Thanks to Iain in comments on another thread for this link. I was in the mall today having a puff on my way home from returning some library books when a Brisbane Times reporter asked me some questions about Campbell Newman’s new plan to have specific “smoking zones” in the CBD. So I have a new media persona - as a “Queen Street mall smoker”! It was the journo’s idea that I should hold up the cigarette for the photo, incidentally.
That’s a big grin for a tailor-made cigarette, Mark. I wonder.
Smokers’ zones on the footpath are fair enough. Just like drinking and sex, there’s a time and a place, and the street is often that place.
For the convenience of the working public, though, they should be clearly signposted with strict time limits: “dhurry in a hurry”.
Mark always has a big grin. He’s a big grin sorta guy!
That’s the sort of grin that normally gets married with an Akubra. Throw in a chambray shirt and a corn stalk out of the mouth and you have Peter Nicholson’s stereotypical image of a Nats leader!
Well he’s a Quincelander with some country cousins! We’re not all Nats!
OK, OK, I’ll take that back… but only just. Two words: Chad Morgan!
[OK, OK, I’ll take that back… but only just. Two words: Chad Morgan!]
Crossed with Peter Beattie
That looks like Brigitte from Big Brother on the left. Did she sneak out of the House and catch the train up to Brissie for a smoke?
“We’ll lose customers” is a pretty piss-weak argument. It’s not like pubs and restaurants have gone out of business. If anything, a smoking ban will make me more likely to visit the Queen St Mall and thus be persuaded to buy things there. If a do-gooder, anti-consumerist like me will come to the QSM on the back of smoking restrictions imagine what the rest of Brisbane will do.
Well, you’ll have to walk through crowds of smokers just outside the mall on the much narrower sidewalks between the train station and Queen Street if Campbell has his way, Sam!
Personally I’m more worried about the bloke with the coffee…he knows something you dont.
This has all be done before but I too am a smoker and have had enough of this “let’s kick the smokers!!1!” stuff. Like the guy in that Morgan Spurlock doco said “What next obese people?”. It’s righteous bullshit, gripping the nation and we see that eveyday with all this rabid “feed me cheap petrol” crap. I can understand not smoking in places while people are eating, fine and logical but in the front bar? There’s two smells you should expect to encounter when wandering into a pub, beer and cigarettes. When they wake up to the fact and realise alcohol is a poison too then I suppose the beer will also get the arse.
At least you don’t have the hair dye job of the first woman *shudders*
ooo pet-hate.
Fiona?
I thought she was just a well-preserved Quinceland grannie with white hair. Who had dyed her long strands brown. Ummm please make allowances for iggerant southener, as usual
Which sort of begs the question, why should dyed hair look natural at all? It does remind me of a friend’s erstwhile ferret but.
Mark, can I just say that is gold! A picture does say a thousand words. Your response to Campbell Newman’s new plan to have specific “smoking zones” in the CBD requires no verbal response, besides a puff. Just gold.
In WA there’s talk of banning smoking in all crowded public areas and cars with kids in them. Can’t happen soon enough for my liking because here most smokers aren’t responsible. You just have to look at the butts littering the ground to see that. Personally, I’d rather see smoking banned and the addicts placed on a medical-withdrawal program where smokes are only available via prescription. Not gonna happen, I know.
Actually I think it is a State Government initiative - they are intending to give the Councils the power to control where smoking is (and is not) allowed. Smokers who reckon they have rights should consider the rights of others who have to breathe in their used smoke. The argument that it will be obese people next is just plain stupid - obese people only impact themselves.
Barry - if obese people only impact themselves - who would you rather sit next to on a crowded bus on a hot day then?
Although I no longer smoke, I have to agree with Jacques about the smell of a decent pub - there’s nothing that can match the mingled smell of stale beer and stale smoke in the front bar. It’s like coming home.
Like coming home? Erk.
If you’re a non-smoker, a smokers home smells basically awful - and years of smoking in old homes is a real bastard to clean up too (the tar/stains/ick that collects on the ceiling is revolting, only challenged by 80 years of fry-ups in the kitchen).
The only way to remove the smell is expunge the house entirely of carpeting and repaint/sugar soap everything.
I don’t miss the smoke smell in pubs at all - it gets in your clothes and your hair and competes with what you should naturally smell like: stale beer and vomit.
tobacco… urgh. if you’re going to damage your throat and lungs, you might as well get high while doing so. replace that durrie with a joint Mark, for your own good.
Hey Mark,
I’ve just realised that I live in the same building as you. And yes, sometimes the smoke does drift up…
The Grin?… The smoke?
I reckon the shirt is worthy of more debate!
Hilarious. A while back you were a ‘Political blogging guru’. Now you’re working on a PhD, you’ve graduated to ‘Queen St male smoker’.
Bespeaks volumes…..
I too am a Queen Street Mall smoker, though thankfully I still have my anonymity
I’ll try not to waft too much, Thomas!