Smoking persecution

Last week, a Brummagen painter & decorator was pulled over by officials from Cerydigion council in Wales and given a £30 fixed penalty notice for smoking in a place of work.

Some newspapers reported the story in a vaguely tongue in cheek manner. Some played it dead straight. Only a small minority questioned what kind of society encourages petty officials to bully the public they are, ostensibly, employed to serve.

Yet, the smoking painter and decorator was just the latest in a long line of ordinary people who have been criminalised and persecuted using laws that were passed in haste to satisfy the demands of a few vocal minorities. Since New labour came to power it has done its level best to honour its manifesto commitments - not to the voting public at large, but to the minority interests that helped it obtain and retain power. Thus, the first laws it rushed through Parliament were designed to satisfy the special interests of the anti-hunting brigade, the homosexual lobby, the Green lobby, the anti-family tendency and the various pressure groups that regards anyone who smokes tobacco products as a prime candidate for euthenasia.
Strangely, for an administration stuffed full of lawyers, its record on law making is pretty pathetic. The Anti-Hunting legislation has proved to have fewer teeth than a 12 year old vixen. Laws intended to enable the security services to monitor potential terrorists have been used mostly by local councils keen to stalk their own tax-payers or, by Labour itself, to eject crusty old dissenters from its party Conference.
Now we have the unedifying story of the painter and decorator being fined for smoking inside his own van. To be strictly accurate, at the point that he was fined it wasn't a workplace since he was using the van to go and pick up a takeaway for dinner.However, that cut no ice with the Jobsworth who issued the fine. So, now it begs the question of what, precisely, constitutes a workplace? Indeed, what constitutes work?
If, for instance, he had been a self-employed doctor, lawyer, accountant or consultant who uses a car for both work and leisure, would the same rule be applied? And, if it does, how far would it stretch?
It is reasonable to assume that most self-employed people work from home. Now, the question is, if they light up a fag while doing the books, are they in breach of the no smoking at work rule? At what point does the house become an office and vice versa? One thing is for sure, there are smoking fascists all over the UK already salivating at the prospect of being able to extend their persecution of smokers into the only place that has so far evaded them; private homes.