[the culture of deference]

Originally Posted by RoverJames

The ban works in the vast majority of pubs, it has been very effective, nothing (almost) is 100% effective.

It has been a great success.

I have friends who may smoke 10 fags on a night out now, 10 years ago it would have been 2 packets for the night. Also plenty more girls to chat up now.

I know 1 couple who are now married after meeting

[Eric Cartman]

Originally Posted by djimi

And can you come up with a compelling reason why every one of those factors should not be legislated against if at all possible?

Im not talking about the government controlling every aspect of peoples lives, but when a situation exists where people are too stupid/ignorant to realise that they are putting other people in harm, especially their children who can do absolutely nothing about it, then I think we have every right to expect the government to step in and try and take control.

unfortunately the government gets it wrong a lot of the time, and allowing the government to regulate what we can and cant do is a dangerous path to go down, Im against smoking with a kid in the car, but if you allow this then next it will be no smoking in cars altogether, no eating in the car or even worse... The government has gotten too big and regulated far too much, and to allow them down this path with the justification of protecting kids from their idiot parents well your setting yourself up for more and more leeway for the government to regulate the behavior of all, to protect a few.

[Reg'stoy]

Originally Posted by Eric Cartman

unfortunately the government gets it wrong a lot of the time, and allowing the government to regulate what we can and cant do is a dangerous path to go down, Im against smoking with a kid in the car, but if you allow this then next it will be no smoking in cars altogether, no eating in the car or even worse... The government has gotten too big and regulated far too much, and to allow them down this path with the justification of protecting kids from their idiot parents well your setting yourself up for more and more leeway for the government to regulate the behavior of all, to protect a few.

You're dead right we should decide our selves, only snag is knowing what the majority of us actually want. I know we'll put all our ideas on paper and gather them together and maybe count them. No, won't work, maybe if certain ideas were put foward and then we could decide, but who would put forward the ideas? Hmmm maybe we could, like, appoint people in some sort of, I don't know election type thingy. Then these people could, like decide things because we asked them to. We could call these people say the Government......hang on....... ah for fcuk sake.

Or we could move to an island off the west coast with those freeman of the land loonies.

regulate the behavior of all, to protect a few, I thought that was the point of a civilised society, where we do take care of the few who can't protect or care for themselves.

I personally am not for overt over regulation but to jump from making it illegal to smoke while children are in your car to 'insert story' from your paper du jour the daily mail as in your "even worse" comment is a bit much even for a daily mail reader like yourself.