Oh yeah... I can see that happening... NOT! No way will the smokers pay more for their beer, regardless of what the extra money is going towards. I bet it wouldn't be long before the beer sales dropped off because the smokers would find it cheaper to drink at home, in their own comfortable, smoky surroundings, thus negating the excercise.

If a smoker sees it as their right to smoke (fair dos, it is their decision), then they will not see an extension of that being their right to pay more for their beer. That'd be like making people who take sugar in their tea pay for the sugar bowl.

Landlords have known this ban was coming for months, if not years. They should have realised that as soon as it became law in Scotland and Ireland, it would come to England sooner or later. The landlord or manager should have applied to the brewery or pub owner for the funds and support to create 'smoking shelters' or have a room put aside for them. As in so many other areas, ignorance is not an excuse.

Those pubs not owned by a chain had the same amount of notice - they may not have the big names and money behind them, but if they're doing well enough to stay independent, then they must have some capital to fall back on. I suspect that those pubs mentioned above as 'being closed by the smoking ban' are those that were already in trouble, or on a knife edge between trouble and managing. We all know that sometimes it just takes one tiny thing to overbalance us, the skill is in recognising where that balance point is. I think that the knife edge pubs failed to see that balance point and are now blaming the latest restriction rather than looking at themselves objectively to find out what the underlying problem was.

And as for the comment by the first landlady quoted right at the top - the reason the bar in the Houses of Parliament still allows smoking is because it is not a public place. The only way to get into the HoP bar is to become an MP.

LTS