Question Author
The Prophet, I have just thought of something that negates most of which you have said (and most of which I have accepted) and entirely negates the posts of THE CORBYLOONand Whickerman. It is this:
SWT does not own the station: it is an operating company which runs the trains only. Only Railtrack, or whatever it is called nowadays, can set out rules for the station.
SWT is perfectly entitled to require passengers to obey the law, which is that they must not smoke in the enclosed ticket-office concourse or on that part of the platform which is part-covered by a canopy. But the law does not apply to the open parts of the platform, therefore SWT had no right, in the announcment I heard, to forbid smoking on the open part, quoting the new law.
I knew there was something phoney somewhere...