Breakfast with Bannatyne

I have just been booked to appear on BBC Breakfast in the morning. My opponent? My old "friend" Duncan Bannatyne (see HERE and, especially, HERE). Looking forward to it!

Lansley unveils Tory proposals on health

Further to yesterday's post about Conservative policy on obesity, smoking and alcohol, shadow health spokesman Andrew Lansley will today unveil new proposals designed to help people control their alcohol consumption.

Speaking on the Today programme this morning, Lansley said: "What I'm publishing today is a public health Green Paper that sets out a broader strategy. Alcohol and the abuse of alcohol and the deaths that are associated with it and the £20 billion cost to society of the misuse of alcohol is clearly a very significant public health challenge."

This morning Lansley is giving a speech at an event organised by 2020health, a centre right think tank.

More information to follow.

Update on Wednesday, January 13, 2010 by Simon Clark

Here are some excerpts from the press release just received:

A Conservative Government will work with business to draw up new 'responsibility deals' designed to prevent irresponsible activities and extend restrictions on
unsuitable marketing to children throughout the media. We will introduce a clearer system of alcohol labelling which allows people to compare the amount they drink
with other people, mandate the display of 'guideline daily amounts' on food packaging, and encourage restaurants and bars to publish more dietary information for their customers.

We will introduce a focus on public health throughout government, led by the Secretary of State for Public Health, with a series of measures including extra Sure
Start health visitors, a school sports Olympics, better maternity care, and tough measures - including a tax on super-strength drinks - to curb binge-drinking.

The Department of Health will be renamed and refocused, becoming the Department of Public Health, with a stronger remit for preventing disease, rather than just its
cure. Whenever possible, we will ensure that national public health initiatives funded by public money are focused wholly on behaviour change and paid for on the
basis of the results they achieve.

We will extend voluntary restrictions on marketing to children to all media, including online advertising, and support industry-led initiatives to promote better health, such as reducing food portion sizes.

We will also work with business to encourage the publication of dietary information in fast-food outlets, restaurants, cafes and bars, and improve the clarity of information on food packaging by supporting EU proposals for mandatory publication of 'guideline daily amounts' on food packaging.

To tackle the specific problem of binge-drinking, there will be a ban on cheap alcohol used as a loss leader in shops and supermarkets, and problem drinks like alcopops and super-strength beers will be taxed more heavily. A tougher licensing regime will also be introduced to tackle irresponsible bars.

There is no direct mention of smoking in the press release but in his speech this morning Lansley said:

We will invest to save by prioritising public health. There is a vast human and financial cost associated with problems like obesity, sexually transmitted diseases and infectious diseases.

Preventing them makes good economic sense and good public health sense. Obesity costs the NHS £4.2 billion alone. Smoking is responsible for around 84,000 deaths a year.

We are seeing a rising rate of alcohol and drug problems. And there's been a three-fold increase since 1998 in the number of young people diagnosed with HIV. We have to get to grips with the real drivers of demand on our NHS now.

Make of that what you will.

Update on Wednesday, January 13, 2010 by Simon Clark

"Is this the second longest suicide note in history?" comments Rick S. "Don't the Tories know that people are sick of this stuff and just want to be left alone?"

What the Tories have to get across - fast - is the extent to which these measures are going to be enforced: nanny state or bully state? I understand the need to keep NHS costs in check but government has to acknowledge that smokers (for example) pay a huge sum of money into the public purse (in addition to income tax etc). If anyone is entitled to treatment on the NHS, it's smokers.

Properly targetted, these policies may do some good. What politicians must not do is target and stigmatise everyone who smokes, gets "drunk" or is overweight.

Doing "the right thing" - who decides?

If you want to know where we're heading under the next Conservative government, there's a clue in THIS article by Tim Montgomerie (left), founder of ConservativeHome.

The title alone is fairly explicit: "We need a state that helps people who do the right thing". It all sounds very reasonable, doesn't it? The problem is, who decides what the "right" thing is? Politicians? Bureaucrats? The media? And what does Montgomerie mean by "help"?

At the Conservative party conference in Birmingham in 2008 Tim was a panellist at a fringe meeting organised by The Free Society. We called it "Libertarian Paternalism and the Nanny State" and it followed reports that David Cameron was in favour of a policy known as "nudging".

This, it seems, is the acceptable face of the nanny/bully state. Instead of forcing people to change their behaviour, they are encouraged or "nudged" in the "right" direction.

To his credit (because he was the only panellist to do so), Tim defended this policy, and the concept of "libertarian paternalism". Outside of that meeting, however, I suspect he represents a majority within the Conservative party because one thing I've learned about the Tories over the years is this: libertarians are very much in the minority. There is a far greater number of paternalists who are more than happy to tell the rest of us what to do in our own "best interests".

Yesterday - and this was the catalyst for Montgomerie's article - David Cameron gave a speech to the New Labour think tank Demos in which the Tory leader said:

"I know this is tricky territory for a politician. We're not exactly paragons of virtue ourselves. But to those who think politics should stay away from issues of character and behaviour, I say this: When there are more than 120,000 deaths each year related to obesity, smoking, alcohol and drug misuse. When millions of schoolchildren miss out on learning because their classmates are constantly disruptive. When British families are drowning in nearly one and a half trillion pounds worth of personal debt. And then ask yourself: do any of these problems relate to personal choices that people make? Or are they all somehow soluble by top down government action, unrelated to what people actually choose to do? Can we hope to solve these problems if we just ignore character and behaviour?"

I don't disagree with the reference to disruptive schoolchildren. But what about obesity, smoking and alcohol which he describes as issues of "character and behaviour". I am not denying that there are problem areas (for example, excessive drinking by some young people) that need to be addressed. But what is he implying? That people who smoke, drink or are overweight are guilty of bad character or poor behaviour?

Cameron and his associates will deny it, but this smacks of a moral crusade (more echoes of Tony Blair).

Click HERE to read the full speech.

How Hamish fell foul of UKIP

I was interested to read the story that appeared in yesterday's Blackpool Gazette. It involves UKIP and former Blackpool bar owner Hamish Howitt who has a fairly colourful track record opposing the smoking ban.

I don't know the full story and I don't want to take sides. But I thought it might interest those who have followed Hamish's fortunes and those who intend to vote UKIP on the strength of the party's opposition to the smoking ban.

Forest was criticised in some quarters for not getting right behind Hamish when he was prosecuted for allowing people to smoke in his bar after the introduction of the smoking ban, and later when he stood for parliament as an independent candidate in two parliamentary by-elections.

Hamish is a great guy but he is a loose cannon and, like many campaigners, he is single-minded to the point of obsession. I also thought it was irresponsible to encourage him to fight a battle he had no chance of winning and could cost him his business, which it has.

You can read the story in the Gazette HERE.

Above: me, Roger Helmer MEP, Hamish Howitt and Brian Monteith at the 2007 Conservative party conference in Blackpool

J M Barrie would have approved

The Edinburgh Evening News reports that "A little girl got a shock when she went to see Peter Pan – the little boy who supposedly never grew up – at the Capital's Lyceum Theatre during the festive period.

"The three-year-old's mum took her outside during the interval while she had a cigarette. To avoid the wintry wind, they stepped round the side of the building into Cornwall Street, where the girl spotted Peter Pan, Wendy and Captain Hook – in full costume, hats and all – having their own fag break."

By coincidence, Eamonn Butler, director of the Adam Smith Institute, sent me a note the other week pointing out that this year is the 150th anniversary of the birth of J M Barrie (1860-1937). "I am sure the newspapers will be concentrating on Peter Pan," said Eamonn, "but of course he also wrote another book, a peon of praise to tobacco, My Lady Nicotine."

Chapters include 'Matrimony and smoking compared', 'My first cigar', 'The romance of a pipe cleaner', 'How heroes smoke', 'The perils of not smoking' and, finally, 'When my wife is asleep and all the house is still'.

Oddly, one edition of the book has My Lady Nicotine paired with a mystery novel that Barrie wrote in 1888. Title: Better Dead.

Time to take the gloves off

Talking of gloves (see previous post), I have received a lengthy email in support of the Save Our Pubs and Clubs campaign. It begins quite promisingly ("Dear Simon, thanks for all you do with your website") and continues as follows:

It's election year and time to take the gloves off. Although not politically aligned, I hope like so many that the Tories will win and start dismantling the Nanny State, but there is no guarantee yet that they will do anything to amend/ameliorate this ban.

It's time to start reminding your readers and correspondents that the Total Smoking Ban was NOT in the Labour party manifesto (it pledged a CHOICE for non-food pubs and clubs). The Total Ban has NO electoral mandate!

It's time to tell people which parties are most likely to heed our campaign. I have Hansard from the day the Hewitt bill passed the commons. It was a 'free vote', but very polarised in the parties: the percentage of Labour and LibDem MPs who voted for the ban was in the high 70s percent. Tories voted about 25% for the total ban. I've met no-one who knows these figures, so it's about time they were made public! Perhaps publishing a 'shame list' of Ban-voting MPs should be posted?

And so it goes on ... and on ... for 1875 words (many of which I sympathise with, as it happens).

Finally, and rather unexpectedly, the email finishes with a PS:

I strongly advise you to have nothing to do with Forest. The fact that they are funded by the tobacco industry makes their opinions questionable and ignorable by neutrals, and anyone affiliated to them likewise. It is essential that you be seen as non-aligned. Even if you link them it is essential that you accept no payments from them.

Oh dear, how do I break it to him?

Answer: gently.

Smoking mittens

Available from Suck UK and other outlets.

From the archives ...

Writing in the Observer yesterday Nick Cohen acknowledged what we were saying ten years ago:

Puritanism is as powerful a strain in English culture – and wider British and American culture – as embarrassment. As smokers told you they would, the puritans have now switched their censorious gaze from cigarettes to wine and beer ...

Reading the full article HERE reminded me of another piece by Cohen, published by the New Statesman in January 2000, exactly ten years ago.

"The plot to keep us puffing" began with a reference to a 1999 Forest report entitled Smoking: The New Apartheid that highlighted the growing number of recruitment ads that advertised vacancies for "non-smokers only".

Thereafter the article preoccupied itself with the battle between Big Tobacco and New Labour's "good intentions". See HERE.

Bearing in mind what has happened to smokers in Britain over the past decade, and the dark cloud now gathering over those who enjoy a drink, I wonder if journalists like Nick Cohen will be as censorious about the drinks industry as they were about the tobacco industry?

PS. The Yorkshire Post has a "look back in history" style feature. Last week it focussed on January 1985 and included this item:

Smoking was banned on Yorkshire's buses, following pressure from the anti-smoking lobby. Members of the West Yorkshire Public Transport Committee passed an order making it an offence to smoke on buses, apart from the back row of seats and even then smokers would be asked to refrain in the interests of public health. The move did not go down well with the Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco (Forest), who argued 71 per cent of people were against the ban.

Apart from the back row of seats? Now that's what I call compromise!

Another good result for the nanny state

It's not much of a Saturday when most of the day's football has been postponed because of the weather. It wasn't like this in my day blah blah blah. But it's true. People used to bust a gut to make sure matches were played, whatever the conditions.

And supporters had the choice of whether or not they wanted to go. I've slipped and slided to many a match in the past. If I fell over and hurt myself I would take full responsibility for it. No-one forced me to give up the comfort of my armchair (or, as a student, my bed) and a warm fire.

But I can't remember ever coming to grief. The only time I remember things getting a bit hairy was when I was a student at Aberdeen and a friend and I tried to drive to Dundee for a midweek match in, I think, February.

North of Stonehaven it started to snow quite heavily. We were in a long line of traffic that slowed to a crawl as conditions got worse. Eventually it became obvious that we weren't going to make the kick off. In fact, we weren't going to make the match at all. So we gave up, turned round, and drove back to Aberdeen.

The game, meanwhile, went ahead. (We listened to it on the radio. United won 3-0 and we celebrated in a pub near the university in Old Aberdeen.) No-one suggested that because it was difficult for some people to travel to the match it should be postponed.

Today most of the top clubs in England and Scotland have undersoil heating so unless there is a late snowstorm or melting snow floods the ground, the pitch itself is unlikely to be a problem.

Nor is ice on the terraces because, in many grounds, the old-style terraces that we used to stand on no longer exist. They have been replaced by covered all-seater stands with plastic seats.

No, the only reason they are postponing matches left, right and centre is because it is said to be too dangerous for supporters outside the ground or en route.

I'm sorry, but if I choose to go to a football match - or any other event - I'll make my own risk assessment. I don't need the state, or the football authorities, or the football club, to make that decision for me.

The club and the football authorities should be concerned with two things: making sure that the pitch and the stadium are safe for players and spectators. What happens outside the ground or further afield has nothing to do with them unless the conditions are so bad that the visiting team and officials can't get to the game - but if they can, so too can the supporters, if they choose.

Thankfully some people within football have spoken out. In the London Evening Standard yesterday Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger referred to a "culture of fear":

“If one of 60,000 people has an accident, you feel very guilty and nobody accepts any more that the slightest insecurity could exist in our society and that's why the games are postponed when there is no real need for it."

Mark Lawrenson, former Liverpool player and now a BBC pundit makes a similar point in the Daily Mirror:

"Sadly, gone are the days of orange balls and playing in snow. I’ve played in far worse conditions than we’ve seen at grounds which have seen postponements.

"But, in fairness, it’s not down to the grounds or state of the pitch largely. It’s all about safety certificates, transport and stewards. People are far too politically correct these days on this.

"Are you honestly telling me that when those games are called off the same fans won’t be diverted to shopping centres?

"How do they get from the car to the shops? Exactly the same way they get from stations to the football grounds. We live in a nanny state."

They are right, of course. But what can we do about it?

In the meantime I've got the choice of driving my son 20 miles to Peterborough today in icy conditions for indoor cricket training. No-one has suggested that the session should be cancelled and he wouldn't miss it for the world.

Looking at the conditions, and using my experience (I am 50, for God's sake), I'll risk it. How long, though, before even small decisions like that are taken out of our hands?

That was the week that was

Best PR stunt of the week was this new ad campaign for a health club in Bristol. Inevitably not everyone saw the funny side:

A spokesman for the Beat Eating Disorders association said: "This is a very unfortunate choice of words. People get fit and healthy when they are positively motivated and are unlikely to respond to such a negative message. Perhaps the gym should reconsider the approach."

Full story HERE.

As someone who is overweight, I think it's great. I am far more likely to respond to an ad like this than I am to a campaign that tries to nag or vilify me. ("If you smoke, you stink" comes to mind.)

Note to government, Keep Britain Tidy et al: if you really want to engage with smokers, learn from this campaign and add a touch of humour to your anti-smoking ads. It's not rocket science.

Update on Saturday, January 9, 2010 by Simon Clark

Stories that (almost) passed unnoticed ...

1. Giving up smoking 'raises diabetes risk' (BBC)
2. Obesity 'now a bigger threat than smoking' (Independent)
3. Backlash over plan to extend TV advertising (Guardian)
4. Call for pre-9pm ban on alcohol TV ads (Guardian)

Note: check the rolling newsfeed on the Forest website for the latest smoking-related stories. Updated daily HERE.

Stumbled upon

I stumbled upon the blog Sponsored Linx last night. It features a post about the Save Our Pubs and Clubs campaign. I don't think the author is a fan.

As I write there isn't a single comment. I know it's the weekend but perhaps you'd like to drop him a line ...

Click HERE.

Update on Saturday, January 9, 2010 by Simon Clark

PS. Since I posted this, the design of the blog has changed. The new design is very snazzy, but not so easy to read.

Defining liberalism

Interesting article in the Financial Times by Samuel Brittan. (In 1981, when 364 leading economists wrote a letter to The Times criticising Margaret Thatcher's economic policy, Brittan was one of the few economic commentators to openly defend her.)

On the subject of liberalism, Brittan writes:

Modern discussion of the subject begins with John Stuart Mill’s still controversial 1859 essay On Liberty. This states that “the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection”, that is to “prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant".

"We need to move on from Mill, writes Brittan, "partly because there will always be argument about how to draw the line between self and self-regarding actions. Almost all conduct has some effect on other people." He continues:

I would myself favour an informal concept put forward by John Maynard Keynes in an essay in the 1920s, which distinguished between the agenda and non-agenda of government. This would not be fixed for all eternity but would vary over time. Kaeynes devised the idea to separate himself from those 19th century Liberals who saw little useful role for the state. But it could equally be applied in reverse to cordon off areas where the government has no business interferfing with citizens. It is the refusal to recognise any such limits tat is the real crime of New Labour and why some of us will find it hard to support it again.

Brittan concludes with three examples "that starkly expose anti-liberal ways of thinking". One is compulsory national service; another is rigid foreign exchange restrictions.

A final example is the smoking ban in public places - and I speak as a lifelong non-smoker. So long as there are designated areas to ensure non-smokers are protected from smoke pollution, what is the harm in providing a room where people can smoke at their own risk? Why is this worse than making smokers stand outside in the cold?

"However difficult it is to define a liberal," he concludes, "it is not hard to spot anti-liberals."

PS. I can't link to the article because the FT is now subscription only.

Nanny Hewitt twists the knife in Labour's open wound

What a wonderful irony (for readers of this blog, if no-one else) that it should be former health secretary Patricia Hewitt, the woman directly responsible for the smoking ban, who should be one of two ex-Cabinet ministers openly challenging the prime minister.

According to the BBC:

Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon have written to Labour MPs saying the party was "deeply divided" and the issue must be sorted out "once and for all".

Full story HERE.

This is genuinely a momentous day in British politics. Here we are, months (weeks?) away from a general election (even, as some are saying, in the middle of an election campaign) and members of the governing party seriously want to ditch their leader.

With Nanny Hewitt wielding the knife I feel almost sorry for Gordon Brown.

Almost, but not quite.

Update on Wednesday, January 6, 2010 by Simon Clark

It's at moments like this that the top political bloggers, those who stay on top of stories and even come up with their own exclusives (even if they are based on rumours!), come into their own.

Best of the bunch (no surprise) are Iain Dale and Paul Staines aka Guido Fawkes (above) because gossip is far more interesting than analysis (I think you'll agree) ...

Update: it took a while but the BBC has finally got its act together. See HERE. Nick Robinson however should hang his smug little head in shame.

Postscript to the Today programme

Following last week's Today programme which featured a short interview with Joe Jackson (left) about smoking bans, someone (I think it was Joyce) commented: "I was quite surprised by the lack of anger coming from Joe Jackson who, when he writes, does so very passionately."

Further to his earlier comments which I posted HERE, Joe has written to say:

"On the Today show I didn't even get to the subject of secondhand smoke. I was on my 'best behaviour' ... I did say that I understood that a lot of people personally quite liked the ban, but that I wish they would stop and think about what has happened: government has banned adults from using a legal and heavily-taxed product in places which are actually private property ... and where will this end? etc.

"I thought this was well-put and that they would use it but it seems that even this was too 'controversial' - they really did use only the most innocuous couple of quotes they could find. As I said, it really is all about nothing more than personal feelings about bans one way or the other. There is no real debate."

PS. You can listen to bits of the programme, guest edited by David Hockney, HERE. Joe is featured in Caroline Wyatt's report.

Mick Hume: the politics of behaviour

Mike Hume, founding editor of Spiked, has written an article that screams common sense. A 60-a-day smoker until he gave up (going cold turkey "using the oral crutch of sucking 20-plus lollipops a day"), Hume writes:

As one who has long been irritated by the increasingly shrill and illiberal anti-smoking crusade, I have been thinking again about the issue over the past week. Because this New Year marked the twentieth anniversary of the day I stopped smoking for good.

The intervening two decades have brought remarkable changes in the way that both smokers and giving up smoking are viewed in our society. It seems to me now that these changes are about far more than the way we see cigarettes. They mark a downward shift in the predominant cultural view of our humanity, and a demeaning of the qualities of adult autonomy and independence.

He adds:

The move to redefine smoking as anti-social behaviour has also struck a chord with many because it chimes with the cri de coeur of the age – that your life is being messed up by other people, and you need protection from them (and possibly also from yourself). The underlying issue here is not passive smoking so much as passive living, inviting the authorities in to resolve your problems. Hence there was none of the talked-of resistance to the ban on smoking in public places. Where once it would have been thought these were matters for adults to sort out among themselves, now it is considered fair enough for the state forcibly to stub it out.

He concludes:

I don’t regret stopping smoking 20 years ago, and it would be daft for anybody to take it up as some sort of political protest. But I do worry about what is behind the changed cultural status of smokers and giving up. I think I will always feel like a smoker inside, even though I hope never to have another puff. But even those who have never touched one should surely be concerned about the diminished view of adult autonomy and free choice that the anti-smoking crusade has helped to spread, opening the door to the new interfering ‘politics of behaviour’ in a way that would never have been tolerated in the smoke-filled rooms of yore.

Full article HERE. Highly recommended.

H/T Pat Nurse - Tea and Cigarettes