Fire escape

Kabaddi, a boisterous and occasionally violent team game, is immensely popular in Bangladesh where it's apparently the national game^[1], and beyond. It's essentially a cross between British Bulldog and Tag, but has the added twist that you're not allowed to inhale while attempting to tag an opponent.

Witty remarks alluding to Bill Clinton aside, the method employed to demonstrate that someone is not inhaling is to have them chant, "KabaddiKabaddiKabaddi..."

Which brings me on to my main point. I have to play 'Stairwell Kabbadi' whenever I visit the other office in the same building. Is this some attempt of mine to keep fit? Well, maybe, if the avoidance of passive smoking counts as keeping fit. The offices themselves are all designated as non-smoking areas, so the smokers choose to get their collective fix in the fire escape, notwithstanding the 'Please No Smoking in Stare' [sic] signs that the building management has kindly pinned up. The alternative option - to smoke outside - evaporates during Ramadan, of course.

There is an alternative to Stairwell Kabaddi, which is to become a Nybster. Regrettably both lifts are so slow that waiting for them can take aeons.

At least my complaints that mixing naked flame with flammable trash was dangerous has at last largely eliminated the hazardous habit of dumping cardboard boxes and other office waste in the fire escape. How are we supposed to evacuate a building if the fire is in the stairwell and we're not allowed to use the lifts?

That's still not as bad as my erstwhile residence, Grumpy Goat Towers. The bottom of the fire escape stairs there were habitually used for storage of mattresses, supermarket trolleys and moribund bicycles^[2], and were thus completely useless as emergency exits. Requests made to the management to clear it out, followed by threats to inform Civil Defence^[3] went completely unheeded.

[1] Not cricket, then? I'm surprised.
[2] Not unlike Birmingham Canal Navigations.
[3] Arabic for 'Fire Brigade'.

]}:-{>

Hard at work?

Hot on the heels of my apparently pro-smoking rant comes this, possibly in the interests of balance, or possibly not.

I work as a desk pilot in an office where everyone is expected to put in a good nine hours a day. The office is non-smoking, which is good news for those individuals who have no need for nicotine, and bad news for the tobacco addicts.

Or is it? The smokers habitually step outside into the corridor, stair well or even outside five floors below to indulge in their habit. As far as I know, it is impossible to use a word processor, AutoCAD or a spreadsheet, less use the office intranet whilst propping up a wall several metres away from the workstation. Meanwhile, non-smokers remain at their desks, busily pounding away at keyboard and mouse.

How long does it take to smoke a cigarette? Five minutes, by the time a casual conversation with others is taken into account? Is six smoke breaks a day a reasonable estimate? If so, a non-smoker (and for these purposes someone who only smokes during lunch break or outside office hours counts as a non-smoker) is putting in an additional two-and-a-half hours a week of actual work, or over one day a month. Smoke breaks, of course, never appear on the timesheets as non-productive time; I for one object to paying a design engineer for the hours he or she spends smoking. There would be uproar if I took one day a month off, claiming I was taking all my smoke breaks. It was bad enough when everyone in my office stepped outside for a social chat and a cigarette (again), and I downed tools and started surfing the net. Apparently, the official line is non-smokers don't get smoke breaks and have to work more hours.

What of the additional costs of sickness owing to smoking-related illnesses? Well, at least being off sick doesn't get charged to individual projects.

I once knew someone who worked in the non-smoking office in an armaments store. The trade union had negotiated four ten-minute smoke breaks per day, but the designated smoking area was a 15-minute walk from the office. Health and Safety had decreed a minimum safe distance from any ordnance. Two hours and 40 minutes a day of paid idleness for each smoker, whilst a non-smoker had to continue to work. That's the British civil service for you.

Incidentally, during the holy month of Ramadan it is against the law here for anyone not just Muslims, to be seen smoking (and also eating or drinking) between dawn and dusk. Everyone can manage all day without a nicotine hit for one month, so why not every month?

Strike a light!

So the latest from the British nanny state is the proposal for a total ban of smoking in all indoor public places. Apparently, the current system of having separate smoking and non-smoking areas or advertising whether a particular establishment has a permit or prohibition is no longer good enough. We'll all have to trot outside for our nicotine fix. Why shouldn't I be allowed to go to a closed room with other consenting adults so that we can damage our health?

Contrary to the apparent belief of the Smoke Gestapo, smokers do not as a rule light up maliciously, specifically to annoy any nearby non-smokers. Neither do they gang up in doorways with the sole purpose of breathing second-hand smoke at everyone entering or leaving the building.

Those non-smokers who are currently crowing about this wonderful ban will doubtless be more than happy when their tax bill increases to cover the deficit in funds due to the absence of tobacco revenue. In Britain, smokers contribute £9.3 billion to the State annually. The cost of treatment of smoking-related illness is around £1.5 billion. It isn't rocket science to realize that the balance is £7.8 billion. In other words, with the NHS neither treating smokers nor receiving any funds from them, making up the shortfall would have to come out of everyone's pocket: Around £5 a week from each of Britain's 30 million or so taxpayers.

If the British Government is actually serious about controlling tobacco consumption (which I doubt), perhaps laws to criminalise it should be introduced? Use, possession, trading and import of tobacco would become an offence. But that would involve an enormous loss in excise revenue wouldn't it? The British National Health Service annual budget in 2002-03 was around £65 billion. Most of this money comes from direct taxation, with tobacco revenue contributing to the remaining 10%. Even assuming that the remaining 10% is entirely tobacco related, that's smokers donating £6.5 billion a year, leaving £2.8 billion for Her Majesty's Government to spend elsewhere. Deduct £1.5 billion for treatment of lung cancer, emphysema and other smoke-related morbidities, and that still leaves £4 billion that the NHS wouldn't have if tobacco didn't exist.

What is next on the list of things to ban? Alcohol perhaps, or fatty food? Maybe those carcinogenic barbecues should be made illegal, along with all dairy products? While we're about it, isn't red meat supposedly too dangerous for the public to eat?

Incidentally, the new healthy lifestyle to be imposed upon us by law will inevitably result in huge numbers of healthy senior citizens, all gleefully drawing their pensions well into their nineties and beyond. Paid for by whom, exactly? Presumably the same people who who also pay Customs and Excise to keep tobacco out of the Sceptred Isle.

And my own smoking habit? I enjoy the occasional cigar and the even more occasional pipe. I also have a sheesha (nargileh, hubble-bubble) once in a while. Cigarettes? No thanks.