Former MSP joins The Free Society

I may have mentioned this before but now it's official. Brian Monteith, former member of the Scottish Parliament, has been appointed policy director of The Free Society. Brian will advise on strategy and implementation, with special emphasis on ways to tackle the bully state.

For eight years (1999-2007) Monteith was one of the Scottish Parliament’s more outspoken and colourful members. He was Tory spokesman for education, culture and sport, and then finance and public service reform, before becoming an independent member in 2005. He was also Convenor of the Parliament’s powerful Public Accounts (Audit) Committee for four years.

In 2006 he announced he wouldn't stand again as an MSP, saying he “would rather return to commerce than be a one-man band swimming against the treacly tide of collectivism in the Scottish Parliament”.

A former spokesman for Forest, Brian writes regularly for several newspapers and has a weekly column in the Edinburgh Evening News. Writing for The Free Society website, to be launched on Monday (February 4), he says:

Thank goodness for The Free Society. The idea of the nanny state where nanny – who of course knows best – can attempt to shape our lives in our ‘best’ interests is long past. It is now the bully state.  That’s why this campaign is so important. It is long overdue and I look forward to helping it provide solace, inspiration, leadership and a generous helping of common sense and humour.

Brian is currently writing a book about the bully state to be published by The Free Society later this year. If you have any examples, anecdotes or stories you would like him to consider, email info@thefreesociety.org or comment below.

Seat belts - a little loss of liberty

Today is the 25th anniversary of the introduction of the law that made it compulsory to wear seat belts in cars. I know this because yesterday afternoon I got a call from the Jeremy Vine Show on Radio 2 asking what I thought about the issue.

To be honest, I rarely give it much thought, although the health lobby sometimes use the example of selt belts to molify opponents of public smoking bans. "Oh," they chirp, "people were against compulsory seat belts but everyone accepts them now. The same will happen with smoking bans."

There is a big difference, of course. Wearing a seat belt, especially since the introduction of inertia reel belts in the Seventies (ie the ones that allow you considerable movement), is not a major inconvenience. In fact it's no inconvenience at all, so I am perfectly happy to belt up because it doesn't have a negative impact on the quality of my life.

If I stop and think about it, however, I do object to the fact that if I choose not to clunk click every trip I could be stopped and fined. Whether I wear a seatbelt should be no business of the state. If I am in an accident and smash my head on the dashboard or the steering wheel or, worse, get thrown out of the car because I am not wearing one, that's a risk that adults should be allowed to take.

(Children are a different matter. Always err on the side of caution, I say, although I wonder sometimes how the baby boom generation ever survived childhood, what with the absence of seat belts and all those adults puffing away in their presence.)

It could be argued that being forced to wear seat belts was a small step towards the modern bully state. We meekly accepted what politicians and campaigners told us - that tens of thousands of lives would be saved every year - and assumed that would be an end to it.

Now, 25 years later, it's compulsory to wear seat belts in the back as well as the front of the car. Failure to buckle up in the back of a cab is also an offence (although I don't know anyone who does). Perhaps we should all wear  straitjackets and be done with it.

Allen meets his match

It's not often that anyone gets the better of Five Live Drive presenter Peter Allen, one of the best broadcasters in the business. Yesterday, however, Allen met his match when he interviewed licensee Anita Adams who runs two pubs in York city centre and is a member of the Federation of Licensed Victuallers Associations.

Anita was a breath of fresh air - feisty without being overbearing or aggressive. Not only did she respond brilliantly to the proposal by "Liberal" Democrat MP Greg Mulholland who says pubs, bars and restaurants should be forced to sell smaller glasses of wine (story HERE). She quickly moved on - before Allen could interrogate her - to make a number of other points, including the impact of the smoking ban and other factors on the licensed trade which is losing pubs at an alarming rate.

Unable to get a word in without being shot down in flames, there was only one thing Allen could do. He very graciously raised the white flag, a beaten man.

Lack of judgement could cost us dearly

There's little I can add to the Derek Conway story that hasn't been said elsewhere - although David Cameron has gone up in my estimation. A free society needs a strong, occasionally ruthless, leader. Not only did Cameron act correctly in withdrawing the party whip (effectively sacking a popular colleague), he acted very quickly. I know opponents are trying to say he prevaricated for 24 hours but that's nit-picking. Compare that with Brown's response to Peter Hain's predicament, and before that his dithering over an election that never was, and there's no comparison.

Conway isn't the only politician to come out of this badly. According to today's Telegraph:

The Daily Telegraph has established that at least 38 other MPs are currently employing members of their immediate families. The Speaker of the House of Commons has blocked the disclosure of information about their employment.

The Committee on Standards in Public Life is now poised to launch an inquiry into MPs’ expenses although it has emerged that Jack Straw, when leader of the House, blocked a similar move last year on the basis it would embarrass backbench MPs.

Note the use of the word "blocked". Twice. I don't have a problem with people - including government - keeping some things secret. It's a question of judgement, and in this case the Speaker and the former leader of the House have demonstrated appalling judgement.

Taxpayers are entitled to know how their money is being spent. If MPs wish to employ members of their family, fine, but they must be open about it. We are entitled to know how much they are being paid and there has to be evidence that the work is being done. Some call it "transparency" (how I hate that word), others call it "freedom of information". I call it common sense.

Report HERE.

Britney-style ad banned

OK, it's a bit gratuitous and hardly the most sophisticated advertisement I've ever seen, but did it have to be banned?

The Ryanair ad which showed a Britney Spears-style model posing in a classroom has been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority who say it is "irresponsible".

As it happens, I don't think Ryanair will be too bothered. The company can save money by pulling the ad - and in return they gets lots of free publicity. Job done.

Full story HERE.

Cat among the pigeons

Last week I reported that Roger Helmer (MEP and chairman of the Freedom Association) had been invited to lock horns with ASH before a so-called "People's Jury". Roger has now written about the event on his own blog. He begins:

Last Wednesday (Jan 23rd) saw me in Shoreditch Town Hall, at a "People's Jury", organised by ASH (the anti-smoking lobby group), on the question "What more should the government do to reduce smoking?".  I rather threw the cat amongst the pigeons by arguing that it had done too much already.

And concludes:

"It's time for the government to back off, and leave the citizens with at least a little elbow-room to make their own choices and live their own lives."

Click HERE for the full blogpost.

Joe Jackson IS citizen sane

The Free Society website will go live next Monday, February 4. This morning, one of the first articles to be commissioned for the site arrived in my inbox. The author, Joe Jackson, is an old friend of Forest and I am thrilled that he is publicly supporting the new project. The article begins:

As I write this, I'm busy promoting my new album Rain; sitting in hotel rooms or record company offices all day doing interviews and answering the same questions over and over again. It can be interesting, though, when it forces me to examine my own motivations in ways I never did while I was actually writing the songs. It's as though the journalists hold up a mirror, and what I see in that mirror can be surprising.

For one thing, you're supposed to be an 'angry young man' at 20 and 'mellow' at 50, but I'm more angry and rebellious than ever. Don't get me wrong; I don't walk around with a black cloud over my head. I enjoy my life. But age and experience have provided me with more and more things to be angry about.

You'll have to wait until next week to read the full article, but I can reveal that it was prompted by 'Citizen Sane', a song on the new album which is released tomorrow. Recorded in Berlin, where he now lives, Rain features ten new songs and is reviewed HERE.

Why politics is pants

Fascinating though it has been to read about Jeremy Paxman's problems with his M&S pants, the Telegraph put the matter in perspective with THIS suitably ascerbic profile. That said, I would have preferred the Telegraph to ignore the "story" altogether. Here's why:

I'm all for a bit of banter, a little note of levity, but when there are so many issues that deserve proper debate and investigation, doesn't it strike you as odd that Britain's most famous political interviewer should make the news not for a challenging, one-on-one interview with a leading politician, but because he has chosen (in his own time, presumably) to complain about the condition of his underwear.

A conspiracy theorist might conclude that this was as good a way as any to deflect attention from Gordon Brown's problems - Northern Rock, Peter Hain et al. But I'm not a conspiracy theorist.

On a related issue, I have been giving The Spectator a great deal of thought. You see, I have bought the magazine every week since 1975 when I was still at school. A creature of habit, I like to buy it on a Friday afternoon and head to the nearest coffee shop where I can immerse myself for an hour or two.

But not any more. These days I can read all that's worth reading in five minutes. Each week I should be able to thrill to the sound of knives being sharpened and blades being twisted into the heart of this illiberal, intolerant regime.

Instead, there are some weeks when there is hardly ANY politics in The Spectator. Check it out. Even revered commentators like Matthew Parris do everything they can not to mention politics at all. The Spectator Diary? Vanity publishing at its worst. Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody? Ugh!! Elsewhere, regular columnists fall over themselves to write about the one thing they love more than anything else - themselves. "Me! Me! Me!" their columns shriek. "Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!"

Above its masthead The Spectator currently boasts: CURRENT AFFAIRS MAGAZINE OF THE YEAR. Who on earth gave it this ill-judged title? Did they actually read the magazine or were they seduced by the circulation (the largest in its long and distinguished history) and the glossy advertisements for expensive watches and luxury cars?

I don't want agitprop. I want some semblance of style - elegant articles written with wit and humour - and an eclectic range of subjects including the arts and popular culture. But a political magazine has to have substance otherwise it's an empty vessel devoid of purpose. You can't even say The Spectator is attractive to the eye. The New Statesman - and I never thought I would say this - has improved out of all recognition and visually makes its rival look dull and one-dimensional.

The rot started a decade or so ago and it's got worse and worse. Current editor Matthew D'Ancona seems far more interested in writing about Led Zeppelin and Joy Division. Perhaps he should apply for a job at Q magazine. This week the magazine introduced a "new occasional column on technology and the web". Why? My advice: save yourself £2.95 a week and check out the magazine's far livelier website (HERE). Or buy The Week.

On television Newsnight, our premier current affairs programme, is almost as bad. Reports by political editor Michael Crick often say more about him than the subject he is "investigating". Who does he think he is? Dom Joly? As for our old friend Jeremy Paxman - I'm sorry, Jeremy, you used to enliven my evenings with your forensic grilling of the political elite. Now, like The Spectator, you're just pants.

A very British protest

Following a meeting at the ICA in London yesterday, I took advantage of the bright winter sunshine and walked to Green Park station via Lower Regent Street and Piccadilly. As I approached The Ritz Hotel in Piccadilly I couldn't help noticing, on the other side of the road, the West End branch of Aeroflot, the state-owned Russian airline. Twenty-four years ago this very office was the scene of a most unlikely demonstration. I should know because I was there. In fact, it was my idea.

At the time I was the British representative for a Frankfurt-based human rights group whose primary interest was supporting Russian dissidents and re-uniting German families separated by the Berlin Wall. In 1984 the most prominent Soviet dissident was Andrei Sakharov. Dr Sakharov, a Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1975, had been exiled to the closed city of Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod) after criticising the Soviet war on Afghanistan.

It seemed a good idea to demonstrate on his behalf. The Soviet embassy in Kensington was too well guarded so we decided to stage our protest at the next best thing - the London office of Aeroflot. There were just eight, possibly ten, of us, but everything was meticulously planned. We did our homework, noted the big plate glass window at the front of the building, and decided that the best thing to do was to demonstrate inside the building where we could nevertheless be seen by passers-by and the massed ranks of journalists and broadcasters who, naturally, would be there to record every second of this hugely important event.

We hired Soviet military uniforms from a theatrical costume shop in Camden (recommended by a friend who worked for the BBC); we made posters and banners; we even hired a beaten-up Ford Transit (no windows, no seats) to get us to our destination - in uniform - without being seen. We were deadly serious but we were also crying with laughter as we crouched in the back of that van as it crawled up Whitehall, past Trafalgar Square and on to Piccadilly.

At 11.00am precisely two "customers" walked nonchantly into the London office of Aeroflot and sidled up to the counter. The "plan" was to keep staff occupied with questions like "How do I get to Tokyo via Moscow?" and "Is it cheaper to fly to Washington via Leningrad?". It worked. Staff were sufficiently distracted they failed to notice - until it was too late - that a slightly larger group of people had also entered the building and were now standing in the window waving placards while bellowing their support for someone they had never met and knew very little about.

The police were called, but here's the funny bit. Today you might expect a crack team of armed officers to be on the scene within minutes. In 1984, however, it took at least half an hour for the Met's finest to come to Aeroflot's aid. To be honest, we were slightly disappointed. We wanted the police there pronto to give the protest a bit of an edge. Thirty minutes is a long time. We were beginning to feel a bit stupid. This wasn't going to plan.

But there was a reason for the Met's tardiness. A police officer told me later that when the airline rang 999 Aeroflot staff assured them there was no cause for concern because "They [the demonstrators] seem like very nice people"!!! How British is that?!

Postscript: the demo wasn't a total waste of time. Channel 4 News did in fact send a camera crew and we were featured on the evening news. Flushed with success, several members of our team went on to bigger and better things. One became a hotshot PR director at a leading London hospital; another became a journalist and currently works for the London Evening Standard; a third became an influential apparatchik within the Conservative party; a fourth is a prominent libertarian and an outspoken critic of the EU. And Sakharov? He was allowed to return to Moscow in 1986. In March 1989 he was elected to the new parliament and co-led the democratic opposition. Nine months later, in December 1989, he died of a heart attack, aged 68.

Warm welcome for smokers

Talking of smokers welcome (HERE), I spent Wednesday evening at Boisdale, spiritual home of The Free Society. It's a curious thing, but despite the ban there are moments when you feel like an outsider if you DON'T smoke at Boisdale.

I was having dinner in the Macdonald Bar (above) with a group of 10 people. At the end of each course, the smokers would get up and climb the stairs to Boisdale's £40k roof terrace (or "cigar terrace" as it's officially known). After a few minutes the non-smokers would look around, note the empty seats and the sudden hiatus, and join them.

On Wednesday - my fifth or sixth visit since the terrace opened in November - it was colder and a little windier than I had previously experienced, but wrapped up in tartan blankets (so thoughtfully supplied) and allowed to simmer gently under the excellent patio heaters, the terrace was still the place to be.

As a non-smoker, however, I did feel a bit of an interloper, as if I was gatecrashing someone else's party. To enjoy the full experience, and the unspoken sense of camararderie, I really must take up smoking properly - if only at Boisdale.

Open to debate

Commenting on THIS post, Struggling Spirit suggests that "big questions" don't seem to be asked by politicians any more. "Where have the big ethical debates gone?" he asks.

It's true that many politicians seem more interested in micro management, telling us how to live our lives with a million petty rules and regulations, but he's wrong to think that big ethical debates no longer exist. The problem is, they tend not to take place within parliament or the mainstream media which prefers news and soundbites.

One of the best examples of intelligent debate is the annual Battle of Ideas which is organised by the Institute of Ideas, a close relative of the online magazine Spiked! . The IoI and Spiked! emerged some years ago from the wreckage of LM (formerly Living Marxism) magazine.

Claire Fox, director of the IoI, is a good friend of mine. A regular panellist on Radio 4's The Moral Maze (another forum for ethical debate), she has chaired or spoken at numerous Forest events. I hope to persuade her to write a regular column for The Free Society website. She, in turn, is trying to persuade Forest/The Free Society to sponsor an event at this year's Battle of Ideas (1-2 November). Negotiations, as they say, continue.

Smokers welcome

Smokers Welcome is a website that allows you to search for pubs, clubs, bars and restaurants that have outdoor areas that can accommodate smokers. I was going to add "in reasonable comfort" but this isn't always the case. Sometimes the "outdoor area" turns out to be a car park. The better ones offer seating, heating and some cover from the elements.

Established by Imperial, Gallaher and British American Tobacco last year, the site features over 8,000 venues and is adding to that database all the time. Now, instead of relying exclusively on proprietors to post information about their business, the site has a section that allows customers to recommend a particular venue.

There are also plans for a section on hotels. I am delighted to hear this because Forest gets regular calls and correspondence from people who want information about hotels that offer a choice of smoking and no-smoking rooms and we were about to commission some research in this area.

It's a time-consuming job so if you have recent experience of smoker-friendly hotels (especially hotel groups) please let us know.

Trial by jury

A curious "event" takes place in London this morning. ASH has commissioned Dr Foster Intelligence to conduct a citizen's jury (sic) on the pros and cons of further tobacco controls. The areas that ASH wish to consider are:

• Tighter controls on smuggling
• Increasing tobacco taxation beyond inflation
• Restricting marketing further including plain packaging and banning product display
• Banning sales through vending machines
• Increasing access to smoking cessation services
• Making nicotine replacement therapy more widely available
• Increasing "social marketing" campaigns to encourage smokers to quit and discourage young people from starting
• Promoting voluntary "smokefree homes" especially in homes where children live
• Banning smoking while driving
• Banning smoking in front of children

The "jury" will hear from two speakers - Deborah Arnott, director of ASH, who will promote the case for further tobacco control, and Roger Helmer, MEP and chairman of The Freedom Association (above left), who will counter many of her arguments. He will, I'm sure, do a great job. (I know for a fact that he's been very well briefed!!)

A tolerant non-smoker who addressed the Forest reception at last year's Conservative party conference, Roger believes that action against smokers is now a challenge to personal liberty. Our job is to persuade more politicians who share his - and our - view to speak out.

Update on Thursday, January 24, 2008 by Simon Clark

Roger reports that the event went "just fine". Details to follow.

Oscar nominee speaks out

Congratulations to Ronald Harwood who was yesterday nominated for an Oscar for his adapted screenplay of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. If he wins it would be his second Academy Award - the first was for The Pianist in 2002.

As it happens, Ronald is a member of Forest's Supporters Council. He first came to our attention in 2005 when he cancelled plans to direct a play in Winnipeg because of Canada's "draconian" anti-smoking laws. A few months later he attended a private Forest dinner (other guests included David Hockney) and in January 2006 gave us THIS interview.

Last week (before his Oscar nomination) he agreed to contribute an article to the new Free Society website. I have it in front of me. It begins:

We live in an age of extremism. It manifests itself in every walk of life – religion, most obviously, but also in politics because politicians, our elected representatives, have a savage impulse to control and they have taken this impulse to extremes.

To read the full article, click HERE week beginning Monday February 4. Bookmark the page now.

The Free Society - the countdown continues

When The Free Society website is launched on February 4 it will feature a combination of news, comment and articles. Initial contributors will include old friends such as Joe Jackson, Claire Fox (director of the Institute of Ideas), Oscar-winning playwright Ronald Harwood, Times journalist Simon Hills and former MSP Brian Monteith.

As the site develops we intend to commission articles from a variety journalists, bloggers and political campaigners. We also hope to feature two or three regular columnists whose writing will become synonymous with the site. The site will be edited like a magazine (apart from readers' comments, which - hopefully - can remain unmoderated).

Unsolicited articles are welcome but publication is not guaranteed and articles may be edited. If you would like to contribute an article email me HERE and we will send you a style sheet.