Petrol
Make petrol free. If oil really is running out, then it's our duty to use it all up as fast as possible to accelerate the research into alternatives.
...and bacon. Bacon would be free as well.
To pay for it, tax on bagpipes would be 110% of their worth each year.
...and the fines for not indicating on roundabouts - or anywhere really - would be increased to a minimum of 1200 quid.
Oh, and the obvious one of reducing the drinking age to 16, but only for poof lager like Carling, and get rid of the smoking ban in pubs - everywhere else, yeah, leave it, but pubs?? That singlehandedly destroyed them overnight.
(dchurch bah, Thu 22 Sep 2011, 17:58, 30 replies)

Got to disagree on the pub thing
I hated going to pubs before the ban. Always ended up stinking of smoke and wheezing from my asthma being irrated by the smoke. And that was only a small country pub. Didn't go anywhere near busy town pubs.
(Cuthbert Annihilator, Thu 22 Sep 2011, 18:07, closed)

but
thousands of people said that. They said "I hated going home smelling of smoke. when the ban comes in, I'll be down there a load more".
That's clearly why 35 pubs per week are closing down then, they're full of people who don't smoke.

...ahh, no they're not.

Greene King and Wetherspoons (not that I ever went anywhere near one of those) share prices plummeted pretty much the day after the ban came into force.
(dchurch bah, Thu 22 Sep 2011, 18:11, closed)

Ban supermarkets from selling booze
That'd help some. In fact, just ban supermarkets.
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Thu 22 Sep 2011, 18:19, closed)

I'll
go along with that.

Bring back the off-licence!

(and of course, bring taxation levels back down to what they were 20 years ago in pubs.)
(dchurch bah, Thu 22 Sep 2011, 18:20, closed)

But I do go to the pub more
If the smoking ban does end though, I can guarantee I'll be there a lot less. I could somewhat put up with it before the ban, but having got used to no smoke after years of the ban, I'm not sure I could cope again.

I don't know why pubs are shutting down more now, maybe non-smokers simply got into the habit of not going to the pub and never went back. And of course correlation does not imply causation etc.
(Cuthbert Annihilator, Thu 22 Sep 2011, 18:29, closed)

It
certainly does imply it.
It doesn't prove it, but it certainly implies it.
From the moment the ban came in, there were fewer people in pubs - that's undisputed.
It just irks me that many people said that they would be in pubs more when there was no smoking. There are three pubs in our village. After work, each of them would be packed. Now, there's very little point going to any of them - you'd be pretty much the only one in there. More people don't smoke than do, by that reckoning they should be packed.
Both, Greene King and Wetherspoons share price spiked shortly after the ban for a few days - due perhaps to an influx of the aforementioned people talking about going there more when the ban was in - but then, they didn't stick with it and the price plumetted, and has stayed at the lowest level in both of their histories ever since.
To suggest that the ban has had no effect on pubs is either blinkered denial or lies.
(dchurch bah, Thu 22 Sep 2011, 18:35, closed)

I didn't say it didn't have an effect
I just stated that correlation doesn't imply causation. Which it doesn't.
(Cuthbert Annihilator, Thu 22 Sep 2011, 18:52, closed)

Sorry
I didn't mean to imply that you had suggested that it didn't have an effect.

I am at a loss to understand why the correlation between the smoking ban and the amount of people in pubs doesn't imply that it's the cause.
(dchurch bah, Thu 22 Sep 2011, 19:01, closed)

So
what's your theory as to why people in your village no longer go to the pub? Are the pubs owned by Greene King and/or Wetherspoons? Strange that you are aware of the all-time low price levels but no-one else in the village seems to be.

This is going to degenerate into one of those situational empiricism debates: I can say that I've been going to pubs before and after the smoking ban came into force, and haven't noticed any difference at all, and you can say that since the ban came into force there's no-one in the pubs any more. All it proves is that we live in different places. If someone were to carry out a sociological study of why attendance dropped in some places and not others, that might go some way to addressing whether it's a question of demographics, but as far as I know that hasn't happened yet.
( .Yeti. El amor en los tiempos del cólera, Thu 22 Sep 2011, 19:03, closed)

It's
not really all that strange. I used google to find out; I googled it, and I found out. Others in my village may well have employed the same tactics to find out themselves if they were interested. I'm unaware if they have or not, and am more than a little surprised that you seem to be in possession of knowledge that they haven't.
We may well live in different places, but the fact remains that since the ban the pubs in my village are empty. I was in "The end of the world" pub in Camden the day the ban came in. Usually a stupidly busy pub at any time of day. That day it was almost empty.
35 pubs a week, on average, are closing down. This was not the case before the ban. Are there other factors, yes, but it's undeniable that the ban has had the most effect.
My theory is that when pubs have people in them, you go in to socialise. When they are empty, or near empty, less people go in them as they don't expect to see people they know and have no-one to socialise with, creating a circle. With fewer people in them, the publican makes less money, and in turn has less to spend on the upkeep of the establishment, making it less attractive as things like carpets etc... wear out.
Certainly, this may have affected out-of-town pubs more than pubs in a busy high street, but to say it has had no effect on the pub trade is bizarre.
(dchurch bah, Thu 22 Sep 2011, 19:08, closed)

Makes sense, sort of.
It's a similar logic as for when you're mooching around town looking for a restaurant, you'll happily walk into one with plenty of customers, as that's a gauge of quality, but an empty restaurant indicates bad food.

Not sure your critical sociability mass theory applies to big cities, though. Whenever I went into a pub in London I fully expected to meet absolutely no-one I knew. I'm also in two minds as to whether it applies to villages: given a smaller population density, the likelihood of a resident knowing any given client is greater, but could you not argue that the chances of bumping into someone you know in this scenario are virtually certain? Even if people in villages know they're less likely to see their smoker friends down the pub now that the ban has come into force, they're still just as likely to see their non-smoker friends. Arguably more likely.
( .Yeti. El amor en los tiempos del cólera, Thu 22 Sep 2011, 19:42, closed)

True
that could of course be argued, and it does make sense.

However, in that case, what did cause the start of the decline of pubs (the 35 per week on average) at the same time the smoking ban came into place?

The price didn't shoot up, and they became no less attractive overnight for some reason. Short of the ban, I can think of no reason why at the same time as the ban coming in, at least two of the largest chains (the only two I looked up simply because they were the only ones I could think of) had their share price fall drastically - and as yet haven't recovered - and the acceleration of pub closures.
(dchurch bah, Thu 22 Sep 2011, 19:53, closed)

My point is that
Just because something correlates doesn't necessarily make it the cause, or the prime cause. It's a classic misnomer. You could equally say that the recession caused the downturn because that has correlated with it. They probably have both had an impact, but you can't just state that they have just because they happened at the same time.
(Cuthbert Annihilator, Thu 22 Sep 2011, 19:46, closed)

Not
necessarily, but it certainly implies it.
(dchurch bah, Thu 22 Sep 2011, 19:48, closed)

No it doesn't
That's his point - just because the two events happened at the same time, it doesn't mean (or 'imply') that they were in any way related

For reference; en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation
(Godwin's Lawyer is more evil than Hitler, Thu 22 Sep 2011, 23:08, closed)

I'm not buying that
By the same token, because some people that smoke get lung cancer, smoking causes lung cancer. There's no research to back this up that I can find. It's merely correlation between the two happenings that have lead people to the conclusion that one must be the causality of the other.
The same with drinking, and speeding.
Someone gets hit by a driver going faster than a limit on speed that someone in a suit somewhere has decided is fast enough for a road he's probably never seen but applied the same blanket rules to, and therefore 'Speed Kills'. Yet, I've seen plenty of F1 drivers driving far faster, yet miraculously they survive.

By definition, an implication is something that is an indirect indication, it's not the same as saying "a means b" - such as, smoking no longer being allowed in pubs being an indirect cause of less people frequenting them, implying that the ban is the cause of the demise of pubs.
(dchurch bah, Fri 23 Sep 2011, 13:27, closed)

It's a statistical analysis thing
It's not really up for debate.
( MatJ LOOK, Fri 23 Sep 2011, 16:58, closed)

Tell
Karl Popper that.

Statistics, and/or tools of statistical analysis should not be questioned or debated.
(dchurch bah, Fri 23 Sep 2011, 19:21, closed)

Ok, I've looked up his views.
And I've tried to write something sensible, but that's not easy when you're pissed. Suffice for now to say that I see where he's coming from but don't agree with his basic position. I'll try to add more tomorrow when I'm sober.


Edit:

It depends on how you view natural laws. I would say that the correct way is that all laws of nature are derived entirely by observation, and that anything that appears to break the laws of nature as we understand them in fact does not - it merely provides a situation in which we must modify our definition of the laws.

Popper claims that a single counterexample is sufficient to prove a law false, but by the definition above that just doesn't make sense; rather it will modify a law that cannot, under any circumstances, be said to be false. As a proponent of the falsification principle, Popper would probably then argue that if a law cannot be proven to be false it has no meaning, but would fall into the trap that the falsification priciple itself is not falsifiable. Traditionally philosophers have got around this problem by claiming that the principle itself is the only exception to which I say: Bullshit.
( MatJ LOOK, Sat 24 Sep 2011, 0:13, closed)

As a more coherent and less philosophical argument:
Not all disagreements are created equal. Someone who admits having failed a maths GCSE (which when I did it did not contain ANY statistics - it may have done before 2005) questioning an absolutely fundamental principle of modern science is not quite the same as a nobel laureate questioning the priciples of homeopathy, for example.
( MatJ LOOK, Mon 26 Sep 2011, 1:34, closed)

Technically
and 'E' is a pass mark. Your post sounds somewhat like an ad hominem attack, if I may say so, which weakens any argument you may put forward.
(dchurch bah, Mon 26 Sep 2011, 19:36, closed)

It's not ad hominem if it's relevant to the issue
If I'd claimed you were too short to talk about maths, that would be ad hominem. Stating that the issue involved is one you come to realise and understand more easily if you've studied maths to a fairly high level, then pointing out that you have not, is an entirely relevant point (in the same way that I could not advise you on how to change the flow of a computer program).

I'm not claiming that you don't have a right to talk about mathematics in general (that WOULD be ad hominem) but that this is a very specific point therein.

Although it strikes me that this entire argument is somewhat pointless...
( MatJ LOOK, Tue 27 Sep 2011, 16:16, closed)

The smoking causing lung cancer is a seperate issue
In this case, there were significant control groups who did not smoke, where the instances of lung cancer were several magnitudes lower. You can find examples of such studies (one of which was carried out between 1951 and 1994) which clearly show smokers have a higher rate of lung cancer. Causation can only be inferred by comparing one set of circumstances with another - in this case, those who smoke versus those who don't. To prove causation in your example, we would need a seperate timeline where the smoking ban didn't come into effect, to see the true impact.

If you want to truly try to understand it, I suggest reading David Hume's views on the matter - here's a handy link to start you off; plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume/#CauIndInfNegPha
(Godwin's Lawyer is more evil than Hitler, Sun 25 Sep 2011, 23:32, closed)

Fair
point.
(dchurch bah, Mon 26 Sep 2011, 19:38, closed)

I am an ex-smoker
, but I can say that I preferred walking into a pub with a bit of smoke than a pub where all you can smell is BO, stale beer and the toilets
( MrSanity has maybe kicked the WoW habit forever, Thu 22 Sep 2011, 19:02, closed)

Clearly no one likes it when the smell is BO, stale beer and the toilets.
( enoughblueskyforsailorstrousers, Thu 22 Sep 2011, 21:56, closed)

Smoking has nothing to do with the reason I go to pubs less now
I don't (have never) smoked, and I have asthma, but to be honest I never found smoky pubs offputting. In fact I can't say I've really noticed the difference -- apart from the fact that I often end up sitting at the table on my own as everyone else fucks off into the street to fume for ten minutes.

The reason I don't go to pubs so much now is much simpler: £3.60 or more for a pint which costs £0.80 from the corner shop at the end of my street.

I don't mind a mark-up for being provided with a pleasant social environment in which to meet friends, with staff, food, music etc etc. But 400% - 500% ??? You're 'aving a giraffe, incha?
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Fri 23 Sep 2011, 11:38, closed)

Indeed.
...but the prices were high before the smoking ban came into play, and yet the pubs - in my experience and that of the pubs that are closing each week - had more people in them than now.
(dchurch bah, Fri 23 Sep 2011, 13:35, closed)

It's not that clear cut though, surely?
In the smallish town of Rochford, close to me, there are around 10 pubs in the village and close by, with another 10 or so in the surrounding countryside.

I should say that all the pubs in the town are not only still there after the ban, but pretty much full every time I go there. There are plenty of people outside smoking, or under cover in the "smoking gardens", but it seems that they like their drink more than being able to smoke inside.

The country pubs have all pretty much gone over to being restaurants, which is where the money is they tell me. One pub owner I chat to said they used the smoking ban as an excuse to close down the less profitable /desirable pubs in his chain and blame it on the government, and that many of them re-opened soon after under different management and are doing fine.

I personally don't go in enough pubs for it to worry me. I'd wouldn't mind people smoking in "drinking pubs", as I tend to frequent the "eating pubs" a lot more. I still have to run the gauntlet of smoke to get in them though...
(Kliper Filllets Getting noticed by twats on the internet since, Mon 26 Sep 2011, 8:09, closed)

My cousin used to run a pub in Scotland
Where the ban was trialled before coming into force in England. When asked to give English pub owners some advice on how to deal with the transition, the conversation went:

"Buy some air fresheners"

"Ah, to cover up the lingering smell of smoke?"

"No, to cover up the continuous smell of the men farting"
( MatJ LOOK, Fri 23 Sep 2011, 17:01, closed)