After Plain Packaging for Oz, Now Plain Discrimination

Another series of nights out, Thursday at the posh Le Meridien, last night at the more down-market dangdut Asmoro, in Jakarta’s Blora district.

I admit to a preference for the latter, dark, smoky, none too expensive, with good music and highly watchable sources thereof!

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Unlike the Blok M bars, an expat face is a rarity in Blora, and there’s none of the pushiness one finds in Blok M…there are pretty butterflies aplenty, but  they don’t close in like birds of prey as happens all too often elsewhere.

And it’s the smokiness – I looked around the Asmoro, and EVERYBODY was enjoying a cigarette – which contributes to the atmosphere, that whiff of tempo dulu, the good old days, free of PC whining.

Which brings me on to…

Good article in TFA’s latest bulletin, which exposes how UK tax-payers’ cash is handed to lobby groups for blatant political campaigning. http://www.tfa.net/2012/04/16/plain-packaging-proposals-shun-evidence-fairness-and-objectivity/

nearly half a million pounds of taxpayers’ money is being spent on lobbying in favour of plain tobacco packaging in the South West of England. The regional Primary Care Trust receives this money from the NHS Strategic Health Authority, which is funded by the Department of Health, paid for by none other than the taxpayer. This is government spending your money to lobby government, hardly a fair and equitable start for a consultation. South West England is just one area; speculatively, if these levels were spent across the country by all PCTs, it amounts to £5 million of taxpayers’ money.

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Plain Packaging – More like Scare Tactics!

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The ever-growing witch-hunt against smokers is at its worst, perhaps, in Australia, where, as I’ve reported previously, you can’t even light up on the open-air terraces of some cafes and bars.

And now there’s a stormy debate on job discrimination, with ads appearing openly saying ‘no smokers need apply!’
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It’s all the more offensive when you think that in various corners of the supposedly civilised world, laws are being enacted to allow sleazy ‘transgender’ freaks to use toilets reserved for whatever ‘gender’ (i.e. sex) they imagine they are.
So if your pre-teen daughter is caught short in a department store, she may walk through the rest-room door and find a cross-dressing abnormal lurking within.

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Macy’s has fired a Christian woman for refusing to violate her religious beliefs. Her offense? She prevented a man dressed as a woman from entering the women’s dressing room.  https://rossrightangle.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/boycott-macys/

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Scary stuff, and of course decent people should campaign to ensure that sort of nauseating scenario is prohibited.
Certainly, if anti-discrimination rules protect perverts, they should also protect smokers, who are usually well-balanced individuals, unthreatening to man or beast (which is more than can be said for pervs!)

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And to be fair to Australia, the ‘equal opportunity’ people are taking an interest.

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Acting Victorian Equal Opportunity Commissioner Karen Toohey said job advertisements must not discriminate.
“Stipulating smokers need not apply for a job may be against the law. Employers should not seek to exclude smokers from applying for a position, unless the need not to smoke is an inherent requirement of the role,” she told the Telegraph.

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Well, she’s showing signs of consistency, but for my part, I simply wish she’d find something better to do with her talents, and that the liquidation of her organisation be expedited by legislators in Oz and everywhere else.
It’s a nonsense for governments and bureaucrats to tell employers who they can and cannot hire.
If some uptight anti-tobacco fanatic won’t hire smokers, that’s his loss – I wouldn’t want to work for him or her.

If I were hiring a secretary, I’d want to advertise for an attractive fun-loving lady – blatantly sexist, and why not?.

If an Arab doesn’t want to hire a Jew, why should he be forced to? Same goes for a Jew hiring an Arab.

If somebody lays down an age limit for applicants (and being over 40 in Indonesia, I have come up against this kind of idiotic discrimination often enough) okay, who wants to work for a nitwit?

The last thing I’d do if I was ‘discriminated’ against on grounds of age, sex, colour, or tobaccophilia is go crying to some wacko  ‘rights’ body.
But while the wierdos and freaks are given that privilege, I guess the smokers may as well avail themselves of the sticky-beak service too!

The move has met with mixed reactions, with anti-smoking groups saying employers, especially hospitals and health organisations, had the right not to employ smokers.

I’ll now sit back and await my tobaccophobe friend in Canada to comment on why his phobias are fine and mine are monstrous!