Friday, August 19, 2005

Pubs and smoking

According to today's Guardian
As many as two-thirds of pubs in the most deprived parts of England could be exempt from a ban on smoking because they do not serve food, according to a study by doctors....Leeds topped the league, with 88% of its pubs not serving food and therefore likely to be exempt from the smoking ban, followed by Stoke, Lambeth, Chesterfield, Sunderland, Bradford and Macclesfield.

Interesting that Macclesfield is up there, not really a deprived area, I assume this survey covers the borough as a whole (it's from the BMJ but I can't find it on their web site). Here I think it's more cultural, a very large number of pubs - back in the 1960's I remember counting 50+ in Bollington - so competition constraints don't encourage the serving of food.
It's annoying though for us non-smokers in the area!

I'm sure the blogger spellcheck needs a tweak, place names are always problematic but it suggests misclassified for Macclesfield and Cinderella for Sunderland!

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