Sky - taking liberties or taking the piss?

Just before Christmas I ordered a digital Sky+ box. (That's the thing that allows you to record hundreds of hours of television directly on to a hard disk.) I arranged for it to be installed on Monday December 31, between 9.00 and 1.00pm.

At 8.30 on Monday I got a phone call from the engineer to say he would arrive between 1.00 and 4.00pm. Having booked a morning appointment this was, frankly, a little inconvenient. OK, I said. See you later.

At 3.00pm (I was by now at work in Cambridge) my wife took a call from the engineer who told her he couldn't, in fact, come at all. When we sought an explanation from Sky "Customer Services", we were given two explanations: (a) the engineer's wife had been involved in a car accident, and (b) his daughter was seriously ill and had to go to hospital. Fair enough, if true. But when we asked how this explained his non-appearance in the morning, the Sky woman replied, sarcastically, "I will pass on your sympathies" - and put the phone down!

Eventually a new installation date was arranged: Friday January 4 between 8.00 and 5.00. For a second time, we arranged for someone to be in all day. On Thursday a letter arrived promising that an engineer would call before 9.00 to confirm the estimated time of arrival. (Sky, I should add, make great play of the fact that they know their customers have busy lives, hence the option of a morning or afternoon appointment.)

Needless to say, no such call was received. At 9.30 I rang "Customer Services" and was told that the engineer would come between 1.00 and 4.00pm. I then popped into Cambridge leaving the house empty. When I got back (at 12.30) there was a message on my answering machine. The engineer had come at 11.10, found no-one at home, and unilaterally cancelled the installation.

Several calls to "Customer Services" later I am no nearer getting a Sky+ box - or my money (including installation charge) back. I have been a Sky customer for ten years but I am tempted to tell them to go hang themselves (or worse). Would they care? Of course not. And I would be cutting my nose off to spite my face because they have a semi-monopoly on the one service I use regularly - live coverage of Premier League football matches.

Fortunately, there are alternatives to Sky+ including BT Vision. In the meantime, if only to get it off my chest, I'll say this. This is a company that - apparently - doesn't give a hoot about "Customer Services". Deliberately or otherwise, their employees and sub-contractors are taking the piss. The quicker we break their strangehold over our viewing habits the better. Personally, I can't wait.

Joe Jackson - the interview

I mentioned, a few days ago, that Joe Jackson has a new album out later this month. Today, in the Daily Telegraph, "Joe Jackson, songwriter and contrarian, talks to Robert Sandall about smoking, Berlin, and his new album". Full interview HERE.

Name of the game

How typical is that? Having finally been featured in one of those ubiquitous "Quotes of the Year" lists (compiled, in this instance, by the Daily Telegraph's Spy column), they got my name wrong!! It's even more galling because, had they got it right, I could have basked in the company of (among others) Brian Sewell, Michael Buerk, David Cameron, Zandra Rhodes, Ann Widdecombe, Daryl Hannah, Elle Macpherson and Hugh Grant.

Here's the "offending" item:

Simon Richards [sic], director of the smokers' group Forest, on BBC health fascists banning Sherlock Holmes from smoking a pipe in their new dramatisation: "How is he going to solve all those dastardly crimes if he's denied the opportunity to think, ponder and reflect while lighting his briar? Fictional detectives need their nicotine."

Full article HERE. Oh well, there's always next year.

Birthday girl

Hilda Newson has just celebrated her 109th birthday. She told her local newspaper: "I do not take any pills or drugs and still play the tambourine. My favourite meals are roast dinners and chicken and I enjoy a fruit juice with my meals. I used to smoke 40 cigarettes a day but gave it up 24 years ago when I was 85." Full story HERE.

Cigarettes and cocaine

I first saw Squeeze in 1978 when they shared the bill with Eddie and the Hot Rods and a band called Radio Stars at the Music Hall, Aberdeen. Three years later I caught them at London's Hammersmith Palais. I've also seen them play Hammermith Odeon (1985 and 1989), the Royal Albert Hall (1987), and the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow (1993).

I missed the recent reunion tour (which didn't feature Jools Holland) but, to make up, I have been reading their former pianist's amusing autobiography, Barefaced Lies & Boogie-Woogie Boasts. If you get past the awful title, it's a quite a good read, and on page 210 Jools turns the spotlight, briefly, on cigarettes and cocaine:

There are lots of things that are very bad for you but they tend to have at least one or two good aspects to them. Cigarettes, for instance, smell great, look great, feel great, the packaging is great, you look more glamorous with a cigarette - everything about smoking is great apart from the fact that it kills you after disabling you horribly. That's the bad bit. Obviously there has to be a good bit, or nobody would smoke, would they?

Now, with cocaine, I actually think the truth of it is that everything about it is bad. It's hard to see any positive aspects to it at all, other than the ability it gives you to talk non-stop rubbish to your friends or to people of a similar disposition. You hear about drug-fuelled orgies but, if cocaine increases the desire for such activities, it doesn't help your ability to engage in them ... I'm no drugs tsar but I wouldn't advise anybody to touch it in the first place.

This is as serious as this gentle, rambling (and surprisingly discreet) book gets - but I thought you might like to comment.

Forest - 1.3 million visitors in 2007

I have just received the latest stats for the Forest website. I won't bore you with every detail. However, I can reveal that in 2007 the site attracted over one million visitors (1,316,179 to be exact).

As you would expect, the largest number of visitors was in July, following the introduction of the smoking ban in England. Monday July 2 saw a record number of visitors on a single day - over 11,000.

The total number of hits (not to be confused with visitors) in 2007 was 218 million. (No, I don't know what "hits" are either. All I know is that some people mean "visitors" when they say "hits" and deliberately quote the number of hits to mislead people about the number of visitors.)

The average number of visitors per month since the site was launched in March 2003 is 78,854. In our first month we attracted 800 visitors a day. Today, on average, that figure is 4,000 or more.

Forest publications continue to prove popular. The Smoking Issue by Joe Jackson, first published in 2004, was downloaded 17,115 times in 2007. Prejudice & Propaganda: The Truth About Passive Smoking (published in 2005) was downloaded 12,059 times. The previous year (2006), The Smoking Issue was downloaded 12,977 times, Prejudice & Propaganda 11,907.

Smoke, Lies and the Nanny State, an update of The Smoking Issue published in May 2007, has been downloaded 10,433 times to date.

Repeat visitors account for 98.4 per cent of the traffic, so our task in 2008 is to broaden our appeal and attract - and keep - new visitors. The new Free Society site (coming soon) will play an important role. In the meantime, if you wish to demonstrate your support for our work, please register your name and email address HERE.

Perils of modern living

I got my wish at Christmas - a brand, spanking new iPhone - but it's still in its box. I can use most modern gadgets, including computers, once they're set up, but that's the problem. I'm hopeless at DIY of any sort.

Last year I spent most of Boxing Day trying to rig up BT's Home Hub system (a Christmas present to myself) and failed dismally. When, finally, it kicked into life and I could access the internet wirelessly via my laptop, it was thanks to a BT employee in India who managed to operate my computer remotely and click the right buttons.

The year before it took the best part of six hours to erect a flatpack desk from John Lewis. Even then I got it wrong, glued some wooden dowels into the wrong holes and had to pay someone to sort out the mess.

Last Friday, with the clock ticking on my mother-in-law's imminent arrival, I made a similar mistake with our new spare bed. No glue was involved this time so the error wasn't catastrophic, but it still took two hours to complete a job I was told would take ten minutes.

On Saturday I had to register (online) my children's new pay-as-you-go mobile phones. I'm sure this is as easy as pie for most of you, but after several attempts - during which I was asked for security and ID codes I didn't seem to have - I gave up, jumped in my car and drove 20 miles to the nearest Orange shop to let them sort it out.

The point I am trying to make is this: what is the point of modern gadgets and flatpack furniture if they make our lives even more complicated and stressful? To be fair to Apple, their products are (usually) incredibly intuitive. So, today, I shall get my shiny new toy out of its pristine black box, consult the instructions, and master the iPhone "tool by tool" (if it kills me). Watch this space.

Postscript ... I have just spotted the following in today's Telegraph: "Rumours are swirling of some important new product launches in the next few weeks, not least ... a much-improved version of the iPhone." Aaarrrggghhh!!

Breakfast with Wozza

Look out for Forest patron Antony Worrall Thompson on BBC Breakfast (BBC1) tomorrow morning. He's due on the sofa at 7.40 and 8.40. Subject: the smoking ban six months on. The antis will of course declare the ban to have been a great "success" - high compliance rate and improved health all round. AWT will, I'm sure, be as feisty as ever in his response.

Here comes the Rain

Joe Jackson, a member of Forest's Supporters Council and an outspoken critic of smoking bans, has a new album out on January 29. Recorded in Berlin (where he now lives) and mixed in New York, Rain (left) features ten new songs, at least two of which feature some "barbed social commentary".

A few days ago Joe emailed to say that:

'Citizen Sane' is about how everyone is looking to authorities to tell them how to live but the authorities are all corrupt, including the doctors, and 'King Pleasure Time' is about how pleasure rules the world but many people don't know it or have forgotten. I guess those two have some relevance to Forest or The Free Society.

You can pre-order the album HERE.

Beginning late February, Joe will embark on a 4-5 month tour which will take in Europe, North America, Australia and several places Joe has never played, including Israel, South Africa and Eastern Europe. He will also be contributing to the new Free Society website. Watch this space.

Will Self's New Year message

I've never read any of his novels but Will Self (left) is one of my favourite journalists. His writing, like his persona, has a sardonic, sometimes menacing, tone. In an age of conformity he's also a contrarian - a trait I particularly like.

Today, reviewing the smoking ban in the Independent, Self mentions Forest. It's not a glowing reference (rather the opposite), but I don't care. Recognition from one of Britain's top literary talents is good enough for me.

More interesting (for you) is Self's confession that "I find [the ban] a bit more of a drag than I thought I would". This, remember, is a man whose lack of opposition to the ban was well publicised in his column in the London Evening Standard.

His final para is also worth repeating:

Still, what goes around comes around, and for all those triumphalist former health secretaries out there, basking in their success, it's worth biting down on this: public smoking was banned in 17 US states in the 1870s, but when the peoples' habits changed again, so did the legislation.

Full article HERE.

Tell us the truth

For years passive smoking has been cited, in some quarters, as a significant factor in sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Now, following a nine-month investigation in the USA, the Scripps Howard News Service reports that most of the victims of SIDS die "because they are accidentally smothered by their parents or other children who sleep with them or because they are placed on dangerous overstuffed sofas or heavily blanketed adult beds".

The Scripps study also found that most coroners are not following the methods of investigation recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, prompting them instead to rely on often-incorrect diagnoses of SIDS, still the officially listed cause for 57 percent of all infant deaths.

But the top 11 coroners in the Scripps study said they are confident that the SIDS diagnosis is grossly overused in America because their own investigations overwhelmingly lead to different conclusions ... [They] agree it's difficult to tell grieving families the truth.

"As a coroner, you don't want to look into the face of a grandmother or father or mother who rolled over and smothered their child. There's no way to console them," said Dr John McGoff. "But without that knowledge, there's no prevention."

"A huge percentage of sudden infant deaths will be found to be asphyxia if a proper death scene investigation is done," said Theresa Covington, director of the Michigan-based National Center for Child Death Review Policy. "This is what the national evidence is leading us to. They are not homicides or anything else. They are accidental suffocations."

"If we can get to the truth, then we can craft the right intervention strategies so that we can actually make a dent in the number of sudden and unexplained infant deaths. We are doing a disservice to the parents if we don't tell them the truth," Covington said.

Full story HERE.

Smoking and stress

The Forest/Boisdale CD, You Can't Do That (Songs For Swinging Smokers), has been a great success. Recorded earlier this year, it was released in advance of the smoking ban on July 1. Copies were duly dispatched to the usual suspects - MPs, peers, journalists and broadcasters.

Prior to Christmas, a handful of copies were sent - as gifts - to some of our favourite columnists. They included Philip Hensher who writes in today's Independent:

A charming CD arrives from Forest, the pro-choice in smoking organization. The Boisdale Blue Rhythm Band play a number of fag-related standards and new numbers, including "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes", "I'm Going Outside" and "Smoke Smoke Smoke That Cigarette". If only the anti-smoking fanatics showed a tenth as much good humour. Anyway, it's all wasted on me, since I gave up in February, thinking that I'd probably smoked long enough.

I anticipated an immense increase in my personal well-being and health. I should have listened more to David Hockney, who points out that the decline of smoking has been accompanied by an immense rise in the consumption of anti-stress medication. I stopped having any craving for cigarettes within days of giving up, but my stress levels, previously under quiet control, just kept on rising.

Is it merely coincidence that Britain is getting shorter-tempered, dependent on anti-depressants and stressed out now that nobody's allowed to smoke?

Happy Christmas!

No comment required

Just back from Scotland. I took my son to see Dundee United play Gretna at Tannadice on Saturday. Embarrassingly, United lost. It's the second time this season we have been beaten by the SPL's bottom side.

We stayed two nights (Friday and Saturday) in St Andrews, where I went to school. The hotel restaurant offered a breaktaking view of the sea, the beach, and the famous Old Course. The 18th green, white with frost, was no more than a few yards from where we sat, enjoying an early morning fry-up. Bliss.

While I was away the following story appeared on the Forest newsfeed: "A landlord is planning to put on strippers because the smoking ban has killed business" (The Argus, December 21). Sometimes comment is superfluous. This is one of those times. Full story HERE.

That was the year that was

I have just posted a Christmas message on the Forest website - click HERE. Our goals in 2008 are to maintain and develop strong and vocal opposition to the smoking ban; highlight the negative impact the ban is having on many people's lives and businesses; oppose further restrictions on smoking such as smoking while driving or smoking in outdoor areas; challenge the "denormalisation" of smoking; and promote responsible smoking.

I will continue to blog over Christmas and New Year. In the meantime, from everyone at Forest, to all our friends at home and abroad, have a very happy Christmas - and a smoker-friendly New Year!