Sark landladies fume over ban on smoking
Monday 18th April 2011, 2:29PM BST.
SARKEES should be free to decide for themselves if they want to visit a pub that allows smoking inside, says the landlady of the Mermaid.
Dorothy Taylor (pictured), who has run the pub since 1954 but whose family has owned it since the 1920s, responded after the island’s Medical Committee published a report asking Chief Pleas to ban smoking inside public buildings.
In 2008, the committee conducted a survey on the issue and the majority of pubs and restaurants have since implemented a ban on smoking of their own accord.
The Mermaid and the Maple Bar, at the Island Hall, were the only two pubs where drinkers could smoke inside.
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Time gentlemen please! Bloney me, Sark is only 10 years behind the rest of the civilised world this time.
Ignorance about smoking is no longer an excuse.
The facts are out there but the books haven’t got many pictures so must be that them old smokey Sarkees don’t understand, eh?
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Hardly surprising from an island that is 500 years behind the times.
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@ Sark Pubber
What about alcohol? have you not read a book on the dangers and damaging effect of alcohol.
I am not questioning your intelligence, your reasoning however…
People choose to go to the mermaid because it is a smoking pub and people can do what they please whilst having a good old drink.
The non smokers have plenty of choice in Sark and have clearly adapted to the situation.
If smoking goes in the Mermaid the very essence of The Mermaid goes… the freedom of our glorious local pub… down to the bitter black depths of conformity… Deep in to George Orwell’s tomb!
Do you get the point?
If you don’t smoke… drink elsewhere… you have your freedom. The whole of Guernsey and the rest of Sark… now give us one little patch of free land.
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On a completely different matter. Ms. Taylor looks like a perfect landlord! Stand your ground! :-)
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HUH? what do you mean ‘Sarkees should decide for themselves’….? Chief Pleas are democratically elected by Sarkees therefore they ARE deciding for themselves through the political process in the usual way!!!
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At least on Sark there is no costly NHS designed to pick up the pieces of the feckless and stupid (plus a few genuinely deserving cases) at the expense of the rest.
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OK@AK. Education, education, education. Back to skool, my ickle brayeing donkeys. A couple of extracts from Janet & John Book One;
(1) Scientific
Tobacco smoke contains over 4000 chemicals, including particles of tar, nicotine and benzene, and in its gas phase, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide. As many as 60 cause, or are suspected as causing cancer and many irritate the respiratory system.
(2) Public Health
Banning smoking in public spaces will also help smokers. It would reduce the amount of cigarettes smoked and encourage smokers to stop smoking. It is in the interest of the people as a whole in that it is promoting the health of the whole island.
How large does the body of evidence need to be written before Sarkees wake-up and recognise their tired and out-dated selfishness and ignorance?
Choice, what choice? Slow lingering death by nicotine or slow lingering death by ignorance?
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@Sark Pubber
Choice and self determination is a wonderful thing – but a thing that most countries’ politicians have whittled away using all the devices and impositions of the nanny state.
Somehow politicians manage to convince voters that they are doing them a favour by having a costly nanny state employee in a peaked cap, armed with right of access etc, to enforce the self-important diktats of the political class, and their fans from the over-represented cabals of vociferous minorities.
Never mind that the political class of even a relatively uncorrupted place like the UK has been exposed as a collective of self-serving, frauds, bent of doing anything possible make their lives comfortable and to stay in power, on a quite breathtaking scale.
Be grateful that Sark continues to want to be different, and resist this gruesome fate as best it can.
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Larky – I agree with your anti-nanny state stance in general, but not on this issue. Since the smoking ban has been introduced in Guernsey, UK and elsewhere, it is an absolute pleasure to spend an evening in a pub. No longer do people need to conform to an apartheid of “that’s a smokers’ pub” and “that’s not”. All hostelries become open to all.
No-one is stopping you smoking, they just want to stop you dictating whether other people can enjoy a drink in the same pub as you.
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@Terry
Hmm… see “Wedge, thin end of…”
Priorities! Grown up customers can choose to avoid smoking establishments (I would); then nanny can spend her time trying once again to bring up and educate the kids who have become unruly and poorly educated in exact and opposite proportion to the rise of the nanny state..?
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Larky – but why should I have to avoid a pub where my friends may be drinking? I should be free to choose.
It is not a question of having the right to choose to smoke. It is a question of whose right to choose is greater: (a) smokers who want to smoke and drink or (b) non-smokers who want to breathe clean air and drink and not wake up smelling like an ashtray. In the past society dictated that (a) trunped (b). But times change, and the majority of society now wants (b) to trump (a).
Throughout life there are examples of an individual’s right to choose being restricted when their choices affect others. This has become one of those situations. I do not regard this as nanny state. Nanny state is when the state tries to stop you doing something which affects only you.
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Terry
If your friends choose to drink in a pub that allows smoking then maybe they don’t want you to turn up!!
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Phil – and I bet that they don’t even like smoking either!
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Good on you Sarkees, tell the health police where to go.
Why can’t people make their own choices anymore? Everyone knows that smoking can lead to an early and very unpleasant demise – but some people choose to smoke anyway as is their right. If the staff and customers who use those boozers go there in the full knowledge that it is a smoking pub then why shouldn’t they? If you don’t smoke don’t go there.
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Terry Langlois
Your right, it`s the fag that is in control or should i say the addiction to it. Thats why if smokers were to be honest they would all say they wish they had never started.
P Le Page
And i dont mean the odd cigar here and there :).
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I abhor smoking myself. It is unhealthy and it creates an environment which makes me very uncomfortable. I do not often go to the Mermaid and on the few occasions that I do, I will leave immediately if it gets so smokey inside as to cause me discomfort – and my level of tolerance is quite low. I find this regrettable, as I might wish to catch up with the people I had just been chatting to.
However, the Mermaid is a private establishment which happens to be open to the public. It is up to the landlady to decide what rules to apply in her own pub – and she will to some extent be following her own preferences, and to some (and probably greater) extent the demands of her customers. Patrons do not have to visit the Mermaid if they do not wish to do so; it is not an essential service, and moreover there are plenty of other pubs to choose from – if one wishes to go to the pub in the first place.
The thought that the rest of us should have any right whatsoever to impose our own preferences on other people doing in other people’s establishments, with each other’s consent, things which do not affect us in any way – seems so alien to me, I am most surprised it receives the benefit of serious debate.
The Chief Pleas may today be widely accepted to have the raw power to impose whatever rules they want on whomever they want, but they have neither the right, nor the legitimacy, nor the consent of the people, to do so.
Saying they have been elected does not help them in any way.
When the Chief Pleas was first created in the 16th century, it was created by the then Seigneur and the inhabitants of Sark, with the consent of the latter, to run the basic administration of the Island, to enact essential laws and to ensure basic shared services continued to tick over satisfactorily. This was the basic contract entered into between the government and the governed. The basic contract never included the right of the Chief Pleas to lie under our mattresses, to tell us what we can or cannot do in our own bedrooms, to watch over us, to be our nannies or to micromanage our private lives. The people been never been asked if we wanted the Chief Pleas to have such powers; we have never been given the opportunity to opt out, and we have never consented to it.
When we vote for 28 Conseillers, we give our consent for those 28 people to exercise these basic powers and perform these basic duties under this basic contract which has been in force since the 16th century. These are the only powers the election gives them the legitimacy to exercise; for anything else, they cannot claim legitimacy by virtue of having been elected.
When on the ballot paper, there is an option which states “I vote for nobody to be my nanny and to have the power to micromanage my life” and every other option states “I vote for X to have the power to be my nanny and to have the power to micromanage my life”, and the people still elect 28 Conseillers, then the Chief Pleas might have the right to claim legitimacy in exercising such powers. Until then, any attempt by them to do is merely an illegitimate attempt to usurp power which has never been legitimately given to them.
Regrettably, the Chief Pleas since the 2008 Reform Law have been behaving as if they did legitimately possess such powers, legislating left, right and centre and getting involved in all sorts of areas of life in which they have no business getting involved, purely so as to impose the personal preference of the governing lot on everybody else. Admittedly, in doing this, they have merely been copying what has become the fashion the world over, but this does not excuse their actions.
I object to smoking but I stand up for the right of the smokers to do what they please in their own properties, for the right of publicans to set their own rules in their own establishments, and for the right of anyone to go to hell in whichever way they choose for themselves – including the right to drive themselves to ill health and death by smoking, if that is their choice.
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Why is it that smokers and drinkers appear to be the most aggrieved members of society?
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@ A Resident – you hit the nail on the head with this comment:-
“merely been copying what has become the fashion the world over”
…the universal supine acceptance of the tyranny of minorities, AKA political correctness, is used by many manipulative activists who understand that “Joe Average” will put up with amazing impositions for a quiet life. Look at the asinine practises at any airport these days, where old dears of 85 are dutifully frisked – along with those that ALL concerned know full well are the “target market”.
Smoking is obviously a disgusting and filthy habit, but I and others will defend the right of the feeble minded to poison themselves (and themselves only) whilst paying stellar additional taxes for the privilege.
And plenty of us also recognise that legalising, taxing and controlling (nearly) ALL drugs would only be to acknowledge the common sense lessons of US prohibition in the 20s. I sometimes wonder if the Columbian drug barons are paying the easily corrupted politicians of the EU and US to maintain the bans to keep the price up and help them control distribution.
The world is dangerously overpopulated anyway, as Sir David Attenborough is doing his best to point out. We should send Nanny back to the kindergarten, and allow Darwin to do his thing.
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i wish this problem would be resolved easity. everyone should have freedom to do what they wish and smoking should only be banned in pubs at the landlord/ladys discretion. now would you all shut up and let me live my life.
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Picture this. A quaint little hostelry tucked in the quiet, leafy lanes of Sark. The landlady exchanges witter banter and gentle ‘bonne homie’ with a handful of colourful local characters. They respond with equally witty, polite and well informed observations about the meaning of local life. Could this be the Woolpack in Emmerdale or the Mermaid in Sark?
The reality. Landlady nowhere to be seen. A couple of student bar staff who would also rather be elsewhere. A room full of heavy drinkers and smokers communicating with Neanderthal grunts punctuated by crude expletives. Abusive, bad language. Petty drunken arguments. Random outbreaks of physical abuse. The landlady takes the profits whilst the local medical profession are forced to pick-up the pieces of a broken society fuelled by booze, fags and associated medical conditions.
Not quite so quaint and romantic, eh?
Moral of the story? If landladies took more responsibility for their existing licensing obligations, new legislation would not be required.
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The anti smoking lobby continue with their dictatorial approach in the name of Sark Pubber. Smoking is now responsible for physical abuse, bad language and petty drunken arguments, the propaganda these people churn out would have got them a job for Adolf in 1940.
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Predictable response from @blogger. When the truth hurts churn out the old Hitler propaganda chestnut.
Truth is nicotine; alcohol; cannabis and cocaine are all addictive drugs. They may be variable in their strength and relative in their effect but they all destroy lives. Directly and indirectly. Short term and long term. They may be sociable for a moment but their side effects can last for years.
No one wants a nanny state but a civilised society cannot ignore well publicised and proven facts. Ask a medic. Drugs may be a lifestyle choice but they shouldn’t destroy the lives of others. Ask anyone who has watched someone die a slow & lingering death from drug abuse. This includes nicotine addiction and lung cancer.
Freedom of choice is fine but only until it affects the freedom of others.
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Sark Pubber
I know someone who died from being morbidly obese (as many people do, increasingly so). Should Governments interfere with people’s eating habits do you think?
What about people who die from sexually contracted diseases? Should the Government interfere in that area?
You say that nobody wants a nanny state yet that is exactly what you are advocating.
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Phil – you are failing to acknowledge the difference between inflicting harm on yourself and inflicting harm (and being generally anti-social and obnoxious) to others.
The state should only stop people choosing what to do to themselves in extreme cases. It is right that the state should reflect the public will in stopping some persons inflicting harm on others.
In Guernsey I see no complaints about the smoking ban and most people think it is a huge improvement. The States have responded to changing social standards and attitudes. Is it right for the Chief Pleas to do the same? If the people of Sark have the same views as elsewhere, then absolutely yes.
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Phil, quite a silly comparison.
Sex is natural and so is eating – smoking is anything but
Smokers poison themselves and, more importantly, others with their foul and disgusting habit. It should be banned in ALL public places without exception. Get with the times Sark.
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Martino
Humans have sought to alter their state of consciousness throughout the ages, whether it’s tobacco, alcohol, coca, caffeine, cannabis, opium etc, or some of the more exotic hallucinogenic substances used by ancient tribes. Does that not make it natural? It does in my opinion………
Also, is over-eating to the point of popping natural?
Terry
Is it extreme for a human to want to smoke the odd spliff or snort the odd line of cocaine in their own property, thereby inflicting no harm whatsoever apart from on themselves?
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@ Sark Pubber:
Neanderthal grunts and abuse may be amongst the essential life signs of a society that does more than merely slump in front of Sky TV with pack of cheap supermarket Stellar Export and cigarettes – which is what has happened in many parts of the UK, following the demise of “traditional” pubs.
The fact people can still gather to get drunk in the haze of cheap tobacco on Sark probably has a lot to do with the general absence of motorised traffic; but we do get your drift, and now realise that once the fag ban is sorted, other forms of substances deemed unsuitable for your vision of “civilised society” will follow.
What Sark may need more than the imposition of a 21st Century Nanny State is a sense of purpose and opportunity that can evolve beyond the life of servitude to an alien hospitality empire, as currently held out by latest edition of “the thoughts of Kevin Delaney”.
But who on earth would want to put their head above the parapet and lead this society, when there are a handful of snipers armed to the teeth with spite, bile and innuendo, just waiting to sneer and take pot shots at anyone notionally “in charge” of anything..?
The people of Sark need to properly step back and appreciate the insidious and poisonous consequences of the relentless propaganda campaign, which seems far more injurious to the long term health and well-being of the Island community than a right to exercise personal freedom, within the scope of “market forces”. However misguided that freedom might be in the eyes of others.
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Phil – the proscription of certain drugs is based on the believe that the use of those drugs (or the mis-use which is usually involved) is harmful to society as a whole. Whether that belief is well founded is debatable but is entirely irrelevant to the question of one person smoking in another person’s vicinity.
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Those that feel the smoker has more rights than a non smoker is selfish & deluded. They tend to be the careless smokers.
The coolness & glamour has been taken away from the filthy habit.
It must continue if the health of the public is to be at the forefront of those that are empowered to ensure a decent environment is something everybody can take for granted.
The more uncomfortable smokers are made to feel about what they’re doing the less people will be inclined to take it up.
An awning or gazebo is not much of an outlay to give them a decent amount of protection from the elements in the colder months.
All services that have banned it a long time ago would say it was a good move. I very much doubt any of them would reintroduce it if given the option.
Smokers have a duty of care towards none smokers. It’s madness to think it should be any different.
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@Paul – so now there is “a duty of care”, is there?
I would suggest that people who knowingly circulate in public when they are suffering from a cold or flu (or worse) are rather more of a nuisance. Unlike smokers, their condition is not immediately apparent (and thus avoidable).
A law to require all persons who give cause to suspect they may have a communicable disease should be quarantined or required to wear a biohazard suit, seem like a natural extension.
But you try putting up a sign that says “No AIDS Sufferers Admitted”, and see where that gets you!
So this is about choosing the ends of fashionable wedges, drawing politically correct lines, proportionality, relevance – and generally, having something more important to occupy your time than the desire to micro manage the lives of all around, whether they want/need it or not.
If the vast majority don’t want to be in the presence of smokers, then only a mad publican would choose to limit their potential clientèle. So why not just let Darwin prevail..?
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Larky
Do you think the bus or train companies would revert back to smoking if they were allowed to then?
Never. Those days are long gone.
The majority would say pretty much the same. The benefits are enormous.
Of course everybody has equal rights to expect a safe & healthy environment. Smokers can still smoke. They have to slip outside. Big deal. Where’s the problem with that?
Beverages are not glued to the bar preventing those with the excuse of enjoying a smoke with their drink whilst relaxing.
Moral & ethical legislation doesn’t make smoking in enclosed areas workable in today’s world.
Smokers generally smoke less with these policies in place. It’s beneficial for them too.
I do smoke. I regret starting.
A clean fresh smelling environment is a much nicer place to eat. Only selfish uncaring smokers would say different.
It’s ignorant & wrong to expect non-smokers to endure unhealthy establishments in a world where common decency & respect for others is seen to be practised. Every member of society certainly does have a duty of care towards others.
It makes my blood boil seeing smoking parents driving about with children in their car. That should be illegal. The sooner, the better. It’s irresponsible, arrogant & abusive.
You need to question how good a friend people are if they knowingly spend time in your presence whilst carrying infectious diseases.
Fashion has absolutely no part to play in this either. It’s more to do with people being better informed of the dangers. Life goes on. With each day we seek to improve over the previous.
There is no contest for any further argument.
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Well done to SEM for taking the lead on this.
Black mark for the gorse burning though!
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@Paul: Well, you avoided dealing with the tricky question. Next time I have the flu, I will seek you out and sneeze over you.
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Larky
Whatever. It’s like I said earlier. One should choose who they they spend time with more wisely.
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“Larky”
Although I’m definitely not married to you?????
I will join with you in coughing and spluttering and sneezing all over “friend “Paul”. Who is still in a FOOLS’ PARADISE I see.
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“Paul”
Another suggestion for you, how about working in a Major City Hospital (where I have incidentaly)and just see how your concern for the well-being of others works THERE!
You are such a patronizing, pompous so called KNOW ALL!!! on so many things that you KNOW NOTHING ABOUT!!!!
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Margaret Le Page
In what capacity?
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