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Government smoking ban - more restrictions planned
WHAT will this Government think of next to interfere with people's pleasures?
That was Mr Pendle's initial reaction on reading that it is planning more legislation to cut the numbers of people smoking from a fifth of the population to one in 10 by 2020.
Not content with banning smoking in public buildings some years ago, it has now said it wants to ban smoking at the entrances to them.
But has it thought this through properly?
It would appear not – for it took Mr Pendle only a few seconds to see a gaping loophole in this idea.
Take two of his watering holes in Colne as an example.
The smokers among his friends, unable to smoke inside the premises, now have to go to the entrances if they wish to do so.
If the Government's latest plans come into being and they are banned from doing that, all they will have to do is walk a few yards away down the street or across a car park and they will be free to indulge in their habit. So that idea has gone up in smoke (pardon the intentional pun) for starters.
One of its other ideas for reducing the numbers of people smoking – that of only selling cigarettes in plain packaging – will also have a negligible effect.
Just how that will stop anyone wanting a packet of 20 going into a shop and asking for one Mr Pendle has no idea – and he does not know anyone who can think of how it will work either.
WHEN Mr Pendle read the recent story about a man being fined 60 by police in Ayr for blowing his nose while at a the wheel of a stationary car in a queue of traffic, he stopped to think for a moment and wondered whether it was April Fool's Day.
Then he realised it was still January and the item was perfectly serious.
Despite the fact the man in question had put his handbrake on before proceeding to blow his nose (and remember the traffic was not moving), officers decided he was not in full control of his car and handed him a fine – with three penalty points on his licence as well.
It is a pity the officers had nothing better to do, for as a spokesman for the Automobile Association said, it was the first time he had heard of anyone being fined for this type of thing – and the consequences of him not doing so could have been more serious.
The man not surprisingly refused to pay up, and unlike footballer Ashley Cole, who on the same day was banned from driving for four months and fined 1,000 for speeding in a 40 m.p.h. zone – something far more likely to have serious consequences – he has Mr Pendle's full sympathy.
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Weather for Pendle
Thursday 09 February 2012
Today
Light sleet
Temperature: 0 C to 1 C
Wind Speed: 9 mph
Wind direction: West
Tomorrow
Light sleet showers
Temperature: -0 C to 1 C
Wind Speed: 9 mph
Wind direction: South
