February 7, 2009

Mayor from government party smokes at the office

Filed under: Design,General by Branko Collin @ 3:15 pm

The War on Fun is all nice and dandy, but apparently it shouldn’t impede on the little pleasures that its proponents enjoy. Mayor Ruud Vreeman of Tilburg, member of the PvdA (Labour) party that’s in the fun-hating government coalition that banned smoking in bars last year, lights up a cigar now and then in his office. According to Brabants Dagblad (Dutch), the mayor was found out because the stench of his cigars was noticed by a visitor.

A city spokesperson told Revu (Dutch): “‘Vreeman knows it’s not allowed. He will stop immediately. He regrets smoking in the building and will never do it again.”

Well, until next time.

Photo by Jan Lapère, used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.2. Via Jong Nieuws (Dutch), which has been writing way too little about Tilburg lately.

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December 26, 2008

Coalition mayor smokes in bar, breaks own party’s law

Filed under: General,Health by Branko Collin @ 7:09 pm

Last Tuesday the mayor of Deurne in Noord Brabant was questioned by the city council about his smoking in a public bar. Since July of this year smoking has been banned in bars in the Netherlands. The ban has met with a lot of resistance, and many smokers openly defy the law. As far as I am aware this is the first time that a public official was caught red-handed breaking the anti-smoking law. A salient detail is that mayor Gerard Daandels of Deurne is a member of CDA, the Christian party that is in the vanguard of the Jihad against fun: it was CDA minister Klink that proposed the smoking ban.

Daandels response: “You can hold me responsible for everything in matters of enforcement, but not for this unenforceable measure. […] I went to three bars where people were smoking. If a hundred people are smoking, you no longer give an example by not smoking.”

The Department of Public Health commented: “Even mayors are bound by the law.”

Link: Brabants Dagblad. Via Jong Nieuws. Depiction of the Deurne coat of arms by Wikipedia user Tibor, distributed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2.

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July 14, 2008

Smokers to get smell of cigarettes back in cafés

Filed under: Weird by Branko Collin @ 10:55 am

With the ban on smoking in cafés comes the inevitable stink of us non-smokers. We reek of sweat and of not knowing how to have a good time, just the way our Protestant government wants it. A company in Groningen wants to remedy the former. Rwin Showtechniek rents out a device that will spread any of an array of 150 scents across a room, including the smell of a good Havana, and of cigarettes. Shown here is the Multi-Scent 1, which can disperse one scent through a room, but Rwin Showtechniek claims to be able to spread multiple scents at once, which probably means they also bought a Multi-Scent 3 or 6.

Via Z24 (Dutch).

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May 25, 2007

Smokin’ Dutchies

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 9:51 am
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A record that is not something to be proud of: The Dutch are now the heaviest smokers of Europe, followed by the Belgians and the British. In 2006 the Dutch lit up 1,511 cigarettes per inhabitant. The old record belongs to the Germans (from where this posting is being written – Munich). The Netherlands is one of the only European countries left that still allows some smoking in catering establishments. No one saw the cloud of smoke in the bistro car of my German night train this morning. The lightest smokers are the Italians with 1,175 cigarettes.

(Link: Blik op nieuws)

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