A Labour MP writes
Thursday, July 3, 2008 Kerry McCarthy (left) is the Labour MP for Bristol East. Writing on her blog on Tuesday, she says: "My recent post about the success of the smoking ban mentioned a reception by Forest, the pro-smoking group at a private members club in Belgravia. And today they're having a champagne tea party for MPs in the Commons. Kind of bears out what Libby Brooks is saying in today's Guardian."
Leaving aside the fact that Boisdale is NOT a private members' club (it's a public bar and restaurant), how chippy can you get? (Has she never heard of champagne socialists?!)
Anyway, two days earlier, she wrote:
Since the smoking ban was introduced, there has been a record rise in the number of people giving up smoking. The figures for April to December 2007 (only 9 months) were up 22% on the previous year. 80% of people think the ban is a good thing. And fears that more people would smoke at home instead haven't been realised. There is also good news about people with lung conditions now being able to socialise without harming their health, and a predicted fall in the number of heart attacks (as happened in Scotland after they introduced their ban). As someone who voted for the full ban, this makes me feel good.
Kerry doesn't seem to get many comments on her blog. Perhaps you'd like to change that. Click HERE.
Boring but important: please do NOT insult her or write anything that could be construed as personally offensive. It is vital that when we engage with MPs we do so forcefully but politely. This is a battle of ideas and we want to make MPs think - not alienate or bully them. Stick to facts, and your own personal experience of the ban and the war on smokers.
Simon Clark
Kerry McCarthy writes: "Forgive me for being somewhat sceptical of the fact that four comments arrived in very quick succession opposing the smoking ban. And from people who have never posted comments before. Would it be cynical of me to suggest that Forest might somehow be involved?"
13.09 Kerry has promised to reply later in the day "once the comments have stopped coming in". So keep those comments coming in. Click HERE.
14.31 Brilliant post on KM's blog from "Frankie". (In case anyone's in any doubt, it's a spoof!) Frankie, you've made my afternoon.
16.11 Uh-oh. Lots of good points and then some idiot mentions Hitler. (Not a Forest supporter, I hope.) This sort of language has no place in the smoking debate. Talk about an own goal.
23.25 There are now 85 responses - Kerry's blog has never had it so good! Remember, keep the language reasonable, please.
Reader Comments (60)
Idlex,
I think you'll find that it is EU policy to reduce smoking and that the Labour government have given a committment to reduce it from it's current level (to 20% of the population I seem to remember reading).
Having said that it is up to the government in each EU country to decide on what smoking restrictions to impose to achieve that target.
Labour, being the authoritarian muppets they are, simply went for a blanket ban whereas other countries took a more pragmatic and, in terms of job & business losses, much less costly route.
Therefore, whilst the EU is the ultimate source of the problem, it is difficult to blame anyone other than our government for the present dismal state.
Labour richly deserve to be thrown out of office for many reasons. I wish them well in what will hopefully be a very long opposition.
JonS, there is a EU Green Paper of January 2007 which proposes the reduction in both active and passive smoking as well as the de-normalisation of
tobacco use (goes to show how deeply antismoking zealots have penetrated the EU that it also proposes 'denormalisation').
However, these proposals appear nearly a full year after HMG had enacted the smoking ban (Feb 2006). HMG had already acted by the time the EU had only got round to proposing it.
HMG did however sign up for the 2004 WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control to implement tax policies and, where appropriate, price policies, on tobacco products so as to contribute to the health objectives aimed at reducing tobacco consumption.
But the WHO is not part of the EU. Perhaps you would like to tell me when and to whom HMG made a commitment to reduce tobacco consumption to 20%.
What a delight to see so many informed people FINALLY getting an opportunity to openly confront a government minister in this way.
I am (sadly) not surprised to see that an MP has no concept of who the people are that they are addressing or from whence they come, or of how inappropriate, patronising, inaccurate and damaging it is to simply dismiss them as a 'group' that fits neatly into a box. I may be reasonably comfortable now (not rich, but I can meet my needs easily and am debt-free), but I grew up in relative poverty on a council estate, and yanked myself out by going to university (when it was still hard to get into one, and you could still get a grant).
If there is a Forest 'email list', then I am not aware of it, and am certainly not on it. She seems unaware that Taking Liberties is a blog that is open to all and sundry to read and comment on. (Is this even a Forest blog? I thought it was Simon's personal blog). I am grateful to Simon for linking to her blog, as it has finally opened up a door in a way that I've not seen before - and look how much is pouring through it! Truly excellent and heartening to see. Does she not realise that these forums are bound to be places where smokers and pro-choicers 'gather' when public spaces are denied to them?
Someone made a wonderful comment on the MPs blog, i.e. that political,tribal distinctions no longer apply, and that most people are LIBERAL in that they 'live and let live' and CONSERVATIVE in that they feel 'if it ain't broke don't fix it'. That comment certainly describes me. I switched from Liberal to Labour just to get the Tories out (I've never voted Tory in my life) - but my next vote will be tactical, and will either go to whoever voted against the smoking ban, or to whoever has the best chance of ousting this shower - who are completely out of touch with reality and have developed the same cockiness and 'disconnect' that the Tories developed when they'd had their feet under the table for too long. I despised the Tories for making me and those I knew feel isolated and without representation then, and I despise Labour for the same thing now.
I agree totally with whoever said that those blog comments should be forwarded to every MP in the country.
Simon, despite the revamp of the Forest site, it is still quite awkward to get access to the Taking Liberties from there. I still think it should be in a consistently prominent position, as it provides an opportunity for the general public to air their views in a way that the Forest site does not.
How many more people would welcome this open door, if only they could find it, I wonder?
I eagerly checked Miss McCarthy's blog for a carefully-framed reply. Nothing there at all..fair enough, I thought, it's only Saturday...and yet then I noticed she was able to post new blogs on Biofuels, MPs' expenses and Ray Lewis!
Will she actually continue to ignore this avalanche of feeling? If so I will be flabbergasted (it would bear out Blad Tolstoy's comments about her putting her fingers in her ears...Lalalalala!)...not to mention utterly livid and downright revolutionary!
As Struggling Spirit says, the Taking Liberties (and the Forest website) is open to all. I know of some anti-smokers who read them, so that they can make their anti-smoking comments on stories and am surprised that none have made comments on Kerry's blog.
"Frankie" if you're around could I ask you, please, to post the following comment on Kerry's blog (I can't get the tech sorted at all!)
Nigel Saint,
I'm not part of the freedom to choose crowd (or any other 'crowd' for that matter) but may I respond to your remarks about NRT?
I understand that NRT has a very poor success rate. This isn't surprising since the NRT programme, in fact, keeps quitters 'hooked' on nicotine. After the last patch/piece of gum/ inhaler has been thrown away the quitter still wants nicotine but is more likely to associate it with cigarettes than NRT and is hardly likely to think "God, I'd love an NRT patch"!
If NRT comes in for criticism perhaps it's because the government, in its determined bullying of smokers to quit, is wasting MILLIONS of pounds of tax-payers' money on an ineffective method.
The question has to be asked, too, why smoking cessation clinics recommend only NRT to stop smoking. The Allan Carr people, for example, claim to have a much higher success rate with their methods, at a fraction of the cost yet ASH has been extremely snippy towards them, being forced, indeed, to issue an apology having tried to impugn their reputation. Could it be because, within the witches' coven that is the tobacco control coalition, some reciprocal back-scratching had to be done?
You might also be interested to know that development of a safe cigarette was proposed but was blocked by opponents who were - the tobacco control lobby. Still believe that they're altruistic?
As expected, a load of naive and misinformed nonsense from McCarthy. Bereavement issues and personal opinion combine to show that she voted not on the facts but on confirmation bias.
Have MPs in this country ever been as poor a quality as we have at the present time?
Interesting. She says that she'll summarise the key themes from the comments - and then proceeds to make a whole series of largely unrelated points of her own. No big surprise.
And it seems to be a different universe she inhabits, if her smoker friends all unanimously approve of the ban. I have the feeling that turkeys vote for Christmas in her universe. If she's telling the truth, I suspect that her 'smokers' are people who smoke 2 cigarettes per day max. The smokers I know pretty much universally hate the ban - although there are exceptions.
And in her universe, active and passive smoking is implicitly regarded as the cause all cancers of every kind. She informs us that her uncle's partner died of lung cancer after having "spent most of her working life on a production line in a factory where everyone smoked." And she tells us that her father, who died of some unspecified form of cancer (probably not lung cancer, otherwise she would have highlighted the fact), smoked roll-ups. I wonder why she doesn't blame smoking for every death. Perhaps she does?
She says that, "I agree it would therefore have been wrong for Government whips to have pushed the full ban through Parliament, given that it wasn't a manifesto commitment, but they didn't; there was a free vote." This is completely upsidedown. It's true that that there was no manifesto commitment for a full ban: the manifesto commitment was for a partial ban. For what its worth (nothing), the actual manifest commitment was:
We will legislate to ensure that all enclosed public places and workplaces other than licensed premises will be smoke-free.The legislation will ensure that all restaurants will be smoke-free; all pubs and bars preparing and serving food will be smoke-free; and other pubs and bars will be free to choose whether to allow smoking or to be smoke-free. In membership clubs the members will be free to choose whether to allow smoking or to be smoke-free.
I could go on. But I think that the main thing - the really serious thing - missing from her non-response response was any recognition that smokers were being excluded and marginalised and persecuted. It was something that a number of the comments made.
Thank you, "Frankie"! (...and I've now sorted out the tech).
I haven't posted before, any comments about this on here, or on Ms McCarthy's blog, for the simple reason, that she intends deleting most of them that she disagrees with, and not answering hardly any of the others either. I think she did answer one post, which was the very first one which was from a non smoker!
I have just read her sort of general reply to all posts, which you can see here http://kerry-mccarthy.blogspot.com/2008/07/cigarettes-and-alcohol.html
It is exactly as expected, she doesn't really address any of the very strong feelings expressed by the many posts she received, she just drones on and on about her feelings, and her supposed reasons for supporting the ban.
In my opinion, Ms McCarthy is just so typical of her type of person. I think her "Blog Rules", sums her up very adequately:
Blog rules
I know some people will say blogs don't have rules. Mine does. As Monica says in Friends, "rules are good, rules help control the fun!" You don't have to follow them, but I will be.
First: if you're after a detailed response on a policy issue, you should email me or write to me. If you're a constituent (or perhaps a very special case), I'll respond; if you're not, you'll have to contact your own MP.
Second: you can't use the comments section to try to introduce a different topic that I haven't blogged about. Well, you can, but you're unlikely to get an answer from me.
Third: I don't have a problem with trenchant criticism, of me or the Government, or vociferously expressed opinions, but if you're abusive or aggressive, I'll probably choose to ignore you. Or delete you.
That's all!