people are stupid

So. The minister for health introduces the smoking ban. After some months, the official figures show a 97% compliance rate, but there are widely divergent views on whether pub business is affected or not. So, owners of a pub in Galway decides to take matters into their own hands and allow smoking in the pub once more. For some reason, the legal process for prosecuting them for this breach seems to involve more press releases than anything else; the publicans, the Western Health Board, and the Minister for Health have all had several lengthy conversations with various bits of the media despite this being, to simple old me, a pretty clear case of "you broke the law, you pay the price".

However, it doesn't stop there.

Apparently some people figured that if the pub said it was okay to smoke, then it was okay to smoke. I'm struggling with the logic here. If the pub says it's okay to drive while drunk, that doesn't make it any more legal. And so these people will be prosecuted. Smart kids. Bet you wish you'd checked out some alternative means of registering your disagreement with the law.

I can only laugh

It's a sad thing to see people lose their jobs, but in a previous employment these are the people who sent me unrequested and unwanted copies of manuals no matter how often I asked them not to. If they'd only paid attention to me and, no doubt, other customers, they might not have had to engage in such dramatic cost-cutting.