Wednesday 15 August 2012

It's not true until they deny it

From The Daily Mirror:

A number of parks in a town are to be declared "designated smokefree sites". Signs will go up at entrances to 13 parks and playing fields in Blackpool, Lancashire, to warn visitors that children need protecting from smoking in open air....

A Department of Health spokeswoman said: "There are no plans to extend the law to cover outside areas."


Ah fuck.

7 comments:

Sue said...

I actually just read somewhere that it can't be enforced legally unless a bylaw is specifically changed, which is hasn't been. So I can tell a park jobsworth to sod off if he hassles me.

Bayard said...

You are already forbidden to smoke on railway station platforms and technically, a farm worker is forbidden to smoke on any land belonging to his employer.

Case in point: Nrear me is a cafe, which has seating outside for customers to enjoy the liquid sunshine. Customers can smoke in the outside seating area, because it is outside, but the waiting staff can't, because it is their place of work.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, aha, the penny drops. I did once ask a waitress why she was skulking behind the dustbins to have a smoke rather than sit in the sunshine. Your explanation makes more sense than hers ("My boss told me to.")

View from the Solent said...

B, and MW
The most likely reason is that the owner didn't want the public to see the cafe's staff smoking.
(3rd-hand smoke on their clothes would cause customers to fall dead)

Mark Wadsworth said...

VFTS, B's explanation sounds most plausible so far.

James Higham said...

Mark - you read the Mirror?

Mark Wadsworth said...

JH, not regularly. I just Googled the story and ended up at the Mirror.