Smoking Bans kill businesses-FACT!
Such astounding news for all those who believe in freedom of choice & freedom of expression as it now seems that not only 'SmokeFree SW' have gone kaput but also 'SmokeFree NW' have too as councils suddenly find themselves with their financial backs against the wall. Be rest assured that "Stop Smoking Leicester" are under severe pressure from yours truly to wrap up their own 'waste of space' quit smoking service as they are literally wasting £920,000 per annum in the hope that even one smoker quits! (all figures quoted from FOI responses).
Where the Leicester Smoke-Free system fell flat on its face was that they couldn't tell me if any smokers relapsed after the obligatory 4 week period - or even 8 weeks, 12 weeks or 12 months! So, anyone with the need to gain a public health, look how good I am 'Blue Peter' badge could easily do so and then simply carry on as before. Not exactly the greatest test for a quit smoking mob that seemingly have no specific targets! They also seemed to feel the need to waste nearly 45% of that sum (£920,000) on useless NRT products and I say useless because even ONS stated that 98.4% of NRT products are useless!
Incidentally, a once very popular pub in Leicester has been refurbished and now includes a delightful beer garden, which I accoladed greatly as it means that they want the valuable smokers back in their drinking customer base. The online comments brought about the usual verbal assault yet none of the 'assailants' could answer even the simplest of questions posed - "smoking/smokers stink" was about as educated as got!
With two major anti-smoking units disbanded and a few more under fire our blogging friend Frank Davis could well be correct in his suggestion that government are tiptoeing AWAY from all this smoking ban crap! God knows I've been banging the drum long enough trying to get them to accept the truth-as have others! The one thing they (none of them) can dispute is the immense cost this stupid law has imposed upon this country. After all, it is still costing this country a minimum of £1/2bn EVERY single MONTH and smoker prevalence still sits at 22% -big whup! In 10yrs of smoker hatred & vilification 'they' have managed to reduce rates by 3% - oh wow! Thus far this country has wasted a minimum of £60bn on something that is a complete freedom of choice and have, stupidly, spawned a new breed of mega rich foriegn businessmen - tobacco smugglers.
Is this right or is this wrong I ask myself? The simple truth is that it serves this idiotic, self righteous government right for the smoking ban (though they won't admit it) was brought in on the back of Lies, Fabrications, Manipulated Statistics & total utter Junk Science and nobody disputes that anymore. The only thing 'they' have left to beat the smokers with is "fooor the cheeeeeldren" - they still do it at the entrance to the Leicester Royal Infirmary via their extremely annoying tannoy proclaiming yet another lie insomuch that "it is illegal to smoke on hospital grounds". Quite simply..... it isn't.
Interesting to note that as local elections have come round again, one jeremy Corbyn is still doing his best to drive Labour voters away from his party-and non more so than here in Leicester where the referendum vote shocked the 'hardcore labourites' to their very core. Leicester has been a red flag paradise for 40+ years but the REMAIN vote only scraped across the line by the narrowest of margins: 51%-49%.
Leicester
Remain: 70,808 (51.1%)
Leave: 67,992 (48.9%)
Number of voters: 139,309
Turnout: 65.1%
I would imagine that with another 2 years before OUR local elections, all UKIP candidates will be storing up and almost endless list of reasons why voting Labour would be treasonous but voting UKIP would be the sensible move. I think that political change is on its way in Leicester - and many other regions so let's just hope that UKIP's top table get their house in order well beforehand. It surely cannot get any worse after the debacle at Stoke! Vaz will probably stand down (and there is a clown is being primed for his seat), Ms Kendall does nothing & Mr Ashworth simply wants Leicester to absorb more & more 'refugees' even though we have no houses for them, no jobs for them and an ever expanding Leicester dole queue!
Now we have presented Article 50 to the EU we can expect to see some fireworks from them as they beat their chests and declare themselves King of the Jungle - the only problem being that they are, quite simply, bankrupt minnows. We will win in the end-I just hope that Mrs May stays strong in her resolve as we have always been a great trading nation. I'm not even going to go into the growing Muslim problem in this blog as that is certainly now worthy of its own write up - sadly!
