Monday
Mar182013
Smoking in bars and brasseries: what Belgians can teach the British
Monday, March 18, 2013 at 21:06 
I'm in Brussels for a meeting tomorrow.
But first I joined my former Free Society colleague Tom Miers for a drink and a bite to eat.
Here's a picture of Tom. It was taken this evening in the smoking room at L'Ultime Atome, a brasserie close to my hotel.
Yes, the smoking room. Note the ashtray and the comfortable leather chairs. It was also inside, 100 per cent enclosed.
If Belgium can give bar owners the option of providing a well-ventilated smoking room where people can smoke and drink in comfort indoors, why on earth can't we?
Why is Britain so uncivilised?
Reader Comments (8)
That's why Belgium gets my tobacco tax and Britain does not.
I am going to be controversial, I am going to say something in support of Patricia Hewitt. When the cabinet in 2006 spent a brief time discussing a monumental piece of legislation, Ms Hewitt allegedly suggested 'smoking carriages' in licensed premises. Now I take this strange term to mean well ventilated smoking rooms. Who objected? Certainly not John Reid, who had now been moved to Defence because he was too smoker friendly for the Department of Health.
It's not a matter of being civilised, but of small minded, sanctimonious, bullying and taking of spiteful pleasure in their quest to make smokers miserable..
I was in Belgium last year and most of the bars either ignored the smoking ban or drew the curtains at night.
I*t is not going well.
And Belgium was the country where fraudulent antis did yet another alleged "study" that showed since the smoking ban in Belgium, no more prem babies have been born - or some such rubbish.
Now that the press has seen how "democracy" involves back room deals with self interested groups against something with no representation from those being attacked. Maybe they'll open their eyes to the fraud of SHS, the scam of the ban, and how over paid zealots get pleasure at making others suffer just because they can.
Maybe they will realise that if Govt can steal trade marks from legitimate business, like tobacco companies with plain packaging, they can steal others. After all Hacked Off could come up with a very good argument about how the The Sun is a brand that's harmful to others and should not be seen by children.
And it is only Hacked Off - like the anti-smoker zealots at ASH - that Govt is listening to and no one else.
Odd how the Guardian is the only newspaper backing these new press regs. But then the Guardian is a Govt mouthpiece judging by it's appalling bias in favour of the DH and call for Govt subsidies to keep its ailing rag going.
Timbone - perhaps Hewitt changed her mind with her eye on that Big Pharma £3000 per day she was paid as a taxi for hire at the time of the ban. It was her who stabbed everyone in the back at the 11th hour and forced through the most draconian ban in the world.
May she rot in hell.
And she got rewarded by Boots the Chemist who sell the soon be obselete, nicotine gum, patches and inhalers.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7196420.stm
Can I ask something ? Is this smoking place separated from the non smoking place by walls or is it okay cause of the ventilation system ?
Nice place BTW The Dutch could take an example !
"May she rot in hell."
I appreciate the sentiment, Pat - but wouldn't be quite so hard on Hell. It does after all - if reports are to be believed - have some rather interesting people among its varied population of inmates.
Personally, I'd rather see her 'resettled' near one of the many crocodile-infested swamps in the land of her birth.
Australia.