Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by ChaosEngine.

"Not tough"!?
Try telling that to Wez.



*promote

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Tuesday, June 27th, 2017 2:36pm PDT - promote requested by newtboy.

Ron White- Do You Like Porn has been added as a related post - related requested by newtboy on that post.

love this joke.

Steve Hughes is great. His bit about being offended should be required material on day 1 for students going to University:

(been sifted before, but I think this ^ has the full short set)

As much as I love Steve Hughes, and as much as I hate taking a comedy bit seriously, he's pretty much wrong about every single point in this video.

Oppressive health and safety? Oh please can we return to when employers could order me to endanger my life just for a paycheck.

PC? Been down this road a million times, but it's really easy for a straight white dude to talk about not being offended.

Smoking? I give zero fucks if you want to smoke, just don't do it around me. Oh, and I was in Ireland when they banned smoking in pubs. It was fucking great, and yeah, it encouraged a bunch of people to quit.

Anyway, as I said, it's a comedy bit and it's funny. Just don't go actually believing it.

Sometimes I feel like people have to expend a lot of effort to miss the point so well...

OH&S - We had a MSDS for Spray and Wipe in the office which required us to use gloves and a facemask. Ordinary surface cleaner. And it was enforced... This is what he is talking about. Taking what started as a good idea and going way too fucking far with it.

PC - You kinda prove the point right off the bat with "straight white dude". You're discriminating. You feel justified in doing so because white males are so fucking awful to everyone on the planet (it's true, I heard a feminist say so..), but it doesn't change the fact that it's discrimination. You're either politically correct all the time or you're a hypocrite. I happen to support your right to discriminate, but take issue with hypocrisy.

Smoking - Missing the point, the government makes it socially unacceptable, removes the places where you can do it, but leaves it as legal and runs up the cost to astronomical levels to keep the revenue rolling in. It's an innately contradictory position.

The bit on Ireland was more a commentary on the Irish than smoking...

And of course smokers are one of the few groups within society that almost no one will stand up to defend. Very easy to be non-PC and discriminate against (gotta let all those uptight PC dickheads vent their spleen somewhere I guess... =)

My inline comments in italics below \/.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

It's funny because the logic makes sense.

I live in NZ. There's very much a "she'll be right" attitude to H&S here. And in some ways, it's great. It's easier to set up sports clubs, if you want to go in the wilderness, you're pretty much on your own, etc.

But the flip side is the fact that we have a terrible rate of injuries and actual deaths in industry, especially in agriculture and forestry.

And quite honestly, I think this "H&S gone mad" attitude is actually promoted by companies who don't want to pay to keep their employees safe. And that's not hyperbole, there is literally an ongoing investigation into a company that skimped on safety resulting in the deaths of 29 miners.

I agree it can be taken too far, and maybe the UK really is insane, but in my experience, it's one of those things that people whine about when they don't understand the reasons behind it.

PC, we'll agree to disagree.

Smoking: again smoke if you want to, but just not around me. Why should I have to put up with smoke when I'm having a meal? More importantly, why should the staff who have to work there, have to put up with a toxic environment?

As for the competition argument, it doesn't really hold water. A few pubs in Ireland preempted the smoking ban, and they went out of business, because there's almost always one person in a group that smokes. Having it as a law makes a level playing field.

I've been in three countries now when smoking was banned in pubs. Every time, the hospitality industry said it would be the death of them. 10 years later, no one gives a damn. People still go to pubs and a lot less people smoke. It worked.

It all goes to how comfortable you are with the government legislating what you can and can't do. I used to smoke, nasty habit. I did it for at least 20 years, started when I was 14. I was a light smoker, usually less than 4 or so a day, but I did do it until I weaned myself off with nicotine gum and then quit that later.

Now, I wouldn't want to stay in a hotel or go to an establishment (bar, eatery, etc) 'alone' that allowed it in all areas. But in selected areas that I don't have to enter, I don't have a problem with it. I feel that way because I want people to be able to do what they want to their own body.

As far as employees being forced to be exposed to it, no one can force you to do anything in a job unless you are essentially a slave. You always have the option to look for work elsewhere. Bars could offer a pay differential or force patrons to pay an automatic tip percentage if they want service in a smoking area, giving incentive for people who don't care about serving smokers. Their body, their choice.

The difference between smoking and say, drinking alcohol or eating unhealthy food, is that I can drink alcohol or eat cheeseburgers all day and I'm really harming no-one but myself.

"Ah, but people drive drunk and get in fights and do stupid things and cause all sorts of trouble"
Agreed, and we have laws against all those things. If you get drunk and kill someone, off to jail with you.

"Yes, but fat people are an enormous cost on the health system"
This is hard to discuss without going into the whole healthcare mess in the US, but as a broad point, it's nigh impossible to legislate against unhealthy behaviours to ones self. Where do you stop? Eating meat? Salt? Not exercising enough? What about people with disabilities?

But smoking? That directly and provably harms OTHER people in the same environment as you and they really have no recourse. If I walked into a public square swinging a sword around, it's not reasonable to say other people should just get out of my way.

So ultimately, as much as I dislike government legislating what you do to yourself (read my post history, I'm very pro-drug), I am ok with legislating that you cannot do something that harms other people in a public place.

Hell, I'd go further. I'm ok with government legislating that you can't smoke in your own home if, for example, you have kids. They didn't ask to live there, and it was your decision to have them, so sorry, no smoking for you.

And yeah, I'd say the same about alcohol. If your drinking is harming your children, then maybe you shouldn't have kids anymore.

I could use the same argument to try to outlaw cars.
When someone complains about smokers outdoors, I ask them if they drove there to complain, then offer a deal. They sit in their car with the exhaust plumbed into the window, I'll sit in a box smoking a fat cigar, last one breathing wins the debate.
Oddly, no one ever takes me up on that, but at least they all sheepishly drop their complaints.

As to banning it in private homes, this is a terribly slippery slope that gives power to others to decide what's dangerous to you....now consider getting too little sleep has proven to be harmful, so why not a legally enforced bed time based on the youngest or oldest person on your block? Your second hand noise might keep them up, harming them, so night night time is now 6pm. Consider all the food issues you mentioned as second hand groceries, because children have little option but to eat what parents supply, so no more sugar, salt, or processed foods in the stores because they might buy them.

The questions about health and safety vs freedom to be unhealthy are not simple ones to resolve, and it's impossible to fully safeguard both.

First, I'm not talking about smoking outdoors. The conversation specifically relates to pubs (and restaurants, I guess). If you want to smoke outdoors, it's not such a big deal.

Second, cars have utility. Whether you think more people should cycle or use public transport or whatever, you can't argue that banning cars wouldn't be a massive shock to the economy, and the way people live. Smoking? Not so much.

Finally, smoking tends to get it in the neck, because it's EASY to regulate. Regulating healthy food is a nightmare, considering there isn't even universal agreement on what constitutes a healthy diet. But there's no positive side to smoking, so it tends to get regulated.

Can't argue that. I've been in California so long that the idea of smoking inside a business didn't even occur to me. The 'in private homes with children and apartments or townhouses' part I find draconian and unenforceable...and we have them here.
On a side note, I also find it distasteful that cigars get lumped in with cigarettes. As far as I know, there have been few if any studies on second hand cigar smoke, which has none of the toxic additives most cigarettes have so produce a different smoke. I'm not saying it's good for you, just that it hasn't been proven to be the same kind of toxicity....yet they are now taxed the same here, doubling the price overnight. (If you can't tell, I'm bitter, I can't afford them now)

True, cars have far more utility (except to tobacco farmers) but are also far more damaging in many ways. It's not meant to be a logical argument, it's more about getting people to see that they also pollute the air (a normal complaint I hear about smokers) in a directly more deadly and indirectly disastrous way, and I hope they will consider that before angrily deriding someone for a cigarette. It's a disguised 'people in glass houses' argument.

Sadly, yes, smoking is an easy target today....alcohol could be tomorrow, or marijuana again (just became legal here)....I don't like our governments going after the easy targets heavy handedly just because they can. It's too easy to portray something or someone as an easy target and go after it solely because a small persuasive group finds it distasteful.

To play devils advocate, there are a few positive sides to smoking...smoking tastes good (to smokers), it acts as a stimulant/depressant and appetite suppressor, it supports an industry of farmers and for cigars, hand rollers, and it helps thin out the herd. ;-)

Yeah, I pretty much agree with all of that, especially around cigars (they're simply not as much of a problem).

And in general, a bit of common courtesy goes a long way. If you're in a beer garden and someone sits at a communal table with you, they should have the decency to ask if it's ok to smoke, and the reverse applies also. If you sit down at a table and someone is already smoking, you don't really have the right to ask them to stop.

There isn't really an easy answer to any of this... it's the issue of individual rights vs collective good, and there just isn't a single correct answer to that. If you think there is, you're either naive or a fundamentalist ideologue with no concern for practicality (either way).

It also gets me out of the apartment [er, playhouse] 4-5 times a day for a 10 minute walkabout to the designated areas. In addition, it's an excellent social outlet for me. I certainly have met my fair share of characters around here [takes one to know one]. I carry my own ashtray ... have for years.