Whatever happened to ...?

Talk of Europe (below) reminds me that Forest used to belong to an association of European smokers' rights groups. Founded in 1992, it was called Smokepeace and members eventually included groups from Germany, Italy, Denmark, France, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Greece.

In 1995 a "secretariat" was set up in Brussels. Apco, a worldwide public affairs company, was recruited to run it facilitate meetings. Representatives of each national group would meet several times a year and international conferences were organised in Amsterdam and Seville.

I joined Forest shortly before the Seville conference in 1999. The organising team, led by Apco's Mark Dober, did a great job. Seville was a fantastic location, the  food and wine were magnificent, the company was terrific, and I have never inhaled so much smoke in all my life. Socially, it could not have been better.

Two years later Smokepeace was quietly wound up. Starved of funding, it had neither the means nor the resources to have any serious political clout. Over the next few years most of the individual member groups bit the dust too.

Today - out of curiosity - I visited Apco's website to see what became of Mark Dober. This is what I found:

[His] main area of expertise is in health care and he has represented numerous influential companies and associations in the sector. He is a regular conference speaker on health care issues, recently chairing the European Pharma Marketing Congress, and speaking at the Drug Industry Association Congress.

You've got to laugh.

Update on Monday, April 21, 2008 by Simon Clark

Last night someone posted a potentially libellous comment on this post which I have deleted. I actually think this story is quite funny so, please, no diatribes against Mark Dober (or Apco). Mark's a good guy and doesn't deserve it. He's only doing his job.

Question time

If you read about my experience in Brussels last month (HERE and HERE) you may be interested to know that Forest has now submitted a formal complaint about events on March 19.

I won't reproduce the full three-page letter (although it's not every day that I find myself writing to the Secretary-General of the European Commission), but it includes the following questions:

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  • Is it normal or acceptable for a stakeholder who has received a written invitation to a consultation meeting to be asked to leave that meeting by other stakeholders?
  • Is it normal or acceptable for stakeholders with a clear vested interest to dictate who can take part in a consultation meeting?
  • Why were the representatives of four pharmaceutical companies present at a meeting described as a “consultation meeting with EU experts, civil society and social partners”?
  • Do written minutes of the meeting exist and are they available to the public?
  • Is there a formal list of stakeholders at the meeting and is it available to the public?
  • If the answers [to the two previous questions] are “No”, why are stakeholders allowed to attend consultation meetings – and make verbal contributions – anonymously?

If and when we get a reply I'll let you know.

In a separate letter to the EU's Health and Consumer Protection Unit, I have written:

Forest is keen to play an active role in the consultation process and I would welcome the opportunity to attend future meetings in Brussels. However, having read the background document and considered the impact assessment procedure, I am concerned that the outcome of the consultation is a foregone conclusion.

Well, that's the diplomatic way of putting it. Watch this space.

Will the real Boris Johnson please stand up?

Tom Utley, a former winner of Forest's Smoker-Friendly Journalist of the Year Award, has written an interesting piece about his friend Boris Johnson in today's Daily Mail. Like many people (including, I suspect, Tom Utley), I cling to the hope that Boris will eventually have the courage of his convictions to say - consistently - what he really believes without backtracking, hours later, into Cameron-speak.

The truth is, Boris Johnson faces a very tricky balancing act. Even people like me - who love his quirky, amiable persona - have been praying that he would abandon the "buffoon" act and become a "serious" politician. This he is clearly attempting to do. The danger is he goes from one extreme to the other and becomes yet another boring, identikit politician with nothing interesting to say and no reason to vote for him.

Anyway, read the full Tom Utley article HERE. My advice, for what it's worth, is "Vote Boris". His heart's in the right place even if, on occasion, his mouth isn't. There's nothing to lose if Boris becomes Mayor of London. In the long run, there may be something to gain.

Boris and the power of blogging

Take a bow, readers of Taking Liberties! I don't think it's over-stating the case to say that, as a direct result of your response to THIS post (which led to a flurry of emails being sent to Team Boris), the great man now writes:

"What is the point of having local democracy if we don't leave decisions like this to a local level? If I had my way, we would have an online referendum in London about whether to give boroughs back the power to give discretion over smoking to pubs and clubs."

Better still, it's on the record, published HERE - by The Sun.

Vote Boris! Vote for freedom!!

Update on Thursday, April 17, 2008 by Simon Clark

Aaaarrrggghhh! From BBC News this afternoon:

Mr Johnson issued a statement on Thursday saying that he was expressing a personal view that laws like the smoking ban should have been decided at a local level.

"Personally I do not like smoking and believe that pubs and clubs are better places since the ban came in," he said. "It is not within the power of the Mayor to have a referendum, nor will I be lobbying for the power to grant one."

Politicians. Don't you just love 'em.

Welcome to Little Britain (3)

A reader writes:

I find it interesting that my local council (Rotherham) has seen fit to put signs on every bus stop in the town saying "It is against the law to smoke in this area" despite the fact that some of these bus stops are not "substantially enclosed". A lot of these bus stops consist of just a back wall and a roof, with no sides or front.

I have contacted the council to ask if anyone has been fined or cautioned for smoking in these bus stops, but they will not comment. I also asked if it is illegal to display signs saying that smoking is illegal in these bus stops when, according to the current legislation, it is not against the law to smoke there. They refuse to comment. I have even seen a "No Smoking" sign on a bus stop which is simply a pole in the ground with a timetable on it - no roof!!
 
Rotherham council, like so many others, believes that it is in the right to do whatever it wants and seems to believe that the law can be misinterpreted by them with no comeback from the public. We must do what we can to stamp this out.

Note: Forest is currently compiling a series of "Little Britain" stories for publication later this year. Email contact@forestonline.org.

Meat is murder

It's time for Action on Sausages and Health, writes Simon Hills of The Times on today's Free Society blog. Full article HERE.

Update on Thursday, April 17, 2008 by Simon Clark

Some very funny comments have appeared under the article above. Thanks for making me laugh!

Reason to be cheerful

I've re-read the last few posts and they're a bit depressing. So here's something to cheer you up. I have just bought the May issue of The Oldie - featuring The Oldie of the Year Awards - and there, beaming out from the cover, is the great David Hockney (2008 Oldie Gasper of the Year) whose citation reads:

"One of the country's greatest living smokers, he has campaigned courageously for the right to have his cigarette and smoke it where he likes".

Hockney, I should add, was Forest's Smokers' Rights Champion of 2006, an award he collected in person at The Groucho Club in London. I won't repeat a story I have told (several times) before, but if you haven't heard it you can read about it HERE.

Welcome to Little Britain (2)

Another reader writes:

I work in Sheffield city centre and recently have noticed more and more "smoking police".  These people are employed by the local authority as "City Centre Ambassadors" and are supposed to help/assist shoppers, give directions etc as well as issuing fixed penalty notices for littering. 

However, I rarely see the City Centre Ambassadors helping anyone.  Instead, they hang around watching people smoking outside the shops, restaurants etc hoping that they'll drop their cigarette end on the floor and pounce on them to issue an on-the-spot-fine.  They even follow potential victims so that they can issue a ticket. 

It seems to be the policy of Sheffield City Council to make the life of the smoker as hard as possible as there are very few bins around. Apparently private business have to apply for planning permission to put an ashtry up outside their business and more often than not Sheffield Council refuses the application on the grounds that it will encourage smoking!! They then have the "smoking police" to fine people.  The smoking police don't even attempt to give warnings to people. 

I'm all for a litter-free Britain but issuing very expensive fines is just a money making racket.  I wonder whether they have targets or get paid based on the number of tickets issued.  Why can't they just ask the person to pick up their cigarette end and put it in a bin??  Are they just power crazed individuals who have let their uniforms go to their heads?  Or is it Sheffield City Council who wants to make lots of money out of issuing on-the-spot fines?

Welcome to Little Britain (1)

A reader writes:

Last Friday I went to Birmingham on a business trip. I booked a room in a hotel where I could smoke and my reservation was made at the end of October, months in advance. On the Friday evening I was shown to my room.
I lit a cigarette and looked around for an ashtray. As I couldn't find one I used a glass in the room. I then called room service for some food. When the waiter arrived, he pointed at me and screamed "That's illegal" and ran down to reception to report me to the duty manager. 

Just as I started to eat the duty manager phoned my room and gave me what can only be described as a tirade of abuse due to the fact that I was in a non-smoking room. I pointed out that it was their mistake as I had booked a smoking room but she continued with some outrageous accusations: (1)  I had done it on purpose knowing that it was a non-smoking room; (2) I had used a glass that would have to be "decontaminated" and I would have to pay for it; (3) the room would have to be fumigated immediately and I would have to pay for it; (4) I could not stay there and would have to be moved to another room.

I agreed to move to a smoking room but I told her that I refused to pay a fine as the mistake was made by them.  She then said that smoking rooms could not always be supplied and I pointed out that five months' notice should be sufficient to secure one. If I had known it was only provisional I would have gone elsewhere. 

When I went to pay my bill on Sunday a £50 charge had been added for fumigation. After a lengthy dispute with the manager I managed to get the fee cancelled. I can only say that I was shocked by the treatment I received from both the waiter and particularly the duty manager who by her tone almost implied that what I was doing was as bad as taking illegal drugs on the premises. 

I will be writing to the general manager to complain further about this but thought you might be interested in my experience. 

Welcome to Britain. Little Britain.

Update on Friday, April 11, 2008 by Simon Clark

Several people have asked me to name the hotel. I'm not going to because I have received a further email (see below) from the guest in question and although the situation was very badly handled, I don't think it would be right to "name and shame" a hotel that, unlike many others, still accommodates smokers, albeit in a rather cack-handed fashion. The latest email reads:

Thanks very much for posting my experience on your site. It's good to have a bit of support from the people who have commented. The smoking ban has the effect of making us feel alienated from the rest of society, something I find very depressing. To be honest I don't like smoking in a bedroom. In the good old days before the ban I would simply have had a couple of cigarettes in the bar and then gone up to my room, but what can you do? 

I booked a smoking room so that I did not have to travel many floors down in a lift and fight my way outside to have a cigarette in the cold. I think the mistake was made by the desk clerk who upgraded my room but didn't check whether I wanted smoking or non-smoking. Obviously if you smoke you cannot expect to have the nicest rooms anymore.  They had one floor of the hotel dedicated to smoking rooms and the standard was not as good as elsewhere in the hotel.

What is interesting is the fact that the smoking rooms appear to be inferior to the non-smoking rooms. My correspondent's original email referred to one she was eventually given as "smelly". Non-smokers may laugh and say, what do you expect? But I was given a smoking room in a London hotel recently and I would never have known - and I'm a non-smoker.

I'm no expert but, properly cleaned and ventilated (and with decent air conditioning), I see no reason why a smoking room shouldn't be as clean and fresh as a no-smoking room. If hotels want the business, it will pay them to make the effort - unless, of course, they intend to introduce, voluntarily, a "level playing field" (ie a ban on smoking in all hotel bedrooms).

For the moment my advice is to write and thank any hotel that provides bedrooms where you can smoke (ie be positive not negative). If you have a complaint, be polite and constructive. Save your anger for those hotels where smoking is completely verboten. They're the real enemy.

Update on Saturday, April 12, 2008 by Simon Clark

I'm not going to name the hotel but I will say this. By coincidence, it just happens to be the same hotel we were planning to stay at during the Conservative party conference in September!

Modern life is crap (continued)

Yesterday morning, at 9.15, I jumped in my car to drive from my hotel in the centre of Bristol to a meeting less than two miles away. According to Multimap, the journey would take exactly four minutes. 

One hour (60 minutes) later I gave up the battle with the city's unfathomable road network and returned, defeated, to the hotel where I abandoned the car and called a taxi.

I now understand why so many people choose to jump from the city's famous suspension bridge. Yesterday morning, at 10.15, I came THAT close to doing it myself.

Smoker? You dirty, disgusting chucker!

The war on tobacco just got really dirty. According to Keep Britain Tidy, "we are literally swimming in a sea of cig butts". (Literally? Swimming?) Launching the organisation's biggest ever anti-smoking litter campaign, chief executive Phil Barton says:

"Since the smoking ban was brought in nine months ago, the number of discarded butts on our streets has soared. We applaud the cigarette ban as it has made our pubs and restaurants more pleasant environments to be in. But unfortunately we are now seeing an epidemic of smoking related litter on our streets. The message is clear: dumping fag stubs on the ground is disgusting and people responsible will face fines."

As of today:

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  • Thirteen councils will issue on-the-spot fines to anyone caught chucking their cig (sic)
  • 10,000 posters and banners will go up warning "Dirty Chuckers" of £80 fines. These will appear in bus shelters, phone boxes, pub toilets and lampposts.
  • 50,000 beer mats will go to pubs across the land to "highlight the problem"

Says Barton:

"Now is the time for smokers to change the dirty habit which is staining our streets, particularly in town and city centres. Almost half the councils in England have received serious complaints from the public and this is simply not acceptable."

Forest's response:

"We support any responsible campaign that encourages people not to drop litter. But this campaign is grossly offensive and irresponsible. Targeting smokers in such an aggressive fashion will do nothing to help the environment. It is far more likely to alienate smokers who won't appreciate being singled out for special attention.
 
"Keep Britain Tidy say they applaud the smoking ban but complain that the number of discarded butts has soared since it was introduced. They can't have it both ways. The obvious solution is to support an amendment to the legislation that would allow licensed smoking rooms, and encourage local councils to install cigarette bins in the nation's high streets.
 
"Instead, Keep Britain Tidy wants to vilify and insult smokers and create a culture of intolerance. It stinks."

Note: the "Dirty Chuckers" campaign is also backed by the portable ashtray company, Ashcan, and Tesco - something you may care to remember the next time you visit your friendly neighbourhood superstore to buy, er, cigarettes. (And while you're there, check out the number of cig bins on the premises.)

Update on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 by Simon Clark

CSR Solutions, which promotes ButtsOut ("the smart solution for cigarette ends), welcomes the campaign - which, it says, will "generate some shock value that will build awareness and recall - but the company is concerned that "it may serve to vilify the smoker as opposed to engage ... We are correspondingly dubious that it will have the desired effect of encouraging responsibility and changing behaviour".

Referring to the "Don't be a tosser" campaign in Australia, CSR says, "That campaign reported very high levels of consumer recall but we aren't aware it had a big impact on levels of cigarette litter". In other (less diplomatic) words: it was a turkey. And turkeys (like chickens) come home to roost.

Encams: what a bunch of tossers

The government banned smoking in all enclosed public places. Now, says Encams (which runs the Keep Britain Tidy campaign), "Smoking related rubbish is now the UK’s biggest litter problem, with cigarette litter now found on 78% of our streets."

Today, working in partnership with eleven local authorities and Tesco (which is selling a portable ashtray called Ashcan), Encams is launching its latest campaign to encourage smokers to "bin their butt". According to their website:

The striking campaign ... aims to drive home the scale of cigarette litter as a problem and encourage smokers to dispose of their dog ends properly. The eye-catching advertising will be seen across England on bus shelters, phone boxes, lamp post banners in Tesco car parks, and in washrooms and on beer mats in pubs, bars and clubs.

I have no problem with a war on litter. Indeed, Forest is to launch its own 'Responsible Smoking' campaign which will include a plea to smokers to take greater care when disposing of their fag ends. The difference is that instead of hectoring smokers we will urge local councils and businesses to do more to help smokers behave responsibly - by providing more cigarette bins.

A noticeable absentee from Encams' list of partners is the consumer. Instead, this taxpayer-funded organisation has opted to bully and ridicule smokers. Borrowing heavily from a similar campaign in Australia (where the message was "Don't be a tosser"), the new campaign is thought to feature the slogan "Don't be a dirty chucker" (geddit?).*

No surprise there. Some time ago I attended an Encams meeting in Westminster that was attended by MPs and other interested parties. (Sorry, let me rephrase that. I invited myself.) I expressed support for an anti-litter campaign but made clear that Forest did not appreciate heavy-handed threats of fines if people are caught, absent-mindedly dropping cigarette butts. Not should smokers be singled out ahead of people who drop sweet wrappers, chewing gum or anything else.

Despite our best efforts, we were quickly excluded from the consultation process which was being driven by a woman who (surprise, surprise) had been a leading anti-smoking campaigner in Australia. Although she has returned Down Under, her influence is there for all to see.

The truth is, Encams' latest initiative is part of a much bigger campaign - the "denormalisation" of smoking. As far as they're concerned, smokers are just a bunch of tossers who need to be whipped into line.

* I was given a sneak preview of the proposed posters a few weeks ago but neither the posters nor the slogans are currently featured on Encams' website, which is an odd way to launch a campaign. Watch this space.

PS. The leading story on the Encams home page says that "London is bidding to become the cleanest city on earth in the run-up to the 2012 Olympic Games". Cue a crackdown on smoking anywhere in London prior to and during the Games?

Update on Monday, April 7, 2008 by Simon Clark

The new campaign is to be launched tomorrow (Tuesday) in Trafalgar Square when Encams will unveil a 30ft high cigarette butt. Oh, and the slogan is not "Don't be a dirty chucker" but "Are you a dirty chucker?". Charming.

Update on Monday, April 7, 2008 by Simon Clark

I have just received an advance copy of Keep Britain Tidy's press release. It's even more offensive than I anticipated. However, it's embargoed until midnight and I respect embargoes so you'll have to wait until the morning to read it - along with Forest's response. (Not sure how much coverage the campaign will get. I have just called the Press Association and BBC News Online and neither seem too interested. We'll see.)

A musician's guide to smoking in Europe

Currently on tour, Joe Jackson (left) has written THIS smoker's guide to Europe for The Free Society blog. Part two on Wednesday.

Intermission

I am currently enjoying a short break in Northumberland. This blog will be resumed in due course!

Boris and the BNP

I have removed several comments from the Boris Johnson post below. I respect people's opinions and I have no wish to censor them, but a line was crossed when people began to talk about an issue - immigration and race - that had absolutely nothing to do with the subject of the post.

For the record, I applaud Boris Johnson's statement condemning the BNP and rejecting the second preference votes of their supporters (report HERE). This is an open forum (within reason) but I abhor racism and fascism and I will not tolerate posts that are deliberately racist. There are other forums where you can express such views. This is not one of them.

PS. This is NOT an invitation for a debate about immigration on this blog, so don't even go there!!