Letters to the editor

The Daily Telegraph reports that:

Antony Worrall Thompson, the chef, is among signatories to a letter in today's Daily Telegraph calling for the ban on smoking in pubs to be relaxed. He is leading the Save Our Pubs and Clubs campaign, which claims that the ban is "ripping the heart out" of British pubs. It wants smoking permitted in some areas.

The letter, signed by AWT and 18 publicans, some of whom attended last week's campaign launch, reads:

SIR - Traditional English pubs and clubs are suffering like never before. Around 40 are closing every week and many others are laying off staff and making cuts in a desperate attempt to survive. Tens of thousands of jobs have already been lost and many more redundancies are likely to follow over the coming months.

There are many factors causing difficulties for licensees, from the serious downturn in the economy to continuing punitive duties on the sale of alcohol. But one factor that could be dealt with - at no expense to the taxpayer - is an amendment to the blanket ban on smoking in public places.

Tomorrow marks the second anniversary of the smoking ban in England. As publicans, we believe that its impact in reducing trade has been substantial.

We seek a solution that is fair to smokers, non-smokers and staff alike. We consider it wholly unreasonable that, when up to half of our customers are regular smokers, we can make virtually no provision for them. But we are also conscious that many pub-goers are keen on a smoke-free atmosphere. That is why we are calling for an amendment to the smoking ban, rather than its full repeal.

If we were allowed, for example, to provide separate smoking rooms while ensuring that non-smokers’ preferences were catered for, we could improve our service without causing any upset.

For these reasons, we urge politicians of all parties to help save our pubs and clubs by introducing an amendment to the smoking ban. If they don’t, the traditional English pub will continue to wither on the vine.

Letter and full list of signatories HERE.

Note: the letter will almost certainly generate a fierce response from the anti-smoking industry. It is important therefore that supporters of the Save Our Pubs & Clubs campaign write to the Telegraph echoing our call for amendments to the ban.

You might wish to highlight the devastating impact on your social life. Or the fairness of the Spanish model. Then again, you could take the opportunity to urge David Cameron to revisit Conservative party policy on this issue ...

Email dtletters@telegraph.co.uk. Keep your letters short and to the point and give your full name and address.

Who knows, if the paper gets a good response it might encourage the Telegraph to get behind the campaign.

Update on Tuesday, June 30, 2009 by Simon Clark

On the back of AWT's letter in the Telegraph, I will be discussing amendments to the smoking ban on the BBC Radio Wales phone-in at 1.30pm.

Update: Antony also took part in the phone-in. He was up against some woman from the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health who was, of course, hugely in favour of the smoking ban. Antony, I have to say, performed brilliantly. We're lucky to have him on our side.

Pete Harrison - my Facebook friend

You have probably never heard of Peter Harrison. I met him 15 years ago when I produced a concert at the BBC Concert Hall at Broadcasting House. We had very little rehearsal time before performing two sell-out shows, back to back, but Peter was the least of my worries. He was a very good blues guitarist and extremely professional.

That day Peter performed a classic song by Eric Clapton plus one of his own compositions, which didn't seem out of place. A gentle, modest man, he got a great reception.

A year or two later the full Peter Harrison Band performed at another concert I organised, this time at the Royal College of Music. Again, there was no need to concern myself with their performance because they were utterly dependable.

We lost contact after that because I stopped producing music events and our paths no longer crossed.

A few months ago Peter contacted me, out of the blue, via Facebook. He asked how I was and what I was doing.

"Hi Peter," I wrote. "I'm fine thanks - doing this and that. What are you up to?"

He replied: "Spent 4 months in hospital last year fighting cancer and emphysema so things have been better but the radiotherapy has helped enormously."

In April, in response to something I had posted on Facebook about Forest, he commented:

"I would join your campaign but as I have lung cancer from tobacco and another fragrant substance, I feel unable."

To be honest, I wasn't sure how to respond. What is there to say apart from offering heartfelt commiserations?

Yesterday, again on Facebook, I read this message from his daughter Natasha:

To all Peter Harrison's friends:

It is with great sadness that i have to announce that my Dad passed away peacefully (last night) following a battle with lung cancer.

A mutual Facebook friend, who also took part in those concerts a decade and a half ago, has now written:

RIP Pete Harrison, great guy who will be missed. I hadn't seen him for nearly twenty years, I'm grateful to Facebook for giving me a chance to catch up with him before his untimely demise.

I echo those sentiments. I am genuinely very sad, not just for Peter but for the family he leaves behind. Thanks to Facebook, which has brought his loss alive (if you know what I mean), my thoughts are with them.

AWT, Greg Knight ... caught on camera

Photographs of the launch of our Save Our Pubs & Clubs campaign at the Buckingham Arms, Westminster, last week are now available HERE.

Among those featured are Antony Worrall Thompson, Greg Knight MP (Conservative), David Clelland MP (Labour), Nigel Farage MEP (UKIP), Mark Littlewood (Progressive Vision), Eamonn Butler (Adam Smith Institute), Josie Appleton (Manifesto Club), Sean Spillane (Luton Social Club), Simon Esnard (Butchers Arms, Luton), Paul Lofthouse (Queen's Head, Coggleshall), James Wilson (Forbidden London), Angela Harbutt (Liberal Vision) and Trevor Baylis OBE.

Other publicans present included Declan Sheeran (Romanway, Luton) and Peter Freeman (Live and Let Live, Dovercourt, Essex).

Dave Atherton and Dick Puddlecote are in there somewhere too!

Low resolution images are available to download for your own personal use. If you would like hi-res images or prints contact Dan Donovan at dan@battenburg.biz.

The NHS and "self-inflicted" illnesses

Oxford University is currently hosting an online debate on the motion "The NHS should not treat self-inflicted illness". I have received an email from the University inviting members of the public to take part in the debate and I would urge you to do so.

According to moderator Dr Paula Boddington:

The debate raises the wider question of what the NHS stands for, and what role it should have in society, what it is fair to expect from the NHS, and what individuals should do in return. It raises questions about living in a liberal society, about the rights and responsibilities that each of us has in such a society and how free we should be to live the lives we choose.

There are many voices urging us to take responsibility for our own health – from food labelling, advice about alcohol consumption, exercise and obesity, to legislation restricting smoking. Calls for greater responsibility can easily seem, on the one hand, calls to treat people like sensible adults in charge of their own lives, yet on the other hand as unfairly apportioning blame.

The university has now posted two contributions apiece from the debate proposer and opposer and members of the public are invited to leave comments HERE.

Chris Snowdon: online, off message

There's an excellent interview with Chris Snowdon, author of Velvet Glove, Iron Fist: A History of Anti-smoking, on Spiked. Written by Rob Lyons, the interview was conducted at last week's book launch hosted by Forest in London (see above). It appears in the online magazine's Review of Books and begins like this:

I’m sitting in the corner of a bar, talking to author Christopher Snowdon and doing something almost unheard of in Britain these days: enjoying a cigarette under cover. Admittedly, it is a pretty open-air kind of ‘under cover’ in a specially adapted part of the Boisdale restaurant and bar near London’s Victoria station; still, the novelty value is not lost on me.

We are here because Snowdon is launching his book this evening, a history of the anti-smoking movement that has been three-and-a-half years in the making. One of the main reasons he wrote it, he tells me, is because ‘I wanted to read it. I went into the library looking for a history of the anti-smoking movement, assuming there would be one, and there wasn’t.’ Instead, he had to wade through many other books on the history of tobacco, picking out snippets here and there and trying to build up a picture of the chequered history of those who want to see the evil weed confined to the ashtray of history.

Full article HERE.

I've said this so many times that I'm beginning to bore myself, but it's worth repeating. This is a superbly written, impeccably researched book that deserves the widest possible audience. But we need YOUR help.

Publishers here and in the United States declined to publish the book leaving Chris to go it alone. So far he's done most of the work himself. Now it's our turn to help.

Forest has ordered 400 copies and we will be sending them to selected politicians, national newspaper journalists and potential sympathisers. You can help by buying a copy for yourself and a second copy for your local MP or a columnist on your local newspaper (for example).

The important thing is to get as many copies as possible in circulation among opinion formers and decision-makers.

In addition, if you have a blog or website, please write a review and/or tell your readers about the book and how to get hold of it.

Copies are currently available via Amazon HERE and Chris's own website HERE.

Sunday Express: amend smoking ban

The Sunday Express has an editorial praising Antony Worrall Thompson's support for our new campaign to amend the smoking ban:

It's great news that Antony Worrall Thompson is making a stand for common sense on cigarettes. The Government ban on smoking is forcing the closure of six pubs a day. Clubs and restaurants are also suffering while the number of smokers shows no decline and the health of the nation is unchanged.

Thompson’s campaign has backing from MPs from the three main parties and the group is fighting for reform when the law is reviewed next year. They’re asking for rooms in pubs and clubs to be set aside for smokers. It is a simple, sensible voluntary move that would improve our right to choose without damaging the health of others.

In a separate article, the paper reports:

Mr Worrall Thompson, who smokes 20 cigarettes a day, is one of Britain’s most prominent smoking campaigners. Though he admits that it is not a habit he is proud of, he says the issue is about liberty and free choice.

He claims that the Labour government chose to implement the most draconian smoking ban available, despite warnings about the dire economic and social consequences such a move could have.

“Why is it that on the Continent, governments gave bar owners a choice? In Spain, premises which are smaller than 100m square can choose whether they allow smoking or not but if they are bigger than this, they must provide clearly divided and ventilated smoking sections. That’s the model we want here,” he said.

Full report HERE.

Dizzy supports our new campaign

Highly regarded blogger Dizzy Thinks adds his weight to the Save Our Pubs & Clubs campaign HERE. Not all the comments are so supportive! If you haven't yet done so, you can sign up to support the campaign HERE. Please invite your friends and family to do so too.

Forest's 30th anniversary reception

Ranald Macdonald, MD of Boisdale plc, proposes a toast to Forest at our 30th anniversary reception on Monday night. One hundred and fifty guests attended the event at Boisdale of Belgravia in London. Among the guests was actress Lorraine Chase who starred in Emmerdale and the famous Campari "Luton airport" ads when she worked as a model.

Other guests included my Forest colleague Neil Rafferty (co-founder of the Daily Mash); Rob Lyons, deputy editor of Spiked!; Eamonn Butler and Madsen Pirie of the Adam Smith Institute; Trevor Baylis, inventor of the clockwork radio; Shane Frith and Mark Littlewood from Progressive Vision; Mark Wallace and Tim Aker from the Taxpayers Alliance; Simon Richards, director of The Freedom Association; bloggers Chris Mounsey (Devil's Kitchen) and Dick Puddlecote; and my old friend Harry Phibbs, now Cllr Phibbs (Hammersmith & Fulham).

Apart from Ranald, other speakers were journalist James Leavey, author of the Forest guides to Smoking in London (1997) and Scotland (1998), and writer Christopher Snowdon who also signed copies of his new book Velvet Guide Glove, Iron Fist: A History of Antismoking.

You can view photographs of the event HERE. You can download any of the low-resolution images for your own use. If you would like hi-res images or prints contact Dan Donovan at dan@battenburg.biz.

If you attended the event it would be good to have your comments. I spoke briefly to Dave Atherton but I may have missed other readers of this blog. Apologies, it was a busy evening!

PS. Thanks to Simon Chase of Hunters & Frankau, the cigar importers, for the present of 30 (geddit?) Cuban cigars. Now, where's my lighter?

Update: I should have added that guests also included Ian Parker-Josepth, leader of the Libertarian Party, and Tim Evans, president of the Libertarian Alliance. So many libertarians! Oh, and Tim brought his wife - Dr Helen Evans, director of Nurses For Reform.

Jacko's dead: where were you?

I never really "got" Michael Jackson. I liked one or two singles but not enough to buy an album. Nevertheless it would be churlish to deny that Jackson was a phenomenon and to hear that he had died was undoubtedly one of those "where were you?" moments (as Iain Dale points out HERE.)

In my case I must have been one of the last people to hear the news. I stayed overnight at a London hotel (where I had gone straight to bed after attending a corporate event at the Royal College of Arts) and there was nothing in the Daily Telegraph that I read over breakfast. (It must have been an early edition.)

So the first I knew of Jackson's death was when I was in WH Smith in Victoria Station around 8.30 and saw a copy of The Times with the headline: "Michael Jackson, the king of pop, dies at 50". (The Sun, I later discovered, had "Jacko's dead" in large caps on the front page.)

Like most people, I think, I was surprised but not shocked. And, I must confess, I immediately forgot about it until I sat down and wrote this post. Life, as they say, moves on.

I doubt that Michael Jackson will be remembered in 300 years but he undoubtedly made a mark in his own time - which is more than most of us will ever do. What a pity his fame, and his talent, didn't bring him lasting happiness.

Sign up to save our pubs and clubs

If you haven't already done so you can sign up to support our new Save Our Pubs & Clubs campaign HERE.

Yesterday's launch (see HERE) was attended by Antony Worrall Thompson, Greg Knight MP (Conservative) and David Clelland MP (Labour), with a message of support from John Hemming MP (Lib Dem), and it's important that we get the message out and encourage as many people as possible to the support the campaign.

Note: the campaign website is best viewed in Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer 8. If you a problem viewing the site on any other browser please let us know.

Update on Wednesday, June 24, 2009 by Simon Clark

Please support Greg Knight's position against anti-smoking comments HERE. See also the Beverley Guardian report HERE.

Wapping good time

On Monday I was interviewed by Jon Gaunt on Sun Talk Radio. It was great fun. But first I had to drive to Wapping, home of News International, where the Sun and Sun Talk Radio are based.

Years after the bitter union battles of the 1980s, News International still feels like a fortress. Once inside, however, I found Sun Talk Radio to be a remarkably convivial place. The atmosphere was friendly and the facilities are excellent, albeit on a small scale. (If there was a bunker mentality it was because it felt like we were, literally, in a bunker.)

On this evidence presenter Jon Gaunt is rather more mellow than his TalkSport persona. And there is no comparison with his aggressive stage act which I found quite uncomfortable when I saw it in St Albans earlier this year.

He sounds like he's having the time of his life, surrounded by colleagues who are getting a huge buzz from running their own mini radio station. And as a columnist on the paper, he's secure in the knowledge that he's unlikely to get fired for speaking out of turn.

I hope that News International sees this as a long-term initative because there's no doubt that it will take time - years, perhaps - to build a reasonable audience. A lot of people are still suspicious of internet radio and the technical problems I experience when trying to listen to other internet radio stations are a serious turn-off.

I understand there are plans to broadcast Sun Talk Radio 24 hours a day - no mean undertaking - and if that happens there's no reason why it can't become a serious and influential "voice of free speech". But it won't happen overnight.

You can listen to my interview with Jon Gaunt for (I think) seven days HERE. According to the blurb, "Director of Forest (Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco) Simon Clark looks back on the 30th anniversary of his organisation" ...

Amend smoking ban says AWT

Forest patron Antony Worrall Thompson (above) launches the new Save Our Pubs & Clubs: AmendTheSmokingBan.com campaign.

We were joined at the Buckingham Arms in Westminster by the Rt Hon Greg Knight MP (Conservative) and David Clelland MP (Labour). Lib Dem MP John Hemming sent a message supporting the campaign.

The campaign is supported by Forest, the liberal think tank Progressive Vision, the Adam Smith Institute, which champions the free market, and the Manifesto Club which campaigns for “freedom in everyday life”. See press release HERE.

Apart from Antony, Greg Knight and David Clelland, speakers included Progressive Vision's Mark Littlewood and Josie Appleton of the Manifesto Club.

Other speakers were landlords Paul Lofthouse (Queen's Head, Coggleshall), Simon Esnard (Butcher's Arms, Luton) and Sean Spillane (Luton Social Club).

UKIP leader Nigel Farage made a surprise appearance and said his party would support the campaign in any way it could.

The ASI's Eamonn Butler has blogged about the launch HERE. Likewise Dick Puddlecote HERE.

Meanwhile:
TV chef joins campaign for limited pub smoking (Independent)
Amend smoking ban, save pubs (Morning Advertiser)
Campaigners launch bid to amend smoking ban (Publican)

Update: to support the campaign please click HERE.

No smoking in the station!

Thanks to Rob Lyons, deputy editor of the online magazine Spiked!, who sent me this picture. Rob writes:

"So I'm on York station a couple of weeks ago and the tannoy announcement repeats that smoking is banned anywhere in the station. Meanwhile, on a platform nearby ..."

The day ahead

Busy day ahead. This morning I'm a guest on SunTalk Radio with Jon Gaunt. Naturally we'll be talking about smoking but we'll also be talking about Forest's 30th anniversary and the publication of Christopher Snowdon's book Velvet Glove, Iron Fist: A History of Antismoking.

After that I shall be working on the imminent launch of our new campaign - Save Our Pubs & Clubs: AmendTheSmokingBan.com. In particular, I have to write some copy for the new website which goes live tomorrow morning.

Last but not least I'll be off to Boisdale of Belgravia where Chris will be signing copies of the book at Forest's 30th anniversary party. Entry is free and there will be complimentary cocktails, canapes and live jazz. Not to be missed.

Goebbels would be proud

Further to my post about antismoking activists in Liverpool wanting to give films that feature people smoking an 18 certificate, I have just done an interview on the subject for Five Live's Weekend Breakfast.

Earlier, the programme had featured an interview with American antismoking activist Stanton Glantz (referred to as a "professor of medicine"). I shared my slot with Andy Hull of Smokefree Liverpool. Presenter Phil Williams said he had seen most of the current top 10 box office films and only one featured a character smoking. Ah, said Hull, you've got to look out for it and go through each film "frame by frame". Seriously.

Williams must have heard me snort with derision because he referred to me as sounding "exasperated".

I said the idea was laughable and that if Liverpool went ahead with this policy it would bring the city into disrepute. It is generally agreed, I said, that teenagers are primarily influenced to smoke by their peers and by members of their family, not by seeing people smoke on film.

Films, I added, should be able to portray the real world and in the real world a quarter of the adult population smoke. As long as it's not gratuitous I couldn't see the problem. This was taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

I mentioned the 'C' word (censorship) and pointed out that according to the BBC website "films ... which show a 'clear and unambiguous portrayal of the dangers of smoking' would be exempt".

"Goebbels," I concluded, "would be proud."

(OMG, did I really say that? I'm beginning to sound like some of the people who comment on this blog!)

Update on Sunday, June 21, 2009 by Simon Clark

See BBC report HERE. Note the reasonable comments from the British Board of Film Classification including: "We don't make [smoking] a classification issue unless a film is actively promoting smoking to young people - and we've never seen a film which does that."