smoking ban

Bobaol and guslopez wrote...

"There were over 700 deaths in UK last year amongst pedestrians crossing the road.  Obviously, the only way to stop this is to stop pedestrians crossing the road. "

Actually there are lots of other means too.

1. Ban cars completely.  Completely impractical but my favourite outcome.

2. Cars restricted to  20mph or less where in areas where  there are pedestians. Impact is likely to result non-fatal injury.

3.All cars to have massive soft cushioning on the front.

4. Cars to have inbuilt sensors and automatic breaking (or speed reduction) when pedestians are sensed.

and so on.

This message was last edited by PMillsom on 02/01/2011.

This message was last edited by PMillsom on 02/01/2011.

Dear All,

there is no possible defence for community smoking, it is a complete no-no.

but P.M.'s idea....

"4. Cars to have inbuilt sensors and automatic breaking (or speed reduction) when pedestians are sensed."

should definitely be adopted if feasable.

It seems like little more than an extension of the already available parking aids and would not be restricted to sensing pedestrians but other cars as well.

At my age, like Bobaol I remember the scarcity of cars and still enjoy that on some French roads occasionally.

We live on a development (off plan) with some 5 bed houses and the parking problems get worse almost monthly.

We have indulged our first grandaughter through uni' with a car as a named driver but now has come the time for her to insure herself, most insurance companies will not quote at all, despite 5 1/2 years and 40,000 miles accident free driving.

Aviva (the biggest or one of) quotes £3,400 for one years insurance on a 1.4 Astra, others are £1,000+.

Which leads me to conclude that the majority of youngsters who whiz past me on both sides cannot be insured.

We already have the speed limit insanity to deal with here with rat-run drivers doing 60+ on narrow country lanes fit for 10 while I must not exceed 70 on 120 designed motorways.

We have some restictions (traffic calming outside schools and even pedestrian areas) which are a nuisance to all traffic since some of them operate 24/7.

In my meandering I am musing on the possible benefits of his idea which may be much wider than just reducing pedestrian deaths.

Just a thought or two.

Regards

Norman

This message was last edited by normansands on 02/01/2011.

 just got back from watching the footy in a smoke free spanish bar.must say it was a lot emptier than usual. but at least the ban is being upheld and my clothes dont reek of smoke!

bobaol,

I think the time for denial is well past.  Smoking has been linked directly to lung and other cancers and to heart disease and strokes.  Car exhausts also contribute to respiratory disease but only a fool or a wishful thinking smoker would deny that smoking is responsible for a particularly unpleasant, slow, painful death to users and to those innocents subjected to secondary/passive smoking.  To try to deflect attention to another pollutant and to suggest that the dangers of smoking are somehow exaggerated is pretty naive.  

Why ban cars when in most cases it's the fault of pedestrians? Lets get back to teaching them how to cross a road & not jaywalk,  which is still on the statue books & should be vigourously enforced. yes, their are too many cars. We could reduce that by banning people from owning them who've never had a job, anyone on benfits,  people who think it's a method of getting from A to B , people who think it's a form of motorised walking, anyone who can't do basic maintenance on them, any one who thinks it's a means of children getting to school, thus leaving the roads free for those of us who enjoy it .

Norman Aviva are the biggest load of scum  going, amongst an industry of crooks . Back in 2000 I was going to buy a car for my daughter, came with a years free ins. through them & providing no claims, a 33% ncb at the end. Before buying I rang & got a quote for her without an ncb of 1100 pounds . & asked what it would be with 1years ncb & was told  £ 710. I explained that I was proposing purchasing this car with ins. supplied by them & would it apply & was told most definitely.  Well as you can guess at years end they wanted £ 1400 with a years ncb. When I explained that they'd quoted £ 710 they laughed , It took me 10 weeks , many phone calls , the threat of legal action to get the premium of £ 710  honoured & the reason they did was because I'd recorded all calls & correspondence with them.

Spotted in Jumilla today, while walking around town: one bar with a huge no-smoking sign in the window; staff from another bar setting up tables and chairs outside, obviously for the smokers!  We are going out soon to look at one of the belenes, so we may pop in somewhere for a vino tinto and to check what's happening.  A friend said that she had been discussing it with her English students (i.e. Spaniards who are learning English) and they think some people will still light up in their local bars, however if somebody asks them to stop smoking they will do so. 

I will report back next weekend, as we will have visited several bars over the course of the week (purely in the interests of research) and at different times of the day.

Sue

 Not at all jek, as I've said, I am an ex-smoker.  I do know that smoking is a major contributory factor to respiratory diseases and, in my case, it was great after a couple of weeks of giving them up to lose the early morning and late evening cough.  However, it just seems a bit hypocritical for people to sit next to a smoker giving it the cough - cough - how dare you invade my space type thing and then to get into a car to drive the mile or two home.  Asthma and other respiratory diseases are on the increase.  I'm just wondering why this should be so when the number of smokers has decreased from 75% in the 50s to 23% now yet the number of cars on the road has gone the other way, from around 23% to 75%.

A bit like they used to say only smokers get lung cancer.  Now that so many people have never smoked (and a good thing, too) get lung cancer they have had to change their views.  It was only because the majority did smoke that it seemed to be only the smokers got it.

((I am in no way denying that smoking is a major contributory factor, nor am I denying that the chances of you getting a respiratory disease or lung cancer will be vastly increased if you do, just that it isn't the only thing that does.  I am pretty convinced that the increased car ownership has a lot to do with foul and polluted air.  After all, a 10 mile journey in a car pollutes the air more than a 20 a day person will do in a lifetime of smoking.  Driving a car is the most air polluting act an average citizen commits (UN report on the environment 2009 words, not mine).)

A bit like smokers being criminalised more than murderers, paedophiles and rapists, there are worse things out there.

(And, in UK, if you want to smoke indoors (legally) you will have to go to prison, be put in a mental institution or become an MP as their bars are exempt - however not if you are a prison officer, a normal hospital patient or a bog-standard member of the public).

Dear Gus,

whilst I don't have your conviction we are more or less on very similar wave lengths.

however we live in town and work in the country, we commute and whilst not an hgv driver I drive everything else.

I travel the country rat run with my heart in my mouth, ironically the road is called "heart in hand road".

I hate the morning and evening rush hours including the school run to the little but much favoured village school.

we pass over  narrow and very twisty lanes with much uphill and downdale.

very enjoyable to be driven or ridden with abandon, which of course seduces drivers and riders to do just that, go with abandon.

no pedestrian dare use these roads without bright yellow jackets with protection for their many dives into the brambles.

I am afraid one persons enjoyment in the community is anothers risk, much like community smoking.

Regards

Norman

Bobaol,

if a strong and undeniable link betwen cancer and car pollution is proven, as it is with smoking, then I would think electric or power of some other sort would need to be introduced for the majority very quickly?. People concerned about their health and that of others would stop using their current cars ASAP, and as their is no chemical addiction, I would hope many would be less likely to come up with some of the bull**it we see on here in defense of smoking. Having said that, many love their cars of course, and as (unlike smoking) they are crucial for many aspects of day to day life for many, and many could not afford to just dump their cancer car, then it could cause real chaos until a total ban is introduced?

With so many cases of cancer being reported now, you have to wonder if something is being kept from us for financial reasons of some sort?  Do cars come in to that, or pest control chemicals, something in the water etc?.

At least with smoking, it's not crucial to anyone like a car, or most of the other known pollutents. it's just a known addictive killer that does nobody any good and kills thousands every year whilst ruining the lives of many many more. Surely it makes sense to ban the things like fags that are of no use first, while also accepting that smoking's not the only killer that needs sorting out?.

jek , I thought bobaol's post was spot on. "they " were the government years ago. I'm not a sun reader but consult all available info. to form my views & the 1st thing you should learn is that all information that is released has a 'spin' on it so that it shows what the person wants , who is funding the research.  Here in spain breast cancer is the no.1 with lung cancer 2 & colon/rectal cancer no.3 No's 1 &3 are decreasing though & 2 is on the increase. How can that be if less people are now smoking if not for some other cause like vehicular emissions?

"With so many cases of cancer being reported now, you have to wonder if something is being kept from us for financial reasons of some sort?  Do cars come in to that, or pest control chemicals, something in the water etc?."

Does make you wonder as around here when the tractors are spraying the fields , why does the driver wear a respirator when he's sitting in an air-conditioned cab ? It's always bothered me.

"At least with smoking, it's not crucial to anyone like a car, or most of the other known pollutents. it's just a known addictive killer that does nobody any good and kills thousands every year whilst ruining the lives of many many more. Surely it makes sense to ban the things like fags that are of no use first, while also accepting that smoking's not the only killer that needs sorting out?."

But will the people accept an increase of   £ 374 on income tax for every living person, which would mean more than double that as there's only 29 million working, to cover the 12 billion   pounds loss of tobacco tax.        

 For jek.  Not wishing to get into an internet spat and I don't feel the need to respond in the similar nasty way you have of putting things.  However, that link goes up to 2007.  Years ago "they" were government medical advisors.  The perceived view was that smoking was the only cause of lung cancer.  I worked in General Practice for many years and can assure you that that was the message being given out by doctors at the time, indeed, it was said that anyone with lung cancer who didn't smoke were sure to have smoked in the past.  Now it is known that people who have never smoked, nor been in an environment in which they come into contact with smokers, can also get lung cancer.  It's just that, all those years ago, not many people didn't smoke.

And there's no need to alienate all the Sun readers that may read these posts, after all, it is the highest selling "newspaper" in the UK. (apologies to any Sun readers for putting newspaper in inverted commas, by the way).

My remark about the alienation of smokers can be easily found if you go round some websites. Statements like "It's the worst thing in the world", "smokers should be burnt to death", "kill smokers now to save time in the future" etc are very commonplace.

You need to lighten up a little and take things a little easier, after all, I had already agreed with you that smoking is terrible, is harmful to health and should never be encouraged.  I am so anti-smoking in restaurants that I will walk out if someone lights up when other people are eating.  It just doesn't bother me, as some of the more sensitive souls, when people smoke in pubs and they are welcome to smoke on my front porch (won't say balcony this time as I quite enjoyed the video) as long as they don't do it inside my house.  

Now calm down and take a deep breath.  Maybe you should take up smoking to relax a little.

For those of you not of a confrontational bent, this "scientific" site  explains some of the reasons for the increased air pollution including the preponderance of acid rain and other pollutants. 

Well Bobaol as a society we are far much more addicted our cars than to cigarettes.  It's so much easier to ban cigarette smoking in public places than it is to even  introduce mild counter measures to  moderately reduce the use of cars (through ledislation)  with their polluting internal combustion engines, irrespective of the greater damage by cars to public health with their impact on climate change, noise pollution, danger to pedestrians, and toxification of even most remote parts of the globe such as the antarctic. 

ARound la mata & ciudad quesada  today the signs were up.. SMOKING PROHIBITED, i realy think they mean it.

Most brits are used to it now in  uk.

I no some of my friends say how they have made new friends going outside for a fag........lol good for them.

But still glad about the ban.

Jeanie 

 Yes, Jeanie, good to see the signs up.  Mind you, the restaurants we use in Quesada are all no smoking, anyway.  Don't know if you went to Amsteleria or Laurel and Hardys but I'll probably pop in during the week and see how they are doing.  Bit cold for going outside at the moment.

Now, if we can only get them to ban the ever-present TV with football on I'll be very happy......

Ha! well i think you asking a bit tooo much there.

Happy new year to all

OK.  I know that I said I would do my report at the end of the week, however we were impressed by day 1 of the smoking ban here in Jumilla.  We had a copa de vino in Nuestro Bar tonight, and nobody was smoking inside, but we saw 3 people going outside for a quick ciggie while we were there.  Passing another bar on the way home, we saw one person smoking outside.

Sue 

PS Everybody was drinking!

Just written a piece about the first day of the smoking ban which people may find of interest (and maybe not!)

It's on my Life With A Spanish Flavour blog (http://www.eyeonspain.com/blogs/donnagee2.aspx)