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→ British voters support smoking and drinking bans
There has been much chat about Britain’s vices lately. This week, Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary blamed too much alcohol for the increased levels of violence and antisocial behaviour in airports and on planes. He said flyers should be allowed no more than two drinks in airports, while Wetherspoon’s boss Tim Martin naturally came out in firm opposition. Today, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has confirmed that the Government will consider banning smoking outside pubs, clubs and sports stadiums. But does the public really buy into all this puritanism?
Well, yes. A new YouGov poll suggests that 62% of people support O’Leary’s suggested drinks cap in airports, with only 9% strongly opposing the prohibition. As for smoking, the same pollster shows that 58% of those surveyed would support a smoking ban in beer gardens and outdoor restaurants. Starmer might have trouble implementing this for 2025’s summer of cigarettes and alcohol…
→ Ford turns its back on DEI
Ford is withdrawing from the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, the latest instance of a corporate purge seemingly spurred by anti-DEI activists. “We will continue to put our effort and resources into taking care of our customers, our team, and our communities versus publicly commenting on the many polarizing issues of the day,” the CEO told employees in a memo.
Today, @Ford ABANDONED its values and commitments to an inclusive workplace, cowering to MAGA weirdo Robby Starbuck.
With the LGBTQ+ community wielding $1.4 TRILLION in spending power and 30% of Gen Z identifying as LGBTQ+, we won’t forget this shortsighted decision and its… pic.twitter.com/qwshHPApN7
— HRC (@HRC) August 28, 2024
The HRC published a furious condemnation of the move, accusing Ford of cowering to “MAGA bully” Robby Starbuck, an anti-DEI activist. Previously, John Deere, Tractor Supply, Harley-Davidson and Jack Daniel’s also pulled out of the programme following activist campaigns drawing public attention to their DEI policies. Lowes is reportedly exiting the HRC index too. The brands are apparently responding to the views of their heavily male and blue-collar customer base. It’s unlikely that Starbucks will join the anti-DEI ranks any time soon.
→ Kamala Harris’s McDonald’s history questioned
A stint at McDonald’s in one’s youth is the cornerstone of the American dream and the ultimate signifier of middle-class relatability. Kamala Harris’s claimed stint at McDonald’s, however, may have been fabricated, per a new report from the Washington Free Beacon.
NEW: Dems made a huge deal at the DNC about Kamala Harris once working at McDonalds in the summer of 1983. But did she really?@ChuckRossDC, @SaysSimonson and I performed an exhaustive review of the facts:
1: We badgered McDonalds, which employs a full-time archivist, for close…
— Andrew Kerr (@AndrewKerrNC) August 29, 2024
A 1987 job application which asked Harris to list every job she’d had in the past decade didn’t mention McDonald’s, where she claimed to have worked in 1983, though it did list another job she’d held for only a month, the outlet reported. She never mentioned it in the two books she wrote, nor did her unauthorised biographers. While the specific Baskin-Robbins at which a young Barack Obama once worked was subject to a media frenzy in 2008, no one seems to know where the McDonald’s at which Harris worked is. Will this take the heat off Tim Walz’s “stolen valour”?
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SubscribeHow the hell would airports be able to monitor how many drinks a passenger has had?
What constitutes “a drink” for a start? Is my two pints of real ale equivalent to your couple of cocktails? Also, if people have a drink or two because they’re nervous flyers (i’m not), what’s to stop them having a few before they arrive at the airport? Are people going to be breathalysed before entering the plane?
Finally, which idiot thought up that idea?
O’Leary just wants to sell less drink at the airport so he can sell more on his planes
I’ll drink to that.
‘Are people going to be breathalysed before entering the plane?’
That, or something like it, is probably the aim here. The idea itself is not so much about practicality as it is about control. Once it starts then it won’t end, getting to the thin end of the wedge is the priority. Public health is now the same as identity politics and the EU – a convenient stalking horse for any old agenda, with the triple benefit: it animates the internet, there’s always something else and it allows for easy posturing.
We the public are of course guilty. In the past we as a public had a civil society were we had togetherness and commonality and, critically, we understood its value. Going to the local for a drink with your peers is the best sort of civil society. We were able to keep the state out because we as a civil society knew our limits and, importantly, could police those boundaries as peers. As civil society has eroded so we’ve actively beckoned in the state to regulate our lives, to nudge us and to ‘protect’ us. The stark reality is that the state has not barged in, we’ve done this to ourselves and to our contemporaries and our children.
There’s all sorts of things they could do to reify these de facto bans. Weekly alcohol rations (with a smoking style long-dated ban backdoored on), facial recognition to back it all up. At least the Chinese, unlike Europe’s finest, have the decency to be open about social credit. Of course the legal class, largely Labour-voting, will one expects love all this and likely grow rich on the profits. I’d like Horace Rumpole back but I’ll be waiting a long time.
Slapdash, poorly defined ideas with the legal profession’s best and brightest bearing down on us inevitably brings about the most maximal interpretation of anything in the interests of caution – it’s not about any sort of definition and it certainly isn’t about any ‘good law.’ Of course, what Covid showed us that an ever greater number want to be governed harder and Starmer et al are just taking the lead.
To my mind this is simply Labour doing the worst of what the Conservatives did before them – just scattergunning luxury ideas that don’t have much to do with priorities outside of the establishment. ‘Look, those people don’t want reshored production, strong immigration controls and affordable energy – they want smoking bans, same-sex marriage, race relations acts, gender pay reporting, nudging on alcohol……’ I would not be at all surprised if Conservate ex-ministers are delighted with this idea.
Michael O’Leary just likes publicity and lo and behold he is getting a load of it by shooting his mouth off as per usual.
To be fair, he probably has got a point about alcohol consumption before and during flights leading to increasingly disruptive behaviour. The sort of behaviour that would get you thrown out of a pub by a combination of the publican and his regular customers. Unfortunately that option is not available on a flight and everyone else has to put up with the idiots who drink too much. Ejector seat anyone.
Really frightening how many authoritarians there are out there. But I suppose we alredyb learned that during covid.
How many of the people in the yougov poll actually go to the pub?
I would strongly suggests Harris’ employment or non employment at McDonald’s is not a news story.
Her employment would be a non story but her non employment / lie would most definitely be a news story
Surely it’s the “fabrication” which is the point? But CVs are often “overstated”, rather like the job description…
As I recall Tony Blair claimed to have seen a football match in his childhood which he couldn’t have…
Yet another demonstration of why polls are utter rubbish. Very few people support these kinds of bans on smoking/drinking, and how on earth would they be enforced? What constitutes “outside” a pub – within the property boundary, within a certain distance, outside the boundary?
I would have thought the government had more important things to think of right now – immigration, avoiding economic collapse due to their moronic decisions, etc.
I am amazed that you are allowed to smoke in hospital grounds or in children’s play areas. But if not outside on licensed premises, then where? On the main road? That is a more public place. And everywhere stinks of weed these days, yet they never do anything about that.
Why ? If the smoke is sufficiently diluted (it’s outdoors after all), the risk is below noise level.
Hasn’t it struck anyone as odd that many of the puritans demanding smoking outdoors is banned are the same sort of people who’ve historically campaigned for the legalisation of cannabis ?
There’s a point at which the alleged risks of these activities become so low that further legislation is pointless. In addition to the fact that such things cannot be policed at acceptable cost.
Whatever happened to common sense and trusting people’s judgement and indivudal responsibility ?
The withdrawal of Ford from the DEI maelstrom is tailor-made for creating speculation: are Ford bring back the old policy of “you can have any colour you like, so long as it’s b****? Phew! I nearly said the word that should not be spoken.
30% of Gen Z identify as LBGTIAFGHI+. Sure, sure…
Re: Smoking ban extension – whilst a majority support the general idea it’s not clear what the main driver is here for the Govt to have ‘flown this kite’ to gauge reaction.
is it the annoyance many have that they can’t sit in a pub garden, or walk in the door without the requirement to do a bit of passive? Or is it the desire to reduce smoking full stop to reduce costs on NHS and help with some health inequalities?
If the former, it surely could be dealt with by just better demarcation in smoking areas. If the latter then whilst the lesson from banning in pubs was a big resulting reduction in smoking uptake/continuance I’d question how much more this might actually save if extended to outdoors. On average folks consume the most healthcare resource in last 6mths of life, regardless when that occurs. Of course reducing chronic conditions does reduce costs, but actually much more now relates to drinking and alcohol.
Ah I now see the plan! Force a bunch of drinking dens out of business and drive down alcohol consumption. Reduce the opportunities for UK to continue to be a nation of pissheads and NHS will go much further. Yep that is so true. Just wander into an A&E any night, esp a Friday or Saturday.