The blanket ban perception among many people that you can't lawfully smoke anywhere, including non-enclosed outside areas and in open premises needs to be made clearer to the general public and especially to local authorities and town centre managers.

It is not illegal to smoke in the overhang in Corby town centre for example. Nor is it illegal to smoke on an open train station platform.
In both cases, this is simply either a mistake borne out of ignorance of the law or it is simply the policy of the owners of the area in question.

Yet there are signs purporting the myth that smoking is illegal.
Where smoking is illegal is in commercial vehicles.

This has to be the most outrageous and lunatic part of this fascist imposition on the British freedoms we used to have. There is nobody else in the vehicle for goodness sake.

The last thing a hard-working commercial driver needs is to be chastised and fined by a council 'official' who delights in being given power and has the luminous jacket to prove it.

When drastic legislation is passed such as the smoking ban, it is often not thought through properly.

The apparently shocked response among non-smokers of the rise in cigarette butt discarding in the street was more predictable than a wet British summer – yet to hear these people you would have thought a seismic event had happened.

Simple solution, modify the law to allow choice of landlords to allow smoking – in other words be adult about it – or get the local authority to install street cigarette disposal facilities.

In the meantime, well done Kettering hospital – let's hope this signifies a move back to the principles of compromise that this country needs back.

Gordon Sutherland
Chequers Close
Corby