Voters in Switzerland have rejected a total ban on smoking in enclosed public places at a referendum.
Although Geneva voted slightly in favour, results from the country’s other 25 cantons showed a majority of voters rejected a full ban.
This is what happens when you ask the proles what they want. Which is why it will never happen here. The proles, you see, don’t know what’s good for them. That’s why we need the great and the good of Westminster and the Guardian readers of Islington to decide for us.
In some cantons, more than 70% of voters rejected the ban, according to Geneva newspaper La Tribune de Geneve. Geneva itself bucked the trend by supporting the ban by 52% to 48%.
That’s a fairly conclusive result – even the Geneva one is hardly a ringing endorsement for the anti-smoking zealots. So there is a little plot on this earth where common sense still applies. I knew there was a reason I liked the Swiss system.
The Swiss Socialist party “deplored” the result, saying that better protection against passive smoking would have “incontestably been a major step in the improvement of (workers’) conditions”.
Yes, well, we would expect socialists to take that line having been comprehensively trounced. And still they trot out the old passive smoking lie. As a non smoker, I have worked in smoky bars and pubs in my time. I’m still here and not a bit fazed by the experience. After all, no one held a gun to my head and made me do it.
The question being, what protection is available for workers from passive socialism?
La Tribune de Geneve suggests voters rejected a full ban because they did not want to force the smaller cantons into changing their local laws, and because of resentment at perceived state interference in people’s lives.
Well, quite, but over here, there’s nothing perceived about it. How do we get the Swiss system adopted here?
And if the people had voted in favour of a ban, I suspect you would be denouncing it as the “dictatorship of the majority”, which is the typical response of libertarians when they find themselves on the wrong end of a democratic decision.
Yawn. Come back when you can comment without resorting to ad homs. Until then, I can’t be arsed.
As a matter of interest which wrong ends of democratic decisions were you thinking of ? I can’t think of any action to curtail freedom that I or anyone else has actually had a vote on, unless you count general elections of course and we all know what’s wrong with that argument.
We had the referendum on voting reform the other year. The last one I can recall before that was 1975 when we voted to remain in the common market. Otherwise we haven’t had any and neither of these was a direct assault on liberty – although the latter had a long term effect that was not immediately obvious at the time.
The comment you are responding to was a feeble attempt to label me as a hypocrite, which is why I treated it with contempt.
Yes it was that but it was also an example of a common misrepresentation of libertarian views, namely that we are only interested in our own freedom. In reality of course it is the statists and social engineers who have that problem, not being able to imagine that what they think is good for themselves might not be desired by others.
Indeed. I have reached a point where I have run out of patience with such misrepresentations, so don’t bother to give them any credibility. Open contempt is all they deserve and get.
I note the divergence between the capital and the countryside, doesn’t it demonstrate how cities, especially those full of government, are out of step with the rest of the country. Just like here, just like Washington.
Geneva isn’t the capital. Berne is.
Most Swiss (certainly the German-speaking ones) think Geneva is rather odd and more French than Swiss. This is further evidence for them.
Since I don’t believe that 70% of Swiss are smokers (certainly not from my experience) I assume that most people were simply sick and tired of policy wonks shoving their oars in on matters which should not concern them.
Good for the Swiss 🙂
The same may well apply here, but we don’t get the opportunity to tell the political class where to get off.
“This is what happens when you ask the proles what they want. Which is why it will never happen here. The proles, you see, don’t know what’s good for them. That’s why we need the great and the good of Westminster and the Guardian readers of Islington to decide for us.”
This well put phrase has a posh and pretentious name, it’s called Marxist Self Consciousness. It is the concept that the proletariat have been misled by the wicked capitalists (in this case tobacco companies) into having a false conscience and beliefs. The job of the Marxist is to rescue them from them dilemma to the righteousness of Marxism.
The practical implementation is that Marxists feel they can override any democratic mandate and was used by Stalin to justify his reign of terror. At 30-40 million state appointed murders he made Hitler look like an amateur.