I'm a transplanted American living in British society, frankly appalled at the level of nannying the government does on its people here. There are pros and cons over every law and ban, we work and pay taxes and wonder where they all go if the bins are getting left uncollected and the pavements are cracking everywhere you look. So it does make every new step difficult to swallow.
The way I see it, you can change the packaging to brown paper and force the brands to be re-named to things like 'Black Lung' and 'Coronary Bypass' but if someone wants to smoke they'll smoke.
I quit a few months before the ban came in, and would've been irate if I'd still been smoking the way it's been handled. If people make the choice to smoke, sure put them away from those who don't want to be breathing it in, great idea. But now that they're all outside, you have to actually walk in the street to avoid walking through it in front of any pub. And no way will you get through the door to the so called clean air inside without navigating through a blue cloud. To top it off, I read that a few members of parliament were flouting the ban when there were long sessions on so if the laws govern everyone, that's a motherload of hypocrisy.
I think for the most part, politicians legislate just to get their name behind popular causes, with little regard to what it actually will look like in practice. (Here, and in my home country the US.)
x T
My Milage:My Quit Date: 1/1/2007
Smoke-Free Days: 1128
Cigarettes Not Smoked: 25,944
Amount Saved: �7,134.60
Life Gained:Days: 100
Hrs: 14
Mins: 41
Seconds: 19
