Carnival is to have the world’s first non-smoking cruiseship

It is reported that Carnival is to have the world’s first non-smoking cruiseship. It is called the Paradise. Not for me, it isn’t. More like Paradise Lost, with apologies to John Milton.

Carnival is confident that the Paradise will be a success. There are, after all, plenty of other cruiseships where you can smoke. But what about travelling parties made up of people who smoke and people who don’t smoke? Hard cheddar, I suppose.

There will be those who will deem me guilty of over-reacting. I don’t care. This may be only one little cruiseship, but what it really is is the thin end of the wedge. Mark my words. Shipping is hardly the most innovative industry in the world. Just as atriums quickly became de rigeur on cruiseships, so too will the lack of freedom to smoke. Within months there will be several no-smoking cruiseships, and travel agents will be taking on legions of extra staff to cope with the increased paperwork generated by having special smoking and no-smoking booking forms, the whole process slowed by having to free from police custody those same booking clerks who have been arrested for polluting the air outside thousands of travel agents around the world while taking a much needed pull on their Rothmans to cope with the angst generated by the extra work involved in filling in the new booking forms..

This is not the way forward for the cruise industry. It may work on trains and aeroplanes, but cruise travel is no casual boke into the countryside or headlong rush through the air at five hundred miles an hour. It is - or so I have always believed - a leisurely mode of conveyance, to be savoured on the basis that it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive. Why else bother with it? Banning smoking will achieve nothing, beyond giving power to the international bully.

We can all think of things we would like to ban. I , personally, would like to see cruiseships ban noisy eaters who sit at my table and imitate the sound of a horse eating a pound of cooking apples. Whatever happened to live and let live?