With over 10 million smokers in Britain and many more tolerant non-smokers, you would think that politicians would try to court our votes. Unfortunately, up until now they have tried to ignore us. This has finally begun to change.
While Freedom2Choose is not aligned to any political party and does not take a stance either for or against any party, we do applaud when a politician recognises the need for common-sense and says so as reflected in previous Front page articles.
Any voter who lives in London should, by now, have received a booklet introducing the Mayoral candidates for the election on May 3rd. Six million were sent out. Anyone who has not read it yet can download it here.
Actual PDF document here.
The manifestos of all candidates are laid out in the booklet. Only one candidate has mentioned the smoking ban and that is Lawrence Webb of UKIP. This is what he has to say:
Give landlords the power to decide if they want smoking rooms in pubs and clubs.
Meanwhile, Councils in England and Wales are also holding elections on May 3rd. In West Yorkshire, Greg Burrows of UKIP is standing for election in Dewsbury East. He lays out his stall in this article in the Dewsbury Reporter. Here is a brief extract:
I entered politics in 2009 after being involved since 2006 in fighting the smoking ban legislation, after having researched and found this legislation was for social engineering purposes and had no significant health benefits.
We at Freedom2choose feel that any candidate, irrespective of party, who has the courage and conviction to put his/her constituents above partisan interests is a candidate worth electing and will in significant numbers eventually make the changes in British Local and National politics that are so desperately needed.