Boris, booze and fags
Mayor Johnson, as we know, opposed the smoking ban. His voting history on the issue can be found on TheyWorkForYou.com. The noxious fumes produced by the evil weed were not, it would seem, enough in Mr Johnson’s opinion to warrant an intrusion on people’s liberty and bar and pub workers would have to lump it; they could, of course, choose to be out of a job at any time if their health was such a big issue.
At Old Street station, there is a sign up announcing that alcohol will be banned from the first of June on public transport. The occasional drunken idiot is now more of a threat than smoking, which the World Health Organisation considers to be behind 26% of male deaths and 9% of female deaths in the developed world.
It is gesture politics for three reasons.
Firstly, it is unenforceable. Part of Mr Johnson’s campaign was the reintroduction of bus conductors to prevent anti-social behaviour on buses. Unfortunately, his costings were a little bit out. £92 million out, as it happens. Unless every bus, every tram and every carriage is covered, people are going to chance taking that can of their bag and having a beer while they’re going wherever they’re going. That would be nigh-on impossible, and the 400 extra officers proposed, while undoubtedly welcome, will not be able to enforce it.
Secondly, it will make matters worse as people will stand outside the tube station or hold up the bus while they neck their alcohol of choice before getting on the vehicle in question. It will also make life a lot harder for the poor sods who have to try to enforce this - TfL staff. As Bob Crow (and it’s not often I agree with him) has pointed out, you’re making staff pick unnecessary fights.
Thirdly, it’s targeting the wrong problem. That problem is too much drinking in general in the UK and is better dealt with through social means - health education and so on. Unfortunately, that takes time, money and lots of work behind the scenes and does not give the lovely, ‘get tough’ headlines.
Don’t get me wrong - I’d rather people didn’t drink on public transport. However, I think there are better ways to tackle the issue and better places to spend the resources committed to this idea. It is, however, an eyecatching headline that every Londonder will at least notice because of the signs going up at every tube station.
I do wonder whether Mayor Johnson thinks the same applies to tubes as planes. In a speech in Parliament on 16th May 2003, he said
Might the Minister reflect on that, thinking whether, if there is to be a total ban on being drunk on a plane at any time, it may be necessary to consider some compensatory measure to bring back smoking sections on aeroplanes? Many people frankly find it difficult to put up with the rigours of a long flight without the sustenance and reassurance of a smoke .
I am sure that many people consider Bank tube station in the morning as bad as a long flight.
xD.
May 9th, 2008 at 10:34 am
“I’d rather people didn’t drink on public transport.”
Is that really true? Do you think the world would be a better place if I didn’t have a bottle of Becks while reading a book on the train of a Friday evening?
Or do you mean that you’d rather people didn’t behave like drunken arseholes on public transport? - which, as you’ve touched upon but not quite covered, is a completely separate problem from drinking (unless the drunken arseholes consumed their multiple drinks while going round and round the Circle Line, which I doubt…)
Good piece overall though…
May 9th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Yes, it is true. People tend to spill their drinks, making the area sticky and unpleasant, while in the summer the smell of stale lager isn’t much fun either. To be honest, I’m not that bothered by it, but I’d rather they didn’t.
Glad you liked the piece.
xD.
May 10th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
I’d prefer people not to drink on the bus because it would be from a bottle and nasty germs can be transferred.Better they bring a glass.
May 12th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Who in blazes drinks on the Tube? The stifling heat does nothing but detract from the flavour of a good glass of Dom Perignon.
Also, I think it’s quite consistent to want to ban drinking on the Tube, but allow smoking in pubs - one is a public space where some decorum can and should be enforced by the State (though you give some good reasons why its enforcement will be difficult), the other is, IMHO, the landlord’s business.
To conclude, interesting fact - according to QI the air quality on airplanes has decreased since smoking was disallowed on flights. The air gets recycled less, or something.
May 12th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Whilst I do actually agree with you and the Devil on this one, it is illiberal, BUT, and it is quite a big BUT, Boris did run with this in his manifesto. He was voted in by people who expect him to do what he said he would do, therefore he has to have a go…
I think voters do have a reasonable expectation that those we vote in will do what they said they would when they were trying to buy our vote. Unlike Gordon Brown.
May 13th, 2008 at 6:53 am
Mike,
You are a cad and a rotter. You know full well that it’s only Chateau Lafitte that you should drink on the tube.
You seem to forget that a pub is a public house and that the landlord is obliged to provide a decent working environment for their staff.
The QI fact sounds about right to me. Because they didn’t have to filter out tobacco smoke, they just turned the air con down. Apparently, the heavier weight of carbon dioxide also means that, at the end of a long flight, the air is significantly sweeter towards the front of the plane.
Zorro,
Perhaps, but I’m still going to point out bad policies and the impact they can have.
xD.