Beach smoking ban: Swansea Council ignored response to public consultation
Thursday, April 28, 2016 at 10:33 I know the Royal College of Physicians' report on e-cigarettes is the big story today.
I'll post something on that later. But first I want to finish what I started in my previous post, published late last night.
It wasn't hard to find the evidence I was looking for. It was there all along but I didn't know where to look. It took a little digging but I quickly discovered what I had suspected to be true all along.
By imposing a 'voluntary' ban on smoking at Caswell Bay, Swansea Council has ignored the result of its own public consultation announced to great fanfare last October.
How do I know? Well, attached to the agenda and minutes of a meeting of the Cabinet Advisory Committee on December 9, 2015, is a document, Consultation on Smoke-Free Public Spaces, that has all the results.
You can read it for yourself but in the context of the Caswell Bay policy the results that particularly interest me are the following:
Asked to 'agree or disagree that all beaches in Swansea and Gower should become smoke free', the reaction from respondents was:
Strongly agree/agree - 36.8%
Strongly disagree/disagree - 61.7%
Don't know - 1.5%
Curiously (and more pertinent perhaps in view of the Caswell Bay pilot scheme), when asked to 'agree or disagree that some beaches but not all [my emphasis] should become smoke free', opposition was even more pronounced:
Strongly agree/agree - 24%
Strongly disagree/disagree - 73.1%
Don't know - 3%
Interestingly only 14.7% of respondents were current smokers (10.4% daily, 4.3% occasionally). 22.7% were ex-smokers, 22.3% said they used e-cigarettes and 40.3% had never smoked.
In other words, even though less than 15% of respondents were current smokers there was still a clear majority opposed or strongly opposed to extending smoking bans to public beaches.
Ignoring that small detail, Swansea Council has gone ahead and introduced a 'voluntary' smoking ban at Caswell Bay with the support (naturally) of ASH Wales and other interfering busybodies.
The Caswell Bay policy is described as a one-year pilot scheme. I imagine it's what they intended all along. The outcome of the consultation was a minor hiccup.
In 12 months expect a report saying how successful the ban has been - pollution slashed, a huge increase in life expectancy in Swansea, sealife restored to levels not seen for millions of years etc etc.
The council did at least listen to respondents on the subject of e-cigarettes. Asked whether vaping should be included in a voluntary ban, respondents said:
Yes - 31.7%
No - 68.3%
Result: vaping has (rightly) been excluded from the 'voluntary' ban.
The question is, why were these results not made public with the same fanfare that accompanied the announcement of the survey?
Brighton was the same. Widespread coverage of the council's plan to hold a public consultation with headlines implying a beach smoking ban was inevitable, but hardly any coverage of the fact that a significant majority of respondents were opposed to extending smoking bans to parks and beaches.
At least in Brighton the council quietly dropped any plans they may have had to ban smoking on the beach.
In contrast Swansea Council has chosen to ignore the result of its own survey and press on regardless.
Majority support doesn't make a policy right (outdoor smoking bans are wrong, period) but you can see how it might influence decision-makers.
Implementing such a measure without that support - having gone through the charade of a public consultation - makes a mockery of the process.
Oh, and here's another result:
Asked whether making beaches smoke free would encourage them to visit them more often, respondents said:
More frequently - 24.1%
Make no difference - 37.5%
Less frequently - 38.2%
Good news for beach side cafes and other local businesses - not!
For the full results of the Swansea survey go to Consultation on Smoke-Free Public Spaces.
Reader Comments (9)
Next time you are being interviewed via the media, name and shame them, they are corrupt.
I notice the Swansea survey doesn't ask if respondents are locals or visitors. If I recall correctly, Brighton did and I'd think the big "No" from potential tourists might have swayed the council.
Possibly potential Swansea tourists could do the same by e-mailing the council to say they'd think twice? I suspect that Swansea are desperate to attract what we here call "the bucket and spade brigade", i.e. that tourism is pitched at getting parents of lower/middle income families to relive their childhood with a traditional UK seaside holiday.
They don't want me in their town. They won't have my summer savings. That will be spent in tolerant countries in Europe which do not discriminate based on lifestyle, nor do they groom our children to hate and fear and exclude.
F@*k Swansea and the same to those bigoted, bullying councillors and con-artists in ASH.
However, as I have said before, if someone is vaping I will smoke. I won't be forced on to vape sticks even though that is the next assault on smokers hence the latest junk science study that weaponises ecigs against smokers.
It's not about health. It is about politics, ideology and hate. #Thugs, the lot of them.
I won't be there either.
Councils as well as successive governments are not listening to their citizens.
They do as they choose to keep their jobsworth friends and colleagues in work.
It's time for the truth to be revealed. How many more have to endure death, intolerance and unfounded harassment.
The lies beggar belief. We've witnessed the numerous cover ups to keep them in their highly paid positions squashing the fraud in all aspects of public life.
Shame on successive governments and time for change and the truth, including the will of the citizens.
This is an interesting twist. Antismokers typically claim smoking bans are the will of the majority, yet when the majority (in this case between 62-73%) oppose bans, they hide the results of their consultation and impose a ban anyway). The fiction of public consultation and manipulation of data is outright fraud supporting totalitarian oppression. This is the real story of smoking bans and the word needs to be spread far and wide.
Cars are the biggest killers both because of their fumes and because of the crashes that occur many times per day all over the country - but these thugs like their cars, depend on their cars, their cars are trendy - so they couldn't give a flying monkey how many people or children they kill with them.
They are simply a bunch of hypocrites and liars and it's time they were exposed.
Control has gone over to swivel eyed councils, who care not about representing their residents views, since the cowardly Tories put all attacks on smokers into their hands knowing that the issue could bring them down given the very small majority they win elections on.
Ash of course was delighted because they knew that councillors, generally, are thick and have no power to think for themselves and would do whatever they're told by smokerphobic liars in ASH if they just keep repeating the key phrase :"But think of the children."
We must stop ASH exploiting children for political ends. They are the real child abusers and if councillors don't want to lose credibility among the general public, they should supporting these bigoted thugs.
The consultation shows their residents no longer trust them.
It seems to me that the "some beaches but not all" question is not a good question at all. Those who disagree might want ALL the beaches to be smoke-free or none of them. It seems to me if they're going to go to the time and trouble to design a questionnaire to ignore if they don't like the results, they might as well do it right.
Only a complete retard would be unable to realise that the biggest threat to clean air is motor vehicles, not people smoking in a public place
How right you are, Andy.
Fear of political embarrassment led to government cover up of link between air pollution and lung cancer
2002
“Smog Conference: Leading historian documents how shift in public health agenda and political necessity combined to keep air pollution off the agenda.
Delegates attending an international conference in London today to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Great London Smog of 1952, which caused an estimated 12,000 deaths, will hear how governments from the late 50s onwards deliberately downplayed the huge threat to public health caused by air pollution, and sought to shift the blame firmly onto cigarette smoking instead."
http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/pressoffice/press_releases/2002/smogpollution.html
So basically it's OK for them to kill and discriminate against our citizens and peddle lies to make it seem acceptable.
Very simple politics.