Taking Liberties

My latest post on the Telegraph's new Ways and Means blog can be found HERE. Readers of Taking Liberties will find the subject (Europe, tobacco, freedom of speech) familiar so feel free to add a comment. (Note: once registered, you can comment on any of the Telegraph blogs so it's worth taking a moment to do it.)

Wearing my Free Society hat, I have been invited to contribute to a new think tank blog on the Telegraph website. My first post can be found HERE. Comments welcome.

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.

Thanks to Donal Blaney, chief executive of the Young Britons' Foundation, for writing this on his blog today:

Those of us who believe in liberty need to stand up to the bullying of the health fascists - and we need to point out that the government ought to be focussing on more important things.

If you have the time, read The Free Society blog. We need to organise more effectively, including across the political divide as there are many non-tribal Labour, LibDem and unaligned voters who are our natural allies in the fight to preserve our liberties (look at the anti-ID card campaign as an example of how such alliances can be forged).

If we fail to wake up soon, even more liberties will have been taken from us by a government that is bereft of ideas other than in wanting to arrogate more power to the state.

A non-party, non-tribal campaign to protect our liberties is EXACTLY what we had in mind when we launched The Free Society. We are currently working on one or two initiatives and will have more to report shortly.

Read the full blogpost HERE.

If you are new to The Free Society and welcome our aims, register your support HERE.

It's 26 years since I visited Moscow and I assume it's a very different place to the drab Soviet city I experienced in 1982. (It was so awful that when we left, and the British Airways' pilot announced that we were clear of Soviet airspace, the news was greeted with wild and sustained applause.)

What won't have changed (in spite of global warming) is the extreme cold that grips the place for months on end. It was April when I visited the city, which is a three-hour flight from London, but the severe arctic temperature, especially on our first night when we walked the few hunded yards from our hotel to Red Square, is something I shall never forget.

Anyway, the reason I mention it is that Taking Liberties has reached a little part of Russia that will be forever England. I am talking about The Last Ditch, an excellent blog by ex-pat Tom Paine who ironically (some may feel) writes from Moscow about the "death of liberty in Britain". 

I have added The Last Ditch to our blogroll on The Free Society. Warmly (no pun intended) recommended.

Some time ago I invited comments on the issue of organ donation. Influenced, perhaps, by the fact that my father had to wait 18 months and very nearly died before a suitable donor could be found for a heart transplant, I expressed support for the idea that everyone should be placed on the donor register - unless they choose to opt out.

No-one, so far as I can recall, supported my view. Indeed, several people (smokers, presumably) said they were ready to rip up their donor cards if they continued to be victimised. I was impressed by this response not because I think it is right (they would, after all, be taking their anger out on the wrong people) but because it demonstated the depth of resentment many feel towards the present government.

Anyway, the subject has once again raised its head with Gordon Brown said to be in favour of a system of "presumed consent". This has aroused considerable comment including a lively debate on Iain Dale's blog, HERE. Iain writes:

My body belongs to me, not the government, nor the NHS. I carry a donor card. I have made a free choice that in the event of any of my body parts being useful to someone else in the event of my death, someone else is welcome to them. I made an active choice. Gordon Brown is now proposing that there should be presumed consent and that people would have to opt out if they didn't want their organs used. If this is allowed to go through it will set a very dangerous precedent and it will be a further diminution of the freedom of the individual to make an informed choice.

It's not something I feel strongly about but I can see that other people do and I am slowly changing my mind in favour of the "voluntary" option based on freedom of choice. It is important that people who support "freedom of choice" do so right across the board, not just on issues we care about. If you're a genuine libertarian you can't pick and choose which issues to support (although you can put them in perspective).

It is however important that if you want to voluntarily register to donate organs after your death it should be made as easy as possible to do so - and next of kin should not (in my view) be allowed to impede the process. Iain has published a link to "How to become a donor" and I am happy to do the same. Click HERE.

Readers of "Britain's favourite think tank blog" are currently being offered the opportunity to get their hands on a free copy of the Forest/Boisdale CD You Can't Do That! (Songs for Swinging Smokers). See HERE. Dr Eamonn Butler, co-founder of the Adam Smith Institute, describes it as "delightfully politically-incorrect". Eamonn is seldom wrong.

I suppose we ought to make a similar offer to friends of Forest and The Free Society. The CD normally costs £10 from the Boisdale Shop, but we will send a free CD (postage paid) to the first 50 UK and Irish readers who email their full name and address to us at contact@forestonline.org. One per household. The offer closes on Friday December 14.

Another thought-provoking article on Michael Siegel's tobacco-related blog, The Rest of the Story. In recent years, Prof Siegel's site has become required reading for anyone with an interest in the smoking debate. According to his blog profile:

I am a physician who specialized in preventive medicine and public health. I am now a professor in the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department, Boston University School of Public Health. I have 20 years of experience in tobacco control, primarily as a researcher. My areas of research interest include the health effects of secondhand smoke, policy aspects of regulating smoking in public places, effects of cigarette marketing on youth smoking behavior, and the evaluation of tobacco control program and policy interventions.

Tobacco industry stooge? I think not. The title of his most recent post asks, 'Why has the tobacco control movement lost its scientific integrity?'. He addresses this question (which, you will notice, includes a very clear statement) before concluding:

This is the new era of tobacco control ... And it has truly become a free-for-all for anti-smoking organizations.

Imagine this: the anti-smoking groups can actually claim that 30 minutes of secondhand smoke exposure is enough to cause hardening of the arteries. They can actually claim that 30 minutes of secondhand smoke exposure increases your risk of a fatal heart attack to the same level as that of an active smoker. They can actually claim that two hours of secondhand smoke increases your risk of sudden death from a cardiac arrhythmia.

And they can get away with it. That's why I think the anti-smoking groups have lost their scientific integrity. Because they can get away with it.

Full post HERE.

Writing a blog is not unlike keeping a diary. To the best of my knowledge, however, only one blog has, to date, made it into print. Out Of The Tunnel by Rachel North is based on a blog that was written in the aftermath of the London terrorist bombs of July 2005. (A second blog, Wife In The North by Judith O'Reilly, was reported to be the subject of a £70k publisher's advance - see HERE - but I have yet to see it in print.)

Anyway, buy Iain Dale's Guide to Political Blogging in the UK (as I did last week) and you will find that Rachel from North London is listed at number 49 in the UK's top 100 political blogs. Top dogs (in the political blogging world) are currently:

1. Iain Dale's Diary
2. Guido Fawkes
3. Dizzy Thinks
4. Conservative Home
5. Political Betting

My favourites are:

1. Iain Dale's Diary

Er, that's it.

I have nothing against the other blogs - I just haven't got time to read them, religiously, every day. A year ago, according to Iain, there were around 500 political blogs in the UK. Today there are 1200 and ID's Guide to Political Blogging lists all of them, including this one.

Blogging is a growth industry, but whether it can ever influence government policy remains to be seen.

I don't know about you, but I like to spend Saturday mornings drinking coffee, reading the newspapers, listening to Jonathan Ross, catching up on other blogs ... Iain Dale's Diary is consistently good, not just for the political content, but also as a portal to blogs I would never otherwise have heard of.

This morning, for example, I discovered Liberty's Requiem. On Thursday, in a post entitled 'What the jobsworths don't know', blogger DuSanne wrote:

It was a pleasant night in the Village yesterday. It was rounded of in fine style in a local pub that is a bit off my usual well-beaten path and I shall not name it, or even pseudoname it for reasons that will soon become apparent.

Not only was the drink sensibly priced by local standards, but once the crowd had dwindled to a half a dozen and three staff, the doors were locked and curtains closed. Not because it had reached the end of it's licensed hours, but it was about to become 'no longer a public space'. Ashtrays appeared and everyone, including the staff lit up.

I'm not entirely sure if the manager's interpretation of the law was correct, but nobody was going to complain and it was a strange delight to enjoy a cigarette in the time-honoured manner, knowing that what you were doing would drive some small minded jobsworth at the local council offices in to a fit of apoplexy if they knew.

Warmly recommended. See HERE.