Save Our Pubs & Clubs - the next phase
Thursday, September 17, 2009 
On SunTalk Radio yesterday I was able to give a good plug to the Save Our Pubs and Clubs campaign. Shouting above the noise of the traffic (I was in Regent Street, making my way to Broadcasting House) I mentioned that we will be promoting the campaign at the three main party conferences over the next few weeks. (At this point Gaunt interjected and said that SunTalk would be going to Brighton and Manchester but not "that telephone box that calls itself the Lib Dem conference"!)
Anyway, the next phase of the campaign is to send thousands of flyers and posters to landlords who will be asked to distribute copies to customers and other publicans. MPs, MSPs and AMs will receive a flyer too.
The message is very simple: 52 pubs are closing every week ... to save our pubs and clubs ... amend the smoking ban.
We are unveiling the poster at the Labour conference in Brighton in a couple of weeks. Here's a sneak preview of the artwork as it will appear on an ad van that will patrol the road outside the conference centre and the main hotels.
Note: when we launch the poster you will be able to download it from the Forest and SOPAC websites. Watch this space.
Simon Clark
Jon Gaunt has launched the SunTalk Campaign to Save the Great British Pub. Click HERE and comment. Hint: I suggest you emphasise the impact of the smoking ban. If this campaign gets going, the Sun itself might sit up and take notice.
Reader Comments (20)
And if this has no effect,the only option left will be for groups of us to get together, rent houses in city centres and hold "coffee mornings".
Simon - You should probably take a leaf out of ASH's book: "100 pubs closing every week!"
This link was posted to me by a friend.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/5901141/Taxpayer-coughs-up-for-a-21706-Commons-smoking-shelter.html
It makes me feel sick that these people talk about health and safety for themselves and my mum, 82 years old, dying, was forced to sit in a wheelchair outside the hospital in February.
Cruel spiteful, monsters, God forgive me but I hate them.
Excellent poster Simon, well done. Sorry to hear about your mum, Mary. I'm not surprised you're angry. These are the kinds of human stories that just don't seem to be entering the wider public consciousness.
Mary -
Don't feel any guilt. The spitefulness of these people riles me as well - almost beyond endurance.
My Mum is elderly, too - and gave up smoking in 1970. To this day, however, she INSISTS that any smoker light up in her home: she regards anything else as the height of bad manners, and a gross breach of the rules of hospitality.
But then HER generation had more to fear from flying bombs when they were young: a small tube of smouldering herbs in the confined space of an Anderson shelter held few terrors.
What a silly generation of ignoramuses they were !
And how wise and knowledgeable WE have become...............
Why would the commons need a smoking shelter? As a Royal palace it is exempt from the smoking ban
There is such a thing as righteous anger. Christ's attack on the money changers in the temple is an example usually cited. I too have been angry at the sight of old people in wheelchairs, smoking in the cold outside our cottage hospital. I've mentioned this before on this site. I suppose the friendly nurses who allow this put their own jobs at risk because smoking is 'officially' banned in the grounds. I remember, years ago, in London, when all the seats were removed under the canopy at the front of one large hospital. What kind of mind is it that can think up something like that? And did the resulting sight of patients standing, holding their drips as they smoked a cigarette in the cold, spark any hint of compassion? And where are the healers, the doctors and senior nurses and highly-paid administrators who will speak up against this merciless persecution? First do no harm.
John - although the HOC is technically exempt, in the spirit of all being equal under the law (splutter), MPs agreed to impose the ban there, too.
Martin - thank God there are still some people who realise that the cardinal rule of hospitality is to make your guests feel welcome, rather than the exercise of prejudice posturing as social responsibility.
Mary - a disgraceful way to treat an old lady which, sadly, seems to be common in an uncaring NHS that appears to have completely lost sight of its role and the legitimate limits of its authority. I was smoking in the shelter at my local hospital and got talking to an in-patient who sat next to me whose consultant had told him that he'd refuse treatment if he could smell that he'd been smoking.
Jon was an anti-smoker until his run in with that councillor over adoption. Jon is now pro-choice.
Some anti-smokers are now changing their minds.Another is David Goerlitz and it would appear that Bob Russell MP, who voted FOR the ban, is going to help pubs in Colchester.
Norman -
You ask:
"What kind of mind is it that can think up something like that?"
The 'kind of mind' that (inter alia):
Designed the death camps (' technical challenges')
Staffed the death camps ( 'committed workforce')
Performed 'medical experiments' in the death camps ('scientific research')
Fretted about the 'efficiency' of the death camps ('targets')
Sought to create a Pure Race ('mission statement')
Said it was only following orders ('job security')
'Nazism' MAY be dead.
The mindset that spawned it is VERY much alive.
Joyce -
As to the Stroppy Consultant Syndrome you mention:
When visiting the ENT clinic at my hospital a short time ago, the lady consultant suggested to ME:
"You know, you OUGHT to think about cutting down on your smoking a bit: it irritates the nasal passages."
THAT is the approach that used to be standard.
Doctors should ADVISE (that's their job)
Doctors should NOT order (that's NOT their job).
Some confusion seems to have crept into the profession..........
Simon, I've just listened to your interview with Jon Gaunt. Brilliant. Congratulations on your unabating energy.
Martin V. You have some good points comparing Nazism with this ban. Some NHS staff are now joining the scroungers of this Country, Most local GP's don't make house calls after night surgery or weekends. This has Changed since 1979. Before we had a NHS to be proud of. You will notice that none of the new hospitals that have been built since then have 'Nye Bevan' in their names, Especially, since 1997, when NuLabour were elected.
Martin, I agree about the Nazi mindset.Repeatedly in the last 60-odd years people have asked: 'How could decent, ordinary German citizens have allowed that evil to happen?' They just didn't see it. Just like now. The Niemoller poem ('First they came') says it all. If it's not you that's affected the imaginative leap into what it must be like to be an 'untermensch' doesn't happen. And I fear that the footsoldiers of a potential dictatorship are already assembling, whether by design or not: the paramilitary-uniformed parking attendants, some on James Bond-style menacingly-emblazoned motor bikes, the licensed local government snoops, the ubiquitous minor officials who wear high visibility jackets, the decent but modest achievers, suddenly enjoying some status - and spoiled by it. The Nazi oppression must never happen again, we are told every November. As you have observed, it's the mindset of which we have to beware. Jackboots were of their time. The uniforms may be different today.
Norman,
I agree with what you say.
So 52 pubs are closing per an? So what? Maybe these pubs are totally useless. Maybe they deserve to close. I agree with the powers that be. There are too many of these dens of evil. Only the corrupt Upper Classes should frequent these places. Like Soho. Good luck to them! We workers should lead clean and exemplary lives. No booze, no fags, no shagging. That’s what I think.
Norman -
Got it in one !
As long as we DON'T have swastika armbands, torchlight parades, ranting oratory, watchtowers, and all the other emblems of that Germanic Tragi-Comedy we can somehow delude ourselves that we are 'safe'.
In an ironic sense, 'The Nazis' have become a convenient Historical Scapegoat.
A comforting diversion from Present Reality.
I would venture to suggest, however, that the Enemy - the REAL 'enemy' - remains unvanquished to this day.
Only his tactics (and his mask) have changed.
But even he is powerless to disguise THREE important clues to his Real Nature:
a) An UNCHALLENGEABLE sense of his own Virtue.
b) An INSATIABLE desire to control others.
c) An almost total lack of any SENSE OF HUMOUR.
"He who has eyes to see.............."
Norman -
By way of a 'PS':
You may care to click on this link, and study the photograph of the smiling (mostly female) SS guards at Auschwitz:
http://isurvived.org/Pictures_iSurvived-4/fem2GUARDS-Auschwitz.GIF
Not ONE of them looks 'evil' (a few of the girls being decidedly sexy, in fact).
With a subtle air-brushing, they could easily have been Butlins staff in the Fifties.
It doesn't take a Monster to do Monstrous Things.
"G-o-o-d morning, Campers !"..............
Martin, thanks for the link. I've looked at it (was a bit dim about finding it at first). I agree: a very wholesome-looking lot; could, in different gear, be modelling those pre-war advertisements for cod liver oil and malt or healthy bike rides in Metroland, illustrating that the wickedness does not start with them but with those who manipulate them. How could decent, ordinary people assent to .....etc?
I always think that there's a tendency to believe that evil will show itself with a drumroll whereas, in reality, it's banal.
"in reality, it's banal."
Quite so, Joyce.
And THAT is its best disguise.
Why most people insist that it HAS to have a funny moustache, or sit in (say) a converted volcano in front of a battery of TV monitors with a grumpy white Persian on its lap defeats me.
Strip away the uniform, and you have in Heinrich Himmler, for example, the (Welsh) Maths and PE Teacher of my youth.
Further:
As one of Graham Greene's more memorable characters said:
"Nobody said that the Fallen Angels were the ugly ones."
Mind you, he didn't mention the Goblins........