Czech This Out

Ever since the smoking ban kicked in back on 26th March 2006 I said that it was the beginning of the end for centuries-old freedoms.

I maintain that statement today.

Things have gone from bad to worse as out-of-control governments pass more and more legislation. The smoker ban was an experiment, a first step to see how/if they could control a population using social engineering. That social control continues with minimum pricing for alcohol "units" with Scotland having stamped the seal of disapproval on drink by stamping the seal of approval on a rate of 50p per unit. Will this stop excessive drinking? No. Will it increase the amount of dosh heading the Treasury's way? Absolutely.

Most, (if not all) legislation is a business model. The only goal is to generate revenue. Your MPs don't give a shit about your health, but they do care a very great deal about your disposable income. They will plot and scheme late into the night to figure out new extraction methods. That may explain why the coalition broke all records in 2011 by enacting an eye-watering 4,116 new ways of taking our money off us.

Like it or not, we live in state that absolutely adores spying on us.* 4.5 million cameras aren't enough. They need now to pry into our personal emails, tweets, texts and phone calls. How they must rage knowing that they cannot capture each and every face to face conversation as well. No doubt someone, somewhere, is working on that. Just like in the movie Freeze Frame (2004 with Lee Evans), we may all find the need to wear a camera headset so that we can record every waking (and sleeping) moment so that we know for sure we haven't bent one the millions of rules and regulations.

*If you disbelieve me, just wrap your eyeballs around this latest privacy invasion.

This is what freedom looks like:

The above is a snapshot taken last night in a bar in the freedom loving Czech Republic. No-one did that false coughing or the inane hand-waving, no-one looked at me sideways, no-one tutted, and there were no cameras to record my sinful ways. The hotel, just like the dozen bars I frequented this week, had good air management systems and when it was dry in the evenings, it was a pleasure (and MY choice) to sit outside the bar and smoke.

I try to explain to non-smokers (not anti-smokers, there is a huge difference between the two) that their freedoms were curtailed as well as ours. They lost the freedom to decide for themselves whether or not it was life-threatening to enter a bar that allowed smoking. Incidentally, no serious study has ever proved that second hand smoke in a bar is lethal. Unpleasant for some, perhaps, but dangerous? No, not in the least. To this day, not one single death certificate contains the phrase "Cause of death: second hand smoke".

In 2006 we had a stock of 58,000 pubs & clubs in the UK. Just a few years on, we have lost around 11,000 of them. Even today (and I do understand the recession hasn't helped matters) we are losing 50-60 pubs every week. I say this: amend the legislation to allow bar owners to decide whether they want smoking or not, and it will be a shot in the arm for our dying hospitality trade.

Bizarrely, I have come to associate the smell of tobacco smoke with freedom. It smells a damn sight better than the piss, the B.O and the cheap perfume which we are assaulted with in pubs nowadays, and smoke smells a damn sight better than the lies and hypocrisy of the anti-smoking crowd. Their biggest, fattest lie was this: "Stop smoking in pubs and clubs and we will turn up, in our millions, to fill them" They did not show up, then they had the audacity to blame the smokers for the carnage that followed.

If I can smell smoke indoors, I know I am not in an oppressive or repressive society.

Go figure, as our American cousins are wont to say.

CR.