I'll be visiting Wales next week, where the silly little government are about to destroy their tourist industry. I have already lined up smoky-drinkies so there'll be no need to sit outside pubs in the rain.
Pat Nurse mentioned this in comments a little while ago. I hadn't noticed because Scotland has similar plans in the pipeline, so my attention on this matter has been focused here. It seems the Tinpot Tossers of the Welsh parliament have decided to get their oppression credentials in first.
Yes, they plan to ban smoking in cars. It's the usual game. 'For the cheeldren' so if you don't have children in the car, you can carry on. Oh but wait, if you have children and they are not in the car, they will still be at risk of terrible imaginary illness so you can't smoke in there. Oh but wait, how can anyone tell who has children or not, if they are not in the car but still at risk? So this will morph into a total ban on smoking in your own private vehicle whether you have children or not.
No smoking in your own car. Not even if you smoke in Welsh. Exactly the same game will then be applied to your house. No children? What if someone visits? What if you move out and a family moves in? It'll be council properties first and then all homes. Don't ask where this all ends. It doesn't. Ever. These people will never compromise and it is futile to try. This is an all or nothing game.
If you are a tourist approaching from England, you can smoke in your car. As soon as you cross the border you will be fined. Not 'might be'. Will be.
Councils in England have already employed specially nosey people to sniff company cars at checkpoints and look in the ashtrays. If you think these people will not have cameras and patrols at the border, think again. If you think it's okay because you stopped actually smoking before you reached the border, think again. If you think they wouldn't be so underhand as to move the 'Welcome to Wales' sign a mile down the road so you cross the border without knowing it, then you must have been hermetically sealed into a sensory deprivation pod for the last twenty years.
So if you or anyone in your car is a smoker and you are heading for a holiday in Wales, you'd better be prepared for a lot of extra expense. Stony Stratford was just a taster. If this goes ahead we'll have to bring down an entire country. It won't be as hard as it sounds.
If you were planning on spending money within the Welsh tourist industry, heed the warning of the Welsh government.
You are not welcome. Spend your money somewhere else.
23 comments:
Funnily enough, my OH and I were actually considering a break in Wales on our next jaunt away. Not any more.
Oh, and my OH is a non-smoker, too, so they've lost a non-smoker's revenue as well as mine.
Simples!
You pay the road tax, insurance and I will do as you say.
Otherwise, fuck off
The only good thing is that they don't have publicans and shopkeepers to harass. They can only persecute individuals, which will not be so easy.
We will see. Maybe they might be aware of what happened in SS Stony Stratford, and might think again.
Junican - think again? I have yet to be convinced that they think at all.
Politicians everywhere are knee-jerkers now. Consequences? They have no idea what that means.
Oh, but the meaning will be made clear to them in time.
Anon 1:44 - correct. We should not wait until these vicious attacks are enacted. We should respond as soon as they are proposed.
So my visit to Wales will be a cheap one and will include no pubs or tourist nonsense at all. It's my home country and its government hates me. Those who voted for them can count the cost.
No compromise.
Whilst your here come see what has happened to Pontypridd. In the past 18 months bout 70% of the pubs have closed, every petrol station bar one has closed, about 40% of the shops have closed and been replaced with charity and cash for gold shops. Everything that is pretty or interesting is obsured by a massive government building. Our train station, with the largest platform in europe and designed by Brunell has had is wonderful Welshstone facia covered over in yellow brick communist art. The university has given up pretending to be anything other than an oversubsidised polytechnic and now seem to exclusively teach only Nigerians. Greggs is doing OK though.
Pontypridd has driven away the businessmen and the students and nearly everyone I know with above average intelligence or ambition is in the process of getting visas to emigrate. Everyone else though thinks giving the Assembly more power will make Wales strong and will sort out all problems which are all caused by the English.
Nothing's changed in Wales LI. I got my first and only speeding ticket from the Heddlu de Cymru in 2000 after 34 years safe driving. I used to have to visit South Wales from the Midlands for a meeting every six months or so and got used to the village limits. One time in 2000 they had built a few 'executive' houses on a little smallholding just before the main village. They had moved the 30 sign a couple of hundred yards upstream covering the new estate entrance and nicely tucked into the hedgerow. There was a mobile speedtrap hidden in a gateway. It was entrapment pure and simple. In all the years after that I made sure I never spent one single penny during my visits, always filling up with petrol at home and taking my own food and drink. I will never visit wales in my retirement.
Not on Wales, but adding a little humour: on a smoker winning The Open
The Mash
"A spokesman for anti-smoking group ASH emitted a high-pitched whine that seemed to go on forever."
"It's my home country"
Not your fault. I blame the parents. As long as you don't start singing we'll get along fine.
:P
"A spokesman for anti-smoking group ASH emitted a high-pitched whine that seemed to go on forever."
Ha ha ha.......
enjoy your trip to wales blog-iron - i'm off to south africa to run errands for president obama - whom mandela and zuma will not allow to darken their door, on account of bombing libya. then i'll be visiting nigeria on a fact-finding tour of the corruption-capital of the world - with a bit of luck, the locals will be able to give me some hot tips on covering-up vesuvial-proportioned scandals...although i'm somewhat doubtful about the probability of this being the case...as apparently all the indigenous politicians got their degrees in the ancient art of sleaze at british red-brick universities and polytechnics, whereas i, of course read it at oxford.
"If this goes ahead we'll have to bring down an entire country."
Anti-smoking IS the entire country nowadays, the basic premise upon which the new "norm" has been based.
Bring down anti-smoking, then down falls the rest of the corruption in place, the lie which was made into base-root "normal".
Beware anti-smoking and Stony Stratford. Anti-smoking is notorious for doing something sneaky and spiteful soon after any complaint or protest against smoking bans and they may try sneaking through an outdoor ban quickly and quietly in some other town. It will show up in the next day's paper as "normal" - and the lie continues unabated.
Bring down anti-smoking - you bring down the entire corrupt system rotting this world.
When I shall be Principal-Secretary-of-State-for-War in a conservative libertarian minimal-statist England, Scotland will be advised that it is leaving the UK. I may give it "The Oil", or perhaps I may not. I shan't at first set up checkpoints on the A74 or the A1, for I do not want to inconvenience ordinary Scottish people - or indeed Legiron himself, should he want to come South for any reason. But they'll all have to get new EU passports saying "Scotland. The Scottish voters said they wanted it, and the Oily Fish gleefully promised it. Under my Secretaryship whose writ will run in England, they will have to live with that decision.
They may decide to petition for a Union. I shall "have to see about it": it may take 300 years more, but I am eternally open to offers.
The "Assembly of Wales" will merely be sent an invoice for the last 40 years of "subsidies", with interest at the latest Greek-discount bond rate, while the Border is Closed and Wired permanently, and parts of it are mined. I will not at this stage want to say which parts, or what kinds of mines may, or may not, be used, or where the radar-directed-gun-towers may be placed, or not. But Plaid Cymru will be able to see those.
Any assault on these towers, or even an approach, will be deemed an Act of War. Subsequently, "Police" from places like Manchester and Liverpool will be sent in to Wales, in the vehicles that the Army would have given their eyeteeth for in Afghanistan. The Welsh can't want that...surely...?
09:24
i blame it all on the holy labour empire who set up this proxy welsh kingdom to rule us on behalf of the english conservatives, who in turn administer the united kingdom as a vichy satellite of the european union, which has ultimately been colonized by the more-sino-than-american new world odour. we must never submit to their nasty illiberal foreign habits and will swear blood-oaths (in welsh) which bind us to fight to the death to preserve our sacred local customs. i now call on my tribal-brethren to march as one on the pseudo-provincial capital of cardiff with a mind to to burning down the fishy palace of king carijognus and sacking his members.
15:07
yes, the ritual of smoking in cars (together with the deeper more mystical ceremony of smoking in white vans) is innately integral to our celtic culture, and tradition demands that it be passed down to our children in order to enhance the lives of future generations.
ps:
the kick-off time in cardiff will be announced in due course - and with a bit of luck there'll also be a chance for some recreational rufty-tufty with the nigerians at half-time.
20:32
'[a spot of] recreational rufty-tufty with the nigerians' would have read better.
05:10
It's my home country and its government hates me.
all governments hate you leg-iron, which is why you're homeless in every country you visit.
we-hate cardiff-city
we-only hate cardiff-city
we-hate cardiff-citeee
we-only hate cardiff-citeee
swaaaaanseaaa
(champing for europe)
hic
wales, what a great place! smoking in cars, wow! the best thing since (smoking in) theme bars!...mmm...i could market that...
21:20
we hate cardiff city (trad.)
rhyming cuplets incorporating complex metrical sub-rhythms melding into mean metaphorical malevolence to express profoundly heroic emotion
4-4-2, if i'm correct
wonderful, almost latin in its iambic ambit
i must catch the eisteddfod this year
20:32
(and the altogether deeper more mystical ceremony of smoking in white vans)
would read better...i believe
03:15
look here boyo, it's a welsh thing, see - and you english haven't a hope in hell of ever understanding it, ok?
that's why i'm not even going to try to explain to you about the elevated ethereal experience of smoking in four-wheel-drives within the consecrated confines of pre-historical stone circles.
Dear Mr Leg-iron
Look what happens when you turn your back for a while:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/19/npia_rolls_out_mobile_fingerprint_technology/
This will have the police demanding a database of everyone's fingerprints by a week next Tuesday.
DP
Post a Comment