Total Politics: debating matters
Sunday, June 22, 2008 The first issue of Total Politics is out this weekend. The publisher is Iain Dale and it's bankrolled by Tory billionaire Michael Ashcroft, see HERE. (Update: Iain tells me that Ashcroft is not bankrolling the magazine. "He is a commercial investor, just like several others.")
I haven't seen a copy yet (apparently it's on sale in some branches of WH Smith, Borders and Waterstones) so I'll reserve judgement, but the launch issue includes a head-to-head debate on the question "Was the smoking ban right?". In the "yes" corner is the Guardian's Polly Toynbee; and in the "No" corner is my old friend Madsen Pirie of the Adam Smith Institute.
Writing as an ex-smoker, Toynbee argues:
"Banning indoor smoking in public places was a big political risk. Would smokers rebel? The fear was that people would disobey and make the same monkey of the law we have seen with the fox hunting. But one year on, it is a law the country has taken to heart. No-one would dare light up in the wrong place – not for fear of the plod, but fear of the public. It has been an unexpectedly popular law."
Pirie (an occasional cigar smoker) responds:
"The smoking ban arose from an unfortunate desire some people have to make others live as they would have them live, rather than as they themselves would want to live. The same desire has characterised destructive political ideologies and religious zealotry, and does not belong in a free society. The smoking ban has significantly eroded that freedom."
You can read the full feature online HERE.
Simon Clark
I have just spent the afternoon at a garden party in Cambridge where one of the guests was ... Madsen Pirie.
Reader Comments (23)
Oh dear, just when we were getting somewhere, along comes another rich backer of zealotry. Both For and Against arguments contain unproven "givens".
One simple question remains unanswered. Why are all the life-long smoker pensioners not dead yet?
Simon, can I just correct you. Michael Ashcroft is not "bankrolling" the magazine. He is a commercial investor, just like several others.
Polly Toynbee needs to get out more - a lot more - for her knowledge of resistance and what may be about to happen in Holland is NIL.
As for people not smoking in places they shouldn't they do it all the time, including this writer.
In fact, as an insider in the war against prohibition, with very many contacts all around the world, I am going to predict confidently that smoking bans have about 2 years left to run (max) as they are economically unsustainable.
Blad - what's the minimum, then we can live in hope and on borrowed time?
mmm, I have never been that impressed with 'jolly hockeysticks' Polly Toynbee, especially when she changed her name from Tonybee becuse she didn't like being a tony. Typical ex smoker, churning out the usual stuff from the propaganda machine. When she tries to be original, she gets it wrong, saying that transport and cinemas were thick with smoke when the minority smoked - no Polly dear, that was when the majority smoked.
Dunno what the minimum is Helen but the message is finally getting through to the parliamentary brain from its tail. Moreover, at present and in Holland, the Dutch politicians are being presented with a court case with massive amounts of evidence regarding primary, secondary and tertiary smoking ban damage from the following countries: UK, Ireland, Holland, France, Germany, Denmark, Italy, USA and Canada. It's massive and lots of people now know it in Holland, thanks to good promo and favourable press (unlike what happens here).
Now that the knowledge is out and public in Holland, lots of pub and bar owners plus others are prepared to flout the ban. Should be fun, but then the antis aren't going to undermine 400 years of liberal Dutch tradition in even 30 years.
As for Modom Toynebee, I got to the point of thinking, when I used to be a Guardian reader, that her analyses were so naff, it was one of the reasons I stopped reading that sanctimonious and pretentious rag. The woman really is so out of touch with reality it's a wonder she hasn't been carted away.
Polly is not doing well in the media at the moment. I saw her on Question Time and she was patronising everyone on how awful global warming is and we all have to make sacrifices to halt its progress. Richard "Gawd bless him guvnor" Littlejohn interjected and asked: "Polly pet, do you worry abour global warming when you are flying off to your villa in Italy?". it is not often you seen someone speechless. Another buttock clenching, liberal hypocrite.
Blad, what is tertiary smoking?
I believe the main reason most people do not smoke in enclosed places now has nothing to do with 'public' but everything to do with the horrendous financial penalties that are levied on the owners of these enclosed 'public' places!
Also, if the anti smokers are so rife, then why on earth are so many business going to the wall? Pubs, clubs - both private and public - amongst other venues are fast disappearing. I heard just the other day that premises had re-opened in our small town, but the general complaint was, they are not the same and are trying to earn a living by offering food, however, in our small town there are already a surfeit of eateries that are established and have good reputations!
One more point - for the first time since the ban came in my husband and I visited our local Gala Bingo on a Saturday night. The place was lifeless and boring. It was obvious the majority of players (who had always been smokers) were staying away as even during the breaks there were only 8 or 10 of us out smoking and the huge hall was almost empty. Prize winnings, even on the cash link up bingo, were well down on what they used to be pre-ban and we came away feeling that we would have had more fun at a wake than we had at the bingo! It is totally scandalous that a few bigots can destroy peoples lives and businesses in this way, never mind the socialising of every age group.
I agree, Lyn. The reason smokers went along with the new No Smoking law was not just to protect themselves from financial penalty and a criminal record; they also would not want to incur fines for innocent pub owners..
One thing that sticks in my mind from Polly Toynbee's ridiculous article was the phrase, "Wards full of amputees." So now smoking makes you lose limbs! Whatever next will these licensed to lie pundits come up with.
The true fact of the matter, particularly in the elderly, is that when they are persuaded to give up smoking, the beneficial healing and immune qualities within nicotine are withdrawn from their system. This can have devastating effects and cause illnesses which had been kept at bay for years to rush into the body. How many ex smokers have you met who say that all their present ills came after they stopped smoking? Over the years, in my work as a European Coach Tour Guide, I have met thousands.
Sadly, medical pratitioners themselves are so brainwashed that almost any illness imaginable which occurs naturally in people, is now blamed on the fact that they used to smoke.
In the same article, Polly claimed that 28% of smokers had given up since the ban, which means that the percentage of the population which now smokes is 0.72x24=17.3%: comparable with California, where people lie about their smoking habits; and Sweden, where SNUS is popular. That neither the private Badminton School in Bristol, the posh people's comprehensive, Holland Park, nor growing up in a wealthy family with a house full of books could instill basic numeracy and common sense into Polly's brain surely demonstrates that, even by Guardian standards, she is truly thick. An anonymous blog, factcheckingpollyanna, ran in 2006. Presumably the author died of exhaustion. Yesterday, on the Gabby Logan Show, it was mentioned that when Comment is Free started, Polly was shocked by the level of vitriol which came her way. At this point words fail me.
Sorry, I am refering to Polly's article in the Guardian 17th of June. She seems to have revised her estimate between then and now.
"Tertiary smoking ban damage", Joyce, is when there is a third level of negative economic consequence incurred by smoking bans.
For example, there have been quite a lot of reports of musicians not getting the same number of gigs in clubs due to low attendance by punters. This is secondary economic damage with primary being the loss to the club's earnings. Then, if the musicians gig less they use less equipment; i.e. buy less guitar strings, put off buying the new saxophone etc. This, in turn affects music shops that supply those items and hence, we have tertiary economic damage caused by smoking bans.
Another factor I forgot to mention with the collation of Dutch data is that Schiphol Airport has lost 10% of its income since a total smoking ban was applied there. For those who might ask how accurate that data is, then Forces Nederland, which conducted this exercise, has to get these matters totally accurate or its case will suffer. Also, Wiel Maessen, President of Forces Holland, doesn't tend to do things by halves. In other words he's quite meticulous with his researching and planning.
It's a good point, Blad. I know that I tend to think only of the obvious damage, forgetting about the knock-on effect.
Polly Toynbee wrote: It’s not death they should fear, but the grim spectacle of wards full of amputees whose veins have clogged, or the breathless emphysema wards.
Since the mortality from emphysema is about 10 times less than that of lung cancer, and the lifetime chance of a smoker getting lung cancer is less than 10%, then most likely fewer than 1 in 100 smokers will find themselves in the emphysema wards. As for lower limb amputations, there about 5,000 of these a year, with the cause of the greater bulk being given as diabetes mellitus and non-diabetic arteriosclerosis.
Toynbee was making stuff up.
idlex, I read one piece of research, (one of those that doesn't get publicised much) that said the percentage of smokers who actually contract cancer of the lung is so small, that although it is 2%, that is per 100,000. Of course, when you multiply data it looks more scary. If there are 15,000,000 smokers in the UK, then that means that 300 of us will get lung cancer. However, the true percentage is 0.002% One more thing is that the average age of death from lung cancer is 70+ So I think I will continue with my calculated risk.
Yes, one can expect illness of one sort or another as old age sets in. However, if the person smokes or has smoked, the illness is then attributed to smoking.
One of the most fatuous statistics I have ever read was some years ago. It stated that one third of diseases of the lung were caused by smoking. As proof, it added that one third of the population smoked. I pointed this out to all who would listen and asked, "What about the two-thirds who don't smoke?"
Answer came there none.
To cheer those who dread old age, I will be 75 next year and eligible for a free T/V licence...
Yippee! It was worth surviving through the bombing and food rationing of the second world war, Worth having our badly wounded father returned to us and the heartbreak of daily watching him struggle out of the house to earn the small living we survived on.
He smoked, I smoke, we all smoked. I smoke much more since the smoking ban.
I've no illnesses yet. Well, none that I know of. Always kept well away from the medical profession. But, just to make sure, I took a free Diabetes test at a local pharmacy last year. All results showed normal - no high blood pressure, no other related symptoms. With an additional spring to my already springy step, I returned outside into the sunshine - unencumbered by the free NHS Stop Smoking pack they offered me.
So be of good cheer, folks, and remember that non-smokers die too. Remember the words of the famous heart surgeon, Dr Christian Barnard. He said, "It is good for some people to smoke." He also said, "It is not the quantity of life which is important, it is the quality of life."
Timbone, here's John Brignell in the Epidemiologists (p. 132):
What Doll and Hill reported was that annually 99,993 nonsmokers out of every 100,000 people escape death from lung cancer as opposed to 99,834 smokers per 100,000 who are so lucky. When we divide the smaller number by the larger number, we get a smoking vs. nonsmoking "survival factor" of approximately 0.998. This, remember is on an annual basis and over a lifetime it would be more like 0.92
However, these are figures from a 60 year old study, and one has to wonder how applicable it is to a time when most of the many recognised contributory factors (of which smoking is just one) have changed a great deal. We are no longer living in 1950s Britain. We no longer have the same air pollution (e.g. smog), but we have a lot more cars. We eat differently (the English breakfast of that time is now called a heart attack on a plate). Everything is different.
my dad died of lung cancer AND HE NEVER SMOKED answer that one someone. Does anyone know how the french is coping with the smoking ban? they are normally a nation that stand up for there self unlike miserable britain. And i would also like a vote in the scottish parliament as i believe i deserve a vote as we have to copy everything they do. And i would also like a vote in the american elections too as again we have to do everything they do. I have come to hate this miserable nanny state. I hate poxy labour i would never give them my vote again ever.
Does anyone actually believe smoking will return again in this country and the ban be lifted.???
my dad died of lung cancer AND HE NEVER SMOKED answer that one someone. Does anyone know how the french is coping with the smoking ban? they are normally a nation that stand up for there self unlike miserable britain. And i would also like a vote in the scottish parliament as i believe i deserve a vote as we have to copy everything they do. And i would also like a vote in the american elections too as again we have to do everything they do. I have come to hate this miserable nanny state. I hate poxy labour i would never give them my vote again ever.
Does anyone actually believe smoking will return again in this country and the ban be lifted.???
my dad died of lung cancer AND HE NEVER SMOKED answer that one someone.
Easy: smoking doesn't cause lung cancer. The only thing that has ever been shown is that people who smoke tend to get lung cancer more than people who don't. But the same applies to people who live in towns. Or who have poor diets. None of these things can be said to cause lung cancer. Nobody knows what causes it.
And yes, I think that the ban will be lifted. Or more likely amended. I doubt if this headless chicken of a Labour government will do it. At some point the epidemiological fraud underlying the ban will be revealed, and MPs will realise that they were duped. And no sane government is going to want to make an enemy of a quarter of the population. If the Tories get in, and retain the ban, they'll find that all the anger now directed at Labour and Lib Dems will be directed at them.
Oh, and the only person I ever met who had lung cancer was a non-smoker.
The whole subject of producing accurate statistics on the human condition is a very cloudy one. There are too many variables.
The only scientific study I believe in is one which was conducted in America some 30 years ago. A very large cross section of the population were closely monitored over several years to ascertain what effect environment had on health. Results showed that their physical condition was formed 60% by heredity and 40% by environment. These were cautious figures and it was believed that a ratio of 70% to 30% was nearer the truth.