Ban Damage: UK Ban Damage Page 5

Man has fine increased for dropping cigarette outside burger van
October 17th 2014
A man fined seventy five pounds for throwing a cigarette on the floor outside his burger van in Stafford town centre must now pay more than four hundred and fifty pounds.
Gary Southall discarded his cigarette after having a smoke outside the Mr Sizzle food van where he was working.
He was given a ?75 fine by a Stafford Borough Council officer but did not pay it.
The 55 year old, from Paddock Lane, Aldridge in Walsall was found guilty in his absence. Stafford Magistrates fined him ?200, ordered him to pay ?250 costs plus a victim surcharge of ?20 for the littering offence.
Stafford Borough Council took Mr Southall to court after he failed to pay the ?75 fixed penalty notice.
The court was told the fast food trailer was parked in the town’s Market Square in July and Mr Southall was seen in his Mr Sizzle uniform smoking the cigarette.
Magistrates heard the officer saw him drop the butt on the ground and then get back in to the trailer.

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The Smoking Ban, Not Cheap Supermarket Alcohol, Has Decimated British Pubs
August 13, 2014
By David Atherton
According to the Campaign For Real Ale (CAMRA), thirty-one British pubs a week are closing, with planning regulations supermarket takeovers being blamed.
Tom Stainer, head of communications at Camra, said: “It is utterly perverse that developers are able to demolish or convert a pub into a convenience store … without any requirement to apply for planning permission. It is wrong that communities are left powerless when a popular local pub is threatened with demolition or conversion into a Tesco store.”
Free market exponents may view that property, especially freehold, should be left to the sole discretion of the owner, within reason. However, CAMRA’s blind spot on horrific pub closures, which they have sheepishly never commented on for seven years, is the smoking ban.
One of the excuses for bringing in the ban was to protect staff from the “harm” of second hand smoke (SHS). Mike Benner the CEO of CAMRA on 2004 seemed initially to be onside. “In many pubs there is a simple solution. Where there are two or more entirely separate rooms, smoking could be allowed in one, while rooms where food is served could be smoke-free.
However, by 2007, probably after Gerry Sutcliffe MP who was then the Labour Party’s Minister for pubs had been in discussions with Benner, changed their minds. CAMRA prophesised that 840,000 new customers were eager to go to the pub for the first time.
Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), the anti-smoker group, in 2003 accused the industry of “crying wolf” over pub closures if a smoking ban was to be voted in.
However a small clue of what was to befall the pub industry was provided by Wetherspoons. Forty-nine of their pubs went smoke free pre-ban and the results were stark. Profits dropped 20 percent, revenues by 7.6 percent, alcohol sales 17.6 percent and fruit machine earnings by 25 percent. They abandoned the policy within 6 months.
If CAMRA want empirical evidence, these are the weekly pub closures pre-ban: 12, 13, 8, 8, 8 and post-ban: 27, 38, 26, 28, 25 and now running at 31.
The British Institute of Inn Keeping noted fourteen months after the ban: The proportion of smoking customers dropped from 54 percent to 38 percent; 66 percent reported that their smoking customers were staying for shorter periods; 75 percent reported that smokers were visiting less frequently; 47 percent of businesses had laid off staff, although 5 percent had recruited additional staff; Income from drinks fell by 9.8 percent; Income from gaming machines fell by 13.5 percent.
They concluded that the smoking ban has had a serious and continuing effect on trade, with the very important custom of smokers much diminished, and little positive news in terms of increased non-smoker or family business.
Since 2007, we have lost over 16,000 pubs, with 150,000 workers being made unemployed.
CAMRA and others are quick to blame cheap supermarket alcohol. However, in March 2007 four months before the smoking ban in England, CAMRA’s Research Manager Ian Loe wrote to the Competition Commission stating:
“Research by CAMRA in the period just before Christmas, found that supermarkets were selling Fosters and Carling for the equivalent of 54p a pint…a pint of beer in a pub 148p to 213p from 1995 to 2005…the cost of supermarket lager ..the average price is down from 70.8p to 67.4p..”
To underline that alcohol is as expensive as it was pre ban, in 2006 a bottle of Smirnoff Red Label Vodka was ?9.79 and today is ?16.00. Four cans of Fosters was then 3.53 and ?3.79 today and a bottle of Wolf Blass Yellow Label Cabernet Sauvignon ?5.72 versus ?9.99.
Maybe Paul Nuttall of UKIP seems to say what many are thinking, “The smoking ban also severely hit pubs right across the country – if landlords want a well-ventilated room set aside for smokers they should be able to make that choice. Indeed, the Morning Advertiser the publican’s trade newspaper found that seven out of ten landlords would like to offer choice to customers.
Hilaire Belloc wrote “But when you have lost your Inns drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England.” The smoking ban has been the catalyst for the decimation of UK pubs, which shows no signs of abating.

Tottering, teetering and soon collapsing!
12 August 2014
Paul Nuttall has eloquently stated the obvious in the wake of the Publican’s announcement that we are back up to 31 pubs a week CLOSING. It’s not difficult to see why now is it! Ever since this ridiculous ban has been made into a law the industry has gone downhill, a bit further down hill and is now in full descent as people finally get fed up of eating out.
Read More

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UK Nottingham cigarette factory closure threatens more than 500 jobs
15 April 2014
By Julia Kollewe
Imperial employs 540 people in its Nottingham factory, where it makes Lambert & Butler, Embassy, Regal and Superkings. Photograph: Roger Tooth for the Guardian
The last cigarette factory in Britain is to close, with Imperial Tobaccoshutting its Nottingham plant, as well as its biggest Gauloises-producing factory in France, at Nantes. The two closures put nearly 1,000 jobs at risk.
Imperial employs 540 people in its factory and distribution centre in Nottingham, where it makes Lambert & Butler, Embassy, Regal, Superkings (known as John Player) and JPS (John Player Special).
The planned closure of Imperial’s last factory means there will be no cigarette manufacturing left in Britain. The only other remaining factory in the UK is run by Japan Tobacco International in Northern Ireland.
Unite, Britain’s largest u nion, accused Imperial of “social dumping” and shipping production to low-cost eastern Europe, and vowed to fight the proposed closures together with its sister French u nions.
Imperial, which has 46 factories and 35,000 employees worldwide, also plans to shut its Nantes plant, which employs 320 people and makes Gauloises, Gitanes and JPS. A further 120 jobs could be lost by the closure of its Bergerac research and development site, although 80 new roles could also be created.
The company will retain smaller factories in Riom (Auvergne) and Corsica, but the French CGT u nion told Reuters the Nantes shutdown was incompatible with the forthcoming launch of “Gauloise Generation”, a “100% Made in France” brand destined for the French market. The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre smoked the original dark-tobacco Gauloises (Gauloises brunes, which have largely given way to a lighter version, Gauloises blondes), while singer Serge Gainsbourg favoured Gitanes – getting through up to five packs a day. Imperial said the restructuring forms part of plans to save ?300m a year from September 2018.
Ten years ago, Imperial employed 1,000 people in Nottingham.
The tobacco company owns the business founded in Nottingham by John Player, who started out by selling pre-packed tobacco from his shop – until then smokers had to buy paper and tobacco separately and roll their own – and bought his first Nottingham factory in 1877, which produced pipe and chewing tobacco, as well as handmade cigarettes.
John Player later became one of the 13 companies that came together as Imperial.
Unite said Imperial had used increased EU regulations as a “cynical ploy” to shut the factories. The recent EU Tobacco Products Directive will stop the sale of packs of 10 cigarettes and “roll your own packs” below 30 grams. As a result of this legislation, Unite was expecting the closure of some manufacture lines and a knock-on effect on a small number of jobs. Unite’s national officer, Rhys McCarthy, said: “This is shocking news that will have a devastating impact on not only hundreds of workers and their families, but also on the local community … It’s another nail in the coffin for UK manufacturing and a loss of revenue for the exchequer.”
The tobacco company blamed declining industry sales in Europe, due to tough economic conditions, increasing regulation, “excessive” duty increases and a growing black market trade. This has had knock-on effects on Nottingham and Nantes, which now use less than half their manufacturing capacity. Nottingham has capacity to make 36bn cigarettes a year but will only produce 17bn this year while Nantes, with a capacity to manufacture 21bn cigarettes, will only make 9bn. Production from both sites will shift to Germany and Poland. Imperial will still have nearly 1,200 people working in management, sales and marketing at its newly built head office in Bristol.
The company has told employees, works councils and trade u nions about its plans. Chief executive Alison Cooper said: “These projects are an essential part of securing the sustainable future of the business. The prospect of job losses is always regrettable and we will be doing all we can to support employees and ensure that they are treated in a fair and responsible manner.”
Cigarette sales have been falling by about 2-3% a year in volume terms in western Europe, but this has been offset to some degree by growth in eastern Europe and emerging markets. The global tobacco market is predicted to be stable, thanks to population growth. Imperial has identified Italy, Greece, Russia, Turkey and the US as growth markets, while the UK, with its 10 million smokers and where the company has a higher market share, is classed a “returns market”.
– theguardian.com

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Pub closures mean we’re losing the last of England
JANUARY 29, 2014
By David Atherton
On Tuesday 21st January in the British Parliament, Standing Order No. 9(3), called for by Labour was debated.
The discussion featured those oracles of the saloon bar, Labour leader Ed Miliband, Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna, and Toby Perkins, the Shadow Pub Minister (that’s right Americans, we have a Pubs Minister, and an official opposition to him).
Conveniently forgetting their previous mantras of? “harm of alcohol” and “disorder on the streets”, Labour moved to debate how best to help the great British pub.
While Miliband was choking on his Bishop’s Finger, Labour was trying to get amendments to tied pubs by bringing in a statutory Code of Conduct for what is called a ‘PubCo’, which owns the freehold to a pub while an individual? “invests” typically ?30,000 of their own money to run it. The PubCo then supplies the beer, but at an inflated price.
Certainly a tenant in a PubCo is trading at a disadvantage, as they buy a barrel of beer of 88 pints for maybe ?150, while a freeholder in a free house may pay as little as ?50.
While the Westminster bubble dances on a pin head to see who can adjust the trimming on free enterprise the best, the real reason for the expedited pub closures is the smoking ban.
While Labour was trying to get some political traction with pub closures still running at 26 a week, the bailiffs are breaking down a pub door in a town near you.
But the smoking ban was Labour’s idea, and they prosecuted it with a vigour that would make a Mormon knocking at your door asking about Jesus look apathetic. It was quite clear that the average Fabian, middle class Labour apparatchik never goes to the pub, or has the slightest level of empathy for working class people whose pleasure they killed.
The contempt for their core vote is limitless.
If you are not aware of the overwhelming empirical evidence let me remind you.
To be fair, the British pub, for various reasons has been in mild decline since the mid-1970s. Greater and different leisure opportunities, a reduction in alcohol consumption and changing tastes accounted for some of the cause.
However in this essay I wrote for The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in 2010, which was reviewed and amended by the cerebral Dr. Richard Wellings, between 1980 and 2006 the rate of closures was? just 0.65 percent per year. Post smoking ban there was a fourfold increase in pub closures to 2.8 percent. For the sake of clarity, weekly closures were running at 13, 8, 8, and 8 in the four years from 2002 to 2006. From 2007 to 2011, pubs closed at a rate of 27, 38, 26, and 28.
You can probably attribute 75 to 80 percent of recent pub closures to the smoking ban.
Toby Perkins was honest in a recent Twitter exchange partially admitted it when he said, “It is more complicated than this, tho SB (smoking ban) was a factor in many cases, lots of other factors too.”
In the debate that followed, Andrew Griffiths, the Tory MP and Chairman of Parliament’s All-Party Parliamentary Beer Group (that’s right) revealed his understanding when he said: “The previous Government introduced the smoking ban and, at a stroke closed thousands of wet-trade pubs.”
Another Tory MP, Chloe Smith, added “…the introduction of the smoking ban, which is commonly thought to have changed the pub trade quite a lot..”
In the wider debate, the same old tropes get coughed up. It is the cost of supermarket booze that is killing the pub trade. Four months before the smoking ban in England, this letter dated 28th March 2007 from Ian R Loe the Research Manager of CAMRA to the Competition Commission stated:
“Research by CAMRA in the period just before Christmas, found that supermarkets were selling Fosters and Carling for the equivalent of 54p a pint…a pint of beer in a pub 148p to 213p from 1995 to 2005… the cost of supermarket lager… the average price is down from 70.8p to 67.4p…”
Let me remind you this is 4 months before the smoking ban.
In 2006, four cans of 500ml Fosters sold for ?3.53. In 2011 and in 2012 for ?3.97. In 2004, a bottle of Wolf Blass Yellow label was ?5.72 the price in January 2014 is ?9.99 In 2006, a bottle of Red Smirnoff Red Label Vodka was ?9.79. Today’s price is?14.00.
It was the recession. After the banking crisis, GDP did not really fall until the fourth quarter of 2008 and that was by minus 2.1 percent.
PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Nielsen PLC concluded the same in 2008, although the most forthright was the British Institute on Innkeeping. In September 2008 they did their research and did not hold back on their conclusions.
They first of all noted that:
?The proportion of smoking customers dropped from 54 to 38 percent;
?66 percent reported that their smoking customers were staying for shorter periods;
?75 percent reported that smokers were visiting less frequently;
?47 percent of businesses had laid off staff, although 5 percent had recruited additional staff;
?Income from drinks fell by 9.8 percent;
?Income from gaming machines fell by 13.5 percent.
“The smoking ban has had a serious and continuing effect on trade with the very important custom of smokers much diminished…”
Where were all those non-smokers Action on Smoking and Health promised, dying to go to smoke free pubs? Non-existent, according to research that states there is “…little positive news in terms of increased non-smoker or family business.”
I should add that 25 percent of bingo halls and Working Mens CIU clubs have closed too.
Labour over the last twenty years has not become the “nasty” party, but nauseated party with regards for their core vote: the working classes.
As Hilaire Belloc wrote: “From the towns all Inns have been driven: from the villages most…. Change your hearts or you will lose your Inns and you will deserve to have lost them. But when you have lost your Inns drown your empty selves, for you will have lost the last of England.
Miliband, Umunna, Perkins and Labour’s smoking ban may see us culturally dead yet.

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Man stabbed to death while having cigarette outside pub
30 Nov 2013
By Steve Robson
The 34-year-old was attacked outside St Christopher’s Inn in Southwark at around midnight
Investigation: Police said a group of males were in the area at the time
Police are hunting a gang of “hoodies” after a man was fatally stabbed while having a cigarette outside a pub.
Victim Christopher Foster, 34, had a young daughter and worked for a law firm.
Scotland Yard said it was understood he was stabbed while having a cigarette with a male friend in an alleyway outside St Christopher’s Inn in Borough High Street, Southwark, central London.
Officers were called to the scene at about 11.45pm last night and Mr Foster, from Walworth, south east London, was taken to the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, east London, where he died at 1.05am today.
A post-mortem examination will be held at Greenwich Public Mortuary tomorrow.
Witnesses said they saw seven suspects wearing hooded clothing carrying baseball bats and at least one knife. Officers retain an open mind as to any motive.
Mr Foster was not married and was a father of a four-year-old girl. No more details of his personal circumstances were available.
An incident room has opened at Barking under Detective Chief Inspector John Sandlin, who said: “I am keen to identify a group of males who were seen running from St Christopher’s Inn along Borough High Street towards Elephant and Castle immediately after the stabbing.”
There have been no arrests.

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28-year-old arrested after police van set on fire in Chaddesden
March 14, 2013
A MAN has been arrested after a police van monitoring anti-social beahviour was set on fire in Chaddesden last night.
Residents said the van, which had a sign on it saying it had CCTV cameras inside, became engulfed in flames at about 11.30pm while parked in Cardigan Street.
There was no-one in the vehicle at the time.
Police were called to the scene and blocked the road while fire crews dealt with the blaze.
Scenes-of-crimes officers also attended the incident which police are treating as suspicious.
The 28-year-old man, who is from Derby, was arrested at 5.35am.
Residents said the van had been parked on the street for several days.
Police are still investigating the incident and anyone with information should call police on 101 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

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‘We thought we would be shot’: Passengers’ terror as armed police in 17 cars swoop on M6 bus… in false alarm over smoke from an ELECTRIC cigarette
Armed officers, troops, firefighters and bomb disposal experts all called
After nearly four hours investigating police admit it is a false alarm
Man was craftily smoking an electronic cigarette into his bag
E-cigarettes simulate smoking and the flavour of inhaled tobacco
Almost 50 passengers were on the Megabus coach at the time
It was travelling from Preston to London when it was raided
Using an e-cigarette on a coach is legal as it only emits water vapour
‘I rang my wife and told her I might be on the news’: Driver speaks of ordeal
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5 July 2012
Sitting bewildered on the road, dozens of coach passengers find themselves at the centre of a terror alert yesterday.
Armed officers surrounded the vehicle after a passenger is thought to have dialled 999 on their mobile because they had seen smoke coming from a fellow traveller’s bag.
In fact it was a false alarm – and the other passenger had simply been ‘smoking’ a fake cigarette.
Even so, the incident sparked a major alert involving 17 police cars and vans, 13 fire engines, four ambulances and even the military at the southbound M6 Toll plaza in Staffordshire.
Last night one passenger told how she had feared she would be shot after being marched off the coach by police at gunpoint.
Although Britain is on a high state of alert in advance of the Olympic Games, Staffordshire police were last night facing accusations of gross over-reaction.
All 48 passengers were kept on the coach for three hours before being marched off to be treated as potential suspects. They were then held for a further hour while they were frisked and had their luggage searched.
The lengthy delay in getting them off the bus suggests the police already knew there was no immediate threat, otherwise they would have evacuated the passengers to a place of safety rather than leaving them completely exposed.
After finally disembarking, they were ordered into a ‘contamination’ zone where they were ordered to sit apart – silently and cross-legged – before the all-clear was eventually given.
The chaos left thousands of motorists delayed and the motorway closed for more than six hours before police finally revealed the alert had been triggered by ‘a health improvement aid for smokers’ – an electronic cigarette.
Today the driver of the bus, David Myerscough, 38, was praised by his bosses for his ‘calm and professional response to the incident’.
Ian Laing, General Manager of megabus.com, said: ‘While it later emerged it was a false alarm, we can understand how everyone on the coach must have felt when events were unfolding at the time.
‘Safety and security is our absolute priority. David followed all of our procedures correctly and kept a calm head, as did the passengers on board.’
Mr Laing, a father-of-two, said: ‘Once we pulled over, the police told me to make sure nobody left the bus under any circumstances.
‘After a while, we realised that the road beside us had actually been closed and cars had stopped going past us.
‘Then we saw the armed response team arrive. Just before that, a few passengers had started to get a bit agitated, but when they saw what was happening they calmed down and realised that we were going to have to go with it.
‘I was instructed to take the passengers off the bus one by one. I had to wait at the front of the bus until the armed police gave me the signal to bring the next passenger off, and I was to tell them not to put their hands in their pockets and just to walk out slowly.
‘Once one passenger was off, I’d then get the next one.
‘Once we were all off the bus we sat on the tarmac and nobody was allowed to use their phones. After a while, we were moved on to a replacement vehicle.
‘The police then said they wanted to move the coach so I drove it to the new location and the passengers followed in the police coach.
‘There, all the passengers had to identify their belongings. Then they were told that those who wanted to go to London could continue on the megabus.com coach and those who wanted to return to Preston, Manchester or Bolton could go on the police bus.’
He added: ‘When I rang my wife, I said there had been an incident and that we might be on the news. She was a bit worried, but I always felt it was going to be OK and I’d be coming home. ‘
Last night, passengers on the Preston to London service told how they faced up to three hours of ‘sheer terror’ on board the coach as motoring organisations criticised Staffordshire Police for ‘over-reacting’.
Police insisted they had reacted responsibly to reports by a ‘concerned member of the public’ of smoke being seen on board.
But Vermilion Von Kangur, 20, a student from Preston, said she was forced to step off the coach at gunpoint, fearing that ‘if I made a wrong move I could have been shot’.
Arriving in London seven hours late, she added: ‘We were told to get off the coach one by one and told to keep our arms by our sides and walk towards armed officers. I felt scared, my legs were like jelly, it was very intimidating.’
A yellow decontamination unit was set up on the opposite carriageway as passengers in queues building up behind the coach were warned to keep their windows closed and air conditioning off.
Miss Von Kangur said passengers initially thought the coach had broken down or stopped to change driver when it pulled up after the toll barriers at 8.20am yesterday.
When ambulances began to arrive they wondered if there had been a crash further ahead.
It was not until 9.30am that the 20-year-old and her friend Lindsay Parker, 18, noticed armed police flanking the coach – and it was another two hours before they were escorted off the vehicle in single file.
She said: ‘We spotted armed officers pointing their guns at the bus. At this point everyone was terrified.
‘Some people thought it was a bomb, or a suspected terrorist attack, while others thought we might have an escaped prisoner on board. All the coach driver told us was, “There is a situation”. That was it.’
She said there were two children among the passengers on board the service, which had left Preston at 5.10am and was due at Victoria Coach Station in London at 10.55am.
The evacuation started at around 11.30am – a full three hours after the driver pulled up.
Miss Von Kangur told how she was frisked by a police officer with sniffer dogs nearby, and ordered to sit in what police described as a ‘contamination zone’ on the motorway.
Miss Parker, also a college student, said: ‘I believe the person with the fake cigarette was sitting at the front. We were told a passing driver spotted smoke on the bus, but we don’t know what to believe. Some people were crying and we were really confused.
‘There were armed police at the side of the bus, they were looking at us through binoculars.
‘Eventually they started evacuating us – one passenger every five or ten minutes. We were told to keep our arms at our sides and not to put them in our pockets we were told we were not allowed to talk to each other.’
The motorway was closed between junctions T3 and T4 at Lichfield. The southbound carriageway was eventually reopened when police confirmed the incident had been a false alarm, shortly before 3pm. The northbound carriageway reopened around 90 minutes earlier.
A Staffordshire Police spokesman said the electronic cigarette produced a ‘smoke-like vapour’ and the alarm had been raised by a ‘genuinely concerned member of the public’, but it was not clear if that person was on the coach or saw the smoke from another vehicle.
Electronic cigarettes, known as e-cigarettes, are aimed at smokers seeking to quit and look like regular cigarettes but use a tobacco flavoured cartridges which can contain various levels of nicotine, or none at all. They release ‘puffs’ of vapour to simulate the experience of smoking.
It is thought the passenger may have been trying to disguise what he was doing with his bag, even though it is legal to use the ‘smokeless’ devices indoors.
The police spokesman added: ‘Given the nature of the report, we responded swiftly and proportionately, treating the information as credible and extremely seriously.’
The force rejected suggestions it had over-reacted and said a ‘sufficient number of officers attended the incident’.
See the photos and watch the video

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The table in the article below would be MUCH more informative if it extended for several years BEFORE the smoking ban.? Of course in those years it might have been showing an INCREASE rather than a DECREASE every year, eh??
I would imagine that the taxes have remained about the same, but that they’re focusing their complaints on the taxes because they feel it’s absolutely hopeless to go up against the antismoking powers.? For anyone who’d like to see how the bans affect similar low-level “Charitable Gambling” (pull-tabs, bingo, Keno)here in the States, see page 19 of:

for a simple, quick, and very clear graph of what the smoking bans in just one state did to government tax revenue from these sources.? Note at the very end of the graph, the little downward blip?? That’s the “WorldWide Economic Meltdown” — barely an afterthought after the destruction caused by the smoking bans.
The UK’s Bingo interests are fighting the wrong fight: they need to join with the Free Choice groups to restore the option of some places to allow smoking if they and their workers and customers wish.
Michael J. McFadden