Smoking Rooms vs Smoking Ban

You may take my ashtray, but you'll never take... my cigarette!

This news article collects together many things I love - smoking, an artist and freedom. The wonderful David Hockey has joined a cross-party group of MPs who are calling to amend the UK smoking laws.

I'm not against non smoking pubs, clubs and restaurants, I have no desire to inflict my lifestyle on any one else, but I am against this blanket smoking ban and I'm certainly against this wave of self righteous non smoking that this ban brought with it.

Cigarettes aren't illegal, it makes sense to relax the law to allow businesses to decide whether to have designated areas for smoking or a total ban on their premises, thus catering to their clientele. I fail to see how having a pint and a cigarette is an issue worthy of such an interfering and dictating law. There is such a thing as freedom of choice, I can choose to work in a smoking pub, just as someone else can choose to drink or not drink there. So give people back their ability to choose rather than dictate.

Artist Jasper Joffe to Sell Life Possessions

This is an interesting idea. The artist Jasper Joffe is to sell everything he owns at an exhibition of his possessions. It does however pose the question is it art? The way he's describing it sounds more like he's short of cash and needs some money. Yet whatever his personal reasons, it provokes a challenge to the viewer - would you do it?

That's important in art to engage people. It's not conventional art nor is it amazing or aesthetic, but does art need to be? This notion that art is a painting or sculpture is restrictive, art can be a concept, an idea, a thought, a feeling, either conveyed by the artist or by the viewer. It isn't a solely a medium.

So could I do it? There are things I couldn't contemplate selling, others that fall more into the back drop of my life I could. Yet that wouldn't be as freeing, as it's a leap of faith. One that would leave me hanging off the edge of the cliff with my computer in hand, screaming for someone to save it. I fail.

Could you sell your life possessions?