The John Blunt column

IMAGINE it - there's a local full of people who all want to smoke; many are probably there because a pub is one of the few public places left today that doesn't have anti-smoking rules.

Yet because there is a new barmaid with a fad about passive smoking, everyone has to stub out their cigarette. Is that democratic or something a free society promotes? And in a pub of all places?

Hardly, but that's what bossy new Labour has up its sleeve - the pub, restaurant and, indeed, any public place that is ordered to become no-smoking on the strength of a single complaint from just one employee.

But anxious to avoid legal action from smokers who object to having their liberty interfered with, the government is being as crafty over this proposal as any fourth former having a drag behind the bike shed.

For rather than risking this and a political backlash row over its thou-shalt attitude by bringing in a new law to this end, the government is pretending there already is one - the 24-year-old Health and Safety at Work Act which says bosses must ensure their employees have a 'safe place and system of work.'

But tweak the guidelines a little to allow anti-fag fascists in the workplace to have the say-so over their bosses and their colleagues even if a majority are smokers and, hey presto, you have the prospect of public places everywhere, pubs included, becoming no-smoking zones even if only one employee complains about smoke.

Oh, yes, I know all about the health arguments against smoking. But the fact is, it is not illegal - the government would go bust if it was - and because of that, this back door dodge to harass smokers in their traditional pub sanctuary (for their own good, the nannies would say) is a breach of their freedom within the law. It's like the needless switching of the drink-drive goalposts that would take the pleasure out of millions of people's lives - nothing more than sanctimonious do-gooders telling other people how to live their lives.

Democracy? Dictatorship, more like.

Big-wig with nice digs - on us

PRESUMABLY, Saddam Hussein could use the intelligence to bring down a Tornado or send a cruise missile haring back to the Yankee ship it came from in the Gulf.

For why else would the low-down on £200-a-metre upholstery and curtain material ordered for the renovation of Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine's official residence in the House of Lords be covered by the Official Secrets Act?

Surely, anyone can see the danger of any enemy of ours getting hold of the fact that there are plans for a couple of beds costing £8,000 each and a dining table and chairs worth another £25,000.

No, it must be for the good of national security that one of the firms supplying material for this £650,000 refit of Lord Irvine's apartment at taxpayers' expense was sworn to secrecy and told his work was covered by the act.

Or is it that Lord Irvine, who has earned the reputation of Lord Stuck-Up Bighead in no time at all by comparing himself to Henry VIII's mentor, Cardinal Wolsey, ordering wallpaper costing you and me £60,000 and floating back-door plans to gag the press, has another sort of security in mind in wanting the details of his renovation kept so secret - namely, his own? For, surely, this periwigged prig has clocked up enough damage for new Labour already for Tony Blair to sack him as a liability, even if he is the Prime Minister's old boss.

One excuse for the lavish expenditure on his parliamentary pad is that it will benefit the public as it is to be opened on a "controlled basis" (once every Preston Guild, I'll bet) so that ordinary oiks can gaze at what they've paid for.

This patronising added to the profligacy is all the more reason for Lord Irvine to see it from the same viewpoint - as a brought-down-to-earth civvy.

Teachers' new powers fall well short

NEW guidelines announced this week allow teachers to use "reasonable" force to control violent and unruly pupils.

That they need something stronger than detention or giving out lines is evident from the number of classroom thugs they are excluding from the classroom - 12,500 at secondary level alone last year,

Excluded only to cause so much trouble and crime outside that we now have other schools in East Lancashire wanting fences to keep them out of their playgrounds.

But are these new powers really enough?

Hardly. They will only allow teachers to touch, hold, push or pull a pupil, lead one by the arm or shepherd one away by placing a hand in the centre of the back.

What use is this "force" against the snarling teenage classroom louts, many of whom are built like brick outhouses these days? None, I'd say. And not until the government and the bleeding heart liberals in education bring back the cane will teachers and dedicated pupils get the reasonable behaviour in the classroom that they have a right to expect.

And before anti-caning wimps wail at such a reactionary notion, perhaps, for enlightenment, they will compare today's rocketing numbers of expulsions with those before corporal punishment was banned.

New Paternoster hasn't a prayer with me

WHY is it that the Church of England's desperation to appear more "relevant" always ends up with it upsetting ordinary people?

Now, presumably to attract the young, the pick-and-mix outlook that blurs its doctrine on such things as homosexuality and couples living in sin even extends to the Lord's Prayer, the most important prayer of the Christian religion.

For a modern version has been approved by the Synod to stand alongside the much-loved old version in the service books.

But it's not just that, unlike the traditional one, the new version is leaden, with "And forgive us our trespasses" becoming "Forgive us our sins" and "And lead us not into temptation" being changed to "Save us from the time of trial," in being given equal status to the old one, it becomes something designed to detract from the version that millions hold dear.

If it makes sense to the Church to make itself less relevant to its faithful flock in the hope of making itself more relevant to those who do not yet belong to it, one can only pray that someone high up sees the light and stops the Church finishing itself off altogether with gimmickry.

The opinions expressed by John Blunt are not necessarily those of this newspaper.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.