Open for business

6.00am The Freedom Zone opens in a couple of hours with the first event at 10.00pm. Before that I have to do a couple of interviews on BBC local radio about graphic images. I don't have access to a landline in my hotel room, my mobile has run out of juice, so I shall have to do the interviews in my car (which is half a mile from the hotel in a public car park) with the mobile plugged into the cigarette lighter. Glamorous, eh?

I got up early to write a (short) speech for this afternoon's Manifesto Club/Free Society meeting, "You Can't Do That! The Anti-Social Regulation of Public Space". Needless to say I'll be talking about the smoking ban and proposals to extend the ban to public parks and town centres. I'll talk about the social and economic impact of these regulations and the pettiness of what passes for public policy these days.

PS. Iain Dale writes on his blog: "Anyone in Birmingham, don't forget the Freedom Zone fringe at 12.30pm where I'll be interviewing David Davis, followed at 2.30 by the blogging fringe with Guido, Nadine, Dizzy and the Devil. I don't drink, but if you see me in a bar later on tomorrow afternoon you'll understand why I might need a double vodka ..."

Room without a view

Just arrived in Birmingham with a car full of leaflets, flyers, pop-up banners and a bottle of champagne left over from the Labour conference last week. (I may give it to the winner of Tories Got Talent on Tuesday night - or I may not.)

The first thing I did was to check into into my hotel. We've had to book rooms in four hotels - The Apollo, in Edgbaston; the Ramada and Crowne Plaza in the city centre. And NiteNite, which is a good stone's throw from the ICC.

That's where I'm staying, with Brian Monteith and three others. I wrote about NiteNite when we booked these rooms earlier this year. There's been a lot of hype about the windowless city-rooms with their widescreen TVs showing, er, pictures of a grey, nondescript looking city (yes, Birmingham!).

Some reviews are quite kind - and the rooms are certainly clean and fresh - but nothing (certainly not the pictures HERE) can quite prepare you for how small the rooms are. If you swung a cat in here, its head would be bouncing off every wall.

I'd compare it to an internal cabin on a modern cruise ship - but smaller. Don't stay here if you're claustrophobic. The last time I stayed in a room this size, it was a converted linen cupboard in a guest house off Sloane Square.

Oh well, I won't be spending much time in my room. In fact, it's time to hand out some leaflets.

Warning signs

Tomorrow morning I shall be on Radio Four News (at 5.30am!) and Radio Wales (8.15) reacting to the graphic health warnings that will appear on cigarette packets from the beginning of October. (Five Live is also doing an item on the subject - around 7.30am - but they're using an advertising guy from Saatchi and Saatchi who will argue that shock ads don't work.) Then, later in the morning, I'm doing a piece for ITV News.

My response to graphic health warnings is quite simple: we support measures that educate people about the health risks of smoking, but these pictures are designed not just to educate but to shock and coerce people to give up a legal product. They are unnecessarily intrusive, gratuitously offensive, and yet another example of smokers being singled out for special attention.

To paraphrase David Hockney, this is yet another step towards the uglification of Britain.

Update on Friday, September 26, 2008 by Simon Clark

Oh, I forgot ... I shall also be on the Gabby Logan Show on Five Live on Sunday morning ... and the Today programme tomorrow morning.

Update on Sunday, September 28, 2008 by Simon Clark

I got bumped from Five Live this morning, but at least it allowed me to set off for Birmingham a bit earlier. I have just checked into my hotel - watch this space!

Reading matters

The Free Society will be giving away ONE THOUSAND copies of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four to people attending The Freedom Zone.

The publisher, Penguin, says: "Nineteen Eighty-Four is George Orwell’s terrifying vision of a totalitarian future in which everything and everyone is slave to a tyrannical regime."

According to its Wikipedia entry, "The book has major significance for its vision of an all-knowing government which uses pervasive and constant surveillance of the populace, insidious and blatant propaganda, and brutal control over its citizens."

The Freedom Zone and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Spot the connection?

Taking Liberties - Live!

Taking Liberties Live! is one of four Free Society events taking place at The Freedom Zone.

Presented by Claire Fox, director of the Institute of Ideas and a regular panellist on Radio 4's The Moral Maze, guests currently include Michael White, assistant editor of the Guardian, freedom of information campaigner Heather Brooke and author of Your Right To Know, and Mark Littlewood, chairman of Progressive Vision and Lib Dem head of media, 2004-1007. More guests will be announced shortly.

I am, ahem, the producer of the "show" so I may give myself a walk on part. Watch this space.

On with the show

Manchester is gone, forgotten. Next stop Birmingham and the Conservative party conference. Between now and Monday, when The Freedom Zone opens its doors, it's all hands to the pump.

We still need speakers for one or two meetings and there's a long list of other things that need doing. Not least, we need what Margaret Thatcher famously called the "oxygen of publicity". Come Monday we want as many people as possible to know about The Freedom Zone, the programme of events, and the 40+ speakers. So here's what we're going to do:

• On Sunday 2500 flyers will be distributed to party conference delegates in the official delegate pack.

• On Monday and Tuesday a further 2500 programmes will be distributed to delegates inside and outside the secure area.

• The Freedom Zone will be advertised in the conference issue of Total Politics magazine - and banner ads are already appearing on leading blogs such as Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale's Diary.

• Last but not least, we're publicising the event on various social networks.
  
  I can't promise that The Freedom Zone will be a success - but we're giving it our best shot. Final programme of events HERE. Anything you can do to help would be greatly appreciated.

Kiss and tell

Not many MPs but no shortage of champagne at last night's New Statesman party in the Great Hall within Manchester Town Hall. (Think Hogwarts and you've got a good idea of what this extraordinary neo-gothic building is like.)

"I'm a leftie," said the waiter, pouring champagne into my glass with his left hand. "Well, you're in the right place," said I. Ho, ho.

A friend told me that, at another party the previous night, a well-known broadcaster had asked her - out of the blue - "Would you have sex with a smoker?"

Ignoring her discomfort, he added: "I'd never kiss a smoker." Charming.

Labour isn't working

I can't bring myself to say how many people attended last night's meeting. It was double figures, but only just, and most of them were personal friends. Clearly, Labour has no interest in how to win back the smokers' vote. Not that it matters. As Brian Monteith (left) told one trades unionist who popped his head in: "It's too late. You're fucked."

Labour's failure to include our meeting in the conference brochure may not have been the simple cock-up I thought it was. Like Forest, the Tobacco Retailers Alliance submitted details of their event before the deadline. Mysteriously, the TRA reception on Sunday night was also omitted from the fringe listings.

That's quite a coincidence. Do you think the word "tobacco" could have had something to do with it?

Loitering with intent to leaflet

Was it something I said? This morning, while we were handing out flyers promoting this evening's meeting, we were moved on at least five times. It's alright, apparently, to hand out flyers in the street outside the secure area - but not inside where most of the delegates are.

This is a complete pain. It cost us hundreds of pounds (£600, I think) to get fringe passes that give us access to the secure area (and our own meeting!!), and for that money I don't expect to be stuck out in the street rubbing shoulders with the "Ban Tobacco" campaigner and his soapbox, or the class warriors distributing copies of the Morning Star.

The first time we were approached by a security guard I thanked him for doing his job and explained that it was nothing personal but I would continue to do mine.

"Are you telling me to piss off?" he asked.

"Yes," I said, "in a polite way."

"Well, you can piss off too," he said. "I'm going to speak to my manager."

Later we ended up in the entrance to the exhibition area. "You can't stand there," we were told. "You'll have to move on."

So we did - to the smoking area (which was outside, naturally). "Sorry," said an official, as we produced our flyers. "You can't do that."

Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!!!!!

Labour pains

Well, Brian got his pass (see below). Since then we've been flitting around the conference zone, handing out flyers to the likes of Harriet Harman and Rebecca Wade (editor of The Sun), consuming lots of coffee, the occasional pint or two, but generally behaving ourselves.

I'm not the first to comment on this, but the atmosphere is definitely subdued. And no-one - apart from the most blinkered Labour MP - is falling for the idea that David Miliband's speech yesterday was anything other than very average.

In fact I have just spoken to a former aide to Tony Blair and the word is that Miliband is no longer seen as the Blairite heir to Blair. Apparently it's ... James Purnell, the work and pensions minister.

Although, publicly, ministers and aides are trying to maintain a united front, insiders say the reality is very different. For example, I have just been told that Gordon Brown could be challenged even before the Glenrothes by-election. Personally, I can't see this happening - but the very fact that this line is being spun by people close to government shows the turmoil that Labour is in.

When I think back 12 months the difference is amazing. This time last year we were in Bournemouth for the 2007 Labour conference. Everyone was striding around, busy, busy, busy, mobiles clasped to their ears. Confident, purposeful, getting on with government - and just weeks away from a fourth consecutive election victory.

The following week, in Blackpool, I sensed that the Conservatives were enjoying themselves (for the first time in many years) but there was nothing to suggest that this was a party preparing for government.

A few weeks later Gordon Brown bottled the election and it's been downhill ever since.

They'll be back

I have just done an interview with BBC Radio Leicester. A councillor in Coalville wants to ban smoking in the centre of town. Nothing new there - councillors in Barnsley and Birmingham have proposed similar measures. In each case there was an outcry, their ideas were made to look preposterous, and they were quietly dropped.

Expect similar stories in future, though. Although there is no immediate threat that smoking could be banned in town and city centres, that's because the anti-smoking industry has yet to adopt and get behind the idea. What we're seeing is the advance guard testing public opinion. To paraphrase Arnie, "They'll be back."

PS. We invited the councillor who proposed a smoking ban in Birmingham city centre to speak in a debate at The Freedom Zone next week. He declined.

How to win back the smokers' vote

I have just arrived in Manchester, having set off for the Labour conference at 6.00 this morning. Fortunately my pass arrived on Saturday. My colleague Brian Monteith has not been so lucky, so he will no doubt spend a couple of hours in a queue at the Premier Travel Inn (!) waiting for a replacement.

Tomorrow's Forest/Free Society meeting promises to be an intimate affair. In previous years, even with the likes of David Hockney, Joe Jackson and Mirror columnist Sue Carroll as guest speakers, we have always struggled to attract large numbers of Labour delegates. Last year we pulled in about a hundred (including some building workers from across the road), but that was only by offering gallons of free champagne. (In my experience, champagne socialists live up to their name.)

This year's meeting is going to be a model of sobriety. It's called "Labour: how to win back the smokers' vote". I have my own ideas, but if you have any suggestions I'll see if I can include some of them in my speech.

Taking the fight to Labour

If Labour MPs won't come to the Forest/Free Society event in Manchester on Tuesday, we'll go to them. The advertisement above appears in the current issue of the New Statesman. The NS is hosting two parties at the Labour conference in Manchester and we have been told that copies of the magazine will be widely available.

If you can't quite make it out, the copy is a quote from an article on The Free Society website by Eamonn Butler, director of the Adam Smith Institute. It reads:

"I don't smoke and I don't care much for smoking, but I'm outraged that the UK government plans to ban the display of tobacco products in shops. Which other of our 'unhealthy' pleasures will be driven under the counter next? Sweets? Crisps? Fizzy drinks? When you give political zealots so much power, you never know quite where it will end up."

Full article HERE.

More songs for swinging smokers

The Boisdale Blue Rhythm Band will provide the live music for the Forest/Free Spirits reception Cigarettes and Civil Liberties on Tuesday 30th September. Weather permitting, the band will join the smokers outside and play in the attractive open air courtyard.

This is not the first time the band has supported Forest at party conference. They played at Politics and Prohibition, a themed reception at the Conservative conference in Bournemouth in 2006. Since then they have played at a number of Forest events, including Revolt In Style at the Savoy Hotel in London in June 2007.

Last year the band also recorded a Forest/Boisdale CD, You Can't Do That! Songs For Swinging Smokers.

Volunteers wanted

We need help to promote The Freedom Zone at the Conservative party conference (see below). If you are coming to Birmingham and are available to hand out flyers etc please contact the office on 01223 370091 or email Sarah at contact@forestonline.org.