(no subject)

[tree_and_leaf]

It's an obvious enough joke, in a Private Eye sort of way, but I can't help sniggering at Ship of Fool's service of thanksgiving for the smoking ban: http://ship-of-fools.com/Features/2007/no_smoking_service.html

Though I am grateful, actually, despite the idiocy of having to display no-smoking signs in churches (in spikey establishments, it's silly on an extra level)

In other news, I've been watching Inferno, the alternative dystopian universe Doctor Who story, in which Three discovers that actually there are worse places to be stuck than our 1970s Earth with a consultancy job at UNIT... What's striking is how different it is to the Star Trek: Mirror, Mirror, where the evil was of a cartoony. camp, over-sexed nature. Inferno is a very British fascist state, and the characters, while twisted away from their natures in 'our' universe. Mirror! Liz is even more buttoned up and proper than her original, but not a scientist and boiling with anger (probably because she's bored). In the Star Trek version, she'd have been wearing leather and carrying out dodgy experiments with unpleasant sexual undertones: this is more believable, sadder, and more frightening. The Brigade-Leader has analogous traits to the Brigadier: the 'good' Lethbridge-Stewart would never, on being informed that a prisoner can't be found in the ID databases, joke "ah well, if he doesn't exist, he won't feel the bullets", but there's something recognisable in that sense of humour. All in all, strangely convincing, despite the de-evolving wolf people, and I'm looking forward to seeing the conclusion, though I don't suppose it will be happy.

Comments

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Last night I went to a pub in London to wave a friend off to Azerbaijan. It was marvellous to wake this morning, feeling like death after going to bed at 2:30am, be able to wear the same jacket I was wearing yesterday, and not have to wash the reek of old smoke out of my hair.

Though the signs are rather ugly.

[tree_and_leaf]

I think it's brilliant, too, especially after having had chance to get used to a smokefree environment when I went home in the holidays. (The down side of going off to Germany is that lots more people smoke, and there are very few decent non-smoking areas - oh well)

I seem to remember one of the newspapers suggesting wrought iron neo-gothic no-smoking signs for use in ecclesaistical or historic buildings....

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Does this mean a church is a workplace? Is that a Theological Issue?
The smoking ban's worked very well in Ireland for the last three years, after everyone saying it would never be a goer because of the Rebellious Celtic Spirit (TM) but nobody ever suggested putting signs up in churches (htough they are pretty much everywhere else). Is that for real?

[overconvergent.livejournal.com]

Yep; I was in the same church on Sunday and there's a sign up there.

[tree_and_leaf]

Though it's not exactly obvious...

[tree_and_leaf]

They didn't insist on no-smoking signs in churches in Scotland, either.

The English law apples to all enclosed public places, not just workplaces, and churches are indeed public places (esp in the Church of England, presumably). Though I can't imagine why the signs are deemed necessary there - who would have a quick fag in the middle of a church service?

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

all enclosed public places

That makes more sense, then, though I would have thought 400 years of custom had more force than a plastic sign. The signs do epitomise something about UK public life, though, a certain kind of jobsworthiness that doesn't trust people to respect mores and always has to be spelling stuff out. When I lived there briefly a couple of years ago I sometimes felt like I was in a giant playpen. Rail travel especially made me feel that way.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

a certain kind of jobsworthiness that doesn't trust people to respect mores and always has to be spelling stuff out

Indeed. My office has presumably been smokefree for years - why did it suddenly need a sign on Sunday? (Anyone smoking in here would have to have a death wish; I can't believe you could get out before it burned down)