Taking Liberties

As regular readers know, I am not a fan of the No 10 website - or, to be specific, the gimmicky e-petition section. I have lost count of the number of petitions Forest has been asked to support and I have said no to nearly every one - partly because there are too many on the same subject (the smoking ban), and partly because I prefer not to play this government-inspired game. (The anti-hunting ban petition attracted hundreds of thousands of supporters and the government, predictably, ignored it.)

Another problem is that people love to do their own thing. This has led to scores of petitions - often signed by the same people - complaining about the smoking ban, with the result that few (if any) have attracted more than a handful of signatures and the impact has been minimal. (It's that sort of indiscipline that repeatedly hinders the pro-choice movement.)

Anyway, there is a new petition - concerning the government's proposal to ban the display of tobacco in shops - on the No 10 website, and for once I would like to encourage everyone to sign it. It reads:

"We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to reconsider his Government's proposal to ban the display of tobacco in shops, and consider ensuring instead stronger enforcement of the law to prevent underage sales and illicit trade and to make it illegal for adults to buy tobacco on behalf of anyone under 18."

There are a number of reasons why I think this petition is worth signing. One, I believe it's the only one on this subject that is currently live on the Downing Street website; two, the issue is currently the subject of a public consultation and if a significant number of people sign the petition individuals and organisations will be able to highlight the fact in their submissions; three, it's a very important issue because if the proposal to ban the sale of tobacco in shops becomes law it will not only affect smokers, it could have a devastating impact on small shops and community stores; four, the message it sends is that smoking is an adult activity and responsible smokers will support measures that discourage underage sales - but let's have some respect and consideration in return.

Last but not least, I happen to know the proposer. Ken Patel is a retailer from Leicester and I greatly admire the work that he and his colleagues are doing to lobby government. They deserve Forest's support - and the support of their customers.

So, please sign the petition today - and encourage similar-minded people to do so too. Click HERE. 

This year's party conference season is going to be our busiest yet. It certainly seems that way because we have spent the past few days desperately trying to meet deadlines for venues, listings, advertisements and artwork. There's also the small matter of confirming speakers - which isn't easy when everyone is about to go on holiday. And now, for the first time, the police have asked us to answer questions about our events. If we can reach the end of the month without a major hiccup, I'll breathe a little easier.

The Freedom Zone (September 29-30) is a new initiative and our most ambitious conference event ever. Organised in conjunction with The Freedom Association, it's a two-day mini-conference designed to put individual freedom at the top of the political agenda. We're launching it at the Conservative conference in Birmingham but I hope that it will eventually make an appearance at other party conferences too.

We are also presenting (for the first time ever) a fringe event at the LibDem conference. This year's conference is in Bournemouth (my favourite seaside venue) and we are linking up with the new liberal think-tank Progressive Vision to host a discussion entitled "How liberal are the Liberal Democrats?" The event, at the prestigious Highcliff Hotel, is on Tuesday September 16. Details, including speakers, will be announced nearer the time. 

We are still working on plans for the Labour conference in Manchester, but - please note - we need volunteers to promote our campaigns at all three party conferences. If you would like to help please get in touch.

Welsh Culture Minister Rhodri Glyn Thomas (left) has resigned following a story that he flouted the smoking ban - which he supported - by smoking a cigar in a pub near the Welsh Assembly (see HERE).

Did Thomas deliberately break the law? Did he refuse to put out his cigar? No, what seems to have happened is that he absent-mindedly walked into Cardiff's Eli Jenkins pub with a lit cigar and when a member of staff pointed this out he apologised and went outside. (The BBC adds a touch of colour to the story by claiming he was "reprimanded" by staff.)

Some of you may argue that because Thomas supported the ban he deserves everything he gets. I don't agree. This is no time to feel smug. The fact is, the career of a senior politician is in ruins because - shock, horror - he walked into a pub with a lit cigar.

The prize for the most sanctimonious comment I have seen (so far) goes to Opposition leader and Welsh Conservative AM Nick Bourne who said Thomas' resignation was "regrettable" before adding, "However, the smoking ban was introduced in the interests of public health to protect people from the risk of smoking-related illnesses." Ugh! Pass the sickbag. (See HERE.)

The worrying thing is, this sounds just the sort of thing that David Cameron would say.

Note: to put this story in perspective, it is clear that Thomas was becoming "gaffe prone" in the eyes of the Welsh media, and even some of his colleagues. In other words, this incident was the straw that broke the camel's back. Nevertheless, wouldn't it have been nice if someone, Nick Bourne, for example, had stood up and said: "This was the most minor offence imaginable. No-one died, no-one got hurt, or was even likely to get hurt. The minister has apologised. Let that be an end to it."

But no. Political opportunism comes first and the most trivial "gaffes" are seized upon by journalists, broadcasters and political rivals who fall back on soundbites and unproven junk science to justify the rampant and deeply unpleasant wave of puritanism that is engulfing this country.

My latest post on the Telegraph's new Ways and Means blog can be found HERE. Readers of Taking Liberties will find the subject (Europe, tobacco, freedom of speech) familiar so feel free to add a comment. (Note: once registered, you can comment on any of the Telegraph blogs so it's worth taking a moment to do it.)

I have been asked to comment on a story that appears in some newspapers (and on the BBC website) today: "Menthol has been used to make some US cigarette brands more appealing to the young, say researchers" (see HERE).

I don't really have much to say on the subject. Obviously, I have no idea what the manufacturers talk about in the privacy of their research labs. All I know is, the tobacco industry is one of the most highly-regulated industries in the world and there is virtually nothing it can do without the approval of the authorities, so for the story to be spun as an example of the immorality of Big Tobacco is rather nauseating.

Funnily enough, when I was 16, and one or two of my friends smoked, the only brand I quite liked was "cool, clean Consulate ... Britain's largest selling menthol cigarette". I only smoked the odd one but I liked it more than a non-menthol cigarette because it had an edge, a flavour, that I could actually taste.

I'm not sure it was "as cool as a mountain stream", as the ads would have us believe, but to my tastebuds it was an improvement on a regular cigarette. Despite that, I never got hooked so the menthol made no difference whatsoever.

Truth is, I am struggling to think of any smokers I know who prefer menthol cigarettes. And yet, if this allegation is correct, surely lots of people would be smoking menthol flavoured tobacco?

Frankly, it sounds like yet another conspiracy theory. Lucky for the researchers, it must be a slow news day.

Joe Jackson first toured Australia in 1983. He liked it. "The people," he writes on The Free Society blog, "were laid-back, with a dry sense of humour, and the culture had a nice mix of American and British influences." Recently returned from his latest tour, he found the country "stifled by American-style paranoid health-freakery and a very British-style nanny state".

Most disturbing, writes Joe, was the email he received from a journalist from the Melbourne paper The Age, shortly after doing a telephone interview.

He'd been sympathetic to my views on smoking, and wanted to tell me that his article had been 'butchered' by his editor on instructions from their legal department. It seems there are now laws governing what can and can't be printed about tobacco, and it's actually illegal to say anything which might be construed as positive.

Full article HERE.

By coincidence, Conservative MEP Roger Helmer has sent me a copy of a post he has written for his blog. It concerns a hearing he has just attended in the European parliament. (Note: the hearing is NOT the reason I am in Brussels, although it could have implications for an initiative we are working on with our European partners.)

Roger writes:

A series of anti-smoking campaigners vied with each other to vilify the tobacco industry, accusing it of dreadful things like lobbying, and seeking to influence legislation, and promoting the interests of its shareholders, and doing other cynical things like awarding prizes for Corporate Social Responsibility and contributing to anti-AIDS programmes. The sort of things that just about all major industries do, in fact.

The World Health Organisation has initiated the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which the EU and 26 member-states have signed up to (The Czech Republic, God bless it, has declined to sign). They are now producing "guidelines for implementation". Anti-smoking lobbyists are proposing that the guidelines should preclude legislators from speaking to the industry. Yep. You read that right. They want to ban MEPs from speaking to tobacco companies.
 
Frankly, I was hopping mad when I heard this proposal. It is absolutely fundamental to any kind of good governance that legislators should discuss proposed legislation with those affected, and that parliamentarians should talk to businesses in areas they represent. I represent the East Midlands, home to Imperial Tobacco. Hundreds of their employees are my constituents, and a quarter of my constituents smoke. I personally hate smoking, but I respect the right of my constituents to make grown-up choices. Imperial has already been hammered by the EU's Tobacco Directive, which like so much EU regulation had the primary effect of moving jobs, production and investment out of the EU altogether.
 
The WHO proposal is an assault on democracy. Listening to constituents, and to businesses, is a key part of what I am paid for, and I shall continue to do so without let or hindrance from the WHO.
 
If we start with tobacco, where do we stop? Many of my colleagues would like to start restricting the drinks industry. They believe that "Big Oil" is frustrating their attempts to curb global warming. Packaged food companies contribute to obesity. Cars cause accidents and pollute the atmosphere. They have problems with the pharmaceutical industry.  This could grow into a full-scale assault on business and capitalism - which of course is exactly what many in the green lobby want.

The full post should appear HERE shortly.

Last night we ate at Tribeca, a delightful French restaurant on the famous Avenue Louise. If you're a vegetarian or animal rights' campaigner, look away now because one of my companions insisted that I order the foie gras as a starter. Unexpectedly, I got a double helping because the waiter then recommended that I have foie gras sauce on my Argentinian beef - and before I could say "Enough, think of the birds!", there it was on my plate.

It was a warm evening so we sat outside on the terrace. This was one of two smoking areas - the other was inside, on the first floor. (In Belgium restaurateurs can allocate rooms for smokers as long as no food is served there.)

In fact, smoking continues to be permitted in many cafes and bars, so for most smokers there isn't really a problem. What a pity British politicians aren't as sensible about this as most of our European neighbours.

How long this will last remains to seen. Dick Engel, a colleague from the Netherlands, was also at last night's dinner, and we know what has happened in Holland. Sadly, an attempt to delay or reverse the ban failed in the Dutch courts last week, and the anti-smokers march on.

So, plenty to talk about over dinner. And the food wasn't bad, either.

I absolutely love the new Eurostar terminal at St Pancras. I was here in March but today - a bright, sunny morning in July - it looks and feels even better.

I arrived at 7.30 and even then the place was alive with people - businessmen, tourists, students - bustling to catch a train to Brussels, Paris or beyond. How different from the old St Pancras with its dreary locomotives setting off for Derby, Nottingham and Sheffield.

For my generation, though, travelling on Eurostar will never be as romantic as the old boat train from Victoria with its rickety, post-war carriages that rocked from side to side and left you feeling ever so slightly travel sick. I remember crawling through south east England en route to the ferry where we would disembark in some cold, unwelcoming shed (usually in the early hours of the morning). Minutes turned into hours as we waited to board some rusting old vessel that would take us across the Channel.

Eventually, in the dead of night, we'd be on our way. Dawn would break and we'd find ourselves herded from ship to shore, and then on to another train, this time in a distinctly foreign country where no-one (least of all the ticket inspectors and immigration officials) spoke a word of English. Now that's what I call travel.

Now, it's almost too easy. Take this morning. I turned up at St Pancras (I didn't even have to travel across London - I just had to walk a few hundred yards from Kings Cross), collected my pre-paid tickets from a machine, waltzed through passport control, and minutes later I was sitting in Coach 11, seat 51, with a cup of coffee in one hand and an egg and salmon brioche in the other - and off we went. Two-and-a-half hours later I was in the centre of Brussels, checking into my hotel.

In many ways this is great. I'm certainly not complaining. But something has been lost, and sitting here, in my hotel, I can't quite put it into words.

I haven't, until now, commented on Max Mosley's case against the News of the World, but reading the papers this week I am obviously not alone in believing that what people do in private (as long as it's legal and between consenting adults) is a matter for them.

Whether the paper is right to argue that what Mosley gets up to in private is of "public interest" is another matter. It's titillating (of course it is), so from that point of view there is an element of "public interest" (and we can't forget his F1 connections), but what's more important - his right to privacy or our "right" to know?

If there was a Nazi theme (as the NOTW claims), that may change our perception of his behaviour, but surely the charge would be gross insensivity rather than “gross sexual depravity”.

Talking of sexual festishes, shortly before the introduction of the smoking ban in England, I received an email from the organiser of the London Fetish Fair. She told me that, as a direct result of the ban, the LFF was moving to a new venue "with a large, closed off courtyard to accomodate the rights of our smoking fetishists and regular smoking visitors".
 
Things like the smoking ban, she added, "diminish the rights and freedoms of all kinds of people from different walks of life". I agreed, and suggested she write a press release which we would circulate to our media contacts. She did, and it included her comment that:

"My entire staff smoke. How am I supposed to have a happy, chilled-out team if their requirements are not taken into account? Unlike so many other minorities, there is already a dwindling number of welcoming places for people from the alternative side of life to have a chance to meet others. This ban will only drive people out of the social scene and back into feeling cut off from the chance to meet their peers."

There is a serious point here and it is this: all minority groups have to stick together and defend one another's interests. Who knows, but in 30 years' time I wouldn't put it past the anti-smoking movement to brand ALL smokers as fetishists guilty of "gross depravity".

A lot has been written about the Haltemprice and Howden by-election, much of it negative, but Iain Dale - David Davis's former chief-of-staff - makes some good points on his blog HERE:

[Davis] won with an overwhelming 72% share of the vote (the highest in a by election since 1997) on a 35% turnout, which was far higher than most of the so-called Westminster village 'experts' had predicted. Considering he had no real opposition, I think that is a very creditable turnout in the circumstances. It is roughly the same as the turnout in Sarah Teather's by election in Brent East in 2003, but far higher than Michael Portillo's (29%) or Hilary Benn's (19%). When you consider that 9,000 students were away, it is the summer holiday season, and it rained, I am not sure anyone could have expected a much higher turnout than that.

In a few weeks we may have forgotten all about the by-election, and the point David Davis was trying to make. I hope not. Civil liberties deserve to be near the top of the political agenda. For years we have been sleepwalking towards a more restrictive type of society. If DD, and allies such as Bob Geldof (who wrote a spirited article in the Daily Telegraph this week), can keep the issue alive, they will be doing everyone a huge service.

The real losers, meanwhile, were not the 23 candidates who lost their deposits, but the Labour party. Refusing to put up a candidate, the governing party showed themselves to be cowards, unwilling to defend in public a policy they were forced to gerrymander through parliament. The Haltemprice and Howden by-election may have resembled a pantomime at times, but by declining to take part I believe that Labour gave up their right to run this country.

PS. There was good news and bad news for Hamish Howitt, the anti smoking ban campaigner. The bad news? He got 91 votes and (like most of the candidates) lost his deposit. The good news? He got ten times more votes than Tony Farnon, the anti-smoking candidate who got, er, eight.

I don't think I will be blogging today. Instead, I shall be at Lords for the first day of the Test against South Africa.

According to the invitation I received back in March, "We are taking hospitality in the Nursery Pavilion, a short walk from our seats in the Mound Stand. We plan to meet around 9.00am for morning tea and a pre-match breakfast.

"Play starts at 11.00am and champagne will be served prior to lunch at 1.00pm. We will be serving refreshments throughout the day with afternoon tea at 3.40pm."

Weather permitting, I might even see some cricket.

Just back from Birmingham where I spent the day with Simon Richards, director of The Freedom Association. This year's Conservative party conference is in Birmingham and with the facilities available to us it seemed a good opportunity to join forces and launch a new venture, The Freedom Zone.

The Freedom Zone will be open for two days from 8.00am to 9.00pm during the conference in September. Venue is Austin Court, a short walk from the International Conference Centre. It has a modern auditorium (the Kingston Theatre, above) that seats 140 people, a comfortable lounge area which we are converting into an all-day coffee bar, and a sheltered courtyard where we intend to host a smoker-friendly reception with a barbecue and live music.

A full programme of events will be announced nearer the time. It's a big undertaking but we hope to attract some top names. If the project is a success, I would like to think we can eventually rival the long-running Health Hotel which is such a feature of the three main party conferences.

For the moment, watch this space.

"It’s not only national politicians who make one think the world is galloping mad," writes Allan Massie in today's Scottish Daily Mail." (Massie, for those of you who don't know, is one of Scotland's most respected writers and journalists.)

"One Scottish newspaper yesterday ran an interview with the campaigns manager for ASH (Action on Smoking and Health), the occasion being the BMA’s recommendation that the portrayal of smoking be taken into account when classifying films. Now, as a happy smoker for more than 40 years, I should perhaps tread warily on this one, for it’s now generally held that smoking is not only wicked, but, after knife crime, perhaps the deepest and darkest blot on society.

"But then again, perhaps not, for the campaigns manager touched agreeable heights of craziness. Asked his opinion of the portrayal of smoking in movies, he said: ‘It isn’t very realistic. Although you often see actors smoking on screen, you rarely see the consequences. So while you see someone stub out a cigarette, you do not see them having a heart attack or dying of cancer.’

"Well, no, you don’t – and it wouldn’t be ‘very realistic’ if you did because, no matter the possibility – or likelihood – that a smoker may die of a heart attack or lung cancer, you don’t often actually see one doing so each time he stubs out a cigarette. But in the mad world of ASH, I suppose we should have movies in which every cigarette smoked is followed by the actor clutching his throat and dropping down dead.

"Laughter," Massie concludes, "is often the only sane response to the lunacy of the modern world."

I couldn't agree more.

PS. See also Neil Clark ("Anti-smoking hysteria reaches new heights") on Comment Is Free in the Guardian HERE.

Wearing my Free Society hat, I have been invited to contribute to a new think tank blog on the Telegraph website. My first post can be found HERE. Comments welcome.