How smokers can help the economy

Yesterday I was invited to provide a comment for a curious article on the BBC News website. Entitled 'How to spend to mend the economy' it asks, "Where would those ready to fulfil their patriotic duty be best advised to splash their cash?". I said:

"During the recession you can indulge in one or two so-called vices like smoking and drinking in certain knowledge you will be raising money for the public purse and enjoying yourself at the same time."

Concerned, no doubt, that readers might be tempted to take my advice, the article suddenly becomes a little darker:

Some go further, suggesting smokers do the country a favour by dying early and not drawing a pension - helping ease the demographic timebomb of an increasingly ageing population. Others, however, point out that the cost of treating smoking and alcohol-related diseases amounts to billions of pounds.

Eh?

Full article HERE.

Smokers "too much trouble" - that report in full

I am mortified to find that I am in newspapers today appearing to suggest that smokers are "too much trouble" to employ. I didn't say that at all but this is what happens when you have a slightly unguarded conversation with a journalist who is desperate for a "story".

It happened like this. I received a call on Tuesday evening from a news agency reporter. He was miffed, I think, that he had missed the story about Breckland Council wanting workers to clock out to have a smoke break because it was on his patch. Instead, the story had been picked up by another news agency and had become national news.

He felt, I think, that his judgement had been questioned and the conversation began with us agreeing that this wasn't a "new" story because Breckland isn't the first council to introduce such a policy. Indeed, Breckland is positively liberal compared to some employers where they have banned smoking breaks altogether.

I expressed concern that the next step might be for more employers to ban smoking during office hours or, worse, not employ smokers at all. I may have said that some employers might consider smokers to be "too much trouble" but I don't remember using that phrase, or the word "complicated" to describe smokers' lives at work. In fact, I see it quite differently.

As I have said in interviews several times this week, I have employed smokers myself and their habit has never been a problem (apart from the 300 days a year they take off work - JOKE). It's some of their other habits that I found a bit offensive!!

The Daily Mail has the story online HERE - 137 comments to date.

Location, location, location

Over the last few days I have broadcast to all parts of the nation from a variety of locations. Many of the interviews were conducted in a small soundproof studio but I also recorded interviews in other places including the newsroom and outside the building.

When I wasn't at the BBC studios in Cambridge I was either filmed in the street or I was interviewed by phone in my office or, if it was late at night, in my bedroom and even my kitchen.

Last night I did two interviews sitting in my car. The first time I was in a car park, the second time I was outside a church hall where my daughter was having a dance lesson.

The first interview was with a radio station in Ireland. My mobile phone needed recharging so I had to plug it into the electric socket and keep the engine running, which created a bit of background noise. On top of that there was a technical glitch (which sometimes happens) that resulted in my voice coming back at me with a 2-3 second delay. This means that when you are talking you can hear your own voice speaking, quite loudly, in your ear but you just have to press on.

The second interview was for the Iain Dale Show on LBC. This time the rain was making so much noise on the roof of my car that I could hardly hear myself, let alone Iain, speak. So I did the only thing I could - I kept on talking!

Update on Thursday, September 30, 2010 by Simon Clark

Tim Lord, former chief executive of the Tobacco Manufacturers Association, was fond of telling the story of how he once gave an interview to the Scotsman while he was stark naked on the balcony of his Mediterranean retreat.

I can't compete with that (I don't think I want to) but I've certainly done interviews in various states of undress. I suspect this is quite normal. So when you're listening to Five Live or the Today programme don't assume that all the interviewees are suited and booted and sitting in a studio. They are more likely to be semi-naked, buttering the toast or walking the dog.

PS. I once did an interview for BBC Radio while I was on a packed commuter train into London. I was speaking into my phone when a fellow passenger rose to his feet, strode over to me and barked, live on air, "Can't you keep your voice down?!"

Update on Thursday, September 30, 2010 by Simon Clark

Now I'm on the subject, I've been thinking about my favourite location for an interview. I think it has to be Cat Bells overlooking Derwentwater in the Lake District. I was on holiday when the call came. The sun was shining so I sat down on the side of the hill and did the interview with the most glorious panorama in front of me. I remember thinking, "I quite like this job!"

The furthest I've had to travel domestically, just for an interview, is Plymouth. It was an eight-hour round trip by rail for a ten-minute appearance on a regional magazine programme. The upside was, I got to see a bit of the country and the programme was recorded in a pub so I got to drink and talk at the same time.

Internationally, the furthest I've been asked to travel for an interview is Dublin (so not very far at all!). In 2004 I was invited to appear on Richard Littlejohn's Sky News programme which was broadcast, as a one-off, from the famous Shelbourne Hotel. I flew over and got, oh, 20 seconds live on air. The good news is, I stayed overnight and made a weekend of it. Thanks, Sky!

Forest Eireann on Newstalk Radio

I have just been listening to a very good interview with John Mallon (left), spokesman for Forest Eireann. John was speaking yesterday on Newstalk, the largest independent radio station in Ireland. Click HERE. You can also comment on the Forest Eireann blog.

Update on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 by Simon Clark

I was on Newstalk myself this afternoon speaking to George Hook, presenter of the news and current affairs programme The Right Hook.

Seven days to Bangalore

Good news. My visa arrived yesterday by Special Delivery and last night I booked my flight to Bangalore for the Global Tobacco Network Forum. In exactly one week I shall be in India, staying at the Royal Gardenia Hotel. (No athletes' village for us!!)

Mind you, it's going to be interesting catching a flight from Heathrow when twelve hours earlier I shall be in Birmingham, winding down after our Save The Great British Pub Party at the Conservative party conference, but catch it I will.

Five Live (late) last night

Click HERE to hear the item about smoking breaks with Tony Livesey on Five Live last night. It starts around 2:12:00 (12.45am) and lasts for eight minutes. Also features Andy Hull, chairman of SmokeFree Liverpool.

On BBC Radio Lincolnshire (Peter Levy Show) I found myself up against a rather creepy sounding Martin Dockrell of ASH. Click HERE. The 10-minute item starts about 15 minutes in and towards the end includes a minor exchange of insults about funding (or, in the case of ASH, public funding).

Update on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 by Simon Clark

Breaking news ... The BBC reports that Breckland councillors back smoke break ban. Rather misleading headline, actually. The council hasn't banned smoking breaks but councillors have voted to make workers clock off when they want a cigarette. I will be doing interviews for Anglia News (ITV) and Look East (BBC1) this afternoon.

Smoking at work? Give me a break!

Busy day. Having been quoted in the Daily Mail, I found myself doing a string of interviews about Breckland Council's plan to force smokers to clock off when they nip outside for a cigarette.

So far I have given interviews to BBC Radio Suffolk, Norfolk, Newcastle, Leeds, Leicester, Cambridge, Cornwall, Shropshire, Hereford and Worcester, Lincoln and Humberside, Three Counties, WM (West Midlands), Sheffield and Radio Foyle (in Derry). I also did five minutes on TalkSport. Many of these interviews were recorded for broadcast on this evening's drive time programmes.

I missed doing Five Live this morning because I was driving to the BBC studios in Cambridge (David Bowden from the Institute of Ideas did it instead) but here's a selection of newspapers that ran the story today with a quote from Forest: Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mirror, Sun.

The BBC has the story online HERE. It includes last night's Look East report in which I made a brief appearance.

Update: I shall be doing TalkSport again tonight. And Five Live after midnight. Damn, I was hoping to have a few drinks tonight!!

New blog on the block

Something is stirring in Ireland .... Following the launch of Forest Eireann in August, the author of the award-winning Irish blog Head Rambles has started a new blog dedicated exclusively to tobacco. Richard O'Connor (whose original blog was published as a book in 2009), has named the new blog Smoking Out The Truth and the first post reads as follows.

For years now I have been scribbling away over on Head Rambles.

My topics have been many and varied.

One thing I have noticed though is that the topic of smoking is a recurring theme, to the point that some were complaining. Fair enough, I thought. Maybe I should do a Good Bank/Bad Bank split. Why not create a site that is dedicated to the one subject and leave the other site for more mundane matters?

So here it is.

In time I hope to gather facts and figures together in a small attempt to refute the lies, damned lies and total bullshit put out by the anti-smoking lobby.

I will leave you to decide whether this is the Good Bank or the Bad Bank.

Warmly recommended.

See also: Head Rambles on Forest Eireann.

Lost in translation

My comments on the BBC website concerning Wayne Rooney's smoking habit and its alleged influence on young people have appeared on a foreign website where they have been translated as follows:

"Research suggests which it is especially counterpart vigour as well as a change of family members which encourages immature people to smoke,” he said.

"The shortcoming for immature people smoking lies essentially with those who supply tobacco to underage users. We should moment down upon them as well as leave people similar to Wayne Rooney alone.

“Rooney as well as alternative high-profile athletes have been adults. They have been entitled to fume though being targeted by a finger-waggers’ alliance.”

I couldn't have put it better myself.

Quote of the day

“I don’t know why I started. It just gives me four or five minutes to collect my thoughts away from everybody I guess.” West Bromwich Albion manager Roberto Di Matteo explains why he started smoking, a habit he began after becoming a manager. (See previous post.)

Tyranny of the majority

I shall be on BBC Look East tonight. A council in Norfolk is proposing to make smokers among its workforce clock in and out when they go out for a cigarette. How petty. Apparently a poll of the workforce showed a majority in favour. What did they expect? The majority don't smoke!

I'll comment further later. I've got to pop over to the BBC's Cambridge studio to do a recorded interview for the local evening news.

Update: The Daily Mail has the story online HERE. Note that it is a Conservative council. I am quoted (accurately!) as follows:

"I have been told that the council carried out a poll of staff to see whether staff supported the new policy. We would expect the majority to be in favour because the majority of people are non smokers. Once again we see the tyranny of the majority.

"It's completely unfair and prejudicial to pick on smokers and imply that they are slackers or take too many breaks.

"There are a lot of non-smokers taking long coffee breaks, browsing non-work internet sites and taking personal calls so I don't see why smokers should be picked on.

"Really what lies behind this is that the council is trying to embarrass people into giving up when in reality it's none of their business."

In defence of Wayne Rooney

On Saturday the health section of the BBC News website ran a piece headlined 'Athletes attacked for smoking habits'. Footballers such as Wayne Rooney and Zinedine Zidane and basketball player Michael Jordan were all mentioned as example of "top athletes" who should be role models for children and, by implication, shouldn't smoke.

I was asked for a comment and this is what I said:

"Research suggests that it is mainly peer pressure and the influence of family members that encourages young people to smoke.

"However the responsibility for young people smoking lies primarily with those who supply tobacco to underage users. We should crack down on them and leave people like Wayne Rooney alone.

"Rooney and other high-profile athletes are adults. They are entitled to smoke without being targeted by the finger-waggers' alliance."

You can read the full report HERE.

H/T The expression "finger-waggers' alliance" was used by journalist Dorothy-Grace Elder, a former member of the Scottish Parliament, when she appeared on Politics Now (ITV Scotland) with The Free Society's Brian Monteith last year (see HERE). I have used it occasionally ever since.

Update on Monday, September 27, 2010 by Simon Clark

Leading the chorus of disapproval about athletes smoking is Cancer Research. But the BBC also quoted Anna Gilmore, professor of public health at the University of Bath, and Amanda Amos, professor of health promotion at the University of Edinburgh.

Have you noticed how more and more universities are jumping on board the anti-smoking bandwagon? A couple of weeks ago the University of Glasgow published a study that suggested - completely erroneously as far as I could tell - that hospital admissions for child asthma had fallen as a result of the smoking ban in Scotland.

All this comes a year after I highlighted a response to a public consultation in Scotland that declared that "The University of Aberdeen believes that the measures proposed to eliminate sale of tobacco product displays and vending machines are both justifiable as are the associated penalties".

What's going on? Could it, perhaps, have something to do with funding rather than academic excellence? Perish the thought!!

Why Forest lost interest in Labour

A very small part of me would like to be in Manchester for the Labour party conference. A friend reports that the place is "buzzing" following the election of Ed Miliband as party leader. And this evening I could have attended one of the best parties in town (see above).

The truth is, though, I have grown disillusioned with Labour conferences. For groups such as Forest it really is a case of banging your head against a brick wall. But it wasn't always like that.

In Brighton in 2004 Joe Jackson was invited, via Forest, to share a platform with Health Secretary John Reid and we actually dared to think that we were influencing Government policy. Reid clearly listened to what we were saying because a few weeks later he gave some weight to smokers' rights when he announced plans for a partial smoking ban.

Back in Brighton the following year we enjoyed what I can only describe as the most satisfying day of my professional career. I won't bore you with the story again because I've written about it ad nauseum, but thinking it about it still makes me laugh.

Despite our "success" at the 2005 Brighton conference, it was becoming increasingly difficult to engage with Labour on any level. In 2006 in Manchester we employed an ad van but to little effect.

In Bournemouth in 2007, a few months after the introduction of the smoking ban, we organised a drinks reception at the Royal Bath Hotel (scene of our famous Prohibition party at the 2006 Conservative conference). The event attracted a hundred or so delegates but none of them were MPs and I suspect that many were there only for the "free" champagne.

In any case I was already highly cynical about Labour and champagne receptions. In 2003 in Bournemouth I remember very clearly a Cabinet minister telling me, with a straight face whilst holding (another) glass of champagne that he was a libertarian and was opposed to a smoking ban. Three years later the same man (a close ally of Gordon Brown) voted in favour of a comprehensive ban on smoking in pubs and clubs. Libertarian? My arse.

In 2008, the last time Labour was in Manchester, we arranged a fringe meeting but the party failed to publish details of the event in the conference brochure. The same fate befell a Tobacco Retailers Alliance event. Coincidence? I think not.

Last year in Brighton we hired another ad van and handed out Save Our Pubs & Clubs beer mats but our efforts were wasted on what I can only describe as a dispirited rabble. Labour was past caring about social and civil liberties. And Forest was past caring about Labour.

Whether Ed Miliband's election will make any difference I don't know. I do know that Forest will never give up trying to engage with any mainstream political party, and that includes Labour. To paraphrase Arnold Schwarzenegger, "We'll be back."

Update on Sunday, September 26, 2010 by Simon Clark

Actually, we haven't completely neglected Labour this year. The conference issue of the New Statesman, available to delegates, features the new Save Our Pubs & Clubs campaign poster (below right). However hard they try to ignore us, we just won't go away.

Mum and Dad, 80 not out

I shall be spending the weekend with various members of my family at Hassop Hall near Bakewell in Derbyshire (left). My father was 80 in July and my mother will be 80 in December so we wanted to celebrate by organising a small party in their honour.

Apart from my parents, who live near Ashbourne, a 30-minute drive from Bakewell, guests include my sister, my aunt Dorothy who has flown in from Switzerland where she has lived since 1948, and my uncle Roy, a retired GP and former racing driver. Including children, there will be 13 of us.

When we visited Hassop Hall a few months ago we liked it immediately. It has 14 rooms and the main house is cosy if a little old-fashioned. The grounds are lovely and I particularly like the ballroom and banqueting house in the old brewery.

Anyway, if it all goes to plan, guests will have arrived and checked in by mid afternoon (Saturday). Rather in the manner of an Agatha Christie novel, we have invited everyone to assemble for afternoon tea at four (when I shall reveal who the murderer is), followed by drinks in the bar at six and dinner in the main restaurant at 7.30pm.

Earlier this week I ordered a cake (actually, two cakes in the shape of an '8' and an '0') from a local cake maker, and I have also arranged for a photographer to take pictures after breakfast on Sunday.

To be honest, I was beginning to think this weekend might not happen. Neither of my parents is in particularly good health, my father especially. In his late fifties, having been fitter and far more physically active than I ever was, he developed serious angina.

Since then he's had two heart by-pass operations and, ten years ago, a heart transplant. Unfortunately, the side effects of all the drugs he has to take to stop his body rejecting the replacement heart have taken their toll and last year his kidneys finally failed, which now means a thrice-weekly trip to Derby where he spends 4-5 hours hooked up to a dialysis machine.

Recently he has developed angina again and this week I had to ask the hotel if they have a wheelchair on the premises. This is a far cry from the man who used to leap over fences and ditches in pursuit of some bird, rare or otherwise (he is a keen ornithologist). Meanwhile, such was the speed he used to drive, he could turn even the shortest of car journeys into a white knuckle ride. An old school friend still talks about it with awe, bordering on fear.

One thing my father has never lost is his fighting spirit. His will to live is extraordinary. I remember my mother telling me, the night he had his first heart by-pass 22 years ago, that the surgeon gave him five years at most, even if the operation was a success.

I shall say a few words when the opportunity presents itself and thinking about it the other day I surprised myself by feeling a bit tearful. (This is something that usually only happens towards the end of It's A Wonderful Life.) I love my parents to bits but it's not the sort of thing I tend to say, publicly or even privately.

No doubt I'll wing it as usual, but it would be nice to find the right words to express what we all feel.

The Pleasure is all ours

Delighted to report that we have just booked a great band to play at our fringe event at the Conservative party conference (see previous post). Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce ... King Pleasure and The Biscuit Boys.