Labour MP proposes 'smoking awareness classes' for drivers caught smoking in their cars
Monday, March 11, 2013 at 9:37 The Government says it has no plans to ban smoking in private cars. Not yet, anyway.
Don't expect the issue to go away though. Together with standardised packaging it tops the list of things the UK tobacco control industry hopes to achieve in 2013.
This morning I'm writing a short piece on the subject for a local newspaper. It will appear in a section called 'The Big Debate'.
On Friday a regional Sunday newspaper invited me to comment on the latest initiative by Labour MP Alex Cunningham. Cunningham was responsible for the Smoke-Free Private Vehicles Bill which appears to have failed.
Undeterred (anti-smoking activists are relentless), he has now tabled an amendment to the Children and Families Bill to ban drivers smoking in their own cars.
If caught they will be given a £60 on-the-spot fine. Those with no previous convictions will be given the option of attending a “driver smoking awareness course”.
My initial response was probably not suitable for a family newspaper so I watered it down. Libel laws aside, you have no such restrictions ...
Reader Comments (3)
It's really about the next part of the agenda. To criminalise adult tobacco consumers who won't quit - step by step. First landlords who dare to take pity on freezing customers and allow them inside, then ordinary tax payers who drop a biodegradable cig end in the street with no "awareness" campaign on the use of pocket ashtrays, and now onto cars and then the last bastion homes.
Then of course, once they get smokers jailed for doing what some of us have done practically all of our lives, we'll be forced to quit in prison. Win win for the vile antis who are pushing a hate and not a health agenda.
That's why UKIP is rising and taking votes from the main three parties. We consumers have simply had enough of bigoted quangos making decisions based on their own prejudices that the majority of normal people in this country don't want.
They also have to find a way of replacing the lost revenue from quitters so financial criminal penalties for those who enjoy smoking does that job nicely. No one really believes that smokers who quit pay as much tax on other goods they buy. Of course they don't.
I heard that in Wales they even propose to steal your car if you get caught smoking in it. I wouldn't be surprised given the tyrannical nature of Govts all sides of the border.
In England, our problem is the planting of a tobacco control activist as the head of tobacco control in the DoH which is simply perverse and entirely corrupt.
I have a proposal also. I propose that Alex Cunnigham goes and sticks his head up his own arse and gets the hell out of public view. What an utterly contemptible scumbag.
Those with no previous convictions will be given the option of attending a “driver smoking awareness course”.
Really?
Well, I drive. I smoke. I am aware!
Can I have my certificate now, please?
Still, it would be fun to attend one of these "courses". I'd make sure that I reduced the trainer to tears - by force of argument alone.
Something tells me that plod wouldn't be too keen on this piece of totalitarian nonsense.
Oh, and Alex Cunningham is an authoritarian bastard who needs to be sent on a year-long "MP Democracy Awareness Course":
And then be given a £60,000 fine as a repeat offender.