Is total ban the right way?

We won't have to hang our clothes out on the line or throw them to wash to rid them of the stench acquired during an hour or two in the pub, or wake up with a dry throat and chesty cough caused by passive smoking.

So for us this week's vote by MPs was splendid news - in theory at least.

Not so for the smokers, though, who I reckon will do as the banned hunt followers are doing and make a stubborn stand against the new regulations. Who will police them? The same people who now police the dropping of litter in our litterstrewn country? The people who police the ban on the use of mobile phones while driving?

There could be rows galore in pubs as people defiantly light up, non-smokers with the law on their side challenge them, and landlords in the middle try to do the right thing without losing too many more customers.

And that side of the pub sector which doesn't "do" food will shrink even faster than it's doing at present.

So the total ban could be something of a mixed blessing. It might turn out, in the end, to have been better to opt for a system which would have done more to segregate smokers and non-smokers in nonfood pubs and insisted on air-conditioning systems which would have properly protected staff.
I can't avoid a slight feeling of unease about yet another "freedom" being legislated away for the good of the communal health of the nation. This time it's the freedom to enjoy a smoke with a pint.
Next time might it be the pint itself ?

Pat’s morale booster

The Walford soap EastEnders isn't afraid to demolish stereotypes. The popular image of sexually-desirable women on television tends to be of someone young, glamorous and slim or possibly a just a teeny bit curvy.

But Pat Butcher (played by Pam St Clement, above), defies that trend. The current storyline of her pursuit of poor Patrick, including turning up to greet him wearing only her coat, goes totally against all that and must have worked wonders for the morale of women everywhere.
If someone well into middle age and built like an aircraft carrier can be cast as a femme fatale, no-one need consider themselves too old or bulky to be desirable, need they?

Not all roses

It's widely acknowledged that Leeds is a prosperous, thriving city and at present a huge contrast to Bradford as the latter undergoes its massive makeover.

The shops and arcades to the west of Vicar Lane are booming, as is that wonderful market.
However, up on The Headrow the former Allders (previously Lewis's) premises, one of Leeds's landmark buildings, remains boarded up and across the road the Headrow Centre has quite a few empty units.

Those blemishes in an otherwise confident facade, plus the fact that the Habitat store has decamped to the Birstall Retail Park, are reminders that no city centre is immune to the retailing trends which are affecting towns and cities throughout the country.
Leeds is doing better than many, but even it has its problems.

The great divide

"I live in dread of the outcome of the New Vic situation. I do hope 'THEY' do not pull it down."
So wrote a reader to me this week, expressing an attitude typical of a great many Bradford people.
We live in a city which is doubly divided. On top of the more obvious cultural division is the gap between Bradfordians who know what they want (and don't want) for their city and the movers and shakers, mostly from outside, who tell us what we're going to get whether we like it or not.
"Those who pay the piper call the tune" goes the old saying. Not in Bradford. The thousands who pay the pipers via their council tax can expect to have their opinions - particularly on the future of the Odeon, but also on plans for a city-centre lake, ever-glade-style swamps along Thornton Road or a stumpy little "canal" going nowhere ad-jacent to the Forster Square Retail Park - contemptuously dismissed.
Small wonder there's a destructive cynicism abroad and local pride is struggling when "They" and "Us" are so far apart.

Nectar on tap

If you drink bottled water you're costing yourself a fortune unnecessarily and not doing the environment any favours either. That's the verdict of the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute, which has just produced a report declaring the consumption of mineral water to be an "environmental evil".
The world gets through 154 billion litres of the stuff every year, all of it needing to be put into bottles manufactured solely for that purpose and transported many miles, both processes which use up fuel and produce pollution.

Yet most of us, particularly those of us living in the West, could simply turn on our taps and drink water as good as or better than the costly stuff that comes in bottles and in-finitely preferable to the dreadful, fizzy version of the bottled stuff.

So here's a tip to help you spare the environment and save yourself lots and lots of money. Buy one small bottle of still mineral water, the cheapest you can find, and drink its con-tents. Then refill it time after time with the sweet, superb Bradford water that flows from the taps and only replace it if the bottle splits.