Broadcast news
Tuesday, December 9, 2008 Well, the government has finally announced that it intends to ban the display of tobacco in shops. I'll comment on this further when I get a moment (probably tomorrow). In the meantime I'm in London, dashing from Television Centre to the Millbank studios in Westminster to Broadcasting House and back to Millbank in order to give Forest's side of the story.
So far I've been on Five Live, BBC1 Breakfast, BBC News, Channel 4 News and three local stations (BBC Radio London, Newcastle and Cambridge).
This afternoon I'm being interviewed for the BBC's Six O'Clock News. After that I'll be alone in a small studio at Western House off Great Portland Street talking to no fewer than twelve BBC local radio stations. Some of these interviews are live, others are pre-recorded. Full running order (with times):
1530 Sussex
1538 West Midlamds
1545 Stoke
1552 Nottingham
1600 Cumbria
1608 Wales
1615 Hereford and Worcester
1622 Northampton
1630 Leeds
1638 Lincolnshire
1645 Derby
1652 Berkshire
After that I hope to go home because I've been up since 3.00am and, worse, I've got an absolutely stinking cold!
BTW, you can see me on the BBC News channel HERE.
Reader Comments (14)
Betty McBride said that if you smoke you are twice as likely to have a heart attack. She is grossly overweight and her chances of getting a heart attack is much higher.
You're good Simon, really good, glad we have you on side. Shame noone will ever listen to you as you support evil cancer sticks.
Well done Simon and I hope you make it through your mammoth day!
I am sure you have made this point before and certainly don't your grandmother to teach you to suck eggs, however:
I often wonder how illegal drugs became so popular and readily available, when they have never been advertised in the normal sense of that word, nor have they been displayed for sale in shops! As these drugs are still so prevalent, why do these dim, stupid politicians believe that banning displays of tobacco products, stopping advertising and driving it underground, will work any better than this idea has worked with illegal drugs?
Or is this just the forerunner to making tobacco an illegal product?
Congratulations on your marathon efforts today. Repeatedly I am amazed that journalists' critical faculties desert them on this subject. Alan Johnson said on the Today programme that that the smoking ban had been a 'success' without being asked to define the word or being challenged about the isolation and sadness - and worse - and manifest cruelties it had brought with it. I think I find the blandness and blindness of those who have the power to change things but will neither listen nor see more dispiriting than the fact of the ban itself.
Well done Simon, but you could see they just didn't want to listen to your side. Ithank you so much for keeping on trying, but this constant barrage day after day is very depressing.
Well said Simon. It's about time all of us freedom loving types stood up against the Fascist scum that consider themselves our "Leaders" and let them know in no uncertain terms that we employ THEM!! Oh, BTW, I suppose you have a cold because you smoke.....
Steve
Good show and you were a bit more forthright which I liked.
A small and subjective hint of optimism but I feel the media are more prepared to accept Forest as having a genuine viewpoint worthy at least of nominal attention than they might have been a few years ago. This, if a fact, must be a result of the unstinting work of its officials. Nil desperandum ...
Again, we have this mantra trotted out by the health secretary - "....will save lives", followed by the next mantra, "... will save the health sevice billions of pounds".
Why, oh why, is it that nobody can see the obvious contradiction between these two assertions?
If anti-smoking laws 'save lives', then people will live longer and will therefore require MORE health service investment (in terms of joint replacements, care homes, age-related cancer treatments, altzheimers care, bladder problems, and so on - to say nothing of the prolongation of state pensions).
Surely, our politicians must have the intelligence to see this, so why do none of them address the matter?
By the way, AOL/Talktalk are currently running a vote on their home page on the question 'Is the under-the-counter thing correct?'. At the moment, the vote is 66% No and 33% YES - so get voting against before ASH mobilise their army.
I have just looked at the BBC link.
First of all let me congratulate Simon for putting up a great argument and holding his own against that lying bitch Betty McBride when he left her floundering about the junk stats on smoking, all she could do was make a helpless face, she had no answer and it proved in clear sight the lies and scarmongering perpetrated by those govt agencies.
She couldnt answer either when Simon said that with no advertising at all drugs are still available and more dangerous than cigarettes.
I hope people were not taken in by her know it all swaggering arrogance.
Im abhorred to see that this ban is going through.
Good job Simon, you are a damn good speaker and hold your own in a debate. Something I could not do without punching the stupid antis, even if that anti was a woman, I would just say I though she was a man in drag!
Well done Simon, and it is good to here a well spoken well groomed gentleman speaking with well artuculated anger.
It is very frustrating to see the smug look of an anti who is obsessed with their new religion, the Church of Smokefree, who obviously feel they are on a roll.
I think that well prepared arguments in short bursts, like yours, are carrying more weight than we might imagine, despite the fact that you, and anyone speaking on behalf of those who choose to enjoy smoking tobacco, are still seen by many as either a bit of a joke, or a messenger from Hades.
In closing, the female presenter either missed the point or deliberately steamrollered a brilliant argument. I am speaking about when you said that a supermarket had hundreds of items on display, but that didn't mean that you or your son put everything into the shopping trolly.
I think she just wasn't listening intelligently enough, and came out with something about tobacco being in a seperate kiosk - pathetic.
I think the best bit was when the presenter said to the anti "Well what about drink?" and the fat slag anti could only come up with murmours and "this is about smoking not drink".
I forgot to say about the free add for Marlboro Lights!!