by Dick Puddlecote
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DickPuddlecote/~3/Sdm1zHLVzwU/drafting-smoking-in-cars-consultation.html
Drafting A Smoking In Cars Consultation Response Last month I suggested we might have a bash at the consultation on smoking in cars which ends at midnight on Wednesday. Two fellow jewel robbers have already done just that and shared their responses, but if you fancied giving the DoH a piece of your mind as well, full details and the online submission form are at this link.
Much like our contributions to the plain packaging consultation (twice) and the one on minimum alcohol pricing, you may find it helpful to see the questions before you begin. So here they are.
1. The regulations make it an offence to smoke in an enclosed private vehicle when there is more than one person present and a person under the age of 18 is present. This offence would fall on the person smoking regardless of their age. Do you have any comments on this approach?
The obvious comment is that this is just the latest proof that government funded ‘charities’ and other professional bansturbators are afforded far too much respect. Last I heard there was supposed to be a distaste from this coalition about “government lobbying government” but that is exactly what this is. No-one, but no-one, apart from state-financed organisations and fellow rent-seekers demanded this ban.
What’s more, they have done so with some of the most disgraceful junk science the tobacco control industry has ever produced, which is quite an achievement. Only the hilarious nonsense surrounding thirdhand smoke (ha!) comes even close. We’ve seen smoky cars compared with smokefree bars; deliberate misrepresentation of 24 hour ‘hazardous’ levels as being applicable for a few minutes exposure; and, of course, blatantly fabricated lies, regurgitated by serial liars which are so appalling they’re required the unusual step of quiet retraction. For that alone they should be ignored, but especially when they are trying to implement behaviour controls on privately owned property.
You could also point out that open-topped vehicles would be exempt, but not a car with every window open and a gale blowing through it at 70mph. Apparently, that thin piece of aluminium over the top has magical properties which demand tiny smoke particles disobey the laws of physics. A more silly law it is difficult to imagine.
There are other anomalies which big government will make a balls-up of too. Will a 17 year old smoker be fined for lighting up in their own car with their 18 year old smoking mates? Well, of course they will. Will police be tasked with stopping all cars containing smoking teens to see if one of them is underage so they can fine the driver? Of course they will. Will police be bound to stop cars with tinted windows just to check there are no asphyxiated kids in the back? Who knows? I’ll bet the police are going to be over the moon at the confusion which will reign once dozy MPs have engaged their tiny brains and passed this into law.
By Christ, even Nick Clegg can see it’s a pitifully pointless idea which hasn’t got a chance of working! Why has so much time and taxpayer cash been wasted on it already in straitened times?
Which leads us neatly onto …
2. Do you have any comments regarding the proposal for the new offences to apply to caravans and motor caravans when they are being used as vehicles but not when they are being used as homes?
Doesn’t that just make the entire thing a piece of sublime comedy?
Think about that. It’s not dangerous to smoke in a caravan when it is stationary – or the government believe it is none of their business to intervene – but it is extremely dangerous when moving, or the government believe that private property ceases to be so when the wheels are moving. Of course, the same doesn’t apply to a car, because the proposals state that even if the car is stationary on a grass verge or in a car park the smoke is still lethal … err, unlike in a caravan. Got that? The mind boggles (or is it not really about health, whaddya reckon?).
Their wriggling over caravans is, of course, politicians still trying to pretend that they’re not imposing on your liberties and that they wouldn’t even contemplate banning you from smoking in your own home. Except when they debate in Westminster about doing exactly that.
3. Do you have any comments about the intentions regarding the enforcement of the proposed regulations?
I don’t know what the “intentions” are regarding enforcement except to pander to state-funded finger-waggers and advance their illiberal denormalisation campaigns, but if there was any other intention it could well have been to introduce the precedent of the police enforcing public health industry demands for the first time in our history, as I have mentioned here before.
The police, quite simply, should not be burdened by the increased workload of overseeing the career advancement of professional prohibitionist cranks.
It is also scandalous that local council workers are sniffing an opportunity for a new empire to build, presumably attracted by the possibility of more taxpayer funds with which to insert themselves into our lives. So much for public sector austerity and the end of “big bossy state interference”, eh?
4. Do you want to draw to our attention to any issues on the practicalities of implementing the regulations as drafted?
What, apart from their being unworkable; unenforceable; laughable; and a slippery slope to banning smoking in all cars, as has been the intention all along? That even the impact assessment admits that it will lead to smokers stopping more often (cars pulling up on the hard shoulder of the M6 on bank holiday weekends, anyone?) and that there is an obvious danger of drivers shifting attention from the road to smoking covertly? I’m wondering if MPs have ever even heard the term “unintended consequences”. And for what? A zero improvement in the health of kids but a distinct possibility of handing even more power to anti-social smoke-haters and endorsing righteous road rage. Not to mention the fact that e-cigs will be included fairly soon afterwards – if not in the original drafting – to eradicate ‘confusion’ and aid enforcement.
The bully state at its most perverse.
5. Do you have any additional evidence that banning smoking in private vehicles when children are present would contribute to reducing health inequalities and/or help us fulfil our duties under the Equality Act 2010?
The usual ‘equality’ question. Dear God! I remember when laws were assessed for efficacy, value for money, impact on freedom and whether it was really worth it. Now, a Tory-led government is wondering if a pointless law will unfairly affect one protected group over another.
And how banning smoking in private vehicles will reduce health inequalities is anyone’s guess, even the impact assessment glosses over it with a sentence that basically says they haven’t much of a clue. But then, ‘health inequalities’ is only a term used by prohibitionists to mask the fact their policy suggestions are almost exclusively regressive and designed to punish working class people. Sounds better than “attacking the choices of the less well off” doesn’t it?
6. Do you have any evidence that would inform the consultation-stage impact assessment including any evidence or information which would improve any of the assumptions or estimates we have made in the consultation-stage impact assessment?
The impact assessment is an incredible document which starts with all the aforementioned tobacco control junk science on this issue and simply runs it all through a Casio calculator from Poundland, I recommend you brew a cuppa and read it in its entirety. My personal favourite was the assertion that only 31% of under 18s are able to ask their parents to stop smoking – I wasn’t aware that youth incompetence in the UK was so widespread!
I can offer no more advice than to pick out whatever makes you laugh/cry/scream and put that in writing in your response.
If you feel like making a submission, you can do so at the smokefreevehicles by midnight Wednesday (which reminds me, I think carriages are covered but not pumpkins).
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Its quite simple as Chris Snowden said in his blog;
Just open the Window! Its real easy to get an answer to a non-problem to begin with. The same holds true inside and enclosed space simply turn on the ventilation system,they all have one today right! Even if they don’t how did all those folks survive 600 years without one in British Pubs thru out the Realm!
Prohibitionists don’t solve problems they create them where none existed before. Generally just a HATE CAMPAIGN against everything they don’t like.
One things for sure they don’t even know where theyre hate ends,they keep coming up with new things to hate and outlaw everyday. No doubt you’ve been personally attacked at least 5 out of 10 things these bansturbators have done of late or in the past.
In America its said that every American breaks at least 32 EPA rules or laws a day. Some for the simplest thing like warming a car up on a cold morning before they leave to clear the ice off the windshield………….Ive even seen them ticketed in Nashville for the offence.
In a world gone Insane its our responsibility to remove these blaggards from power and replace them with folks who will not only abolish the sock puppets but get the government back to doing what its suppose to do,providing essential services to us as in roads,police and fire protection a standing army to protect our freedoms and fight justified wars like with Hitler should the need arise again……….
But no instead we get Hitler back again in the form of the new world government alliance under the UN CHARTER AND ITS FCTC TREATY!
If we wanted Third Reich Laws like Hitler anti-smoking laws we coulda all just surrendered in 1939 and spared ourselves 60 years without his laws!
Now our own people do it to us………….
Truly Insanity rules and weve done nothing to stop it!
Hitler’s Anti-Tobacco Campaign
One particularly vile individual, Karl Astel — upstanding president of Jena University, poisonous anti-Semite, euthanasia fanatic, SS officer, war criminal and tobacco-free Germany enthusiast — liked to walk up to smokers and tear cigarettes from their unsuspecting mouths. (He committed suicide when the war ended, more through disappointment than fear of hanging.) It comes as little surprise to discover that the phrase “passive smoking” (Passivrauchen) was coined not by contemporary American admen, but by Fritz Lickint, the author of the magisterial 1100-page Tabak und Organismus (“Tobacco and the Organism”), which was produced in collaboration with the German AntiTobacco League.
2. Do you have any comments regarding the proposal for the new offences to apply to caravans and motor caravans when they are being used as vehicles but not when they are being used as homes?
Sounds like a neat way to use it to get into the actual home itself if you ask me. They are a treacherous lot and we all know to well how they manipulate public opinion polls and especially answers that can be loaded to no end!
Well they go 70% agreed a caravan while a home on the road should still fall under the law……………then move 18 months later. Well the public had insisted that a home even on vacation fell under the smoking rules even in a caravan…………….they will as we all know boggle Insanity into everything they do and they don’t care at all they just do it and to hell with us all!
Its likely time we all just simply said to hell with them and ent back to doing what we always did,smoke and drink wherever we bloody well feel like it. The jails cant hold an entire population now can it!
Coping with smoking
By Tibor Machan
Laws forbidding business proprietors from permitting smoking in their offices, cinemas, aircraft, stores, etc. are now legion. But such government-mandated prohibitions ignore the rights of those who don’t mind smoking as well as those who wish to live in a tolerant society.
No doubt, smokers can be annoying. They even may be harmful to those around them. One need not dispute these contentions to still be concerned with their rights.
In most cases, anti-smoking ordinances aren’t limited to public places such as municipal courts. If the government confined itself to protecting the rights of nonsmokers in bona fide public areas, there would be nothing wrong with the current trend in legislation.
Instead of such a limited approach, however, government has embarked upon the full regimentation of people’s choices concerning smoking. The government has decided to bully smokers, regardless of whether they violate anyone’s rights or merely indulge with the consent of others.
People suffer many harms willingly. And in a society that respects individual rights this has to be accepted. Boxers, football players, nurses, doctors, and many other people expose themselves to risks of harm that comes from others’ behavior. When this exposure is voluntary, in a free society it may not be interfered with. The sovereignty of persons may not be sacrificed even for the sake of their physical health.
Individuals’ property rights are supposed to be protected by the Fifth Amendment. Not unless property is taken for public use — for the sake of a legitimate state activity — is it properly subject to government seizure. By treating the offices, work spaces, and lobbies of private firms as if they were public property, a grave injustice is done to the owners.
When private property comes under government control, practices may be prohibited simply because those who engage in them are in the minority or waver from preferred government policy. Members of minority groups can easily lose their sphere of autonomy.
There is no need, however, to resort to government intervention to manage the public problems engendered by smoking. There are many cases of annoying and even harmful practices that can be isolated and kept from intruding on others. And they do not involve violating anyone’s right to freedom of association and private property.
The smoking issue can be handled quite simply. In my house, shop, or factory, I should be the one who decides whether there will be smoking. This is what it means to respect my individual rights. Just as I may print anything I want on my printing press, or allow anyone to say whatever he or she wants in my lecture hall, so I should be free to decide whether people may smoke on my property.
Those displeased by or who object to my decision need not come to my facilities. If the concern is great and the opportunity to work in a given place is highly valued, negotiations or contract talks can ensue in behalf of separating smokers from nonsmokers. In many cases all that’s needed is to bring the problem to light. Maybe the firm’s insurance costs will be inordinately high where there is smoking, or maybe a change in policy will come about because customers and workers are gradually leaving.The issue of smoking may not undermine the far greater issue of individual, including private property, rights.
In some cases a conflict about this matter may go so far as to involve tort litigation. Exposing employees to serious dangers that are not part of the job description and of which they were not warned may be actionable. But what the company does initially at least must be its decision. And the onus of proof in these cases must be on those who claim to have suffered unjustified harm.
Clearly, smoking isn’t universally bad. For some people it may be O.K. to smoke, just as it could be O.K. to have a couple of drinks or to run five miles a day. For others, smoking is very harmful to their health. In either case, health may not be the highest good for many people. All things considered, even those whose health suffers may wish to smoke. In a free society, people are free to do what is wrong, so long as they don’t violate the rights of others.
In a free and pluralistic society, it isn’t necessary to appoint the government as the caretaker of our health and the overseer of our interpersonal negotiations concerning how we best get along with each other.
Tibor R. Machan is a professor of business ethics and Western civilization at Chapman University in Orange, Calif.
http://thepaper24-7.com/main.asp?SectionID=165&SubSectionID=537&ArticleID=47890