Understanding freedom

"In order to defend my freedom to smoke," writes James Harkin on today's Free Society blog, "we need to admit the shallowness and the emptiness of my freedom to smoke compared with other, more substantial freedoms.

"Sometimes," he adds, "when you want to fight for freedom, you have to hold up the banner and join battle against freedom. That is only way in which the smoker, banished to the furtive margins of the city like a gay man in the 1950s, is going to become a emblem of something more lasting than his packet of fags."

Full article HERE. Discuss.

Liberal paternalism and the bully state

This evening I shall be at Balliol College, Oxford, addressing members of the Oxford Hayek Society. Inspired by my friend Julian Le Grand (left, HERE), I shall be talking about "Liberal paternalism and the bully state". If you have any personal examples of the bully state (other than the smoking ban) drop me a note NOW and I'll try and squeeze them into my speech. Deadline: 6.00pm

Thought crime night - coming soon!

If you've never heard of  The Manifesto Club, read on ...

Next week the club is hosting a free speech event in London. "Thought Crime Night" invites supporters of free speech to discuss the state of artistic freedom in Britain today. Speakers including political blogger Paul Staines (aka Guido Fawkes); novelist and journalist Hari Kunzru; rap artist Aki Nawaz; and Brendan O'Neill, editor of the online magazine spiked. The evening will also feature readings by Tim Black, staff writer for spiked, from literature that has been banned over the past century.

The Manifesto Club's "Thought Crime Night" is on Tuesday February 26. Venue: Corbet Place Bar, 15 Hanbury St, London E1 6QR. Doors open at 7.00pm. The event begins at 8.00 and the bar is open until 11.00. It's free to members; non-members pay £5 on the door, but everyone is welcome. Full details HERE.

Note: Tim Black has written THIS article for The Free Society blog. Comments welcome.

From Russia with love (sorry!)

It's 26 years since I visited Moscow and I assume it's a very different place to the drab Soviet city I experienced in 1982. (It was so awful that when we left, and the British Airways' pilot announced that we were clear of Soviet airspace, the news was greeted with wild and sustained applause.)

What won't have changed (in spite of global warming) is the extreme cold that grips the place for months on end. It was April when I visited the city, which is a three-hour flight from London, but the severe arctic temperature, especially on our first night when we walked the few hunded yards from our hotel to Red Square, is something I shall never forget.

Anyway, the reason I mention it is that Taking Liberties has reached a little part of Russia that will be forever England. I am talking about The Last Ditch, an excellent blog by ex-pat Tom Paine who ironically (some may feel) writes from Moscow about the "death of liberty in Britain". 

I have added The Last Ditch to our blogroll on The Free Society. Warmly (no pun intended) recommended.

Monteith attacks "lifestyle fascists"

News travels. Writing from Botswana, Brian Monteith has some strong words to say about the proposal to introduce smoking permits. The former MSP, who is policy director of The Free Society, makes the point that:

A smoking permit is not about winning the argument against the freedom to smoke, it’s about persecuting smokers in full gaze of the public, it’s about de-normalising smoking by making smokers pariahs ... And of course, it’s not just about smokers, it will then be about drinkers, drivers, bungee jumpers – anybody the lifestyle fascists wish to control.

Full article HERE.

In the name of democracy, sign here

Rarely a week goes by without a request to sign or promote some new petition or other. Most of them have been posted on the 10 Downing Street website and I always decline. I'm sorry, but I have no intention of playing No 10's silly little game. It's an 18 carat gimmick, and I'm surprised so many people waste their time.

Another thing that bothers me is the sheer number of petitions, many of them on the same subject. (The smoking ban, for example.) What is the point? If you are going to sign a petition, at least sign one that's clear and concise. For example:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to amend the smoking ban to allow a limited number of smoking licenses to be obtained by owners of pubs, restaurants and clubs from their local council.

As I write that petition has 2,497 signatures. No-one in government will look at it until it has hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of signatures, and even they will probably ignore it, but if you want to sign a serious smoking-related petition that's the one I'd choose. Click HERE.

On the other hand, if you fancy being a little more subversive, you could sign THIS petition. It currently has just 35 "supporters" but they include the wonderfully named 'I LOVE BEING AN EXTREMIST ASSHOLE TOO'. (Well, it made me laugh.) It would be even funnier if we could get several hundred people to sign it using equally inventive names.

Over to you.

Green is the new red

Writing on The Free Society blog today, Simon Hills (associate editor of The Times Magazine) warns that "Climate change is a catch-all for more taxes, more quangoes and more government jobs. Just as communism was about the functionary rather than the proletariat, so green politics are empowering a whole new generation of busybodies."

In London, says Simon, "Red Ken Livingstone has become Green Ken Livingstone." Unfortunately, he adds:

Green Ken and Red Ken are one and the same without the need to mention the word – let’s whisper it – socialism. Ken might not be able to stop the City Boys from larging it up at Spearmint Rhino, but by God he’s going to make sure they go there by bicycle. The politics are the same, it’s just the colour that has changed.

Full article HERE. Comments welcome.

Animal magic

I have just been interviewed on the 2CC Mike Jeffreys breakfast radio programme in Canberra, Australia, where it is 8.05 on Monday morning. (We are eleven hours behind.)

They wanted to interview me about the proposed smoking licence. But that's not why I am mentioning it. As I was waiting to go on I heard the traffic reporter say (I promise you I'm not making this up):

"Expect delays. There's a kangaroo on the road."

Be honest, that's not something you hear very often on Five Live Travel.

Senior health advisor agrees with Forest!

In September 2004 I was invited, with the late Lord Harris, chairman of Forest, to a meeting with John Reid, then Health Secretary. Apart from Reid, there were four other people present, who I took to be civil servants and advisors. One of them was Julian Le Grand (left) who has been making the news with his plan for a £10 permit for smokers.

Ralph Harris and I began the 30-minute meeting by outlining our objections to a ban on smoking in all enclosed public places. We spoke for five or six minutes, focussing on the issue of secondhand smoke. We highlighted the major studies and concluded that the evidence could not possibly justify a comprehensive ban. (Note: the meeting took place BEFORE Reid announced his plan to ban smoking in all workplaces except private members' clubs and pubs that don't serve food.)

When we finished, Reid turned to his senior advisor and asked: "What do you think?" Julian Le Grand didn't hesitate. "I agree with them," he said, nodding in our direction. Reid thought for a moment, then said (I paraphrase): "Yes, I've always been pretty dubious about passive smoking."

Less encouragingly, he went on to say that the threat of "passive smoking" was not the reason the government wanted further restrictions on public smoking. The real reason, he explained, was to encourage smokers to quit so the government could meet its target of reducing the smoking rate to 21 per cent by 2010. (That is why, despite our best efforts, the issue of passive smoking remains a sideshow to the main event.)

I am not aware of any official record of that conversation because it was a private meeting and Ralph and I felt honourbound to respect the confidential nature of our discussion. Sadly (to the best of my knowledge), neither John Reid nor his senior advisor ever went public with their true thoughts on secondhand smoke. 

Until last night.

On Radio Five's Stephen Nolan Show I reminded Le Grand of what he had said. He claimed not to remember but added, helpfully: "I don't actually think the arguments on passive smoking are all that strong."

So there we have it. Senior government advisor on health says:  "I don't think the arguments on passive smoking are all that strong." Who would have thought it?

PS. In interviews yesterday Professor Le Grand repeated the anti-smoking mantra that 70 per cent of smokers wish to quit. It's a figure that comes up all the time and it came up at our meeting in 2004. As I recall, John Reid was quick to dismiss it. In his opinion, the true figure was nearer 30 per cent. Now, who would you believe? A middle-class academic in his smoke-free ivory tower, or a former nicotine addict whose constituency has one of the highest smoking rates in the country?

Permission to smoke, master?

A senior government advisor has proposed that anyone who wants to buy tobacco should have to buy a permit to do so. It would cost in the region of £10, it would have to be renewed annually, and "acquiring it could be made difficult if the forms were sufficiently complex". Full story HERE.

I have my own thoughts on the idea - which I shall be sharing (expletives deleted) with listeners to Radio Five Live's Drive programme and a number of other radio stations this afternoon. I would be very interested to read your comments.

Update on Friday, February 15, 2008 by Simon Clark

See BBC report HERE. The Daily Mail has also followed it up HERE. I was supposed to be on Five Live Drive at 4.15. This was moved to 6.50 but the interview has now been pulled because of scheduling difficulties. (The programme is broadcasting live from London and Lahore.) Oh well, I've spent most of the afternoon in a BBC studio talking to various local radio stations and - fingers crossed - I should be on News 24, the World Service and Five Live (different programme) later this evening.

A very British disease

If you think surveillance cameras, listening devices and so on are a worldwide phenomenon, read today's main feature on The Free Society blog. Last weekend Dr Eamonn Butler, director of the Adam Smith Institute,  took some American relatives to Ely Cathedral. On the way, he writes, they passed through an ‘average speed check’ system.

Our car was photographed at the beginning and the end, and our registration number logged by number-recognition software ... So the authorities knew exactly where we all were, and when. And we would not have escaped scrutiny by going on the train or by bus, because they all have surveillance cameras too. And if we had walked, we would probably have shown up on at least two dozen of the four million CCTV cameras around Britain.

Once inside the cathedral they were asked, quite reasonably, for a donation. Eamonn was asked if he would like it to qualify for gift aid.

I gave my postcode and house number, and in an instant my name and those of my family flashed up on the teller’s screen. My US relatives were shocked that we should be so minutely catalogued and easily accessible. Given the incongruity of this high-tech intrusion happening in an eleventh-century stone vaulted cathedral porch, I must say I was surprised too.

Full article HERE. Comments welcome.

Just fancy that!

Interesting article in today's Times by the paper's excellent and (in my exerience) open-minded health editor Nigel Hawkes. According to a new study, "Smoking in pregnancy is far less damaging to the unborn baby than commonly supposed. If women give up smoking by the fifth month of pregnancy, the effect on the baby is negligible, the study found. And even if they do not, the effect on birthweight is surprisingly small."

The study - by Emma Tominey, a research assistant at the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics - "also shows that the worst effects are suffered by women from the poorest backgrounds, because in their case smoking is often combined with other unhealthy activities, such as poor diet and consumption of alcohol".

Full story HERE.

Watch these blogs!

Look out for our new animated ad banner which will appear on the following blogs - Guido Fawkes, Iain Dale's Diary, Political Betting and Labour Home - over the next couple of weeks.

Ronnie H bites back

You can't keep a good man down. Bafta award-winning screenwriter Ronnie Harwood has reacted to THIS post with the following riposte:

Please tell Mr ..... that I think he is an intellectual giant otherwise how else could he be an assistant editor of the most politically correct newspaper in Western Europe? Presumably he believes everything that politicians and doctors say. Presumably he believes that they never exaggerate to make a point? What a mind he must have. How enviable.

I suppose he has investigated everything from cash for honours to climate change, from the dodgy dossier to MPs' expense claims. Has he investigated the smoking statistics? And will he answer my question - how many people does he know who have killed another human being under the influence of a cigarette? Please ask him to show me a death certificate where the cause of death is given as 'passive smoking' or 'second-hand smoke'?

And please ask him to remember Lady Churchill, the heaviest passive smoker in history. She died aged 92. I'll settle for that.

This could run and run.

Note: I haven't revealed who our Guardian contact is because I'm not sure that his original email was intended for public consumption. In due course, perhaps ...

Beware the sanitisation of public debate

A timely article by Claire Fox, director of the Institute of Ideas, on The Free Society blog. Reflecting on the fate that has befallen the Archbishop of Canterbury in recent days, she notes how Dr Rowan Williams has joined a long list of public figures, from DNA pioneer Professor James Watson to TV's David Bellamy to Pope Benedict XVI who have recently been denounced and told – YOU CAN’T SAY THAT. 

The problem is less big government, or the nanny state, and more an informal narrowing of what all of us can say in the public sphere ... We have to defend free speech by asserting that we can say that, we will say that, and no amount of media hysteria or moral outrage will silence us. If we don’t, we can expect a free society to go up in smoke.

Full article HERE.