Metafilter has this strand.
I will say quite clearly that is smoking in bars and restaurants was banned in England, Jimmy and I would simply stop going.
Not only us: the people whom bars rely on for trade, the regulars-five-or-six-pints-a-day people, or the spend loads of money at the weekend are predominantly smokers. You look at groups in a pub; most groups will contain at least one smoker.
Restaurants are slightly different. Certainly, I wish some of my favourite restaurants would divide smoking and non-smoking areas. I feel ever so slightly guilty lighting up when someone's next to me eating. Not very guilty. And they could always go to McDonalds.
And there is the Wetherspoons argument. No smoking at the bar. Fine. Have a no-smoking area (sure, it's usually empty, but it's a jolly good idea).
Almost all bar staff smoke. If the staff don't like it, there's always a job going at McDonalds.
And let's wise up about this coughing choking red eyes thing. In my personal experience, the people who generally complain the loudest are the ones who use their enormous petrol-guzzling cars to pollute the environment drive the shortest of distances. I read somewhere that people most affected by exhaust fumes are those inside cars. Perhaps if they got out and walked they would find a magic solution to their coughing choking red eyes.
My personal bugbear is people who eat food McDonalds/KFC on the bus or in the lift at work. It makes me want to throw up. I told someone once to move their food right away from me, or I would puke.
Talk about animal behaviour: - you eat shit, you eat it with your paws, you eat it on the move.
And another one I can't stand is people who sit opposite me at work and wear foul-smelling perfume that makes me want to gag. I can't get away from that.
Or people who heat - usually curried - meat in the office microwave, and then shut the door, leaving my hot milk to taste of curried meat.
