polluting air for all to breathe in covered public places is what the smoking ban is all about. I'll defend your overall right to smoke, drink, inhale, snort or inject what you want into yourself absolutely, but given the proven effect that smoking has on others I don't see what your problem is about the ban.

Btw, the safety argument is a good one too. Just because it has not happened before does not mean it is not a serious threat at crowded venues. We had not had a tube station go up in flames before Kings Cross or a football stand before Bradford. In both the source of ignition was linked to smoking.

The festival is a massive open area where you can smoke in well over 90% of the available space.

[elias]

Isn't it just a question of the harm it does to others? While drinking and eating fatty food don't have direct toxic effects on others, smoking clearly does. What you do to yourself is one thing but to inflict it on others is definitely another. If you had a relative who had died from a passive smoking-related illness as I have you may feel differently about it.

It's interesting that you mention a breathing ban in your list of 'what next'. Access to non-polluting air for all to breathe in covered public places is what the smoking ban is all about. I'll defend your overall right to smoke, drink, inhale, snort or inject what you want into yourself absolutely, but given the proven effect that smoking has on others I don't see what your problem is about the ban.

Btw, the safety argument is a good one too. Just because it has not happened before does not mean it is not a serious threat at crowded venues. We had not had a tube station go up in flames before Kings Cross or a football stand before Bradford. In both the source of ignition was linked to smoking.

The festival is a massive open area where you can smoke in well over 90% of the available space.

[fur_q]

Tbh whatever your veiws on the ban flouting it will put GF's licence at risk so it's a pretty shitty and selfish thing to do..

I spent loads of time in tented venues in DV last year and it wasn't any real hardship to walk outside of the tent when I wanted to smoke even in the pissing rain on Thursday night

[Mmmm Beer]

For some reason even before the ban, I was always stopped from smoking in the acoustic tent, fire hazard I presume but no idea why that one was enforced.

Last year when it was raining on Thursday night we were in the Caribbean Bar at the bottom of Big Ground. I as gagging for a smoke so lit up and was immediately followed by just about everybody else in the tent, from what I remember it remained a ‘smoking’ tent for the rest of the weekend.

Of course if someone had complained I would have happily gone outside, but everybody seemed chilled and happy.

[travelling mr pastry]

For some reason even before the ban, I was always stopped from smoking in the acoustic tent, fire hazard I presume but no idea why that one was enforced.

Last year when it was raining on Thursday night we were in the Caribbean Bar at the bottom of Big Ground. I as gagging for a smoke so lit up and was immediately followed by just about everybody else in the tent, from what I remember it remained a ‘smoking’ tent for the rest of the weekend.

Of course if someone had complained I would have happily gone outside, but everybody seemed chilled and happy.

[pie_and_a_pint]

anyone who complains about someone smoking at glastonbury is a c**t, no other way of putting it

[travelling mr pastry]

Well, I'll happily admit to being a c**t, then... Aside from the fire risk and the risk to other people's health, smoking inside tents is now against the law and could cause the festival to be fined (thus reducing the donation to the good causes) or cause difficulties in getting a licence in the future.

[The-Sir]

I'm going to smoke in the tents, regardless.

[marktea]

anyone who complains about someone smoking at glastonbury is a c**t, no other way of putting it

[travelling mr pastry]

Strange way to look at it. Any consequence of someone lighting up where they shouldn't (whether cos they get thrown out, complained about or the festival licence gets revoked) is directly attributable to the decision of that person to light up. It's not about the 'c**ts' as you put it, its about you.

[marktea]

no it wont, there is no fire danger with the fabric of the big tents, whatsoever. health? it is a very big place, if someone is smoking nearby, move one metre away and you wont smell it, and smoking in tents wont hamper the license, really. aslong as they are seen to enforce the ban then the council wont say anything, thats all they need to do, enforce it.

[travelling mr pastry]

Yep its all a load of old b*ll*cks. A bit like 'Love the Farm Leave No Trace' eh?

[budvar]

yeah, i must treat the place like a shithole because i dont acquiesce to the anti-smoking facists at my outdoor festival

[travelling mr pastry]

Deary me, somebody's posting like they've only been using these boards for a couple of days. Oh...

Look sunbeam, nobody's aying you can't smoke at Glastonbury they're saying you can't smoke indoors. Last time I checked that's only a small part of what is, as you say, an OUTDOOR festival. So enjoy your freedom rather than complain about not being able to restrict the freedom of others.

Or carry on bitching, either way.

[budvar]

and yes i will carry on bitching

[travelling mr pastry]

So I see...

[HurrahBrother]

I forgot a couple of times last year and lit up inside a tent,

A gentle tap on the shoulder and a polite reminder was all that was needed.

[Snodgrass]

Britain is gasping in sympathy with Linda Buchanan, the hapless Kent commuter who was pushed on to a railway track by two men she had 'ticked off' for smoking. Everyone is shaken by the idea of this ghastly, nightmarish experience. We are all standing closer to walls as we wait for trains. Poor, terrified Linda Buchanan.

Having said that ... On a bad day, I'd have shoved her off the platform myself.

Of course, this is a horrible story. But not just because there are people who push other people on to railway tracks. This was not a meeting of good and evil. It was a meeting of bad and worse.

Mrs Buchanan, who was helped off the track with a hurt wrist, has been hailed as a hero in the press. Shouting at the smokers, she did 'what any good citizen might do'. She is 'a woman unafraid to intervene when something is wrong'. She 'highlights what ordinary people risk by confronting thugs'.

Bollocks. This woman is not a Ben Kinsella (stabbed to death trying to break up a street brawl) or a Philip Lawrence (killed trying to protect the children at St George's school, where he was headmaster, from a gang of bullies), although one newspaper had the tasteless nerve to compare her to both. Mrs Buchanan wasn't being a hero, she was being a busybody.

People who step in when others are being attacked or threatened are not aiming purely to uphold the law. That's why it's so pointless and unhelpful for the police to advise us 'not to take the law into our own hands' in these situations. It is not about the law. It is what the law's about. Social responsibility, morality, right and wrong. If you see somebody in danger, you don't just walk past and leave them to their fate. Legal, illegal, who cares; it's morally wrong to ignore someone who is terrified, alone and needs help.

Easy for me to say, as a woman. I have twice got involved in situations where I thought somebody was about to get hurt - or, at least, was being terrorised - once when a biker was thumping on a female motorist's car after a skirmish at a traffic light, and once when a man in the street was trying to yank a baby from the arms of a woman (I assume his wife) and she was literally screaming for help.

It's much easier for a woman to walk up and try to calm the situation; you do it in the fairly confident assumption that you're not about to get attacked yourself. If it happens, it happens (better than going home, putting the kettle on and idly wondering if anyone got murdered), but in my experience so far it hasn't. This is statistically more dangerous for men. My father was always a one for: 'Leave that woman alone!' and: 'Give you my wallet? You'll have to kill me first!' and I hated it. I thought, one day, someone might.

Philip Lawrence and Ben Kinsella, and all men who put themselves at risk to protect others, are heroes. Not so a commuter who bustles up to unleash the sharp end of her tongue on a guy having a quiet cigarette while he waits for a train. He's not the bully; she is.

Non-smokers have won, do you understand? We, the weak and addicted, with our revolting habit, who will waste money and lose lovers and die young in our stupid helpless pursuit of small nicotine comforts, have lost the war. You, the strong and healthy and pure, have taken all your land back: you've got the aeroplanes, the cinemas, the theatres, the restaurants, the pubs, you've got the inside of the whole world.

And we stand outside, cold and miserable and addicted and embarrassed, on the naughty step, hunched over our desperate little 'treats'... and still you come scurrying over to shout at us. Outside railway stations, in the street, outside restaurants on the three days a year we can comfortably eat there; you lean across to revel in your power, demonstrate your superior self-denial, and tell us how disgusting we are. The powerful sneering at the losers.

Unfortunately for Mrs Buchanan, she picked the wrong victim. She inadvertently ticked off someone truly horrible, who exacted the inexcusable revenge of pushing her off the platform a couple of days later. Appalling, indefensible, I hope the police catch up with the man, or men, and throw away the key. (Assuming they have locked some sort of door with it first.) But that doesn't make Linda Buchanan right.

Have you seen the train platform at Farningham Road, Swanley? It's a great long stretch, completely open to the sky. It is a huge, airy Serengeti of space. Mrs Buchanan might just as well have trekked across the Sahara, shouting criticism through a megaphone at a distant farting nomad.

Since we have a priggish, disapproving, bullying, absolutist government, which refused to bring in a (good, correct) smoking ban by stages, the Farningham smokers were technically breaking the law even by having a crafty snout on an outdoor platform. But why was this Mrs Buchanan's problem? Anyone who didn't like it could have moved further down, in the fresh air. Nobody was getting hurt but the smokers themselves. They weren't breaking the Ten Commandments.

There's nothing heroic about 'ticking off' a smoker whose air you're not obliged to share. That's like 'ticking someone off' for parking on a yellow line, or for swearing in a private conversation: not doing something right, but something self-righteous. It is done by those who look around the world in smug disapproval of everything, who make personal remarks, who bitch and criticise, who feel superior. It's rude.

Poor Linda Buchanan, who suffered such a horrible assault. I'm very glad she is on the mend. But I'm even gladder that she doesn't live next door to me.

EDIT: Written by Victoria Cohen who I think writes well on the subject of the smoking ban.

Edited June 10, 2009 by Snodgrass

[sammysundae]

as a smoker, i love the ban. its balanced out into a nice little place where i'm forced to go outside on a night out and get some fresh air, without having to pay to go out then back in. then when i'm somewhere else, it gives me an excuse to go outside. everywhere smells better and with things like festivals its kind of settled into this little groove where you just have to know where it is or isn't considerate to smoke.

in my opinion, its worked really well. improved most public spaces. especially pubs. its so nice being able to go to the pub and if i'm not smoking then i can come back smelling the same way i did before. like my smelly house

[Woppa]

As a non smoker, I hate the ban.

But the bottom line is this: It's in place. You might as well adhere to it.

[ukdannyb]

They did in some tents and not in others before the smoking ban, and they would not have let you smoke around the entrances to a lot of the tents either. Would have all depended on the time of day/ who was playing/ how wet the stewards were/ how busy the tent was/ etc though as to if they ever bothered to say anything though.

[ukdannyb]

EDIT: Written by Victoria Cohen who I think writes well on the subject of the smoking ban.

[biscant]

I was smoking in the John Peel tent last year, I saw absolutely nothing wrong with it, infact the whole bloody thing is in a field at the end of the day. The tents are essentially high gazibos with plenty of open air from the walls, the smoking area in my local essentially has a door letting air out, apart from that there's 3 brick walls and one huge woodern one where the door is.

[Storm_NL]

I was smoking in the John Peel tent last year, I saw absolutely nothing wrong with it, infact the whole bloody thing is in a field at the end of the day. The tents are essentially high gazibos with plenty of open air from the walls, the smoking area in my local essentially has a door letting air out, apart from that there's 3 brick walls and one huge woodern one where the door is.

[markeee]

It's another one of the recent spate of overzealous lawmaking, as I understand it... Try and pin down the Word of the Law to such an extent, so that the Spirit of the Law is completely embarrassed.

Now you have a law which was originally invented to prevent smoke build-up for those nearby who do not choose to smoke... but now means that you can't smoke in an open outdoor area, covered by a piece of fabric 100 feet up in the air.

Nonce Sense.