Judicial Review

[lollygm]

Things have certainly moved on since Dave Cheetham, our host, posted his first introduction to the site.

For those who are just joining us, we would really like to hear from you on the Welcome Forum. Please introduce yourself and I am sure that several welcome notes from our hard working friendly team will soon come your way.

We also hope that by looking though the site and getting acquainted with the members, you will be encouraged to take an active part in discussion and add your ideas and support.
This site is still very young, but in the short time that it has been going, it has revealed a camaraderie among people from all parts of the country and abroad, who are working, not for the right to smoke, but for the right to make their own choices about how they wish to run their lives and businesses.

At the time of writing this update, we are about to embark on ( I expect) a long and difficult journey through a Judicial Review. Our first meeting with our solicitor is in the coming week and we hope with all our heart and soul to be able to proclaim "Game On" shortly thereafter.

Dave has put a new Update thread on the site which will only contain the periodical roundup news which Alastair kindly puts together for us regularly. Member won't be able to comment on here as we thought it would be easier for our "Newbies" to catch up quickly on what is going on.
My thanks go (again) to all those members who have given up a very large chunks of their own time, and money to find evidence and promote our campaign. I have been amazed by people's generosity and total dedication. I think that many of us have made a lot of friends over the past few months and perhaps the Ashites, who like to see what we are up to by joining this site, might like to take a leaf out of our book instead of constantly trying to force their own neurotic fanatical opinions on others and gloating about their temporary victory over democracy.

Finally, I would like to give a special mention to our Spokesman Bob, who began this fight long before most of us even realised that the ban formed part of the Health Bill in February! Without his total dedication to this campaign and his continued daily reading and collating of masses of material supplied by our "ferrets", we would not have made it this far.

Ooh - and can't forget my other "oppo" Lord Stoddart of Swindon, who will be encouraging us all the way in the months to come. Thanks Dave!!

Lol

[lollygm]

After months of preparation, our Letter of Intent has now been sent to the Department of Health and they should have received it by today.

They now have 14 days to respond to our solicitor.

The next step will to be to apply to the court for permission to take the case to Judicial Review but this will be an extremely costly exercise and we need more support from the hospitality sector to meet the costs involved.

Further news will be sent to Freedom2Choose members via Newsletter within the next few days.

[lollygm]

Apologies for the lateness of this anouncement but a family bereavement on 1st July has put my work with F2C back somewhat.

We confirm that out application for Judicial Review was lodged at the High Court in London on 29th June 2007. We went on to do radio and television interviews on the day but unfortunately, before they had time to hit the public, the news of the terrorist attacks broke on 30th June and the smoking ban became lesser news than would it would have been under normal circumstances.

The fight goes on.


Loraine.