The Tasmanian zealots
December 30th, 2010 at 10:59 am by David FarrarThe Herald reports:
Despite the island’s clean, green image, one person in four lights up each day, compared with a national average of 17 per cent.
Those smokers are becoming increasingly marginalised: the state capital, Hobart, banned cigarettes from the city centre four months ago, and the second-biggest city, Launceston, recently decided to do the same.
Other councils are considering following suit, and there are also calls for smoking to be prohibited on the island’s beaches. But if Burnie City Council gets its way, the sale, possession and consumption of tobacco would be outlawed state-wide. Even back gardens would be smoke-free.
Smokers would be forced to go cold turkey – or perhaps emigrate to the mainland.
Forced emigration is so 1930s. I am sure the Burnie City Council could be far more efficient and just proscribe anyone caught smoking – making it legal for them to be killed by vigilantes.
Or they could do the Iranian way. Chop their hands off. Damn hard to smoke without hands.
December 30th, 2010 at 11:32 am
Doesn’t Susan Bradford smoke?
Vote:December 30th, 2010 at 12:32 pm
Time, gentlemen: An elegy on the British pub by the Economists obituaries editor.
Vote:December 30th, 2010 at 12:48 pm
Keep up the good work Tasmania I say. I can’t stand cigarette smoke, and before the smokers go on a tirade about how their smoking has no impact on me, well yes actually it does.
Vote:December 30th, 2010 at 1:00 pm
I don’t like smoking either but cannot remember the last time a smoker actually bothered me with their smoke. Leave the poor bastards alone.
Vote:December 30th, 2010 at 1:02 pm
When they are finished kicking smokers could they please do something about that accent.Words such as pool and school completely lose their meanings when savaged by that Aussie twang. Prime Minister Julia Gillard is a leading practioner of this simply awful twang and should be banned from national t.v. till she learns to speak english.
Vote:December 30th, 2010 at 1:02 pm
bc,
Your vehicle emissions bother me equally. And your barbecue smoke. And your fascism.
Vote:December 30th, 2010 at 1:06 pm
Yeah but it’s Tasmania, is it really that more people smoke or did some say “my mum and my sister smoke” and counted the same person twice
Vote:December 30th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
Are they Greens?
Vote:December 30th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
I’m sure soon we’ll be having medicinal tobacco, prescribed to anyone who’s ever had slightly depressing thought.
Vote:December 30th, 2010 at 1:16 pm
First they came for the smokers…..
Vote:December 30th, 2010 at 1:35 pm
I didn’t realise you were such a greenie wat dabney to be so worried about my vehicle emissions. The thing is you see a car is pretty much a necessity (unless you have a great public transport option). Smoking clearly is not a necessity. Simple really.
And my barbeque skills are superb – you don’t see a lot of smoke billowing out from my bbq thank you very much! (eating is a necessity also by the way).
Vote:December 30th, 2010 at 1:36 pm
CHFR: First they came for the smokers…..
Great place to start
Vote:December 30th, 2010 at 1:37 pm
Not like cultured and democratic New Zealand that steadily increases taxes on smokes to a metaphorical hand chopping amount.
Vote:December 30th, 2010 at 1:44 pm
Well, they certainly don’t have much to lose in the way of international travelers but I don’t understand why any Western country would want to become the Saudi Arabia of tobacco, accessible only to those who share a particular “puritanical” prohibitionist viewpoint.
Vote:December 30th, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Ban cigarettes and alcohol and legalise marijuana. It would be a better world.
Vote:December 30th, 2010 at 2:04 pm
Smoking would be a good way to filter some morons out of the gene pool if it killed them sooner, but unfortunately they usually breed before the cancer gets them.
Vote:December 30th, 2010 at 2:11 pm
Impregnate tobacco with male birth control? If it was a testosterone suppressant it would kill two stones with one bird.
Vote:December 30th, 2010 at 3:11 pm
Why don’t they handle smokers like they handled the Abos? Just shoot all the bastards.
Vote:December 30th, 2010 at 3:15 pm
I take it all of you who are so vehement in your anti smoking have no vices that anyone would object to.
As I see it if a smoker can be considerate to you in what is still a legal pleasure (for some of us) then what gives you the right to object. I am amazed that so called right wingers can just let that go when it is something they object to and become as nausiating as the most rabid lefty.
Vote:December 30th, 2010 at 3:24 pm
I currently have the misfortune of serving a 12 month contract (sentence) somewhere very close to Burnie. I can assure you everything that is said about Tasmania is true. It’s very difficult to comprehend that you can fly to melbourne in about an hour for very little cost and yet the north-west coast of Tassie is like some distant backwater of religious fevor. Im in a farming community and there is no local pub – apparently everytime someone applies for a license the numerous local churches (I pass at least 7 on the way to Burnie) kick up such a stink that no-one gets a license. The cricket club has a limited license (training nights and game nights) so its very amusing to see all the old-guys standing on the boundary training so they can qualify to have a drink in a social setting afterwards. I cannot wait to get back to the mainland.
Vote:December 30th, 2010 at 3:28 pm
Just having a mild break from Goff and Muslim bashing CHFR.
I think the balance is about right in NZ now, smoking rarely intrudes in my life any more. One place it has been very annoying though is at sports events, especially when you’re allocated a seat downwind from a chain smoker. The new indoor stadium in Dunedin will hopefully have indoor non-smoking rules.
Vote:December 30th, 2010 at 3:42 pm
ASH and some Maori fanatics want to achieve the same here. Lunacy unbound.
bc, I’ll chip in a few bucks to buy you a one-way ticket to North Korea, the home of totalitarians like yourself. Get lost.
Vote:December 30th, 2010 at 4:35 pm
At the risk of starting off a “Four Yorkshiremen” fest, the Tasmanians are bloody lucky. There’s nowt so puritanical as WA. You might not be able to smoke on Tasmanian beaches but at least you can still fly a kite, or use an “oversized” sun umbrella, jump off the pylon (if there is one) into the water, use a “toy vehicle” such as the radio controlled boat your kids got for Christmas or dig a hole in the sand such as when making a sandcastle.
These are amongst the more than 100 verboten activities on Perth’s main beach, Cottesloe, introduced by the local Council.
Increasingly, local authorities are an outlet for the sort of chip-on-the-shoulder power crazed protofascist who wouldn’t make it through even the incredibly slack preselection processes of a political party. Their powers could, however, be strictly limited by statute, but our “representatives” in Parliaments don’t act. Could it be that they find it useful to have a group of people even less mindful of rights and freedoms than themselves, against whom they might compare favourably?
Vote:December 30th, 2010 at 4:48 pm
Remember this is a state which committed genocide upon its entire Aboriginal population, and only legalised homosexuality in 1997!
BC, your fascism is bad for my health. Maybe you should be banned, and possibly suffer the same fate as the Tasmanian Aboriginals?
(I am a non smoker who enjoys the odd cigar as a treat, by the way)
Vote:December 30th, 2010 at 5:53 pm
Two wrongs don’t make a right….
Anyhoo, isn’t Ponting from Tassie? He could do with a good smoke about now.
Vote:December 30th, 2010 at 7:19 pm
Change a few words and it all looks far more reasonable. Or not.
Vote:December 30th, 2010 at 10:08 pm
The Tasmanian genocide is a fabrication. See the following
http://www.sydneyline.com/Manne%20debate%20Quadrant.htm
Vote:December 30th, 2010 at 10:53 pm
Kowtow its hardly a fabrication, but rather a rigurously debated point. Most of which all boils down to (by my reading) whether genocide is only where there are deliberate mass killings of Aborigines by European settlers, or where it might also apply to instances in which many Aboriginal people were killed by the reckless or unintended actions and omissions of settlers
Either way when you are debating such semantics you can generally say Tazmania as a state is hardly a glowing lightin native rights.
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