Everyone knows the Smoking Ban is killing our Pubs and Clubs but why worry. The coalition have promised to Reform Labours Nanny State and to protect Businesses, so we can look forward to the Pubs and Clubs being allowed to Choose to be smoking or non smoking,what a wonderful concept. Fairness in Britain. Its a win-win situation for the coalition,not only will they honour their promise to the public and put Fairness back into Britain,they will also save our Hospitality Industry and Thousands of jobs.
Lets All hope that the coalition does not let the Country down.

Leaving Bluewater, it struck me how differently its story and that of the town emerging around might have been. In Crawley in 2004, a trio of middle-class British Asians took up the Islamist cause, with plans to blow up Bluewater and the “slags” at the Ministry of Sound in London. Had this happened it’s doubtful that Ebbsfleet would have risen from the dust, blood and ashes. Yet it wasn’t only potential terrorists who saw Bluewater as the epitome of western decadence. “Many of us share the Crawley terrorists’ dislike of Bluewater,” wrote Guardian columnist Catherine Bennett. “But that is not to say we have any interest in their plans to improve it.” In the London Review of Books, Ian Sinclair wrote that visitors to Bluewater “wander… under the soft cosh of muzak, feeling the life-force drain. These are the retail undead.”

Isn't it just another attempt by image consultants to get people to form an opinion (and here we are) in what is otherwise an over-saturated pool of well-rinsed, bland, formulaic, meaningless and inconsequential crud? As a whole heap of manufactured pop manekins and rappers can testify, notoriety sells records - especially to the thirteen year olds who buy most of this piss poor crap - a sales tactic going right back to the fifties.

As has been said about small traders, some are most definitely shits, but some are just people trying to survive, escaping having a boss, are avoiding paying taxes, etc. or even just trying to have some creative control over their working life. They are, much like skilled tradesmen (and women), a reflection of life I guess. Like every business, they set themselves up to make money and inevitably become a target for expropriation in one form or another.

PS Does there really need to be a line on everything, even Rihanna?