Petitions...

No, it was the council that created it. If I was a bigwig in Edi council I wouldn't have even have given this hype the time of day and the press and MS wouldn't have even had a sniff of a story. Someone with some brains has to put a spanner in the works at some stage and call a halt to this type of bullshit.

It's people like you, who can't see past their nose ends, who perpetute this nonsense. ie Council enorcing the law - council would be in trouble - very public, they didn't invent it, not my fault etc etc etc. All bollocks, there's 101 other much more pressing things that Edi council should undoubtedly have been attending too - antisocial behaviour or improving public transport perhaps...

surprise

surprise surprise, IR fails to spot the _real_ problem :-)

Julian.

Nige uttered summat worrerz funny about:

Yeah...I was used to something a bit 'arder :-)... the very fact the gearbox has been replaced along with the clutch is one of the factors in the decission. I.e. it's now known good. The Disco let us down due to wiring coming astray in the south of France, no doubt loosened by me in a service but I like the idea that once the Diesel is going it's not stopping until either I want it to or it's busted something.

The 110 now has a roof rack and ladder along with chequre plate decking to the roof rack, I've also built a full internal cage in the load area for security along with an internal cage door. It's a really useful truck now :-) to the point I may need to adjust my agreed milage at this rate :-)

Lee

I'm a total cynic, so I'd venture that someone (i.e a job justifier, or "adviser") has deliberately started it to see what the reaction would be. If it's only The Usual Suspects (i.e. those of us without friends in high places or in the media) complaining then, hey! there's an "evironmental" vote grabber for the next election.

Richard

Can't see why mel smith, the beeb and various pubs would "spin". I reckon there's more to it than fining individuals, given that there's more than that going on. I can't be bothered to look up the legislation either though.

No it doesn't, he decided that he didn't want to obey that law and decided to accept the consequences, just as many other people do, e.g. that chap who sells his goods only in pounds and not kilos, or aonyone who breaks a law at some point. Just because he is a petty official with very little real power doesn't mean he has to obey every single law, he can choose to break a law and accept the consequences just like you or I can. Believe it or not, those in government are people too.

It's completely different to the Mel Smith situation, where the council were faced with a situation where someone was publically breaking the law and daring them in the glare of national publicity to prosecute him. They either had to do as they were told by the government, or not do it and have to put up with Smith taunting them further and the papers going on about "one law for the rich and famous".

How do you know they didn't oppose the law? If they oppose it and it still gets passed, then they have to enforce it, it's one of the council's functions. They're like middle management, they can complain about something but they only get limited decision making and if they're told to do something then they ultimately have to do it or get the sack. Councils can't just pick and choose which laws to enforce, they have to try and apply them all, although sometimes they don't quite manage it either because they can't afford to, or don't regard it as a priority. Perhaps they wouldn't have bothered enforcing the smoking ban if Smith hadn't put his fat face in the papers trying to invoke churchill with his cigar.

Im not so sure. there is a guy in the 101 club in france currently selling his 101 because he was unable to get it legally on the road in france. :( If i had this problem i would be paying someone in the UK to store it for me for 6months of the year and register it in their name in the UK!. According to my parents (semi-resident in france), as they understand it you can keep a uk registered car in france for a something like 6 months before having to think about registering it in france.

youngster!

all my vehicles are atleast as old as me! :)

Ah now what I want is to drive around in a Landie as old as me. Any one got at 1960 one lying about?

I've just spent the weekend in Ireland (about 20 miles from Dublin). In a pub we visited, I saw a smoker being directed to the "Beer Garden". This was a room, enclosed on all four sides, with a hole in the ceiling leading to a pane of roofing glass about 4ft square that was raised at one end to make a six-inch gap. The room had an ashtray on every table, potted plants, comfy chairs and sofas and a plasma TV. The gap in the glass made it "open air", apparently. The rest of the pub was completely smoke-free.

In the course of four days I visited several establishments (purely in the interests of research, naturally) and there was no evidence that the trade was falling. Each and every one was crammed with people. The air was clean, the craic was great, and I found no-one (not even smokers) who thought the ban was a bad idea. We've had it in Wales since the start of April and it seems to be working well here too. The idea of an army of Council enforcers covertly filming offenders just hasn't happened. Compliance is virtually 100%.

I'm as big a critic of the Nanny State as anyone, but this is definitely a good thing.

On or around Tue, 08 May 2007 20:20:22 +0100, Tom Woods enlightened us thusly:

don't that make you the youngster? or were you referring to the vehicles?

My oldest is Edward II, who's 36 this year. The bike's about 33, the sierra's 21, the project LR (which will hopefully become the hybrid bus) is

No they didn't, the law states smoking isn't allowed in an enclosed public place, which includes a theatre. If you can't see that then you're daft. I think it's a stupid law too, but it's there and Smith forced the hand of the council who could have turned a blind eye.

No I don't care, but you can't see that he was breaking a law, no matter how silly, and doing it very publically and daring the council to take action, which they pretty much had no option over.

No it isn't.

I don't know the specific case but consider this, smoking in a somewhere like a theatre is clearly a serious fire hazard so has an impact on the insurance costs, it's quite likely that the theatre operator (presumably the council?) would have found themselves uninsured for that theatre full of people if they had knowingly ignored the ban. It's a criminal offence for a council to knowingly put itself at such a risk and they are regularly audited by the government to discover such things. Individual councillors can be prosecuted, I know as I was a councillor until recently, there's no way councillors are going to take silly risks doing what is a totally thankless job. Greg

I just got this email from Edinburgh council;

-------------------- Dear Ian Further to our phone conversations the other day. Apparently the origin of this story was that a city in Germany was considering introducing such a ban. The Scotsman sent interviewers out on the street in Edinburgh who asked people what they thought about it. Apparently some people responded by saying they wouldn't put it past this Council to introduce such a ban. However no such proposal exists, has been considered, or has even been suggested to the Council as a possibility as far as I'm aware.

--------------------

That's from the "Senior Professional Officer (Policy)" on the council.

Richard will of course clamp his teeth into the "as far as I'm aware" bit as proof that it's going to happen ;-)

I can see that, and I can see it's a daft law, but British (and as far as I'm aware most other countries) law is like this, it's imprecise and not intended as definitive, otherwise it would take years to get any law onto the books and it'd be even more complex than it is right now as they'd have to cater for every situation. What happens instead is that if the defendant doesn't back down, the case goes to court and is considered in-depth for that particular situation and a ruling is made on whether the law applied, which is then normally used in any similar situations.

Given that the law doesn't presumably contain clauses covering stage props, a prosecution under the law would have caused its use in this situation to be considered, and if deemed irrelevant then it would have gone down as a precedent and people would be able to smoke on stage, at least in Scotland.

Sounds like an OK system, if it wasn't for the cost of actually involving lawyers in anything of course.. So perhaps if some theatre doesn't back down and goes to court then it'll be fine, but they won't because there's no point, there are props that can be used instead, and being a cigar smoker myself I reckon they'd be better than a real cigar, which can be a PITA when trying to do anything else. The worry about fire risks is a minor one though, cigars don't burn like cigarettes, and even cigarettes aren't that much of a fire risk.

It's not a daft law, (not in my eyes anyway) because it will improve the lives of non-smokers, though as a non-smoker myself I think it's perhaps a little unnecessary and OTT. I do however feel for the poor sods that have to work in smokey pubs day in and day out - fitting more powerful extractor fans would be a solution maybe?

but British (and as far

Exactly. But here we have the situation where the twerps in Edi council, (educated men FFS) goaded by the press and MS take the bate and use the law in a manner for which it was never intended. To become distracted my this sort of nonsense exposes them as narrowminded amateurs IMO.

The worry

A think Greg mentioned fire risk too. Of course there's no real risk, and Edi council don't appear to have made an issue out of smoking on stage before this new law.

Julian.

Without looking at the law itself in detail, neither of us can really say whether they are applying it wrongly, and in fact whether they even did, my understanding is that Smith was just told the venue might be open to prosecution, and on that basis didn't go ahead, so no-one from the council actually did anything. The law wouldn't have been actually used unless he'd gone ahead, and if they *had* tried to enforce it then perhaps the precedent might have been set. As it is you are criticising them for action they didn't take under a law they didn't write.. I think that's a tad harsh myself.

Reference the ban on old vehicles in Edi, I'm pretty certain that you stated earlier on that you'd spoken to the council cronies and they completely denied all knowledge of such a proposal. (correct me if I'm wrong)

Take a look here:

I think you should have a word with 'Ricky' and see what he has to say...

Julian.

No you weren't wrong, I'll pass that link along and see what they say. ISTR though that the Stuttgart one turned out to be a crock that never flew, so hopefully they'll keep an eye on that part of the story too and take heed!