Notes from an island even smaller than Britain
Saturday, September 7, 2013 at 9:37 I am currently in Dublin.
I'm sharing a city centre hotel with a large number of Swedes who came over for last night's World Cup qualifier against Ireland. (Sweden won 2-1.)
Watching the game on television I marvelled at RTE's lugubrious trio of pundits – John Giles, Eamonn Dunphy and Liam Brady – whose cheerless comments are a world away from the bland observations served up by their younger counterparts on Match Of The Day.
I met Dunphy once. We were guests on the Richard Littlejohn Show on Sky News the night before the smoking ban was introduced in Ireland.
The programme was broadcast live from the bar of the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin. Dunphy, a smoker, was opposed to the ban.
I was interested to meet him because we had thought about asking him to be the figurehead for a campaign against the ban but I was told it wasn't a good idea.
Many saw him as a cantankerous curmudgeon, out of tune with Ireland's brave new world.
Last night, commenting on the football, Dunphy was as forthright and acerbic as ever. Although the grumpy old men routine is a bit tired (they've been doing it for years), I suspect it reflects the mood of the nation far more than it did ten years ago.
Perhaps it's not too late to ask ...
Great article on Spiked this week:
The fag-end of Irish politics. Worth reading.
Hardly a day goes by without another report of illicit cigarettes being smuggled into Ireland.
The loss of revenue to the Government is huge yet this week the Irish Cancer Society and the Irish Heart Foundation urged the Government to add 60 cents to the price of a packet of cigarettes.
They just don't get it, do they?
Arriving at Dublin Airport on Thursday I approached the immigration officer with my passport:
Me: Hello.
Immigration Officer: How yer doing?
Me: Fine.
Immigration Officer: Yer looking great.
Me: Oh, thanks! [Laughs]
I received an equally friendly greeting when I flew into San Francisco a few weeks ago.
Ditto when I arrived in Cuba in February, although it may have helped that we paid to be fast-tracked past a long line of less gruntled passengers.
Compare that to the 'welcome' you receive when entering (or re-entering) the UK.
Stony-faced border control officers rarely utter a word and I can't remember one ever cracking a smile.
They look at you only to check that your face is the same as the photo in your passport.
Frankly, it's embarrassing.
Reader Comments (6)
Apart from Dunphy whose worn to the bone with political correctness like the rest of us and in which we share a common abhorrance of the shambolic Reily Health Manifesto together with a govt thats slowly but surely getting to run our lives by deciding what we should say or do, it was refreshing if not hopeful to read Damian Byrne's article this week when he put the majority of intelligent peoples thoughts into context and tells it the way it is.
Well done Sir.
I spent a few days in Dublin in early August and was pleased and surprised to find that, in spite of the extreme antismoking rhetoric of the Irish government, the pubs were much more welcoming to smokers than in the UK. Many have courtyards, beer gardens etc which are almost completely covered, heated with huge heatlamps, and decorated to make you feel like you're really inside. I can't think of anywhere like that in England. I also got much less of a feeling in Ireland that ordinary people have jumped on the 'Anti' bandwagon than in England.
The same incidentally goes for France, where many cafes etc have made a real effort to the point that it's pretty comfortable to hang out 'sur la terasse' even in winter. In other words, the UK's smoking ban really is the most draconian in Europe - since even in other countries which have comparable laws, the reality is somewhat less awful. I can't quite decide why this should be so, apart from that typical surly 'jobsworth' British attitude of 'it's not my fault and it's not my job to do anything about it' . . . ?
Incidentally I'm glad you got a friendly welcome arriving in San Francisco, you certainly don't in New York!
In other words, the UK's smoking ban really is the most draconian in Europe - since even in other countries which have comparable laws, the reality is somewhat less awful.
You should come to Greece, Joe. You would be forgiven for thinking that there is no (EU mandated) smoking ban here, since it is universally ignored. The only places it seems to be enforced is the airports, where Greece intersects with the rest of the world. Apart from that, people smoke in bars, restaurants, offices, government buildings, shops, police stations etc etc. - pretty much everywhere, in fact. I've never encountered even the slightest intimation of disapproval when I smoke. I have several non-smoking Greek friends, and when I visit, an ashtray is immediately provided, inside or out.
When you have situations like this, then it's small wonder that Greece is smoker-friendly.
I was in San Fran in 1999 the year their ban came in. I went into a local bar and in disbelief I asked if it was really true that I couldn't smoke inside. The bartender reached down below the counter as he spoke and said : "Yes, it is true but this is my bar and I say what happens here."
He then put the ashtray he'd grabbed from under the bar on top of the counter and told me to smoke and enjoy it.
I've often wondered how he fared given that any resistance is met by totalitarian force these days. I also wonder if his bar is still open.
What Joe says has changed my mind about visiting Ireland in future. I was always too scared to go in case the people were as nasty as their Govt. New York, however, is not a place that people like me would go. I am no masochist and I will not pay to be abused and treated as a second class visitor. Maybe when Barmy smokerphobic health obsessive Bloomberg has gone things might be different.
Until then I'd feel like an "undesirable" visiting fascist Germany in the early 30s . I'm sure Hitler's welcome to non Aryans before the holocaust was akin to that given today by Bloomberg to tobacco consumers in that most tyrannical and oppressive of modern cities - NYC
Of course there are no camps nor gas chambers and neither will be there be for us - but NYC is working to take everything else from smokers that makes life worth living such as homes, jobs, friends and family.
And a little bit of health inequalities thrown in goes a long way - ie - forcing health services to treat smokers less equally than others and even deny them the healthcare they have paid far more for than those who have never smoked.
I caught the Eurostar back from Paris a couple of months ago, and handed my Passport to the UKBF officer at Passport Control in Gare du Nord. He looked at it, smiled (really!) and said...
That's a great surname you've got there"
...and handed my passport back with a cheery "enjoy your journey".
Quite made my day, especially since I too am used to a rather more po-faced attitude.
My surname? I can't reveal that on t'internet, but let's just say I share it with a fictional secret agent in Ian Fleming's novels!
Apart from that, on my recent travels, every European country that I have visited (about 10) has had a much more relaxed attitude to smoking than UK. I agree entirely with Joe, in that, as a nation, we seem to be enraptured by the jobsworth culture, and assume that every 'rule' must be obeyed at all costs.
We are very good at moaning about our lot, though!
One of the cleverest things that the lawmakers did when putting together the Health Act, and I believe the main reason why so many pub landlords have adopted such a smoker-phobic attitude, was to ensure that smoking in an enclosed public place like a pub or a bar would bring a heavy penalty down on the licensee, rather than the person smoking. In other words, they used the uniquely close ties which regular British pubgoers have with their local’s landlord/landlady to ensure that the law would be adhered to. It’s certainly the only reason why I leave any premises to smoke. If it was just a case of me getting a fine then I’d take my chances, and so would most of the smokers I know. But the damage to one’s previously-friendly relationship with one’s local landlord by landing them with possibly a £2000+ fine would be irreparable (not to mention probably getting you barred) and so it isn’t worth the risk.
It’s one of the least-mentioned flaws in that particular item of legislation, in that it was the first piece of legislation in our country’s history which – effectively, if not specifically admitting it – made one adult punishable for the criminal actions of another. Of course, they’ve concealed this violation of the legal principle under the veneer of also making it a crime to “allow” smoking, but the fact that the penalties for “allowing” it are so much higher than the penalties for actually doing it indicates that the lawmakers knew that punishing the landlord was the key to ensuring compliance. Cunning so-and-so's!
All of which to my mind sets a pretty worrying precedent for the future. After all, if it’s OK to violate the fundamental principle of law that the person who commits the crime also “does the time,” in order to ensure compliance for the sake of a “good cause” then surely few could argue that the same tactics shouldn’t be used in other areas, too. I’m just waiting for the day now when they start suggesting that pub landlords should be punished for selling booze to people who then drive home over the limit – well, the smoking ban’s been “such a success,” hasn’t it, because of that one crafty little quirk, so surely it could also be used to good effect to drive down drink-driving offences, couldn’t it? And who could possibly suggest that that wouldn’t be a good thing? After the smoking ban has been "such a success" with "everybody supporting it" and "pubs being so much nicer" and public health "being so improved" as a result ... yadda, yadda, blah, blah ...
See what I mean?