Smoking ban is best thing

Jul 25 2008 Liverpool Daily Post

IT WAS with some incredulity that I read Alexis Armshaw’s letter (Gordon, you’re taking liberties, Daily Post, Letters, Wednesday).

I am not a fan of the Labour government and I do agree that the cost of living is ludicrously high. However, the remainder of the letter just made me angry.

How can a person so passionately champion democracy on behalf of us all and blatantly refuse to acknowledge the damage done to a person’s health as a result of having to put up with other people’s smoking and the effects of it? The smoking ban was one of the best things I have seen come into force in this country. Were it not for the results of passive smoking and the effects on a person’s quality of life, I would have all the sympathy in the world for smokers. I used to smoke myself, and would think nothing of lighting up in front of others, whether they smoked or not. Now I have quit, I realise just how ignorant my own attitude to others was. I can now enjoy the freedom of walking into a pub or restaurant, and not having to put up with the smell of smoke, especially if I have ordered food. I know I am not alone.

I was incredibly fortunate that I didn’t struggle as much as others to quit and, since doing so, I value my own state of health so much more. How anybody can argue that smoking is not “abhorrent” when they must be aware of the damaging effects of the habit, not just to themselves but to others is beyond me.

As for eating that slice of pizza or doner kebab and the objection to warning labels, it may seem a little over-cautious, but the UK does have an increasing obesity problem which is putting unnecessary pressure on the NHS. If you have to read a warning label on an item of food, you still have the choice of buying and eating it or not and for being responsible for your own lifestyle. That rationale of responsibility applies to drinking and smoking too. Isn’t that democratic choice?

N Greenwood, Aigburth

Unsung failure

I WOULD like to propose a day of thanksgiving in praise of Merseyrail.

The company’s contribution to the joy of the nation should surely no longer go unsung. Over the years, no major event in the region has gone unmarked by a train failure, a signals failure, a line failure, a temporary bus service, the lack of a temporary bus service or some other (unspecified) dislocation. The top management have even instituted exciting mental stimulations to prevent any intellectual idling during the unexpected, hot, crowded delays by, in some cases, offering conflicting accounts of what is going on.

In addition, lest we get above ourselves and board the trains too eagerly, the management have thoughtfully avoided any obvious modern means of streamlining ticketing so we are encouraged to form large groups at counters and little shops, refining our social skills while others buy food along with their tickets, and appreciate displays of origami while the staff produce scissors and paper to renew season tickets at peak moments.

Some years ago, in such a letter as this, I suggested that such was the matchless contribution made by Merseyrail to our lives that the fine old English Tradition of The Village Stocks be reintroduced in honour of its top brass. I take back that unworthy sentiment: now, only transportation to Australia would do!

Philip Hall, Wallasey

Modern man

RE: THE anti-smoking rant on Friday’s Letters page. When I hear men complaining about cigarette smoke making their hair and clothes smell, I worry about the frightfully low testosterone levels in the modern Merseyman, and find yet another reason to savour my status as “spinster of my parish”.

Nikki Jones, L17

Drink carefully

WHAT is it going to take for people to start taking it easy on the booze. We learn that Liverpool has the highest rate of binge-drinkers in the country and we do not seem to be listening to the warnings. I pray for this generation.

Mrs D Howard, Runcorn

School’s for learning

I CAN’T say I agree with your Fashion Victim columnist, Emma Johnson, in Style City about whether schoolgirls should be allowed to wear fake tan.

But I do agree with the headmistress in Lancashire who has banned fake tans in her school.

When walking by the park on some mornings, I see boys and girls slouching to school in a hideous array of fashions, which would never have been allowed in my day.

I have seen boys, never mind girls, in earrings, as well as boys with dyed spikes of hair in their Mohican styles.

Some of the girls have multicoloured beehives as well as jewellery and, yes, fake tans. Many of them smoke and/or chew gum. Of course, rebelling against school uniforms is not new and, like Emma, I experimented with the length of my skirt. But you can take things too far.

Like many rules in life, uniforms are not a petty restriction. They are a means of ensuring that everyone dresses the same, so that rich pupils can’t lord it over their poorer classmates.

Furthermore, school is primarily for learning and more of that is certainly needed these days. Fashions are a distraction.

Helen O’Connor (aged 64), Birkenhead

Big lump of nothing

AS SOON as anyone who’s been around the block a couple of times hears promotional tags like “the Manhattan of Liverpool”, the warning flags start to go up in your mind.

So it is with the fate of the Baltic Triangle, scheduled to be developed by the Windsor Group, in a dilemma so well exposed on the front page of yesterday’s Daily Post (July 24).

Having seen fit to demolish the attractive period buildings of Joseph Lamb & Co’s ship chandlers, Liverpudlians are now left looking at a big lump of nothing in a premier position on The Strand. Or, more precisely, a concrete desert with a single lift-shaft going up to nothing. This is all that was completed before the scheme collapsed.

We’re now told it will be years before anything is actually done. Likewise, we’ve seen the large Garden Festival Pavilion, on Sefton Street, which architectural historian Prof Quentin Hughes called the city’s “finest building of the 1980s”, demolished for no apparent purpose and the site left empty and derelict.

Since then, Voss Motors and the attractive single-storey warehouses on Mann Island have been swept away. Will this site also get “credit crunched” and once again citizens will be left to endure the hopelessly deluded ambitions of greedy developers?

S Turner, Aigburth

No ships coverage

I COMPLETELY agree with your letter writer K Ellison (Post, July 24) – I could not believe how little coverage the Tall Ships got on national television.

When you think of how much time is given to big events in London like the Marathon and the Lord Mayor’s Parade, it is ludicrous that such a big maritime event as this was virtually overlooked.

It happens all the time, though. Even our local television news stations are guilty of ignoring Liverpool, preferring to focus on oddly shaped carrots in Manchester than to cover major events in Liverpool. Although, to be fair, both did turn out for the Tall Ships.

Recently I took part in the Field of Women event to raise money for breast cancer awareness. Thousands of women got together in the pouring rain for this, and I expected to see it on that night’s national news but no. It managed a few minutes on the regional bulletins, and that was it.

Southern -based TV bosses want to remember there are plenty of us up here.

AS Holmes, via email

Why ignore north?

“NUL points” to the BBC and ITV for their dismal failure in showing any of the Tall Ships parade.

As far as I understand, we pay no less than our Southern brethren for our licence fee, so why do their live broadcast units only show special events that take place south of Birmingham?

Whenever a national strike takes place, Liverpool is their first port of call for quotes from the picket line. But anything more cultural or unusual is largely disregarded.

They can’t claim it didn’t have mass appeal when a million people showed up – some from as far as Durham.

For all that, they’re supposed to be progressive and inclusive these days. TV stations haven’t moved on much in their view of Liverpool.

Martin Keane, Aintree

Honour too late

IT WAS so nice to see the story in yesterday’s Daily Post about the women receiving their badges of honour for all their work with the Land Army during World War II. Without women like Mary Vincent and countless others this country could not have survived during those dark wartime years.

It is a shame that it has taken so long for the Land Army veterans to be recognised. I am sure that many have passed away now without being honoured, but I suppose it is better late than never.

I wonder how many of today’s young women would know where to begin if it came to them to feed the nation. Many of them don’t even eat vegetables never mind grow them.

Ella Manners, West Kirby

No to electric cars

I DO not want an electric car. A quick straw poll of my friends reveals that none of them want an electric car. So, unless Gordon Brown comes up with some sort of ruling to ban all petrol cars, I don’t think we will ever all find ourselves whizzing around on milk floats.

F Gore, Hoole