Kitty Ussher looks forward to the day when political campaigning and tobacco no longer go hand in hand
Jump to full article: The Guardian (uk), 2004-11-18
Author: Kitty Ussher, Labour's parliamentary candidate for Burnley
Intro: In my experience, campaigning is a smoky business. There's something about the tedium of folding leaflets, stuffing envelopes and sitting in team meetings that prompts even the most occasional of smokers to light up during the inevitable retreat to the pub. Indeed, I once saw one of our candidates on the doorstep, fag in hand. They lost that election.
Perhaps it's the campaign tension; or desperation. Whatever the reason, this is the last general election campaign when it will be legal to smoke in the office. I did a highly unscientific survey to see how that went down with some of our team.
"I think it's a great idea," said Angela. "I can't bear it when our volunteers leave their ashtrays lying around. I think we should ban smoking in the office straightaway. It's disgusting."
. . .
During the course of this conversation it transpired that, according to the rules, all Labour party meetings are supposed to be non-smoking. That fact has counted for little in the past. At a recent Labour party meeting some enterprising smokers thought they would be able to avoid detection by sitting out of sight of the non-smoking chair. Unfortunately, their plumes of blue-grey smoke gave them away, with the result that the chair refused to call anybody from that section of the room to speak and nobody found out what smokers in Burnley's Labour party thought about anything that night.
. . .
The government proposes that by 2008 all restaurants will be smoke free, as will all pubs and bars preparing and serving food. The consensus is this will have a small but positive effect.
. . .
In conclusion, I think we are in favour; at least, two-thirds of our office is: the ban will help people who want to give up without making life a misery for those who do not.
Jump to full article » |