Saturday
Nov062010
Dutch courage
Saturday, November 6, 2010 Interesting - and encouraging - that the Sun should publish THIS interview with Wiel Maessen, spokesman for Red de Kleine Horecaondernemer (KHO), translated as the Foundation To Save Small Bar Owners.
Wiel is a long-term smokers' rights activist in the Netherlands. The lesson, however, of the success of the Dutch campaign against the smoking ban was the alliance between campaigners like Wiel and small bar owners whose businesses were under threat.
Hence the importance of our own Save Our Pubs & Clubs campaign which is designed to create a similar alliance. I will comment further when I get back from Ireland.
Reader Comments (13)
Are the first cracks beginning (at last) to appear in what seemed to be a bomb-proof edifice ?
Could be - could just be.
I'm keeping my powder dry, but might just allow myself one shot of the musket in celebration..........................
PS:
A higher proportion of Jews was murdered in Holland than anywhere else. This painful reminder probably acts as a spur to the more liberal-minded among the Dutch. Or - to put it another way - they tend to lack OUR smugness. Good on them !!
I think this is very interesting that The Sun has decided to give this story a more prominent position. Perhaps this is a sign that the ban should be questioned more and more - at the moment we still get comments from people that 'the smoking ban is here to stay' such as some half witted groups that are supposed to be on the side of the bars - (Camra - I will never support you again - ever). More and more people questioning the ban is a welcome development.
Also, its good that the article points out that the fines in the Netherlands for breaking the ban was small - but in the UK can be life destroying. As Simon Clark earlier pointed out - the UK (and Ireland) have the most draconian bans - they also have the most draconian punshments. ASH have always equated compliance with popularity - No, compliance can be equated with fear. Thats where we are now, thanks to ASH. A genuine state of fear.
Daily Mail has now released the story. With comments.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1327226/Smoking-ban-u-turn-Holland-ALLOWS-lighting-2000-bars-pubs.html
@Martin
In the autumn of 1944 news first reached the Dutch what happened to deported Dutch jews, they went on strike. After the failure of Operation Market Garden, "A Bridge Too Far" the Dutch were systematically starved in the winter of 1944/5.
Anyway back on topic there must be much knashing of teeth in no particular order, Brussels, ASH, Labour Party, Department of Health, Dave C and Nick C's place.
I think this will give us the beleagured smokers, and bar owners a much needed injection of confidence in hope, after all it springs eternal.
A thoroughly well organised march in the UK wouldn’t go amiss. Perhaps we should get the Dutch to organise it. We’ve seen the hospitality trade getting involved in the Netherlands…and that is just the kind of support needed. Now we need a pan European alliance.
It’s this sort of coming together which eventually will crack the back of the smoking ban. Once you have support from other European countries, you then begin to gain enormous strength that no politician can ignore. Ultimately it will become an avalanche.
This inevitably leads to a change of public opinion, when that happens the momentum becomes unstoppable and no amount of vitriolic comments on any site will stop it. It matters not anymore how shrill quangos and fake charities become – they will be trodden under foot.
Mark Butcher
You are spot on with your assumptions Mark. Great Britain is indeed a state of fear, and it doesn't stop with the smoking-ban.
Consider all the other aspects of our daily lives where the state intervenes, and issues non-stop threats against the way we live. If you drive, as the majority of us do, you live a constant nightmare; speed limits that do not work, more and more road signs that confuse, rather than help, massive bumps in almost every street, which they have the audacity to call "road calming measures". Do these bloody bumps calm you? Because they certainly don't calm me, plus of course they do immeasurable damage to your vehicle. And what about all the new parking spaces, which almost every council seems to have suddenly found, and charge us the earth for the privilege of parking in? A few years ago, we would have been fined or towed away for causing what was then termed a parking restriction. Now we can park anywhere our stupid money grabbing councils like, as long as we pay for it, no matter if by doing so, we cut the once three lane street down to a miserable one lane, with vehicles weaving in and out like a game of snakes and ladders.
And what about seat belts? I read just this week that some money-head has devised a machine that will be able to tell not only how fast we are travelling, but if we are taxed and insured, and if we are wearing our seat belt. It will save lives they tell us. Again, no thoughts whatsoever of personal choice and personal freedom. I never wear a seat belt, I hate the feel of restriction that it gives me, making me feel as if I cannot breath, but all the time I am driving, I have to constantly keep a lookout for a "friendly" copper, who, if he spots me, will tell me that it is only for my own good that he is issuing me with some enormous fine. Well it isn't for my own good, and it will not help one iota to cut down deaths on the road. If it did, then why do ambulance drivers, police, and fire engine drivers, all not wear them?
I shouldn't have to drive, constantly looking in my driving mirror for that "friendly" copper all the time, surely that is more dangerous than all the petty rules and regulations they come up with.
But is doesn't just stop with driving and smoking, it even intrudes into our homes, or outside them, where out petty councils dream up new rules almost every day regarding our rubbish bins. Old people especially are scared stiff of these little Hitlers. If your bin is left with the lid more than half inch open, or on the wrong place on the pavement, or God forbid, someone has placed a used torch battery in it, they refuse to empty it at all, and fine some poor old sod into the bargain.
I could go on all day, but I know Simon recently placed some sort of restrictions on here regarding overlong posts, so I won't.
But as you say Mark, the constant threat against us all is here, and because of organisations, such as ASH (being only one of such organisations) people start to believe that the lies and rubbish that they promote are the truth, and that there is nothing we can do about it.
I say there is something we can do about it. I say we need to make ourselves heard more, like they do in other countries. We are a pretty good group here on this site, but we need to get our message across to a much wider audience than just to each other, as we do here, and we need to promote the act of civil disobedience. It has worked in the past to change laws, it can work in the future. How else will our law makers know what we really want and how we really feel?
Also on a postive note I was researching other bans and came across this on the BBC's website. I did write to the Beeb critiquing their coverage of smoking and the "harm" of passive smoking. It is probably coinicidence but I came across this comment on the debate in the UK. Fair play to the BBC they seem to be wanting oto offer a balanced coverage.
"The issue of passive smoking has been at the centre of an intense debate between pro and anti-smoking groups, with each side contesting the validity of each other's statistics."
So guys, all those comments and papers we post on the internet have an effect. Well done!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/3758707.stm
Its good publicity for the cause but I'd hesitate to say it would have any effect on our Parliament. The DoH, ASH and their lapdogs in Parliament like Barron, are still living in a bubble where the ban is popular. We, also, still have to contend with the Lib. part of the coalition, who voted virtually en masse for the original ban.
It certainly chips away and that's the good part, continual pressure.
Having spent some time in my youth 20's living and working in the Dam I liked the Dutch I liked their truly Liberal atttitude to life. I found them to be the nearest to the British in their ways. Apart from the fact that the ritcheous nose prodders within their society were fewer and far between. However when the mad cap opinions of a few force their way into the political spectrum of everyday life which in no way reflects the real feeling of everyday people for it's own ends.
They have rejected it. Good on you Holland, well done. Maybe common sense is infectious.
pps Hey Prime minister, as we are now fully integrated into europe how about we start paying equal taxes on tobacco as our Europeoan brothers? After all soon Europe will be able to set our levels of taxation? Just a thought. LOL.
And when the tide DOES turn on this issue (and one or two others I could mention), just watch the Media Creeps scurrying to prove their liberal credentials ("Ja, but I myself vas never in ze Party" etc). That'll be interesting.
VRIJHEIT MOET ER ZIJN!!!! ("There must be freedom")
Indeed Martin V. Given the way the media has been against the ban, seeing fair coverage like this could indeed be the start of normal people's opinion being expressed. If they continue to shift it's not unreasonable that one of the national papers would join in with a fight against the ban.
Yep, it's high time we got some cleaners in to start scraping all the bird-shit off Britannia. There's nothing particularly 'cool' about guano (which, in any case, some naughty terrorist in Wimbledon could use for making gunpowder).