Halifax, like most towns, has its own sewage facility. Ours is located at the south-eastern end of the town close to Elland by-pass. In winter there is no smell; in a hot summertime the stench from those works permeates every nook and cranny within a two-mile radius. Heaven knows what motorists coming to Halifax for the first time must think (they'll have to find out sometime)! I read a year ago that Yorkshire Water, the company responsible for the upkeep of the works, was to take steps to eradicate the pong. Twelve months on and the malodorous presence is as strong as ever. Calderdale Royal Hospital is less than half a mile away from the facility and the smell even reaches into the wards come July and August. That must be nice for someone recovering from neurosurgery: having their nostrils assaulted by the smell of faecal waste!! Local residents have been campaigning for something to be done for the past thirty years - to no avail. Residential areas straddle the immediate vicinity. People queueing for buses on a summer's morning will likely have to tolerate the smell for a period of anything up to twenty minutes.
Now picture this lunacy. Under the draconian smoking laws currently being considered by Blair's spin junta, it could well become illegal to enjoy a fag at a bus stop. No bus shelter I've ever used has an enclosed space where the alleged carcinogens of second-hand smoke could rape the alveoli of prim and proper health fascists. If any smoke at bus stops is objectionable, it is usually the kind of belched out by 25-year old buses as they move away from the kerb. London readers - with the most modern bus fleet in Europe - might not identify with such a scenario. Readers in the regions, where buses old enough to feature in the Book of Revelations are commonplace, will most certainly do so.
Thus, come the summer of 2007, it will be deemed perfectly acceptable to wait for a bus at one of the twenty + bus shelters which are in the line of fire of Salterhebble Treatment Works - breathing in the whiff of 200,000 stools, but not to tolerate the possible smell of someone standing five feet away clutching a kingsize ciggy. If I was a smoker who was asked to stub out in an enclosed place I would be more than happy to do so. Alternatively, if I was asked to extinguish a cigarette in any open place (bus shelters included) by a sanctimonious health-obsessed upstart, my response would be to tell them to mind their own ******* business. I trust actual smokers will heed that advice should this lunacy become law.
Andrew, I know what you mean about the smoke-belching buses. I was treated to a lungful on Monday in the centre of Befast. It's a disgrace that the bus companies can pollute at will.
Posted by: Peter | June 21, 2006 at 09:57 AM
They just outlawed smoking in public in the state of New Jersey. (except for the casinos...) We won't be going 'down the shore' in Jersey this year.
The sewage treatment plant in Philly is in close proximity to Philadephia International Airport. LOL! What a way to greet a tourist. I imagine that living downwind of it must be like living on a pig-farm in a way - the people who own pig-farms don't even notice the smell after awhile.
Posted by: Monica-Philadelphia | June 22, 2006 at 05:12 AM