I bet your good wife doesn’t know she married an [expletive deleted],you see,I spent 20yrs running my own pubs and,I could tell an [expletive deleted] when they walked through the doors,you don’t have to smell them,as they all small the same.So you insist on calling me bloater,I shall now call you [expletive deleted] if we have any more communication.By the way,I will be looking into HATE crimes with your description of how I look and,you know how the Police like them.

It may be a total coincidence but it was, like the first one that he sent me, sent between 7pm and 8pm.  It’s a bit early to start drinking, isn’t it?

David Nuttall put a good ten minute rule bill on the pub smoking ban.  As a non smoker I find that this nannying piece of legislation was just what New Labour excelled at, and with the loss of pubs such as my local the EUR, the Live and Let Live and (for all practical purposes) the Bell we really are seeing an unprecedented assault on some of the centres of the community.  Luckily the members clubs in Bridge have had a better time of it, but that’s more down to the decent management rather than the  government getting out of the way.

And this is before the economic argument, after all we need to grow ourselves out of this recession and we can’t do that through more regulation.

It’s good to see Ben Gummer rebelling on something that would actually have done some good.

Related articles

• Smoking ban exemptions bid defeated (independent.co.uk)
• Smoking ban is the main cause of pub closures (tfa.net)
• Alcohol licences at record levels but traditional pub under threat (telegraph.co.uk)

We all know that this is happening across the country, but did you know that across the country six pubs a day are closing?  This fact comes from a Conservative Party campaign to Save the Great British Pub.  They believe that this is because low alcohol drinks such as beer are taxed too much while high alcohol content drinks are taxed too little and not enough targetting of the anti-social drinkers who swarm around Ipswich town center on a weekend.

Perhaps, but the smoking ban didn’t help, either.  As a non-smoker it’s nice to be able to not have to choose your pub carefully (or put up with tobacco smells) but it’s hard to deny that this killed off otherwise viable pubs and social clubs.  Conservative Central Office seem to have missed that one.

Any way, they may be a bit too politically correct to go to the root of the problem, but it’s a step in the right direction.  You can sign the petition here.