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I had to roll one up just to steel myself to read this: University announces smoking ban

Newcastle University is banning smoking anywhere on its campus from next year.

Staff and students are being warned if they want to smoke after 1 January 2007, they will have to leave the university site - not just buildings.

Now, I don't know Newcastle University at all. I presume it's a city centre type affair where it won't be too much of an inconvenience to step onto the public highway (until smoking is also banned there of course). Though I know they have an agriculture department and the policy applies on the university's farms which probably will mean a long walk to the roadside.

But no doubt this will come to us all eventually. Here at Brookes we have a policy that says not only is there no smoking in the university buildings, but also, in theory, not within five meters of outside doors or windows.

I am a good smoker. I always stub my cigarettes out and put the butts in a bin, if there isn't an ashtray. I can't stand the habit of just chucking it on the floor as you get to the door - often not even stamping it out - that seems to go on a lot around here.

And I always stand the requisite five meters from buildings if at all possible. The nearest spot to my office has a huge plane tree that provides as good cover as any umbrella or bike shed for most of the year, but elsewhere you can usually find some eaves or something to stand under that don't infringe the five meter rule. But I have to say that from watching other smokers I am if not the only one, in a tiny minority that give more than one hoot about people coming and going at entrances or working in offices with not terribly well fitting windows that always let in a little unpleasant whiff if someone's smoking outside.

So, fellow smokers, especially those here at Brookes, the only way in my opinion to delay this fascist onslaught is to abide by the quite reasonable rules we already have. Mind you, the university could take greater steps to ensure people know what those rules are. At the moment it is up to occupants of offices for example to print off a little petulant looking poster and stick it in their window. It doesn't look terribly official and it looks like the occupants are being a bit petty if you don't already know the rule.

But maybe the attitude is "why spend any money publicising the rule when we could spend the same simply banning smoking on site altogether".

Let's hope they don't want to extend it to one's own space in halls of residence.

Everyone seems to be trying to analyze what caused the death of Rhys James, and what can be done about it. More police, punishment or reward for parents taking more responsibility, compulsory community service, blah, blah, blah. I can categorically state that none of this matters. Rhys was killed by government policy, particularly on drugs, that creates an ideal environment in which organized crime can flourish and drag into its sphere of influence vulnerable youngsters...

In the Independent today Camila Batmanghelidjh of Kids Company provides some insight gleaned from her eleven years of working with dislocated children:

This is not what David Cameron refers to as anarchy; it is nihilism. It is an absence of values in which the notion of society, community and responsibility has been eradicated by violence. Every encounter with adults for these children has been toxic. Instead, the lives of these children and young people are about survival. They are, in their own words, "lone soldiers" who come into contact with those who will facilitate violence.

She goes on to describe how the lack of services and support is filled...

Who steps into this void? Imagine three concentric circles. In the first stands the drug dealer and gangster, a remote-control businessman who leads a criminal network. In the second stand our lone children. They are recruited by the dealer, initially by riding around on their bicycles providing information. In the third circle are children who imitate the violence.

And I might add, when a family has already been tainted with drug use and abuse and parental contact with authority is as a result become something to fear, lest one's relatively innocent personal habits turn one into a criminal, what reference point do these children have? I leave the solution up to you to discover. Take out the inner of those concentric circles Camilla talks about and the whole structure of criminal influence collapses...

To me, Rhys Jones died because of government and international policy which is not only failing to stop addiction (even if that were a valid aim of public policy - see "On LIberty"), but encouraging and subsidizing organized crime. Legalize now to stop these government sponsored deaths. Does any party have the true grit to deal with this, or are we going to be forced to accept intrusions like this horror or total breakdown like this in the vain attempt to fight a war that cannot be won?

...on the other hand, the one good thing about the smoking ban is that it brings starkly into the open the fact that the "state" acting in the "best interests" of its citizens can decide and enforce with legislation and criminal penalties what you can and cannot do with your own property. Of course it always has in all sorts of different ways, but at least it's out in the open now.

So we can proceed to Land Value Tax unopposed by those who think it is not right for the state to take some of "your" property wealth yet okay to tell a landlord what he can and cannot allow in his own property...:)

Technorati Tags: land value tax, smoking ban

I know sometimes there are things that make one doubt whether one is in the right party. My last occasion was, I think, the stabbing of Charles Kennedy and before that his sacking of Jenny Tonge (though her reaction to his alcoholism proved to me I made the right decision remaining in the party despite my misgivings about his treatment of her).

But, for all the bleating and moaning appearing around the Lib Dem blogs and for all that the other parties are trying to put all the "blame" on the Lib Dems for on not having a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty-not-Constitution, I can't say I give a flying foxbat about the events of today.

There has been plenty of opportunity for those with a differing opinion since Ming first suggested an in or out referendum instead of a Treaty referendum back in summer. We had a leadership election in which both candidates took this same point of view. Members who were so against it now, especially ones with 300+ Technorati ratings perhaps who get way more coverage than most of us, could have argued their position then and got concessions from one or other candidate.  At the very least they could have made it a bigger issue in that campaign either to understand the proposed policy better or to be able to support it with good grace rather than this after the fact bleating.

Let's face it, the Tories have little consistency on Europe. They needed to make us the scapegoats over Lisbon. They would not have wanted an in/out referendum in any event as that would have exposed them for the bi-facial opportunists they have been on Europe since at least the days of Wee Willie Hague's 2001 election campaign.

"In Europe but not Run By Europe" is vacuous tripe trying to have it both ways. They started the move towards being run by Europe before Maggie's volte face "no, no, no" speech. Had they had to face an in/out referendum they would not have known what to do - campaign for "out" as many of their supporters probably believe they stand for, or let those all down and campaign for the protectionist superstate they helped to create and they still support as a political cadre.  Even the true left have had a more credible and long standing consistency on the matter.

Me, I can't see the difference frankly between trying to decide whether to put the brakes on pre-Lisbon or post-Lisbon. Personally at the moment, whatever my party affiliation I would probably fight hard for an "out" vote in a proper referendum on membership. Nick's policy would have given me that chance. A vote on Lisbon wouldn't - it would just let me say "a little bit more or a little bit less" of the same illiberal project of the same power hungry political elitist structure.

Ultimately the one thing that Nick Clegg was probably wrong on was to make it a three-line-whip on an issue on which policy had changed without a positive resolution of the party in conference since his MPs had last put it to their electorates. But the principle of holding out for an in/out vote was to my mind correct, and I know which way I would have voted in that, but not in a silly vote about Europe plus or minus Lisbon, but above all Europe still.  Bu people falling for the Tory and IWAR attempts to lay the blame on Nick are I think mistaken.