Thursday, June 24, 2010 I'm trying to write my speech for this evening's Free Society debate and there is a man with a chainsaw in the garden next door. It is IMPOSSIBLE to concentrate. Btw, I'm on SunTalk at 11.10. Hope they'll be able to hear me above the din - it's doing my head in!
Thursday, June 24, 2010 
Join The Free Society on Thursday June 24 for drinks and debate at the Institute of Economic Affairs, 2 Lord North Street, Westminster, London SW1. Enjoy pre-event drinks at the IEA courtesy Boisdale of Belgravia then engage in rigorous discussion with leading writers, journalists and campaigners.
The fourth in a series of five debates is entitled:
HYPER-REGULATION AND THE BULLY STATE
Bad laws that threaten individual liberty
The discussion, presented by The Free Society and the Manifesto Club, will be chaired by James Panton, co-founder of the Manifesto Club and lecturer in politics, St John's College, University of Oxford.
Speakers:
Isabella Sankey (policy director, Liberty)
Josie Appleton (director, Manifesto Club)
Mark Wallace (campaign director, Taxpayers Alliance)
Simon Clark (director, The Free Society)
Philip Johnston (Daily Telegraph and author, Bad Laws: An Explosive Analysis of Britain’s Petty Rules, Health and Safety Lunacies and Madcap Laws)
There will be one final debate on June 29 plus the Smoke on the Water riverboat party on Wednesday July 14.
The first three debates in the series have been fully subscribed. To register for the remaining debates email events@thefreesociety.org
Wednesday, June 23, 2010 The Daily Mail has been in touch for a quote. The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) is suggesting that midwives ask pregnant women to take a breath test to check whether or not they've been smoking. The story will appear in tomorrow's paper.
This was my response:
"People need to be educated not coerced and this seems unnecessarily intrusive.
"No-one likes being lectured and it could encourage pregnant women to reach for their fags in defiance.
"We encourage pregnant women to take their GP's advice on matters such as smoking and drinking, but we wouldn't condemn anyone who refused a breath test in these circumstances.
"I'm sure there are plenty of people who will be telling midwives to mind their own business. NICE should butt out too."
As it happens, breath tests on smokers are nothing new. They first came to our attention several years ago when a Radio 4 programme revealed that some American companies breathalyse their staff when they arrive at work - not to see if they have been drinking but to check whether they have been smoking on their way to work.
And I'm sure that there have been reports of women in some US states being apprehended for smoking whilst pregnant. (Or did I dream it?)
PS. It's 18:50 and I have just sat down to write a short speech for tomorrow night's Free Society debate on "Hyper-regulation and the Bully State". I don't know about you, but I reckon this is a pretty good example of the bully state in action.
Simon Clark
The Sunday Mirror ran this report at the weekend: Smoking tests for pregnant women. Same story, clearly.
Simon Clark
The Mail has the story, including my quote, HERE.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010 
I'm not a huge fan of corporate lunches/dinners - especially those enormous awards dinners where the ear-splitting noise from a band few people have heard of drowns out any conversation - but yesterday's lunch at Lords Cricket Ground, organised by the Association of Independent Tobacco Specialists - was really enjoyable.
It was a warm, sunny day so - naturally - we began with a quick pint in the Lords Tavern Bar by the Grace Gate entrance.
We then entered the ground and were ushered into the Harris Gardens (behind the pavilion) for a glass of champagne.
At one o'clock we sat down for lunch in the famous Long Room, with portraits of great international cricketers peering down on us.
I was lucky to find myself on a rather lively table and it was all extremely jolly.
Of course the atmosphere got even better when Blackberries and iPhones started bleeping with reports that the Chancellor wasn't going to raise duty on tobacco or alcohol. (That raised a cheer as the news spread!)
And then, after a couple of "comfort breaks" so that guests could enjoy a cigarette or a cigar outside, it was time for the guest speaker, Bobby Davro.
Now, say what you like about Davro, on this evidence he works very hard for his money and what we got was a 30 minute performance that kept everyone entertained. For example:
"Never buy a midget with learning difficulties. It's not big, it's not clever."
Or, to a member of my table:
"If you were my daughter I'd still be bathing you."
OK, OK, you had to be there. But I laughed.
In the words of a fellow guest: "What a great afternoon. Bobby Davro in the Long Room - bizarre!"
Afterwards, following yet another comfort break, we retired to the Tavern Bar to refuel. It was that sort of day.
PS. I even won a fountain pen in the raffle. Now that was a first!
Tuesday, June 22, 2010 There appears to be a general assumpton that duty on alcohol and tobacco will go up by five per cent or more in today's Budget. Tobacco, in particular, looks vulnerable because non-smokers (the majority) are unlikely to complain if smokers (the minority) are hit hard in the pocket.
Certainly, it should give us a good idea which way this government is going to go on tobacco control. A large increase in tobacco duty may be dressed up as an economic necessity to help reduce the deficit but the truth is rather different. In fact, a sharp increase in tobacco duty is more likely to result in a net loss to the Treasury because more and more people will buy their tobacco abroad - or find other more illicit sources.
Anyway, I've just done an interview for Talksport on the subject.
PS. Let's not forget that tobacco taxation has already gone up this year. Any increase announced today will be in addition to the increase announced by Alastair Darling in March.
Simon Clark
From your correspondent in the Long Room at Lords: no increase in tobacco or alcohol duty. That's the Tories for you. Cheers (hic)!
Monday, June 21, 2010 I shall be at Lords Cricket Ground today but not to watch cricket. I have been invited to the Association of Independent Tobacco Specialists’ annual lunch. The event starts at noon with a champagne reception, followed by lunch at 1.00pm, finishing around 4.00pm.
Guest speaker is, er, Bobby Davro. Last year it was Carol Thatcher, and the year before that George Galloway. In 2007 Boris Johnson was the speaker but I missed the event that year. If I remember, though, it sparked suggestions that Boris was in cahoots with the tobacco lobby. I wish!!
In recent years the AITS lunch has replaced the rather more glittering Pipesmoker of the Year event that used to take place at The Savoy. Unfortunately, after 40 years, the organisers were beginning to run out of household names to whom they could give the title.
Having awarded it to the likes of Eric Morecambe, Patrick Moore, Jimmy Greaves, Barry Norman, Ian Botham, Tony Benn, Ranulph Fiennes and Trevor Baylis, the decision to pull the plug was made following the 2002 event when the title was given to a member of the Dunhill family.
The final Pipesmoker of the Year award was presented to Stephen Fry in 2003 who gave a very funny speech so at least it went out on a high note.
The bizarre thing is, having moved the AITS lunch to Lords, they haven't used a single cricketer (or cricket broadcaster) as the guest speaker. Shane Warne? Allan Lamb? Come on, guys, check this list HERE.
Monday, June 21, 2010 
I spent Saturday afternoon in East London. Specifically, I was there to explore Victoria Park, one of London's oldest municipal parks, to see whether it might be suitable for a big open air event I want to organise.
It has to be a smoker-friendly occasion and that might put us at loggerheads with the local council who run the park, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. We have a long list of alternative venues to look at first.
Anyway, what I saw on Saturday was the first of a two-day event called Paradise Gardens Festival. And the point of my being there was this: if we can organise a Smoke on the Water party for 200 people, or a Politics and Prohibition event for 400, why not a Smoke in the Park festival for 20,000?
In a perfect world such an event would feature a host of attractions including a concert featuring the likes of Paul Weller, Lilly Allen and Joe Jackson to name a few. Actually, it's not as outlandish or as impossible as it sounds. Watch this space.
Update: the council, I now read, wants to develop Victoria Park so that it includes "adult play facilities to promote healthy living". Can't wait to present my pitch for an annual smoker-friendly festival!!
Monday, June 21, 2010 It's hard to imagine anything more sickening. No, not the sight of BP chief executive Tony Hayward watching his yacht sail round the Isle of Wight at the weekend, but the hoots of predictable derision from his detractors in the US and elsewhere.
According to a White House spokesman, "Well, to quote Tony Hayward, he’s got his life back, as he would say. And I think we can all conclude that Tony Hayward is not going to have a second career in PR consulting. This has just been part of a long line of PR gaffes and mistakes.”
Greenpeace (who else?) declared that Hayward was "rubbing salt into the wounds" of Gulf residents. Oh, really?
Gruesome though the oil spill in the Gulf is - both for the families of the eleven men killed in the original explosion (remember them?) and the people whose livelihoods have been affected by the accident - it doesn't mean that Tony Hayward or other senior BP executives should have to give up any semblance of a private life.
In fact I sense a bit of class envy in this post on the Larry King Live blog: "A posh weekend at an annual yacht race off the coast of England has embattled BP CEO Tony Hayward once again treading water in social media ..."
Heaven help Barack Obama if the media catch him smiling or having a moment of relaxation before the oil in the Gulf is finally capped. And we can't have that. After all, it wouldn't do to have a normal person in charge of the White House, would it?
As for BP, perhaps we should put a cyborg in charge and be done with it.
Sunday, June 20, 2010 "Research shows that those living in multiple-unit housing are being exposed to toxins from tobacco smoke," says Jonathan Winickoff, a pediatrician at Massachusetts General Hospital General Hospital for Children.
"Even if you are not a smoker and don't smoke inside of your own apartment, if you have a neighbor who is smoking inside of his, the entire building is contaminated."
Story HERE.
So, to recap, we have first-hand smoke (inhaled directly by smokers), second-hand smoke (exposure to gases and particles from other people's tobacco smoke, highly diluted - in most circumstances - by the air around us), third-hand smoke (exposure to minute particles of smoke in carpets and furnishings) and, now, fourth-hand smoke (exposure to "toxins" that you might not hitherto have been aware of because the source is to be found in a completely different part of the building in which you live!!).
I don't think anyone else has called this phenomenon fourth-hand smoke yet - but it's only a matter of time.
Saturday, June 19, 2010 
I love coffee so I was delighted to read a story on the BBC website today that suggests that "Drinking several cups of tea or coffee a day appears to protect against heart disease, a 13-year-long study from the Netherlands has found ...
"Those who drank more than six cups of tea a day cut their risk of heart disease by a third, the study of 40,000 people found. Consuming between two to four coffees a day was also linked to a reduced risk."
According to the British Heart Foundation: "This study adds further weight to the evidence that drinking tea and coffee in moderation is not harmful for most people, and may even lower your risk of developing, or dying, from heart disease."
But wait, what's this?
The BHF adds: "Having a cigarette with your coffee could completely cancel any benefits, while drinking lots of tea in front of the TV for hours on end without exercising is unlikely to offer your heart much protection at all."
Damn and blast.
Full story HERE.
Thursday, June 17, 2010 In an earlier thread Forest is criticised for not defending smoking in cars where children are present. We won't defend it because we think it's inconsiderate, if nothing else, and I stick to our line that, where small children are concerned, parents should err on the side of caution.
(Peter Thurgood comments, bizarrely, that "If the great explorers, scientists, artists, writers, doctors and inventors down through the ages, had all decided to 'err of the side of caution' we would not have the great advances in art, science, and technology that we have today." I'm sorry, Peter, but what has that got to do with smoking in cars?! If I put forward that argument in defence of smoking in cars, especially those with children on board, I would be ridiculed, and rightly so.)
Another reason we won't defend smoking in cars where children are present is that Forest tries to represent the majority of smokers who are moderate in most things. If this sometimes leads to disagreement with those who want us to take an even more robust approach to every smoking-related issue, so be it.
As it happens, I have in my hands the results of a recently commissioned survey of over 1000 smokers and I can reveal that in answer to the question "If there were children in the car/vehicle you use, would you: (1) smoke as normal, (2) ask if you could smoke before doing so, (3) not smoke at all because there are children present, the result was as follows:
8.2% would smoke as normal
6.5% would ask (!) if they can can smoke, and
85.3% do not smoke at all when there are children present
In answer to another question, 75% of smokers either don't smoke or will ask even when adults (and no children) are in the car.
Clearly these figures indicate that the overwhelming majority of adult smokers are already considering their passengers, so why legislate for what seems to be a practise limited to a very small minority, especially when the risks are open to question?
That said, while I am sceptical about the impact of passive smoking, I also believe that in a very small confined space such as a car smokers should err on the side of caution if young children are present. That's normal behaviour, isn't it? At the very least smokers should consider the comfort of their passengers, young or old, and behave accordingly.
I feel as strongly as most readers of this blog that a ban on smoking in cars is unnecessary and excessive. That is why Forest will continue to oppose proposals to ban it, regardless of whether children are present.
(Personally I believe this campaign has little to do with the health of children and everything to do with the denormalisation of smoking.)
But Forest has to reflect the views of adult smokers and according to the latest research the overwhelming majority choose to put their passengers first when driving.
I think that shows smokers in rather a good light. Don't you?
Thursday, June 17, 2010 Further to yesterday's post about my interview on Radio Cornwall, the programme also featured a woman called Lyn Mitchell who is in her fifties and is confined to a wheelchair because she is suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) which she claims is the result of growing up with parents who smoked.
In media terms, this is the equivalent of the fictional tobacco lobbyist Nick Naylor being introduced on a TV show to a 15-year old diagnosed with cancer. (See Thank You For Smoking, the very sharp 2006 film starring Aaron Eckhart.)
It doesn't happen to me very often but it's always a delicate moment. One has to be firm yet sensitive to the person's predicament and also their opinions, which may be strongly held.
Yesterday was relatively easy because Lyn's interview was pre-recorded so we weren't addressing one another directly. I sympathised with her plight, made the rather obvious point that I wasn't her doctor so I couldn't possibly comment on the cause of her illness, but added that whatever the reasons we should put her case in perspective.
How many people, I asked the presenter, did he know who have to carry a portable oxygen cylinder with them to help them breathe? Personally, I said, I don't know anyone. (Apart from Lyn I'm sure there are others, but they are few and far between. And I would take some convincing that it was caused by their parents smoking in a car when they were young.)
The point is, however distressing it is for the people concerned, it doesn't justify a blanket ban on smoking in cars, or the home ... or anywhere else.
Meanwhile, on BBC Somerset this morning, I was reminded of a statistic (from the Royal College of Physicians) that suggests that 22,000 children seek medical help for asthma and wheezing as a result of passive smoking every year.
Hmmm, I said. Interesting, isn't it, that cases of asthma have (I am told) tripled since 1970 yet the number of smokers has more than halved. And still smokers are blamed for their children's asthma and "wheezing".
I was a "wheezy" child. Until the age of five or six I occasionally had bouts of croup, which made breathing quite painful. (I remember spending several nights with my head under a towel, breathing in the steam from a bowl of hot water to help relieve the symptoms.)
Neither of my parents smoked but I bet, if I were a child today, I would be listed as one of the 22,000 children suffering from "asthma and wheezing as a result of passive smoking".
Simon Clark
I notice that in THIS information about croup it asks the question "Will smoking effect croup?" and gives the reply, "Smoking will make croup worse. Do not let anyone smoke around your child at any time."
That seems not unreasonable to me. It doesn't say that smoking causes croup. It simply says it will (may?) make it worse. Solution: err on the side of caution when in the presence of very small children.
Likewise, if someone suffers seriously from asthma it makes sense to avoid a smoky environment because it may/will make it worse. But again, it doesn't mean that exposure to tobacco smoke caused asthma in the first place and it doesn't justify a comprehensive ban on smoking in all public places.
Thursday, June 17, 2010 I have just been on The Morning Show with Emma Britton (BBC Radio Somerset) where they are inviting listeners to "Have your say: should smoking be banned in cars?" Emma sounds a little like Clare Balding and her mellifluous voice lulled me into a false sense of security as I rattled on. Eventually she interrupted me gently to say, "I know you're a man who never stops a sentence ..."
A polite way, I suppose, of saying: "Shut up!"
Wednesday, June 16, 2010 BBC Radio Solent wants me to talk about a story in today's (Bournemouth) Daily Echo. The paper reports that a smoking ban is set to be lifted at the Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals. Karen Allman, director of human resources, told the NHS trust’s board:
“Smoking is not allowed on site. Unfortunately it has been driven underground.
“We’ve had instances of patients smoking under the bedclothes.
“We’ve had instances where fire tenders have been called out and staff have been running around pouring jugs of water on small fires.
“I’m aware of one trust where a patient died because he lit up a cigarette. He was on oxygen and went up in flames.”
Full story HERE.
I have blogged about hospitals and smoking bans before. See
Hospital: no smoking policy reversed and Smoking: hospital rebellion grows.
Note, though, that even when hospitals are forced to reconsider unworkable smoking bans, the authorities are still determined to wield a stick rather than a carrot. In Bournemouth, for example:
[The board will] consider whether the seats outside the front of the hospital should be removed to reinforce the message that smoking would not be tolerated in the area.
The good news is: these outdoor bans just aren't working. As we've always said, prohibit something and you drive it underground where you have no control.
Perhaps the message is getting through.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010 Now the British Lung Foundation has jumped on the bandwagon to ban smoking in cars where children are present. Full story, included an edited comment from me, HERE. For what it's worth, my full response was along these lines:
"Forest does not condone smoking in cars where very small children are present but there is no need for legislation because, in our experience, most smokers already regulate their behaviour and choose not light up in a car if children are present. A car is a private space. What next - a ban on smoking in the home?"
Unfortunately I fear that this bandwagon is beginning to develop momentum, not least because a large number of smokers seem ambivalent on the subject - probably because they don't smoke in the car when children are present and can't see a problem if it is banned.
The trouble is, like the indoor smoking ban (an idea that began with exemptions), it will eventually prove "easier" to ban smoking in all cars, irrespective of whether children are present or not.
No doubt we will hear about the hundreds of lives this will save each year - but I'd to see someone in government pour cold water on the idea now. For the moment, all I hear is silence.
PS. I did an interview on the subject for local radio in Liverpool this morning. They took some soundbites from people in the street and you would think that Scousers are all in favour of a ban on smoking in cars.
I'm sure there's a joke there somewhere but I won't be making it (I'll leave that to Boris Johnson) because I have to go to Liverpool in a couple of weeks to check out venues for the Lib Dem party conference!
Simon Clark
I'm on BBC Radio Cornwall around 12.40. They have interviewed Dame Helena Shovelton, chief executive of the British Lung Foundation, and want me to respond. Apparently, the BLF are "confident" that smoking will be banned in cars.
Now, where have I heard that before? Ah, yes, I'm sure we all recall that ASH boasted of having conducted a "confidence trick" on politicians prior to MPs voting to ban smoking in enclosed public places. Now, it seems, the anti-smoking lobby intends to repeat the exercise. We'll see.
