When I first started in journalism I attended a council meeting with a senior reporter and I'll never forget what she said as we listened in disbelief at some of the stupid things that members who were not greatly articulate were saying. She said :
"You have to remember, Pat, that councillors are generally as thick as shit but they wield a lot of power."
They are not only thick like Stony Stratford Councillor Paul Bartlett who ranted about smokers burning children but he also had a problem finding any evidence of litter to back up his prejudicial claim.
I said ages ago that it was a bad idea to put such power to make bans into the hands of local councils - particularly in my own area which is now once again led by a smokerphobic leader who refuses to listen to balanced evidence and prefers to push his own bigotry instead.
And it seems the exclusion of smokers based on hate and prejudice and not health is spreading
Smoking is not and never has been "socially unacceptable". If it was, then they wouldn't need to devise a program to make it so by denormalising the normal and normalising the weirdos like those with a mental phobia about law abiding people who like something that they despise and fear.
And this fear is continually hyped up by Govt Quangos and bigots like Stanton Glanz who adopted the white suprememist attitude to smoking and spread his foul hatred across the world.
I fear that putting stupid councils in control who don't have the intelligence to debate reasonably is a very dangerous move and one we will find hard to fight. This issue is no longer about health and is being openly said so. It's now about not letting chiiiildren SEE smokers.
I think a much better idea would be to stop our children from seeing xenophobic, smokerphobic bigot councillors who teach our kids how to hate and loathe and not tolerate, understand and respect different cultures and lifestyles.