Reviewing The Bully State

Chris Snowdon, author of Velvet Glove Iron Fist: A History of Anti-Smoking, has written a review of Brian Monteith's The Bully State. Comparing the book to David Harsanyi’s Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Teetotalling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists and Other Boneheaded Bureaucrats Are Turning America into a Nation of Children (2007), Snowdon writes:

Eating, drinking and smoking feature prominently, since they have been propelled into the frontline by an over-mighty public health lobby. But, as Monteith argues, this regulation of lifestyle is a symptom - albeit a far-reaching one – of a wider shift of power from the individual to the state.

The expansion of CCTV, the erosion of trial by jury, identity cards, censorship, health-and-safety hysteria and the DNA database constitute a ‘bullies’ charter’ made more dangerous by the ‘jobsworth mentality’ of British officialdom.

Readers who have not visited Britain for several years may be shocked by the lurch towards authoritarianism described in this book. Those who have witnessed the creep of the bully state first hand will be enraged, amused and informed in equal measure.

The full review can be found on the online magazine Spiked HERE.

More pictures from The Cross Kings

Above and below, more pictures from Wednesday night's Save Our Pubs & Clubs gig featuring King Kool, Larp and Native Souls.

Prior to the event someone commented, rather uncharitably, on this blog, "I'm quite sure that all twelve people that bother to turn up, will spread the word far and wide".

OK, the venue wasn't bursting at the seams but we weren't embarrassed and there was no lack of atmosphere. The great thing was, we were reaching out to an audience that prior to this event was probably ignorant of Forest and the campaign to amend the smoking ban.

In fact, with the exception of three or four people - including UKIP press officer Gawain Towler and Bob Loveday, a long-standing Forest supporter who plays fiddle with Bob Geldof's band - I didn't recognise anyone, which was a step forward in my view.

I'm sorry more of you couldn't make it on Wednesday but, don't worry, there will be more opportunities next year.

Thanks, once again, to Dan Donovan who made the event possible and to the bands who entertained us. I feel a Save Our Pubs & Clubs comedy/music festival coming on!

Save Our Pubs & Clubs - the gig

Fantastic evening at the Cross Kings in London on Wednesday night. I must admit that I had reservations that an evening of "grunge-fuelled rock 'n' roll" in support of the Save Our Pubs & Clubs campaign would work, but I couldn't have been more wrong. (Apologies to organiser Dan Donovan, above right and below left, for doubting him!) It was great and I would happily do it again.

Full report and more pictures to follow over the weekend.

A Miller's tale

Three weeks I ago I attended the funeral of my old friend George Miller and wrote about it HERE.

Today the Independent published an obituary written by another old friend, Dr Julian Lewis (Conservative MP for New Forest East). Julian - who in the Eighties ran an anti-CND organisation called the Coalition for Peace through Security - writes:

Intellectual and visionary, liberal and anti-Communist, George Miller inspired a generation of Conservative activists in the 1980s, when the Soviet Union seemed impregnable. His operations were so extensive that few of his associates knew the full picture ...

For Miller the demise of Soviet Communism was an absolute certainty, provided that the West remained strong. His vision was tempered with patience and humour. He would liken the regime to an elephant, repeatedly stung between the eyes by a mosquito. The insect would be brushed aside time and again – yet, one day, without warning, the elephant would roll over, stone dead, with its feet in the air. Miller lived to see it happen; indeed, he helped to make it happen.

Full article HERE.

Update on Thursday, November 26, 2009 by Simon Clark

George was also involved in a little escapade that took place in 1984. If I remember correctly, it was George who drove the van that took a number of young Conservative activists (myself included) to the Aeroflot office in Piccadilly which we had chosen as the location for a small demonstration. I have a photograph of what happened next and it still makes me laugh. Full story HERE.

Study says critics of smoking ban were wrong

BBC News published a curious little story on Monday evening. In fact, you could be forgiven for thinking that the principal reason for running it was simply to rubbish critics of the smoking ban, notably Forest.

The report was prompted by a Cardiff University study that concluded that "The smoking ban in the UK did not lead to children being exposed to more smoking at home". Surprise, surprise, "Anti-smoking groups and the government said the results vindicated the introduction of the ban".

In contrast, said the BBC, "groups such as Forest, the smokers' lobby organisation, suggested it would lead to drinkers shunning pubs for their homes where they could smoke and, as a result, increasing the risk of second-hand smoke exposure for children".

Prior to the report appearing online I spoke to a BBC journalist for three or four minutes. I responded to what he told me about the Cardiff study and explained our position on smoking in the home. This is how he summed up that conversation:

Simon Clark of Forest said: "I want to see more evidence before I am convinced."

And, er, that was it.

He completely ignored the positive spin I put on the study which was to argue that if there has been no negative impact on children as a result of the ban, there is no justification for extending the ban into people's homes as some campaigners (Duncan Bannatyne, for example) have advocated.

No doubt we will see a lot more studies that purport to show how "successful" the smoking ban has been. Or, like the reports of the Cardiff study, they will seek to belittle those of us who warned of adverse consequences.

The idea, of course, that there have been ANY adverse consequences as a result of the ban is too much for the mainstream media to contemplate. So we get this sort of stuff instead.

Full story HERE.

Time for some expert analysis

The suggestion that leading scientists may have manipulated data "to strengthen the case for man-made global warming" may come as a shock to some people, but not to readers of this blog.

After all, anyone who has followed the "debate" about passive smoking will recognise instantly these comments by Lord Lawson, the former Tory chancellor:

"On the face of it, it looks like the raw data was being manipulated to prove what they wanted to prove."

According to the Daily Telegraph:

Thousands of emails and documents stolen from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and posted online indicate that researchers massaged figures to mask the fact that world temperatures have been declining in recent years ...

The paper reports that:

"Some of the correspondence indicates that the manipulation of data was widespread among global warming researchers".

Lord Lawson, it adds, wants the apparent deception to be fully investigated.

"They should set up a public inquiry under someone who is totally respected and get to the truth," he told the BBC Radio Four Today programme.

Full story HERE.

We'll have to see whether this story leads anywhere, but it's high time - as I have often said - that the declarations of scientific and medical "experts" were treated with a great deal more scepticism by politicians and the mainstream media and, where appropriate, investigated by those who are genuinely independent.

Whether such people exist, and whether they would be willing to speak out, is another matter. I am reminded of an excellent essay by the late Lord Harris of High Cross (chairman of Forest from 1987-2006) which we published in 2005.

Privately I have encountered Very Important Persons in the medical world who, in response to my earnest enquiry about ‘passive smoking’, have dropped their voices and looked around furtively before assuring me there was ‘nothing in it’, except for a possibly adverse effect on serious asthmatics.

On the subject of scientific "experts" Harris wrote:

But what are we to make of those 'experts' who, with few brave exceptions, have led the bloodcurdling chorus of death from ETS and keep any scientific doubts to themselves?

The best that can be said is that, like the members of SCOTH (Scientific Committee on Health), they are driven on by such a single-minded obsession with cancer that they have allowed themselves to be persuaded that any means of stigmatising and punishing smokers may be justified in the ‘good cause’ of reducing such a self-evidently risky and ‘anti-social’ activity.

This is the fatal fallacy that the end justifies the means, including exaggeration, spinning, deception and - when that does not work - the outright persecution of dissenters.

Smoking Out The Truth can be downloaded HERE. It also appears as the foreword to the 2005 Forest report Prejudic & Propaganda: The Truth About Passive Smoking which is available HERE.

Coming to a Nanny Town near you

Here's a glimpse of what you can expect at the Cross Kings pub in London on Wednesday. (See previous posts HERE and HERE.)

Dan Donovan is one half of King Kool who are headlining an evening of "grunge-driven rock 'n' roll" in support of the Save Our Pubs and Clubs campaign.

Following a visit to the Cross Kings earlier this month, Dan described the intimate downstairs bar where King Kool will be playing as a "rock 'n' roll dungeon".

See for yourself. I'll be there (somewhere).

Note: the track on the video is called 'Nanny Town' and, yes, it's about the nanny state.

Campaign tip of the week

I had a meeting with a senior parliamentary researcher on Thursday. We were discussing the best way for campaign groups (or non-constituents) to attract the attention of MPs and I mentioned that Forest was planning to send a Save Our Pubs and Clubs video on disk to every MP.

"Hmmm," he said. "Most MPs will probably throw a disk in the bin without watching it. On the other hand, if you put the video on a memory stick there is a much better chance that they will watch it, erase it, and keep the memory stick for their own use."

Who says MPs aren't careful with their expenses?!

Big Government and the bully state

Brian Monteith, author of The Bully State: The End of Tolerance which we published last month (see HERE), has written a piece for Conservative Home. Picking up on David Cameron's pledge to tackle Big Government, Brian writes:

It is not enough to say that overbearing inspectors, prying officials, quality assurance jobsworths and the like will be given their P45s without repealing the screeds of legislation that have brought them into being. I’ve heard it said that thousands of faceless bureaucrats will go, but I’ve yet to hear which of the laws that created them will be abolished.

In fact Conservatives often voice their own ideas about what government can next do in our own best interest such as introducing minimum prices on alcohol and giving more power to the Chief Medical Officer - who is responsible for starting many of the health-based "it’s for your own good" bans and restrictions. And then there’s the idea of just giving a "nudge"- also known as an elbow, push or shove - if you are on the receiving end.

The answer is for a Conservative government to return responsibility for health to the individual by allowing us to make informed choices for ourselves - and adopting the localist agenda where decisions are taken at the lowest possible level rather than by centralised ministries or unaccountable quangos. It can pay electoral dividends. Last year in the New Zealand general election the outrage at the incumbent Labour government’s proposal to restrict shower flow rates caught the public imagination and summed up all that was wrong with an arrogant and petty-minded elite. They were given a cold bath.

Cameron has pledged to stop and demolish Labour’s plans for identity cards - but we are yet to hear if its database backbone will also be dismantled. Campaigns to save our pubs and clubs are in vogue - but where is the willingness to let them offer smoking rooms with licensed air quality standards that would help give them a financial lifeline?

Those who, like me, believe we should be free to make the wrong choices so long as we pay for them ourselves want to hear more from Cameron about how Conservatives will stop the bullying of the state and its agencies. It could be a new second front that Labour - as architects of our Bully State - would find indefensible, and Labour voters in marginal seats that still have to be won would respond with open insurrection.

My experience tells me ordinary punters are just looking for a lead. If Cameron can respond with details behind his end to big government slogan, then the bullies will be on the run.

Full article HERE. You can comment.

Note: The Bully State is available on Amazon HERE.

Dinner at the Dorchester

Forgive the lack of posts lately. I am rather busy on a number of projects. Tonight however I shall be relaxing at a black tie dinner at the Dorchester Hotel in London. Guest speaker is the editor of The Times. Excuse me while I go and get my dinner jacket ...

Update on Friday, November 20, 2009 by Simon Clark

Rather amusingly (I thought) dinner was delayed slightly last night. The reason given was that the room in which we were eating had previously been used by Mariah Carey for the launch of her new perfume and before we could use it they had to fumigate it. Seriously.

Anyway, here's a picture of the white Rolls Royce that was waiting outside the Dorchester at midnight last night. You probably can't see it, but it features a rather tasteful image of Carey down one side. Sadly the waiting paparazzi showed not the slightest interest in either me or my companions.

Fear of flooding? Don't panic!

Last month, speaking to representatives of 17 countries at the Major Economies Forum in London, Gordon Brown spoke of a "catastrophe" if action to tackle climate change was not agreed at the UN talks on global warming. He talked about the effects of drought, floods, loss of farming and fishing yields and the spread of disease.

According to the PM, the costs of failing to address global warming would be greater than the impact of the first and second world wars and the Great Depression.

Around the same time the Press Association reported that:

Global warming will threaten London's wildlife habitats by increasing the risk of flooding in the winter and drought in the summer, according to a new report ... by the London Climate Change Partnership.

This week the Met Office published a new report which led the Daily Telegraph to report that:

Heatwaves that kill thousands, tropical-style storms and widespread flooding could be regular features of Britain's climate within a generation if global warming is not checked.

Now, I'm no expert, but 50 years on this planet has made me a bit of a cynic and I simply don't accept this apocalyptic vision of the future.

Let's take flooding. How often are we told that global warming will cause sea levels to rise dramatically? According to Jonathan Overpeck, director of the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth at the University of Arizona in Tucson"

"The consequences would be catastrophic. Even with a small sea level rise, we're going to destroy whole nations and their cultures that have existed for thousands of years."

That was in 2004 (see HERE), the same year that the Guardian reported that:

Risks of flooding are growing to "unacceptable levels" because of climate change with up to four million Britons facing the prospect of their homes being inundated, according to a report to be published today by the government. The report by the Office of Science and Technology gives the most chilling picture yet of how global warming will affect the lives of millions of Britons over the next half century.

The reason I have a small interest in the threat of flooding is this. First, I live in a small village in Cambridgeshire. A river runs through the village and occasionally - following prolonged rain - the water level rises and the surrounding roads are flooded.

We have lived there for ten years and only once has the water got into people's homes. (Fortunately our house is a few hundred yards from the river so we escaped any damage.) As far as I am aware, there is nothing to suggest that the threat is greater now than it was a decade ago.

Second, and more important, an old friend recently tracked down someone we both knew at school. (They were in the year below me.)

It turned out that Chad Dick (for that is his name) had been working for the Norwegian Polar Institute in Tromso and on 9 March 2005 the Scotsman reported his work as follows:

The melting of sea ice at the North Pole may be the result of a centuries-old natural cycle and not an indicator of man-made global warming, Scottish scientists have found.

After researching the log-books of Arctic explorers spanning the past 300 years, scientists believe that the outer edge of sea ice may expand and contract over regular periods of 60 to 80 years. This change corresponds roughly with known cyclical changes in atmospheric temperature.

The finding opens the possibility that the recent worrying changes in Arctic sea ice are simply the result of standard cyclical movements, and not a harbinger of major climate change.

The amount of sea ice is currently near its lowest point in the cycle and should begin to increase within about five years.

As a result, Dr Chad Dick, a Scottish scientist working at the Norwegian Polar Institute in Tromso, believes the next five to ten years will be a critical period in our understanding of sea ice and the impact, if any, of long-term global warming.

Concern has been expressed recently that animals such as polar bears could become extinct because sea ice is disappearing. The new research by Dr Dick and a colleague, Dr Dimitry Divine, gives rise to hopes the melting will stop soon.

However, Dr Dick warned that if the ice carried on melting, it would mean that man-made global warming had disrupted the natural process - with potentially disastrous results.

He said: "Cycles of 60 to 80 years have been identified before in atmospheric temperature records in the Arctic. The old records that we recovered from ships’ logs and other sources may show that similar cycles are present in sea ice.

"I’ve this gut feeling that within ten years from now we’ll know for certain whether we’re losing sea ice long term or whether it’s coming back.

"If it doesn’t come back it shows we are in serious trouble. Sea ice has a whole lot of effects on climate and it is pretty important."

Sea ice protects the northern coastlines of Canada, Russia and the United States from erosion caused by storms. If it melted, waves crashing on to the shoreline could release vast stores of carbon dioxide stored in permafrost, which would increase global warming still further.

Dr Dick said the research did not suggest that global warming was not a reality.

"You couldn’t say, ‘The sea ice is coming back so therefore there’s no global warming’. It’s never going to be that simple," he said. "But the question now is the extent of global warming, how fast it will happen and whether there are any surprises on the way.

"We know there is warming and that it’s caused by humans, but it will be a great relief to many people if the ice comes back as opposed to going away."

He added that some people might be pleased to see less ice in the Arctic as it would finally open up the North-west Passage trade route - sought by many of the explorers whose log-books were used in the study - between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

"If the sea ice continues to disappear it could cut something like 5,000km off the sea route from Europe to Japan and China. There are people who think that’s a good thing," Dr Dick said.

"Humans are great at adapting to change. We might lose polar bears and some species of seal, but most people don’t worry about that, it doesn’t affect them. And if it means their stereo can be shipped from China more quickly, they are happy with that."

This all sounds very plausible. The threat of rising sea levels caused by melting sea ice may be real but there's no need to panic just yet because there is every chance that what is happening is part of the normal cycle whereby the amount of sea ice expands and contracts.

If cities are in serious danger of flooding, we ought to have a better idea in ten or so years.

No room for complacency, then, but no need for all those apocalyptic warnings either.

TPA highlights cost of Big Government

The Taxpayers Alliance has today announced its first nationwide cinema advertisement - the first, they claim, by a UK campaign group for ten years.

The advert promotes a new book, Ten Years On: Britain Without the European Union, which took 22,000 orders in its first week.

Chief executive Matthew Elliott says: "This advert focuses light heartedly on the very real costs of the EU, and features a number of brief scenes exploring different ways that the EU rips all of us off."

The advert can be viewed online HERE. Copies of Ten Years On are available HERE.

Rock 'n' roll animal

Photographer, musician and graphic designer Dan Donovan has worked with us for a number of years. In 2007 he created a personal photographic journal entitled Ninety Smokers. Featuring many friends of Forest, it was published online HERE.

Today Dan is keen to help promote the Save Our Pubs and Clubs campaign. One half of garage rock band King Kool, he writes:

Hi Everyone

You may or may not know but I play in a band called King Kool. We have a launch party coming up in London to promote a single release.

My band will headline the gig and musicians from the 90 Smokers project will be playing with their bands also. Forest are funding the gig and we'll use it to promote the Save Our Pubs and Clubs campaign.

The gig is in the basement bar at The Cross Kings near Kings Cross in London. It's more of a rock 'n' roll dungeon and the event will be loud and raucous.

If this is something you fancy please come along.

King Kool are a grunge sounding outfit, not dissimilar to Iggy Pop and The Stooges.

Also playing are Larp (post punk outfit similar in sound to The Clash or Ramones) and Native Souls (ball crunching funk rock).

Let me know if you're coming so we can get an idea of numbers. The venue is pretty small so we need to know in advance.

Rock 'n' roll dungeon is a pretty good description of the downstairs bar at The Cross Kings. The colourful main bar however has a very different and rather bohemian aura and outside, weather permitting, there is a comfortable smoking area.

If you'd like to join us, email dan@battenburg.biz. You can download the flyer (see previous post) HERE.

Now for something completely different

Reflections on the death of a friend

Last Monday I attended the funeral of an old friend, George Miller. I hadn't seen George for a long, long time so it was a bit of a shock when I got a message - via Facebook - followed by a phone call to say that he had died. He was 54.

In the Eighties I saw an awful lot of George. We worked together, we socialised together, and when he got married he asked me to be his best man.

Worryingly, I had to be reminded about this by another guest at the funeral. How could I have forgotten? After all, the wedding took place in Frankfurt and I spent a large part of the three-hour service holding aloft a large golden crown. We stayed with friends of the groom and even the flight was an experience. A friend was so nervous of flying that we had to get her drunk on a bottle of Malibu before she would board the plane at Gatwick. Today she would be barred from flying in that condition but back then it was a simple solution to a chronic problem.

English-speaking friends knew him as George and he spoke English without a hint of a foreign accent. In fact George was Russian and to his family he was known as Yura. Russian was his first language and to visit his home was to enter a deeply conservative but always hospitable Russian environment. I enjoyed countless meals with his family and they could not have been more welcoming.

The Millers attended a Russian Orthodox church in Kensington. Occasionally I would join them. I also attended services at a smaller Orthodox chapel in a private house in Baron's Court, west London. I couldn't understand a word but everyone was very friendly and I met some interesting characters.

As I understand it, George's grandfather emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1925 and took his family to Chile. Years later his son Boris (George's father) brought his own family, including George, back to Europe and they settled eventually in Baring Road, SE12.

Boris was a leading member of NTS, a group of Russian emigres that was actively opposed to the Soviet regime. As a result the Millers home in south London became a magnet for Russian dissidents in Europe and beyond.

George inherited his father's passion for politics and it was in that capacity that our paths crossed. (Coincidentally I wrote about it HERE a couple of months ago, although I didn't mention the role that George played. He longed to embark on a similar mission but his background, and his nationality, made it far too dangerous. Instead his role was to recruit people like me to act as couriers on behalf of NTS.)

A couple of years later he asked me to help him write a regular English-language newsletter called Soviet Labour Review. To me it was stupendously dull. A typical headline would read "Tractor production in Turkmenistan halted by striking workers" but George was very proud of it and assured me that it made "a difference".

(The point was, the Soviet government didn't want anyone to know that Russian workers went on strike or that production targets had been hit because it demonstrated a weakness in the Soviet system. Our job was to bring such news to the attention of the wider world.)

George himself was anything but dull. With his distinctive black beard and cheery grin, he could be utterly charming and was always great company. He was like a giant teddy bear and we had many, many laughs together, some of them involving alcohol.

Brian Monteith, a mutual friend, has just told me of a dinner when he and George got seriously drunk on vodka. It sounds remarkably similar to the time George and I celebrated a Russian New Year by drinking 12 or 15 glasses of neat vodka, one after the other, until I slid under the table, waking up in a dishevelled heap several hours later.

But we also shared some despondent moments that brought us even closer together. Hence the invitation, I think, to be his best man.

Eventually our circumstances changed. After George got married he had two children with his Russian wife Lilia. A few years later I too got married and moved to Edinburgh. Around the same time, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, George finally achieved his dream and moved his young family to Moscow where he got a job at the ministry of economics.

There, as far as I can tell, the dream died. Having worked and waited for the Soviet system to implode, reality intervened. George and other reformers were gradually squeezed out by the return of the old guard and their former KGB comrades.

Disillusioned by the lack of reform and the wild west politics of post-Soviet Russia, George eventually returned to London and, I am told, abandoned politics completely. His death followed a series of heart problems and he died in hospital during an operation.

The funeral took place at Brookwood Cemetary in Surrey. Apparently it's the largest cemetery in Britain. It was opened in 1854 as the London Necropolis and was designed to house the deceased from London's rapidly increasing population. According to Wikipedia:

Brookwood originally was accessible by rail from a special station – the London Necropolis railway station – next to Waterloo station in London. Trains ran right into the cemetery on a branch from the South Western Main Line – the junction was situated just to the west of Brookwood station.

The original London Necropolis station (near Waterloo) was relocated in 1902, but its successor was demolished after suffering bomb damage during World War II. There were two stations in the cemetery itself: North for non-conformists and South for Anglicans. Their platforms still exist. It is still possible to enter the cemetery directly from Brookwood station.

George's service was conducted in Russian by an Orthodox priest. The chapel was quite small and it was standing room only with a number of people having to stand outside.

Towards the end of the service we made our way to the open coffin to pay our individual respects. It was the first time I have seen a dead body at close hand. Some people offered a silent prayer. Others kissed his hand.

I took my cue from a friend and rested my hand on his chest. His beard had been trimmed and he looked slimmer than I remembered him. I was struck by how peaceful he looked. A rather obvious thing to say, perhaps, but true, and I was glad to have had the opportunity to see him for one last time.

After that we walked to the burial site half a mile away and watched as the coffin was laid to rest beside his mother's grave.

It was all very sobering but afterwards, over a glass of wine and a light buffet, we had a few laughs as friends recalled some of George's madder moments which included all sorts of weird and wonderful schemes that were going to make him a millionaire. (They never did.)

Many of his old political friends attended the funeral and there is talk of a memorial event organised by his brother Vladimir (a musician) and a dinner hosted by one of his oldest friends, the MP for New Forest East, Dr Julian Lewis.

Let's hope George is looking down on us when we raise a glass to south London's most gregarious Russian dissident.