Monday, May 31, 2010 
Further to my previous post, I have written an article about the new ASH report for ConservativeHome.
Full article HERE. You may wish to comment.
Simon Clark
There's a fair old discussion going on at ConservativeHome. Keep those comments coming!
Tuesday, March 16, 2010 The film director James Cameron, criticised for allowing a character to smoke in his blockbuster Avatar, defended himself by saying that he knows that smoking is a ‘filthy habit’ – he just doesn’t think he should be forbidden to show it.
"Thanks, James. With friends like you, who needs enemies?" So says musician Joe Jackson in his latest article for The Free Society website, published today. Joe writes:
I took a shower this morning and put on clean clothes. My teeth are brushed and my nails manicured. Can anyone tell me – I mean, in a reasoned, logical way – why I am so ‘filthy’ for smoking tobacco?
Is ‘filth’ a kind of euphemism, by which some people mean that that smoking is aesthetically unpleasant to them? If so, it’s purely a matter of taste, and to insult people just because you don’t share their pleasure is just plain rude.
Personally, I can’t stand dogs – I’m allergic to them, and think they’re smelly. But I can see that many people love them, so I bite my tongue and try to be tolerant. I certainly don’t want the government banning dogs from every pub in the land.
Living in the UK today, Joe concludes, is a bit like being back at school:
Rules and regulations, bullying and humiliation. Except that this is a school in which the teachers actually encourage the bullies to beat up the fat kids, or the kids who don’t like sports, or the kids who don’t like the food ...
One thing’s for sure: so much meanness, intolerance, divisiveness and hate must inevitably provoke a backlash. I can’t wait.
Full article HERE.
Friday, January 8, 2010 Interesting article in the Financial Times by Samuel Brittan. (In 1981, when 364 leading economists wrote a letter to The Times criticising Margaret Thatcher's economic policy, Brittan was one of the few economic commentators to openly defend her.)
On the subject of liberalism, Brittan writes:
Modern discussion of the subject begins with John Stuart Mill’s still controversial 1859 essay On Liberty. This states that “the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection”, that is to “prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant".
"We need to move on from Mill, writes Brittan, "partly because there will always be argument about how to draw the line between self and self-regarding actions. Almost all conduct has some effect on other people." He continues:
I would myself favour an informal concept put forward by John Maynard Keynes in an essay in the 1920s, which distinguished between the agenda and non-agenda of government. This would not be fixed for all eternity but would vary over time. Kaeynes devised the idea to separate himself from those 19th century Liberals who saw little useful role for the state. But it could equally be applied in reverse to cordon off areas where the government has no business interferfing with citizens. It is the refusal to recognise any such limits tat is the real crime of New Labour and why some of us will find it hard to support it again.
Brittan concludes with three examples "that starkly expose anti-liberal ways of thinking". One is compulsory national service; another is rigid foreign exchange restrictions.
A final example is the smoking ban in public places - and I speak as a lifelong non-smoker. So long as there are designated areas to ensure non-smokers are protected from smoke pollution, what is the harm in providing a room where people can smoke at their own risk? Why is this worse than making smokers stand outside in the cold?
"However difficult it is to define a liberal," he concludes, "it is not hard to spot anti-liberals."
PS. I can't link to the article because the FT is now subscription only.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010 Mike Hume, founding editor of Spiked, has written an article that screams common sense. A 60-a-day smoker until he gave up (going cold turkey "using the oral crutch of sucking 20-plus lollipops a day"), Hume writes:
As one who has long been irritated by the increasingly shrill and illiberal anti-smoking crusade, I have been thinking again about the issue over the past week. Because this New Year marked the twentieth anniversary of the day I stopped smoking for good.
The intervening two decades have brought remarkable changes in the way that both smokers and giving up smoking are viewed in our society. It seems to me now that these changes are about far more than the way we see cigarettes. They mark a downward shift in the predominant cultural view of our humanity, and a demeaning of the qualities of adult autonomy and independence.
He adds:
The move to redefine smoking as anti-social behaviour has also struck a chord with many because it chimes with the cri de coeur of the age – that your life is being messed up by other people, and you need protection from them (and possibly also from yourself). The underlying issue here is not passive smoking so much as passive living, inviting the authorities in to resolve your problems. Hence there was none of the talked-of resistance to the ban on smoking in public places. Where once it would have been thought these were matters for adults to sort out among themselves, now it is considered fair enough for the state forcibly to stub it out.
He concludes:
I don’t regret stopping smoking 20 years ago, and it would be daft for anybody to take it up as some sort of political protest. But I do worry about what is behind the changed cultural status of smokers and giving up. I think I will always feel like a smoker inside, even though I hope never to have another puff. But even those who have never touched one should surely be concerned about the diminished view of adult autonomy and free choice that the anti-smoking crusade has helped to spread, opening the door to the new interfering ‘politics of behaviour’ in a way that would never have been tolerated in the smoke-filled rooms of yore.
Full article HERE. Highly recommended.
H/T Pat Nurse - Tea and Cigarettes
Saturday, January 2, 2010 
Commenting on the impact of the smoking ban on the pub industry, columnist Vicki Woods - the recipient of a Forest Christmas card promoting the Save Our Pubs and Clubs campaign - has this to say in today's Daily Telegraph:
In a year when the postman brought me fewer handwritten, stamped and posted Christmas cards, the corporate ones stood out. I liked a depressed Santa sitting under a pub sign saying NOBODY'S INN. It was a Merry Christmas from Forest (the pro-smoking people), hand-signed in different biros by Nicky, Sue x and Squiggle.
On the back was the business: please Save Our Pubs and Clubs by visiting amendthesmokingban.com. I duly did, and found a campaign pleading for some flexibility over the UK's blanket ban on smoking in public places. I approve of flexibility (and David Hockney, especially when guest-editing on Today) and disapprove of what my late mother called "tin Hitlers", ie people with a statutory authority to boss you about.
Full article HERE. Please comment.
PS. The aforementioned "Squiggle" is, er, me. Note to self: must make signature more legible in future.
Simon Clark
Lots of comments in response to Vicki Woods' article in the Telegraph (above). I particularly like this one:
I am joint licensee of an unspoilt country freehouse. There are no machines, pool table or jukebox. Our customers like it that way. They also used to like being able to smoke when enjoying a peaceful pint or two. We had a separeate non smoking dining room for those that wanted to get away from the smoke. Our trade has fallen considerably (50%) since the ban, this coupled with cheap supermarket booze will be the death of us.
Our younger customer tell us that when they are going out for an evening in town they get cheap vodka and beer from the supermarket and drink this at home before they go out, so they can drink less and are probably completely trollied before they get there. Then of course its the pubs that get the blame for binge drinking.
The way forward as I and several other publicans see it is:
1. For the smoking ban to change and let it be the publicans choice. (After all if smoking is that bad why not ban it altogether - but silly me the government would lose all the revenue.)
2. Supermarkets to be forced to sell alcohol at a proper price (lets face it pubs can't buy it for what the supermarkets are selling it for)
3. Sort out the pubcos who are being too greedy.
And for your information neither myself or my partner or any of our bar staff smoke but we would all much rather have a smoking smelly pub full of happy customers rather an an empty one.
Click HERE to read all the comments.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009 Sometimes you think you have read it all and then an article like this appears. It was written by David Sexton and was published by the London Evening Standard.
It now seems simply bizarre that people used to be allowed to smoke in planes, on the Tube, in hospitals, offices and restaurants.
In time, it will seem equally improbable that they could once do so with impunity in the faces of people sharing public space outside.
The arguments may no longer be about the dangers of secondary smoking but they are no less compelling. It's not just that they smell so terrible and throw their butts everywhere.
When you see a smoker, sucking in hard as soon as he or she gets to the threshold, what you are seeing is not just addiction but self-harming of the most terrible kind. Half of all regular smokers are killed by their habit.
No other vice, not even drinking to excess, is so directly and inherently suicidal. We would not find it acceptable to see people routinely setting fire to themselves in public.
Yet that is precisely what smoking in public is equivalent to. Children should not grow up thinking that's normal.
Properly understood, smoking is a moral affront every time. So long as we smile on it, we are approving a holocaust.
Full article HERE.
I know that columnists have a page to fill ("It doesn't matter what you write, just get it written" is a mantra that many journalists grew up with) but do they really have to sink this low?
No wonder the Standard is free these days. Who would pay to read this pathetic illiberal rubbish?
Saturday, June 6, 2009 Matthew Parris, the former Conservative MP, is always extremely readable. Writing about the situation in which Gordon Brown and his government now find themselves, Parris has this to say in today's Times:
This is pathetic. This is toe-curlingly awful. This is so abjectly, senselessly broken-backed that it almost isn't interesting to watch. I've seen poisoned rats die slowly, too, and after a while the spectacle loses the appeal even of the macabre.
I agree. The collapse of Brown's government (and his leadership credentials) is hypnotic but it's not what I would call exciting. It resembles an ultra slow-motion car crash. You can't help watching but if you've got a life you want things to speed up a little.
The outcome is inevitable and the moment of impact can't come soon enough. The only thing I'm now interested in is the extent of the crash and how many people stagger out alive.
Parris continues:
It is also an act of supreme selfishness on Mr Brown's part. Wrapping himself like some wingless albatross around his administration's throat, starving his own colleagues of oxygen in his mindless determination that other careers should not live in order that his should not die, he has brought his Government and his party to the ground, broken their legs - and yet still will not release his grip.
Full article HERE.
Also in today's papers, the Telegraph reports that a man has been sentenced to one year in prison after he admitted he was responsible for the death of his wife during a diving trip in Australia. "The coroner found it was likely that [he] had killed his wife by holding her underwater and turning off her air supply."
If Gordon Brown holds on to power for much longer, I suspect that New Labour will suffer a similar fate.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009 Writing in the June issue of The Oldie, veteran sports writer Frank Keating recalls going to his first Test match. It was 1949, the venue was Old Trafford, the opposition was New Zealand, and the home team featured an 18-year-old batsman (Brian Close) who went on to become a legend for England and Yorkshire and is still the youngest player ever to win an England Test cap.
Keating writes:
It was an entrancing day. Behind the pavilion at close of play I asked Close to sign my autograph book: before he did so, he told me to hold his ciggie's still-burning dog-end. It was a Wills Woodbine.
On the second morning, we were there when the players arrived. Talk about a quiet drag behind the pav! Was it a Smokers' Convention or a sporting Test match? Sixty years ago it was, of course, the way of the world. The New Zealanders arrived from their hotel in a coacj, disembarking in a fug, pipes and ciggies at full bellow almost to a man ...
Like their captain [Freddie Brown], Bill Edrich, Godfrey Evans, and Reg Simpson were pipemen, and each were billowing post-breakfast clouds; so was popular roly-poly Black Country leg-spinner Eric Hollies, his burning-bowl furnace, I remember still, letting loose particularly pungent and ripe emissions. Ah, was this my first ever Condor moment?
Gnarled ex-miner and opening bowler Les Jackson was at his Woodbines. In the public prints Len Hutton, we knew, advertised both downmarket Black Cat cork tipped and Phillips 'Special Sport' untipped; but here in real life the pale maestro was shamelessly smoking classy Player's Navy Cut untipped. So was Denis Compton. Ex-Navy amateur Trevor Bailey was chain-smoking, naturally, Senior Service.
In 1949, Britain and its sportsmen were snug in the calming embrace of m'Lady Nicotine. No health scares then. Why should there b? Of that historic all-dancing all-smoking first XI of mine, only one (Hollies, who died of a heart attack at 69) failed to make three-score-and-ten.
Edrich died (after a staircase fall) at 70, Hutton at 74, Compton and Evans at 78, Brown 80, Washbrook at 84, Jackson at 86. Happily still with us, full of the joys, and playing strokes all round the wicket are Close 78, Bailey 85, and Simpson 89. Happy days.
Happy days indeed.
Sunday, April 19, 2009 For 15 years I edited the monthly Mensa Magazine. No, I wasn't a member. I was a freelance journalist and I got the job partly through my friendship with Madsen Pirie who was on the board of directors.
The cover of the September 1998 issue featured the young and very talented pianist Elena Konstantinou who was performing at the Mensa Music Festival at the Royal Academy of Music. Other performers - all members - included professional cellist Oliver Gledhill and Andy Leek, formerly with Dexy's Midnight Runners.
Less prominent was the headline "Exclusive! Derek Draper's Guide to Political Intelligence".
Like me, Draper wasn't a member of Mensa but in 1998 he was a leading spin doctor, a former aide to Peter Mandelson, and I couldn't think of anyone better to write 1200 words on the subject.
It was a thoughtful, well-written piece and in view of recent events I thought you might like to read some excerpts. Reading it again I am particularly struck by the final paragraph. But judge for yourself:
It was John Stuart Mill who first labelled the Conservative Party the "stupid party". He meant it as an insult but it is the least intellectual who seem to prosper best in politics. The much more wounding put down is to be told you're "too clever by half". One can be bright but not too bright ...
The Tories have always been more withering in their contempt for intelligence … Prior to the Thatcherite takeover [the] party prided itself on being an ideas free zone. Whilst the socialists worried themselves about Gramsci, Marx, Crosland or Laski, the Tories got on with governing the country.
Only with the accession of Thatcher did intellectuals turn the party into an ideological venture. Managing decline was no longer a policy option. But whilst Thatcher built an intellectual coterie during the 1970s, as soon as she gained power the brains were spurned and the old machine politicians took over …
Blair has similarly turned to trusted party men now he has the keys to No 10 … Welcome Jack “The Enforcer” Cunningham, a man who learnt his trade amongst the shop stewards of Newcastle GMB; Peter Mandelson, a strategist with a keen intelligence but not an intellectual; and John Prescott. Only Gordon Brown (with his PhD and desperation to get to grips with neo-endogenous growth theory) could remotely be described as intellectual ...
Being too clever by half is, of course, only a handicap in British politics. In France, Italy and Germany politicians regularly display their intellectual depth with turgid books on the foundations on their political philosophy ...
In Britain the ambitious politico settles for a newspaper picture of himself drinking local ale in the nearest saloon bar. Politicians like the Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, the Lord Chancellor Derry Irvine and even William Hague are widely viewed with suspicion for their clever-clever air.
The only way, as George Bush found during the 1988 US Presidential campaign, is to dumb down, lose the hauteur and go for the soundbite. For the cruel truth is that modern electorates like the impression of ordinary men doing extraordinary jobs; not extraordinary men who deign to perform ordinary jobs.
Ultimately it is instinct, common sense and, above all, luck which services the successful politician more usefully than any degree of grey matter. Tony Blair’s instinctive response on the morning after Princess Diana’s death earned him a deeper and more lasting support than any clever policy wheeze ever could.
Intellectuals have their function – but it is usually limited and far from the centre of power. Politics is, in a now hackneyed phrase, about hard choices. The intellectual usually sees too many alternatives, paradoxes and complications to act with the decision and brutality required.
Brutality? I wonder if Damian McBride read this?!
PS. In the same issue Madsen and I created a "political quotient" for each member of the then Labour Cabinet. We did this by estimating and giving marks for the political and intellectual ability of each minister. Tony Blair, for example, got 8 out of 10 for political ability, and 5 out of 10 for his intellectual prowess. Brown, in contrast, got 6 for political ability and 6 for intellect. To achieve a PQ rating we added these figures together and multiplied the result by five to give a mark out of 100. Simple!
It was just a bit of fun and the winner was ... Peter Mandelson with a PQ of 90. Other scores included Stephen Byers (85), Baroness Jay (85), Jack Straw (75), David Blunkett (70), Tony Blair (65), Alastair Darling (65), Gordon Brown (60) and John Prescott (45). Bottom of the class were Clare Short, Nick Brown and Chris Smith with PQs of 30.
Friday, April 3, 2009 As regular readers know, Michael Siegel is a professor at Boston University School of Public Health. With 20 years' experience in tobacco control, he writes a fascinating blog - The Rest of the Story: Tobacco News Analysis and Commentary - which is essential reading for anyone with an interest in the smoking debate.
In his time Siegel has published research on the harmful effects of passive smoking. He has also testified in support of indoor smoking bans in US cities. You might expect him therefore to be another one-eyed anti-smoker, like so many of his colleagues.
Not so. Demonstrating remarkable integrity, both personal and professional, Siegel has put his career on the line by questioning some of the medical claims about passive smoking, and opposing "next step" policies such as outdoor smoking bans.
For his pains he has been shunned by colleagues and accused of taking money from the tobacco industry. Courageously, Siegel has stuck to his guns and his story is featured in a must-read article in this week's New Scientist. Here's a taste:
Siegel's case is perhaps the most clear-cut example of a disturbing trend in the anti-smoking movement. There are genuine scientific questions over some of the more extreme claims made about the dangers of passive smoking and the best strategies to reduce smoking rates, but a few researchers who have voiced them have seen their reputations smeared and the debate stifled.
Putting aside the question of whether such tactics are ethical, they could ultimately backfire. About half of US states and many parts of Europe do not yet ban smoking even indoors in public places like bars and restaurants, so the anti-smoking movement cannot afford to lose credibility.
On the other hand, in some parts of the US, particularly California, the anti-smoking movement has grown so strong that smoking bans outdoors and in private apartments are in force in a few places, and being considered in more. These measures are at least partly based on disputed medical claims, so it is vital their accuracy be determined. But questioning the orthodoxy seems to be frowned on. "It's censorship," says Siegel. "We're heading towards scientific McCarthyism."
Read the full article HERE.
See also an accompanying editorial, The dangers of inhaling dubious facts.
Friday, March 20, 2009 Rod Liddle has written a piece in this week's Spectator (The smoking ban was always going to be thin end of the wedge) which sums up what many of us, including Rod, have been saying for years. In fact, I'm sure we had this very conversation when we shared a table at Forest's Revolt In Style dinner at The Savoy a couple of years ago.
Tom Utley, another recipient of Forest's coveted Smoker-Friendly Journalist of the Year award, also writes about the war on alcohol HERE.
Of course Rod and Tom - both heavy smokers who enjoy a drink or two - might be expected to write in this vein, not least because it provides an entertaining article and, as Tom is always reminding us, it pays for his children's school fees.
What we also need is for people who have hitherto kept quiet to make their views known. The longer they stay silent, the worse things will get. Writing on blogs and message boards isn't enough. People must write to their MP, to newspapers, and vote with their feet.
Oh, and they might also write to Sir Liam Donaldson, Chief Medical Officer, Department of Health, Room 114, Richmond House, 79 Whitehall, London SW1A 2NS.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009 ... asks Jane Feinmann in the Independent today. See HERE. You may wish to comment.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009 Christopher Snowdon, author of Velvet Glove, Iron Fist: A History of Anti-Smoking, available from his website HERE, has written an excellent article for the online magazine Spiked.
Snowdon takes issue with Martin Dockrell, ASH's policy and campaigns manager, who recently launched what Snowdon calls as an "extraordinary attack on the journalist and broadcaster Michael Blastland". Writing online, Dockrell described Blastland as a "conspiracy theorist" and a "dissident".
Blastland’s crime was to criticise a study that claimed that the incidence of acute coronary syndrome (ACS) fell by 17 per cent after Scotland’s public smoking ban came into force in 2006. The study then applied a logical fallacy: since the reduction followed the ban, it must have been caused by the ban. Blastland covered the story for the BBC in November 2007, two months after the findings were reported by the international media following a presentation at a tobacco control conference.
Snowdon also has a pop at members of the scientific community who try to stifle debate:
Scientific debate should not be reduced to ad hominem attacks. Good scientists are happy to have their theories scrutinised, even when they believe their opponents to be utterly misguided. Good scientists do not announce their findings to the press and then refuse to answer questions. Good scientists do not refuse to release their raw data. Good scientists do not claim that a scientific debate is over before it has been allowed to begin. Above all, good scientists do not slander their critics with barely concealed accusations of madness, corruption or worse.
Full article HERE.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009 The Independent, unlike its centre-left rival the Guardian, has always been rather more liberal on the subject of tobacco. Indeed, some of the most enlightened articles about smoking - and passive smoking - have been published in the Indy. Even the paper's health correspondents have been known to give Forest a reasonable crack of the whip.
In today's Independent health editor Jeremy Laurance highlights the American trend for smoker-free workplaces which he calls a "sinister new development". According to Laurance:
There is a scale of harms associated with smoking. As a non-smoker, I am of course in favour of smoke-free public spaces. But even I baulked at the closure of the Independent's smoking room. What harm were they doing, apart from to each other? That seemed to me a curb on individual freedom too far.
The latest assault – banning smokers rather than smoking – is an order of magnitude more serious. What the US does today, we tend to find ourselves doing tomorrow.
On this occasion, we must draw the line. As the anti-smoking charity ASH (which bans smoking but not smokers among its own employees) says, the object of the policy should be the habit, not the person who has it. A ban on smokers is an unacceptable infringement of personal liberty and must be firmly resisted.
Full article HERE.
Apart from Laurance's opening sentence ("By near universal acclaim, smoke-free workplaces have made the world a better place"), my only quibble is the suggestion, "On this occasion, we must draw the line".
Of course we should draw a line. But the line should have been drawn at separate smoking rooms, or well-ventilated smoking areas. Anyone who supports a comprehensive smoking ban is effectively giving the green light to employers, politicians and health fanatics who want to go that extra mile in search of the "next logical step".
That is why government HAS to amend the smoking ban, if only to allow separate smoking rooms. It will draw a line and send a clear message to the SS (stop smoking) brigade that extremism of any sort is unwelcome and must be resisted in the interests of society as a whole.
Monday, February 2, 2009 Brian Monteith, currently in Trinidad "on business" (how he must be missing the snow back home), has drawn my attention to an article entitled "The tyranny of the anti-smoking majority".
It was published in America but the sentiments apply equally to the UK, or anywhere else:
The mindset among an increasing number of public servants insists on nanny-state uniformity that bans tobacco use on any premises where any member of the general public might someday step foot.
Now, at long last, wiser minds somewhere have found no offense in a dual economy where smoking and non-smoking establishments shall be allowed to co-exist.
Gladstone council member Les Smith gets it. The Star reports he told fellow council members that second-hand smoke does not become a public health issue until someone walks through a door and makes it one.
"It is really simple," he said. "You have a choice not to go in."
I couldn't agree more. Full article HERE.
