Smoking: hospital rebellion grows
Thursday, October 15, 2009 Last night at the London launch of The Bully State: The End of Tolerance (see previous post) I took a call from the Dundee Courier who wanted a quote for a local story. I stepped out of the room (it was quite noisy with so many people talking) and we had a quick chat.
Today, under the headline "Call to defy hospital smoking ban", the paper reports that:
"The director of a pro-tobacco lobby group last night urged smokers to rebel against the ban on smoking in the grounds of Ninewells Hospital in Dundee.
Simon Clark, who represents Forest, said measures by NHS Tayside to force smokers off hospital grounds before lighting up were “dictatorial and draconian.”
He also said NHS Tayside had no legal authority to insist hospital staff, patients and visitors should not smoke.
“It’s rather petty and vindictive to enforce a no-smoking policy in an outside area,” Mr Clark said.
“Hospitals are supposed to show compassion and demonstrate a duty of care towards all patients. I’m sure they think they’re acting in peoples’ best interests but they’re actually making people’s lives a misery.”
“There was a hospital in Swindon that actually reversed its policy of smoking off hospital grounds because it forced smokers to congregate beside an A-road.
“The hospital decided this was unreasonable and I think the same thing could happen with Ninewells Hospital, because it is unreasonable to expect staff and patients to go further and further away from the hospital.”
He continued, “It is also quite inhumane to expect patients who are ill to walk some distance just so they can smoke.
“I think hospitals need to show a little humanity because, like it or not, some people smoke as a form of stress relief and being sick or having a relative in hospital can be quite stressful.
“I hope the people of Dundee continue to rebel and refuse to accept this dictatorial and draconian policy—maybe if enough people do then the hospital will have to change its policy.”
Full story HERE.
Simon Clark
I have just done an interview for BBC Radio Tay on the subject. And I have spoken to the Dundee Evening Telegraph as well.
According to the report in the Courier, I said that "NHS Tayside had no legal authority to insist hospital staff, patients and visitors should not smoke". To be honest, I don't remember saying that because I actually don't know.
What I told Radio Tay is that the owners of private property have every right to impose a no smoking policy if they want, but the NHS is funded with public money - much of it from smokers - and smokers deserve to be treated fairly.
Simon Clark
The Glasgow Evening Times ran a very similar story on Tuesday - Hospital ban has gone up in smoke - in reference to the Royal Infirmary.
The paper invited readers to take part in a poll: "Should it be made illegal to smoke in the grounds of Scots hospitals?" As of this morning the poll reads:
Yes 40.4%
No 59.6%
Simon Clark
Ninewells smoking ban: no U-turn (Evening Telegraph)
Reader Comments (29)
Simon, well said indeed and thank you for all your efforts on behalf of smokers. I have no idea either if legally hospitals and other public places, such as council offices, can enforce a smoking ban outside their premises, however I have always made a point of lighting up in such areas on the grounds that I work, I pay taxes and NI and on that basis I consider myself as part owner of that land.
I have to confess however, that no-one yet has stopped me or asked me to put out my cig or leave the grounds. That is some relief as I attend a hospital regularly for psychotherapy, necessary in great part due to the smoking ban and I most certainly would not take kindly, nor necessarily react rationally in such a situation!
Oddly enough, at my appointment yesterday we discussed how the smoking ban had isolated me and therefore exacerbated problems that I had previously managed to cope with, in the main, without intervention from counsellors or resorting to medication; now I rely heavily on both!
With regard to politicians nowadays, if I was stood outside and being blinded by the sunshine and a politician told me it was sunny, I would not believe him/her! I am so skeptical and cynical these days that I choose, in the main, to believe the opposite of what government, the NHS and all their quangos tell us is apparently good for us. I am also forever grateful that my daughter is now in her mid 20's and I do not have to make the decision of whether or not she is vaccinated against cervical cancer, as I am extremely suspicious of such things these days!
Government will have no solid backing from the people until they manage to restore a little trust and faith and that will take a long time, no matter who gets in in the next election!
Good news. Let's hope it forces a debate on the mistretament of smokers by the NHS. I have blogged it here if anyone wants to have a read
http://patnurseblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/and-about-time-too.html
Thanks Simon, well done for all your speeches and interviews you're pulling off on smokers behalf.
Its great that you're bringing the hospitals smoking area ban, especially, to media attention.
What a cruel law, straight out of the dark ages, to impose on the sick at the worst time of their lives and to their visitors as well.
Lyn, you've hit the nail on the head when you say you believe the opposite to what politicians or their lackeys tell you.
I feel exactly the same, I would'nt trust one of them as far as I could throw them.
Hospitals and any other company can enforce rules on their staff, but not on visitors. The law is the law and it is NOT illegal (yet) to smoke in open public areas.
I think Chas is correct. Visitors and patients cannot be stopped from smoking in the grounds. The staff can be threatened with disciplinary action.
This message for Pat Nurse. I've posted some comments on her blog mentioned in the current thread but my computer logged me into the site as fanshaweflyer which, for technical reasons (I think), is its adress. Anyway 'fanshaweflyer' is me.
Chas says 'It is not illegal (yet) to smoke in open public areas.' The 'yet' is there because we all know that further restrictions are on many agendas. I have said before, and I will say it again, 'Such restrictions should be unenforceable if we make a stand.' I say this for the following reason.
The smoking ban in pubs,cafes, and clubs is deemed a 'success' because we all obey it. The assumption is that further restrictions, parks, gardens, streets, will be equally successful. Those wishing further restrictions could not be more wrong. We smokers obey the current law because we do not wish any premises we visit to lose their licence or suffer an exhorbitant fine. We, as individuals, should fight any personal fine through the courts. And in the open air we are the only ones who can be attacked. You can't fine the trees. If we all dig in our heels, and there are millions of us, open air restrictions are totally unenforceable. The courts could not cope. But I suspect that my day in it is getting ever closer.
My local magistrates court has a notice pinned outside in the uncovered open air on a concrete plantstand saying it is illegal to smoke anywhere inside or outside the premises and you can be fined £75 if you drop a fag end - but there are no ashtrays anywhere around.
I'm told that there is scope in the legislation to allow this as railway and bus stations do. I have, therefore, surmised that smoking is illegal anywhere inside or outside if anyone wants it to be. Be prepared to see more restrictions like this creep in unchallenged if this blanket ban is not amended soon.
They are already making smoking illegal outside through the back door.
Pat: My MP is John Howell (C), Boris Johnson's successor. I think he's probably a decent person (don't mean to sound patronising) but, from my correspondence with him so far, he is concerned about the alleged harm in second hand smoke and sees this as the overriding issue. He's probably 20 years or so younger than I am anyway. It needs imagination to think yourself into the hearts and minds of rejected and despised people in a pub car park or on a drip at a hospital door. Perhaps they are as irrelevant to the lives of the 'right-thinking' middle class of left and right now, as the inhabitants of the East End slums were to prosperous Victorians. It's long been my view, incidentally, that snatching a few drags in an icy (literally) and condemnatory climate could be harmful. As would, even, carrot soup, say. Perhaps the value of tobacco is to help release emotional tension not increase it. What all these nice, middle of the road, socially conforming people do not even know they lack is the ability to put themselves in another's shoes.
'empathy [émpəthi]
n
1. understanding of another's feelings: the ability to identify with and understand somebody else's feelings or difficulties'
Encarta ® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1998-2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Pat. Railway stations are private property. Perhaps some bus staions are, but I would have thought that outside magistrates' courts would be public areas. Have you asked the court, if they can impose such a legal ban? If they say it is legal, it may be worth asking under the FOI act, who authorised it.
Chas - I did ask legal staff and that was the answer I got. I will write to the clerk to the justices before making an FOI request. He is a decent chap.
Norman - empathy is one of those words fast disappearing from the English dictionary, as is tolerance.
Grumpy butterfly has hit the nail on the head. We obey the laws becuase of the £2500 fine for the business owner. Without a massive increase in the £75 fine and extensive surveillance, outside bans would be unenforcable. Also I think pub owners would object very strongly to smoking bans at outside tables. They've been stung once. I'm sure the notice outside can be ignored. Under what law would you be fined? They are just trying it on.
Jon, they come up with enough ideas of their own to persecute us smokers, you don't need to help with the suggestions!
Jon, they come up with enough ideas of their own to persecute us smokers, you don't need to help with the suggestions!
I understand that the pub next door to King Johns Hunting Lodge in Axbridge, Somerset has already banned smoking at outside tables of their own volition. I believe the sign says this is because tables are within 5 metres of the entrance.
I'm sure if we smokers thought two years ago that we would be discussing the banning and fining of smokers for smoking outdoors, we would have thought we were on another planet.
Just goes to show how far the race to the bottom the bully state has brought us.
It's so crass the way big bully is going a step further by infringing on smokers rights again and moving the goal posts regardless, whether legal or not.
They have become so arrogant they assume smokers are so cowed they will accept anything. They're even beginning to treat us like drug addicts now and if what Timbone says is true about that pub in Somerset banning outside smoking, the tyranny now seems to be spreading to pub landlords as well.
All us smokers had better start digging our heels in, even going to Court if necessary and ignore these illegal laws they're trying to con us with and continue smoking outdoors wherever you choose. I know I will.
Otherwise if we keep accepting without question all their diktak laws, these crazy bastards will start bringing in more laws without even feeling it necessary to tell us.
Two years ago Ann I thought I was on another planet, when the smoking ban first came into force. Two years ago, I thought, this silly little bully-boy law will never get off the ground. Two years ago, I thought people would surely defy this nasty piece of ultra-left wing piece of legislation. Two years ago I was wrong, and I am still reeling from learning just how wrong I was.
I was always brought up to believe that the British, as a nation, had guts, after all, we won the war didn't we? We held off against the might of the Germans, with undeniable great odds against us we eventually turned the war around and beat them.
So what has happened to us as a nation since then? What took place that changed us, a nation that once ruled half the world, into a nation of snivelling, grovelling, little toadies, too frightened to stand up for our natural rights?
We stood up to Hitler all those years ago, and yet now we are too scared to stand up to ridiculous little men, many of whom, who resemble the "great dictator". Men who work for the local council for Christ sake, men who in the real world, wouldn't even stand a chance of holding down a real job. We let these silly little men dictate to us how we should live our lives!
Yes, I know a law was passed, making it illegal to smoke "inside" buildings. But no law has ever been passed making it illegal to smoke "outside" buildings, so what is our excuse for obeying such petty pub in Somerset banning outside smoking beaurocracy? There is no real excuse of course, apart from cowardliness!
As for the actual law that says we cannot smoke "inside" buildings. Why has this never been challenged in a high court? Two years ago, one pro-smoking group threatened such a challenge, but it just didn't happen, whether it was due to lack of money on their part I don't know, but what I do know is, that we are still letting these jumped up little Hitler's get away with it.
The law can be changed you know, it can also be overturned. High Court judges do it all the time, as one did just this week when he decided to make information available to the public, on so called torture which had allegedly been used against terrorists. If the law had been abided by, as written into the constitution, this judge would never have been allowed to do that, but he did, he challenged it, which is exactly what a consortium of businesses with an interest in the smoking ban should be doing today.
In the meantime, ordinary people who do not have the money to challenge the law can still do their bit, by openly defying it. I have done it, so why can't others?
As for outside buildings, just do it and tell the little Hitlers to do their worst, you have nothing to lose. The pub in Somerset that banned outside smoking are perfectly within their rights to stop anyone smoking if they are using the pub's facilities, i.e., tables and chairs, or if it is within their private property, garden etc., other than that, such as outside their front door and onto the street, they have no such rights whatsoever, and should be told to go eff themselves!
I was the same Peter, even moreso. When that day arrived in 2007, I was not much of an internet surfer. I had never been to Forest, F2C, Forces and many other discussion forums. I did not know about the 50% rule for smoking shelters. I did not know that there would no longer be a room for smokers beyond airport security. I don't read papers much, but I keep up with the news on TV. WHy didn't I know?
The biggest shock was the signs. Signs everywhere, plastered over places where people had not smoked for years, decades, even centuries. I was in a state of mental shock.
I began to seek out things on the internet, and my shock was multiplied when I read the true facts, and the manipulation and connivance of the anti smokers.
I watched the news avidly, waiting to see where the protest and non compliance was so that I could go and join in. There was nothing. It was as if everything was as it had always been. The new smoking laws were hardly mentioned, unless the local news wanted to ridicule Hamish Howitt in Blackpool or Nick Hogan in Bury.
I have never really recovered from the shock. There are days when I deliberately don't visit anywhere online like this forum for my own health. I can wake up in the morning, the sun is shining, I make a coffee, have a cigarette, and everything is fine. Then I boot up, check my emails, then before I begin some work, visit a site like this. Sometimes what I see makes it cloudy again, my well being disappears in a flash.
I hope my last post doesn't make it look as if I am criticising this blogspot. I was just saying that I have to sometimes avoid getting bogged down (or is that blogged down) reading depressing news which affects me. It has gone beyond the smoking issue as well.
A question for Simon Clark. Have you ever been asked/ever been on Question Time?
Timbone & Peter
I felt exactly the same.
The wretched signs appearing everywhere (even on churches!!!!!!!!!) were a great shock and I looked at the newspapers/ tv news each day expecting to see a backlash but it never came.
Even today the apathy amongst some smokers/publicans etc. still irritates me as I see the ban as a precusor to a raft of social engineeing initiatives regardless of who is in power.
I did note recently that a few of the no smoking signs in some local shop windows have been covered up by "pro-smoking stickers" on the outside of the window. Nuisance value only yes, but at least a sign of some dissent. And, as Peter, says more people openly defying a bad law would do no harm.
You have lived up to your screen there Goodstuff, well said!
Let's hope that we can convince more people to stand up for their rights!
What many people fail to realise is that you cannot be fined, and neither can the pub, just because you light up in there.
You can only be fined if you continue to smoke after being told by the publican not to. That also applies to the publican. He cannot be fined if he tells you to stop and does his best to eject you from his premises.
So light up everyone, and when told to stop or leave, just do so, that way you are abiding by the law!
I feel exactly the same: I've changed from being a tolerant, fairly optimistic person into one who lives in a state of constant rage and the anger is fuelled by reading blogs that expose what's happening in this country. We shouldn't shoot the messenger, however, and if it weren't for blogs we wouldn't know half of what's going on, as Timbone and Goodstuff, point out. It's being acknowledged in the MSM that blogs are increasingly influential and I hope that their power continues to grow.
Today is the Feast Day of St Luke, the Physician. Prayers will have been said in churches everywhere for all who work in the healing professions and for local hospitals. My prayer is that those with power to change things will recognise that smokers and patients' relatives who smoke are experiencing actual persecution. And I would ask that doctors who believe in their hearts that matters have gone too far will have the courage to speak out.
Amen
Peter, Timbone and all above, I feel exactly the same as you do, and it gives me great consolation that you all feel the same rage now as I do, as when the smoking ban first came into operation.
I still cant believe, or accept, the apathy of people the way they complied and accepted the ban without question.
I felt that I was the only one still venting my spleen and full of hatred and unacceptance until my husband stumbled onto this site and joined a few years ago and I took over the blogging since.
And even though its dispairing at times to read of the latest bans and new diktats, it's great to know that you're all of the same mind and your good advice and insights are an enormous help.
Sometimes I get so MAD I can hardly speak or write a word!
Amen to that too, Ann x
My ex place of employment here in (cough) sorry, Scotland, instructed us after the 2006 ban we could not congragate at the rear of the building as it would be a "bad" image for the company with customers realising, YES that actually some people who have worked there for many years, whose faces they know, and have had excellent personal customer service, actually had the brass neck to smoke in a public street, on their own (unpaid) breaks.
So we were all instructed to go out the front and smoke, as the world and his wife passed by.
Obviously the management issued a memo stating which litter bins on the street a suitable distance from the esteemed ediface of the building were suitable.
A colleague was pulled by a manager for smoking at the bus stop outside as "customers may have seen him and been offended...", the bloke was on his day off, no uniform, (we can get disciplined for being caught "en flangrante tobacco") not even in the bus shelter, which would have been an "offence" up here in Tartan Taliban country.
As to the back door rule, this is a public street, and if they want to stop me smoking on my own unpaid breaks, sorry they
don't own the the street folks, it's a public street, and if they want me to desist they can pay my share of the council tax bill for that particular bit of the Queen's highway upkeep.
.
Cheer up everyone. Tax and excises are so high that smokers are giving it up. Every time the rulers introduce a new tax because of dimminishing revenues i get to think about the excesses of tobacco revenue siphoned off by the health mafia and their self-imposed fascists. Their funding will dry up and I for one will feel the immense joy as they join the struggling classes. It is not easy to obtain hard copy of how much these scoundrels benefit from the coffers filled by smokers. Agressive rises in taxes will continue as smokers quit. The grumpy nonsmokers should cop it sweet for demonising the weak,addicted smokers. I for one have taken $100,00 a week from the greedy by quitting my habit. I am going to live longer and cost you more than the smokers who did you all a favour not dying in a geriatric home where most of the health cost is spent on those moralisers who live too long and miserably in God's waiting room. Delia
Delia..I too have taken my £80 a week [habit] away from the government and given it to the english mafia ..good riddance to tobbaconists and shops..and while we are about it lets close all the bingo halls..pubs and clubs too.