Today we get into the news that Keir Starmer wants to ban smoking in beer gardens, Jeremy Corbyn and four other MPs’ decision to form the Independent Alliance, and the fallout from the news last week that the Commons’ biggest landlord, Labour’s Jas Athwal, had tenants living in appalling conditions in his properties.
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44 Comments
Non-smokers should be able to use beer gardens and the like without people puffing away. Smokers should be able to go a few hours without a fag. Something like 12% of the UK population still smokes, a ban impact will have negligible negative impact and getting it done has no need to 'be a thing' unless journos/media choose to keep harping on such a non-issue.
something nobody talks about with the smoking ban is how hard it is for people to quit when its so socially acceptable and right next to you all night. i stopped goin to pubs i knew diddnt have really large gardens or that would be busyt for this reason. it totally sucks that having a night out means having to secondhand smoke all night even outside
cigarette smoke comes in through our windows from the flats below us so we either have to breathe black mold or second hand smoke or never stay home
Awww it’s going to be one about actual politics
She has gone to a viewing at one of Jas Athwal's houses !!
There's nothing worse than trying to eat outside and having to breathe the smoke of somebody else who's had the brilliant idea of lighting up a cigarette next to you. So you eat smoke rather than the food you ordered. 🤤
Ava is so mean
I don't have a problem with smoking ban it nearly killed me in 2012 after years off smoking I now have COPD and have to take inhalers
Personally i would love to ban smoking
21:48 here's the thing though, the British climate, especially during Autumn and Winter is chronically humid though!
Buy a humidistat and you'll see that the air coming from outside is always above 60% relative humidity ie mould inducing.
Mould isn't just a problem for renters, the vast majority of British homeowners have dangerous, deleterious black mould in their homes because we just assume everything is ok (like our air pollution).
I have to run a few dehumidifiers outside of the Summer, otherwise my home would be covered in harmful black mould as it once was.
For me it does still apply. I don't really care if we are outside go away from me while you smoke 10 meters seems pretty fair. Clearly people can't be considerate when left up to their own devices.
Gambling is gross and dangerous. When the gambling act was brought in you couldn't gamble on your phone. I think there would be very broad public support for some tigher controls on gambling.
35:24 well we can safely say that Labour won't be legalising and regulating cannabis, their megaminds will notice the contradiction in messaging that banning smoking would do whilst legalising cannabis.
Not that they're mutually exclusive but the tabloid rags that the Labour Right fear, would milk the scenario for what its worth.
And yet we can apparently afford to police the black market and invest in the frivolous war on drugs when we can't do basic things like lift the 2 child benefit cap. 🙄
I live in California, and we have a ban against smoking within roughly 4-5 metres from a bar/restaurant doorway, but it seems more reasonable because people can go a bit down the sidewalk. (And it isn't really enforced unless someone is right outside the door). But saying 10 metres seems extreme – that's another property entirely many places.
Time for a girls rock podcast. Please. Please. Please.
Laura, with her lack of interest in Oasis, further solidifies her spot as the best member of PolJoe.
Seán doing god's work with the intro
Day 52 of asking for a production team microphone.
Keep puffing away Nigel. It'll own the left.
The most interesting question about the Independent Alliance for me is- what aspects of the Green platform do they not share that they didn't all just join the Green Party? The Green Manifesto looks a lot like the 2017 Corbyn Labour one.
Can we get a link to Laura's dress? My Mrs wants one.❤
Ban smoking outside and leave it at the business' discretion as to whether you can or not inside their property. Thats how it works in Japan, and it makes it really easy to plan a smoke-free or smoke-friendly night out, you just change the pub or eat in the seperately ventilated smoking area of the restaurant. Not having hot watermelon spit breathed into my face was amazing <3
Cigs are a class 1 carcinogen..
Alcohol has a far greater impact than smoking. It not only kills people but ruins the lives of everyone around alcoholism. Smoking and drinking generate a huge amount of tax revenue, of about £25bn, that more than pays for their increased pressure on the health service.
I'd also say 860,000 people die of heart disease which is primarily caused by a sedentary lifestyle in combination with poor diet. While it can't be stated as 100% self-inflicted, it is a far greater public health crisis than smoking, which is going way down anyway.
Rather than banning things the government should be focussed on making life better and more fulfilling because the only reason people smoke, drink and live sedentary lifestyles is because life is not that great. Go read about the Rat Park experiments.
I don't smoke – never have. Possibly because it was a factor in the deaths of both my parents.
But control is always better than prohibition, which history has surely taught us is efficient only in criminalising ordinary citizens.
As it is, I don't think von Starmer gives a damn if we smoke or not. This is a distraction. I'd sooner worry about what he needs us to be distracted from.
Hearing you guys talk buildings made me chuckle, it must be how I sound if try to talk politics 😂
But I agree, fuck landlords!!
As an asthmatic i would bloody LOVE smoking to be banned completely. I can walk ~10m behind someone whos smoking and still be coughing from it
I think the baffling thing for me isn't that this is happening – I'm asthmatic and directly benefit from laws restricting smoking – but that, after a quite dour budget announcement and first speech, rioting in the streets being met with (necessary, please understand I'm not making a value judgment) lighter sentencing than prior policing of more peaceful protest, and a low prime ministerial approval rating, one of Starmer's first governmental acts is something which provokes such a strong ire. Listen, the proportion of smokers in this country is low, but they have a loud voice, and the moving age restriction was already a bold and effective policy to remove smoking from society. This feels a little too aggressive to be done by a leader with such little political capital. I worry Starmer's mistaken his enormous majority for a wealth of political influence, when in reality, if he doesn't create a more uniting message for the party and country, that enormous majority is just going to be a rabble of unwhippable self-servers.
Basically whatever joys or misgivings I have about the ban, I do think it's an ill-advised political misstep, this early in an unconvincing premiership.
Living alone compared to 2 days alone 😅 i can go a week without words
Poor housing. Such a pervasively British problem. Shoddy building standards; rentier-centered capitalism without the space of US, Australia and New Zealand; Germany has the biggest rented accommodation sector in Europe but far fewer issues with abusive landlords and shitty housing standards. Astonishing how the British take it lying down…
Definitely agree with the smoking ban. We had lunch outside a farm shop when my partner was visibly pregnant, so had to rush off when the next table started smoking.
An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman walk into a podcast studio…
For people that watch a very liberal podcast, im seeing some very authoritarian veiws, don't ban smoking, legalize all drugs.
Farage has the most toxic smelling breath as its a mixture of cigarettes, booze, coffee and hatred
Man the conversation is so refreshingly insightful and bullshit-free when it's only Sean and Laura haha
The only people who support a ban on smoking in pub gardens are people who don't go to pubs, and absolutely wouldn't start going if smoking was banned in gardens.
All the incels logging off at 28:45
Is ants really a land lord problem? Just get some ant powder?
Oasis are boring. Never liked em. And the chickened out when Robbie Williams offered them out. Lol
Is that interview with max Fosh coming out or not?
glad ava left before she could derail the cigarette conversation.
I used to just love sitting in a bar and a smoker holding a cigarette 3 feet from them and 6 inches from me.
Wouldn't it be better for the coalition to NOT have any common interests (Who wants to ask a question about todays topic?) If the do not overlap, they each have a better chance of getting to ask a question the day they have the most concern
The smoking ban is just pencil pushing, to distract us from the austerity measures they announced prior.
There’s an alternative timeline where people are arguing against banning smack. Nicotine is addictive in any amount and kills you, except unlike smack it kills everybody else around you. Also it’s just grim to be next to somebody post Covid and be able to smell the smoke or vape that you know was in their lungs seconds ago with whatever else is festering. If somebody was breathing on you then you’d have a problem with it but a smoker puffing clouds of rank air is somehow an issue of freedom? Nah good riddance.