We'll huff and we'll puff and we'll smoke the house down

Last night on Sky News: 2 English MPs , a Liberal Democrat and a Tory, debated the smoking ban that is to be introduced in English and Welsh pubs, restaurants and workplaces. From the vantage point of Ireland's near 2 year old ban, the debate was amusingly blinkered. The Lib Dem guy (whose name sounds very like ' Lemon Optical'), claiming to be a 'libertarian', denounced the ban as a gross infringement of (smokers') civil liberties. How dare the 'nanny state' (what a hoary old cliche that's become already) curtail the right of smokers to exhale foul pollutants into the lungs, hair, clothes, food and drinks of those who happen to be in the vicinity of their vile habit. Libertarianism, the last time I checked, favours minimal state regulation of citizens' lives provided their actions do not infringe others' basic rights. Smoking so flagrantly infringes non-smokers' rights in this regard the argument isn't worth repeating. The only reason smoking in public spaces was not proscribed by law until relatively recently is that it was the staus quo, the accepted orthodoxy, however unenlightened.

The degree to which the ban has been accepted by the great majority of smokers in Ireland is truly remarkable, given the resistance it faced from this quarter before its introduction. Most reasonable smokers now accept that the ban is just. Those who still oppose it like to spout Bill Hicks style rhetoric about how their rights have been infringed. Hicks died of cancer aged 32. The arrogance of the British anti-ban lobby has been thrown into sharp relief by the, I repeat, astonishing success of the ban in Ireland (or its towns and cities, at least, I have no doubt smoking continues in many rural pubs).

Put that in your pipe and smoke it (outdoors, you foul creature).