i would fricken BAN smoking at tables outside eating establishments

[ElizabethHoover]

Its just GOPPING.
Its like a nicotine based apartheid ( slight overstatement) where the TINY percentage of smokers (a sixth of the population) in the country force the rest of us inside to get away from their stench and litter.

GRR

I fucking hate the smell of barbecues. Especially when it comes into my house. I just have to suck it up though, because it's legal and people can do what they want in the outside air. No one ever knocks on their neighbours door and asks if it's ok to light a barbecue and cook a load of stinky meat on it. Why would they? It's legal and they're allowed.
Just like smokers are allowed to smoke outdoors in designated smoking areas.

If I ever get the chance to go to a pub with a nice garden and someone lights up, I will sidle up to them and sniff. If there is a pipe smoker, I will love it. I have long since given up, but the smell is pure happiness nostalgia to me. If it ever turns out that I can smoke safely again, I'll be on one in seconds.

In the meantime, I manage to have friends who smoke who don't happen to be selfish serial killers, and I find that the twat / nice person ratio is about the same as it ever was between smokers and non smokers. Find something else to be cross about. How about people who don't put enough Sun lotion on? Or people who don't vaccinate their kids? Or being the only person in the world who hasn't met Anthony Head.

How many times has daff told everyone who disagrees with her to 'get over' themselves? Can we apply this to all discussions on here. Anyone who disagrees with anyone should just 'get over' themselves.

Always interesting to see a poster dodging direct questions and then coming out with personal remarks and digs. Not because they've run out of arguments of course, that would never be it

Yes Steamtrains. The pretend coughing when the anti- smokers are within a few hundred yards of outside cigarette smoke is hilarious.

Well at least anti smokers usually have to pretend to cough punk Unlike smokers, who usually have a lovely haking cough all of their own.

charletdays get over yourself.

I think everyone on this forum should just say that phrase, I mean it really would make each thread so thrilling and interesting

The revenue that smoking brings pays for every bit of treatment a smoker can ever have. The smoker does not bleed the nhs. Smoking costs the nhs, say 20 billion, smokers pay in tax three times the amount. This is a FACT. Where the government choses to spend that is up to them.

You are embarrassing yourself when say things like this. 20 billion erm .... the stats from 2012-2013 showed a 12.3 billion VAT revenue. You can't just pluck figures out of the air if you want to make a valid point.

Just because you say FACT in capitals doesn't actually make it a fact - despite you saying it a cringe inducing amount of times.

It's gopping. I agree. Yanbu. Great word, gopping.

Are there really people who expect their neighbour to chap their door and ask permission to use a BBQ? For real?

it was a "for instance" I personally don't sit here with spreadsheets on a Saturday night. The underlying "fact" remains that Smokers pay for their treatment and towards others too. Turn things around all you like. I do think that people today are far too hysterical and need to get over themselves.

far too hysterical and need to get over themselves

Hahaaaa can you not come up with a better argument than "get over themselves"

Again seeing as you've said that a cringe inducing amount of times as well.

Cost of smoking to the NHS - about £2 billion / year
Total tax raised from smoking (tobacco duties + VAT) - about £12.3 billion per year.

(figures from ASH)

I expect neighbours to tell me they are having a bbq, of course.
They stink and if you have washing out you'll need to get it in before the fumes and smoke get going.

i can remember the lovely sketch that Paul O'Grady did as Lilly Savage.
Non smokers or worst still ex smokers flapping their arms about like Vivienne Leigh in Hitchcock's The Birds

Plenty I'm disputing that VAT raised is higher than what it costs the NHS.

I'm saying you can't just pull random numbers out of no where and say see it's FACT.

I expect neighbours to tell me they are having a bbq, of course

Whether the smoker lights up first or the other way round. Its an outdoor area and the smoker is allowed to smoke. If the person that doesnt smoke objects then they need to go really. They are the ones that dislike the smell.

So why should the person who is part way through their meal move just because someone has chosen to sit next to them and indulge in a totally unnecessary activity which they know will adversely affect the enjoyment of others nearby - especially when it would be easy enough for them to do it where it wouldn't have that effect? The mere fact that you are allowed to do something doesn't mean that it's considerate to do it. Some people have brought up the fact that they dislike the smell of perfume: would you seriously think it OK for someone to come and sit at the next table to yours and start spraying it around, just because they're "allowed to"?

Plenty, in quoting the ASH statistics, why have you omitted the calculation that the total cost to society of smokers is £12.9 billion a year? lullabyneedy, you also are missing out all the other costs - e.g. the tax loss and extra benefits payments for people who have to stop work early, loss in productivity, social care costs for older smokers, cost of fires, smoking related sick days etc etc.

Icimol what are you talking about? The person who made up the figures was daff

The only figure I presented was VAT raised by smoking. So please don't use my name to illustrate your point.

Apologies if I misread you, lullaby.

I agree with you. I was at an outdoor concert this weekend (not in the uk) and we were all crushed in like sardines in the front pit. Some woman lit up a fag right next to me and the smoke was going right up into my face the whole time and there was nowhere for either her or me to move away to easily. I was tutting and shuffling around trying to crane my neck to get away from it and I KNOW she knew it was really bothering me, yet she did nothing. She could have gone to the bar or loo area for a bit, but she just couldn't be bothered because she didn't want to lose her space near the front so she obviously thought she was totally justified in ruining the environment for me and others around her. And technically because she was outside, it was okay.

Well no, it bloody well wasn't okay, skanky cow with no manners who can't go for an hour without her sad drug fix.

And then to make matters worse she and others all threw their butts on the floor but couldn't see properly to put them out with their shoe (dark and too crowded) so I had to suffer that truly disgusting smell of a loads of fag ends burning slowly through the filter, drifting up into my nose for the rest of the concert.

Smokers stop kidding yourselves that you can't possibly be bothering anyone with your disgusting habit just because you don't have a ceiling above your head, will you?

What's a haking cough, Bake off?

I've not read the full thread but I'm bloody sick of being made to feel like a social pariah because I want to to have a perfectly legal fag! I'm not allowed to smoke inside anymore (which is fine, I don't smoke in my home either) but I'm apparently being an inconsiderate cow if I want to smoke outside!

I had a woman throwing me daggers and muttering to her friend on Friday. I was outside a pub, in the smoking area, having a, wait for it...smoke!
It wasn't my problem that she chose to eat in the smoking area and there were tables free in the non-smoking part and inside. I don't normally smoke much at all but I purposely lit another one up when I finished the first (because I'm childish like that and she'd pissed me off)

Icimoi no problem

IhavenevermetAnthonyHead to be honest what did you think tutting would achieve, why didn't you instead say outright but polite would she mind putting it out? I think PA tutting and trying to crane your neck will sometimes make people more determined to continue.

Sad thing is all you've done is say what a bad experience the concert was. When the smoker probably had a good night whilst you just got yourself more and more worked up.

Another way in which smokers are cost effective is that they tend to die earlier - after the stage where they have worked and paid in all their lives but before they have claimed a state pension for twenty years. That is a huge saving.

State pension and other associated costs mentioned above. NHS costs for minor but long-term ailments, prescriptions, social care...
A smokers end is usually nasty but short. My Mum had dementia. Non smoker and the costs were astronomical. Much, much more than she paid in a lifetime's national insurance in the last year alone.