Motorblog The Date Has Been Set: for July 1st; the day England (and Wales, presumably), follows Scotland and Ireland into the illegalities of smoking in public places.
Although N/S myself now out of gratitude and common sense following my operation, (and smoking nor drinking were the cause, I had a faulty heart valve from birth), rather than doing so because they are telling me to, (and I still don't object to a whiff of 'passive' now and again); I'm wondering why there have been no demonstrations against this removal of a liberty won by our father's in two World Wars, perhaps in Trafalgar Square? Smokers are simply going along with this ruling/Law. Nicotine is, without question, the most addictive drug known to humanity, yet England put up, and still does, more of a fight to stop fox hunting than they have the right to smoke where they want to.
Our local news TV programme last evening featured a pub landlady offering her customer's the opportunity to join her in giving up smoking. Wise move, dearie; there are going to be hundreds if not thousands of pubs closing down following the July 1st ban. For smokers, there is nothing better than a pint and a fag. The two went well together for the landlords as well, drinking makes you smoke more as the booze washes the taste from your mouth, so they were selling ciggies out of the machines as an added bonus.
The pub's will close because, and I expect EBay could back me up on this with extra sales of their 'Breweryana' figures, folks are converting their garage into a pub of their own, in which they can smoke and drink to their heart's content. In fact, I know a bloke who is actually doing this in readyness for the ban - and EBay were taking a lot of his (willingly paid) money for optics, bar towels, horse-brasses and so on, to 'furnish' his garage/pub. It will create a great deal of unemployment in the pub trade, (who also employ chefs/table waiting staff and have come to rely on the now lucrative pub grub trade), and the only folks who'll make some dosh are the 'Offies' and the supermarkets, who will be selling canned and bottled booze, and the fags, by the truckload.
And if the garage is big enough, there will be space for darts and a pool table, so sod the pub!
Live music venues will also suffer, although a great deal of those went N/S year's ago; and if the 'garage' can accomodate a Juke Box, it'll be sod the live music venues, too!.
So maybe this is the reason there have been no 'demos' or riots from the potentially non-smoking public as of July 1st?
No, they're not wimps, they're simply converting the garage into a pub and saying 'F**k 'em!"