"Perhaps the anti smoking smug barstards will be happy when they have no
village pub to go to."

What you don't get is that they didn't have one before. As there
are fewer and fewer public places where one is exposed to 2nd hand
smoke, one's tolerance goes down and it becomes more and more
difficult to just 'suck it up.' Not that it's any worse for you
than it was, but it sure causes more discomfort than it did.

Now that doesn't mean 'bring back smoke-filled rooms' so we can
all get our tolerance back, either!