Does government Internet ban include Forest?

STOP PRESS: I have just been alerted to the following written question, tabled by Francis Maude, Conservative party chairman and MP for Horsham, in the House of Commons:

"To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, pursuant to the Answer to the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield of 12 January 2010, Official Report, column 861W, on departmental computers, for what reason websites featuring tobacco content are banned; if he will give examples of the types of tobacco sites which are banned; and whether the internet ban includes the Forest (Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco) website."

To be honest, I'm not familiar with "the Answer to the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield of 12 January 2010, Official Report, column 861W" but I will endeavour to find out.

Watch this space.

Update on Monday, February 22, 2010 by Simon Clark

OK, it's all a little clearer. Last month Grant Shapps, MP for Welwyn Hatfield, tabled the following written question:

"To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport which websites his Department's staff are blocked from accessing on departmental networked computers."

The written answer (by Siôn Simon, minister for Creative Industries at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport) was published by Hansard on 12 January 2010. It reads:

"My Department uses SmartFilter to block access to web sites which are deemed unsuitable. The following categories of sites are blocked.

Anonymizers
Criminal Activities
Game/Cartoon Violence
Drugs
Extreme
Hate/Discrimination
Illegal Software
Malicious Sites
Nudity
Provocative Attire
Phishing
P2P/File Sharing
Spam URLs
Pornography
Spyware/Adware
Tobacco
Gruesome Content
Violence

Two sites blocked that do not fall into these categories are:

www.filthyjokes.freeserve.co.uk
internationallottobv.net

My Department blocks certain sites based on central guidance about potential threats, as is standard practice on security matters we do not publish this list."

It will be fascinating, I think you'll agree, to see whether the Forest website is "deemed unsuitable" because of the link with tobacco.

I can't wait to find out.

PS. Does anyone know what "Anonymizers" are?

Update on Monday, February 22, 2010 by Simon Clark

Mr A (see comments) highlights what I agree is the rather more interesting fact that "Tobacco" is listed alongside "Violence" and (he could have added) "Pornography" and "Criminal Activities". Meanwhile, if the Department of Culture, Media and Sport is going to block "Cartoon Violence", will they include THIS anti-smoking animation which I highlighted a couple of weeks ago?

The BBC versus Mrs Thatcher

I was intrigued to read that scriptwriters gave Doctor Who anti-Thatcher plot lines in the late 1980s. The claim by Sylvester McCoy, the seventh doctor, and former script editor Andrew Cartmel would be laughable except for one important point - it is so obviously true.

At the time I was director of something called the Media Monitoring Unit which was set up to record examples of political bias on all four terrestrial channels. We had enough on our plate watching every single current affairs programme so we didn't include drama and light entertainment in our reports which were published annually between 1986 and 1990.

Even allowing for a little prejudice on our part, the systematic bias against Margaret Thatcher's government was overwhelming. To be fair, the worst programmes were probably on other channels but the BBC has a greater responsibility to be impartial because of the unique position it occupies at home and abroad.

Instead we detected a feeling that, given the weakness of the Labour Opposition during the Eighties, it was the BBC's role to challenge the Tory government. (Needless to say, similar opposition never materialised when Blair was winning one election after another and the Tories were equally ineffectual in Opposition.)

Ultimately, of course, the political bias we detected on the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 didn't stop the Tories winning four general elections in succession.

Pedigree of a TV watchdog - Daily Telegraph, November 20, 1986.

My date with Ingrid Bergman

Just got back from Glasgow. On Sunday I saw, for the first time in full ... Casablanca. No, I don't know why it took me so long to see one of Holywood's greatest films either, but there you go. Anyway, it was worth the wait. I enjoyed every minute - and I wasn't alone. At the end the audience greeted the closing credits with warm and prolonged applause.

Better still, we watched it at the Glasgow Film Theatre, a hugely evocative venue that retains all the charm of an old-fashioned picture house without compromising on modern creature comforts.

In fact, the GFT is immaculate, the perfect place to see a movie, old or new. The ticket office is at the end of a dark wood-panelled foyer and early arrivals can have a drink and a bite to eat at Cafe Cosmo (named after the original art deco cinema that was built in the 1930s).

I have just found these comments online and I couldn't agree more:

"Facilities are old school but equipment is modern and sound system is just perfect."

"Two screens and a wonderful cafe serving actual proper food (no popcorn!) and alcohol which can be taken into the theatre with you."

"One of the coolest places to hang out in the city."

Glasgow Film Theatre - warmly recommended.

Image courtesy ukmovieposter.com

Update on Tuesday, February 16, 2010 by Simon Clark

It's half-term so blogging will be light this week. Don't forget to sign up to the following Twitter accounts: Forest, The Free Society, Amend The Smoking Ban.

In defence of the cigarette break

Writing on The Free Society website today, author and journalist Philip Whiteley defends the humble cigarette break:

Senior politicians have probably never known what it is like for the cigarette break in mid-morning with a good friend, or the evening after work down the pub, to be the only things to look forward to in a working week. John Reid bravely raised this issue when he was in the Cabinet a few years ago, but got shot down, and sadly there has been no debate since.

Increasing proscription around smoking (I don’t smoke myself, by the way) seems to reflect a materialistic attitude towards human life; as though physical health is the only dimension of health, and that it is our primary civic duty to extend the longevity of our physical bodies.

Full post HERE.

Phil will be writing a regular column for The Free Society. His latest book, Meet the New Boss, is available via his own website HERE.

Email of the week

Hello Forest,

I'm delighted to hear of your existence. But dismayed that such friends are across the pond and not closer to home. Such an organization as yours is much needed here in the US. The US is ground zero, where the anti-tobacco campaign all got started years ago.

Very shortly after Obama was elected, Henry Waxman, from out here in prissy California, got a major tax hike on tobacco through Congress so fast, nobody had time to hear about it, let alone organize any resistance.

And it's not just on cigarettes. The tax about tripled the price of a pouch of the roll-your-own stuff, popular with veterans and low income people - a tax on simple comforts of the poor. It also significantly raised prices of pipe tobacco.

I've been a pipe smoker for years. I'm concerned for the economic survival of my tobacconist. The venerable establishment of Iwan Ries has survived many things, including the Chicago Fire and the Great Depression, but this combination of selective taxation and the economy has got to hurt.

It would take a while, but the price gets to putting off those who might otherwise enjoy pipes also, resulting in a diminishing new customer base. They're out to kill the industry.

I grew up in farm country. There were several pipe smokers around. I'd miss it. It's gotten to be very difficult even to find good pipes here in the States anymore.

Health without happiness is merely existing, not living.

The statistics I read seem so skewed. They list huge casualties for tobacco and negligible damage from alcohol. Funny that. In the past 20 years, I can recall hearing of one person who might have died of tobacco related ailments, maybe, but I can count a score off the top of my head of people who have died and many quite young, quite specifically as a result of alcohol. Including such things as young kids getting run over by drunks, friends getting drunk at a party and one of 'em shoots another, stuff like that.

Not that I'd be out to wage a war on alcohol so much, just the hypocrisy. I'd actually considered opening a chain of stores, sell cigars, high end alcohol and handguns; call it ATF; the one thing the government got right here - putting those three together in one department.

Here in California, I might add medical marijuana to the store's stock in trade, but I could see it leading to a bit of a culture clash among the clientele.

My grandfather chain smoked hand rolled Bull Durham cigarettes. One day, well into his 90s, he decided to quit. Two weeks later, he died. I suspect it was the shock to his system that did him in.

Enough stories for now. Just thought I'd say hello to some friends I didn't know I had until I found their comments mentioned in an article about some hysterics in Berkeley talking about 'third hand smoke'.

Matt K

Thirdhand smoke fever

Chris Snowdon (left), author of Velvet Glove Iron Fist: A History of Anti-Smoking, is the latest addition to our team of writers on The Free Society website. Today, Chris addresses the "thirdhand smoke" study conducted by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California and reported by the BBC and others last week.

He writes:

It was the kind of laboratory experiment that two chemists might conduct to kill time on a rainy Friday afternoon," writes Chris. "It resulted in global media coverage. The Daily Telegraph was only marginally more excitable than the many other newspapers which reported it:

"Third-hand smoke as dangerous as cigarette fumes … Third-hand smoke found in hair and on clothes can be as dangerous as the fumes billowing directly from a cigarette – particularly to babies and children."

This came just over a year after the concept of ‘thirdhand smoke’ – toxins lingering in hair and furniture for months after a cigarette is extinguished – was first launched into the public consciousness. On that occasion, a telephone survey asking whether parents would be less likely to smoke if they believed that dormant carcinogens in the upholstery could attack their children was reported as if such a phenomenon had already been proven. In fact it had not even been studied, but this speculative survey was enough to prompt think-of-the-children hyperbole from the Daily Mail under the headline: ‘Even smoking outside can harm your baby’.

Full article HERE.

Note: Chris has also written about the subject on his own blog HERE.

How universities are killing thinking

On The Free Society website today ... Professor Dennis Hayes, founder of Academics for Academic Freedom, offers a guide to the arguments that academics, including students, use to kill open debate and critical thought.

He writes:

Open debate, discussion and hence critical thinking in the academy are now notoriously limited ... Attempting to reach a wider public audience for your ideas is considered ‘popularising’ or ‘polemical’. This is a wonderful defence for the obscure, uninteresting and dull ...

Less well documented is the increasing influence of the ‘student voice’ in killing critical thought with the cry that this or that argument, viewpoint or idea is ‘offensive’. Such infantile pleas for censorship are eagerly supported by the bureaucratised academy of which free thinking students’ unions used not to be a part.

Today the student-centred university and the censorious National Union of Students are aligned in opposition to critical thought. Not all universities and not all students’ unions are complicit in killing critical thought but the general trend towards desiring not just a physically safe but an intellectually ‘safe’ academy is there.

Full article HERE.

Imperial subsidiary seeks judicial review of cigarette vending machine ban

Imperial Tobacco has announced this afternoon that its subsidiary cigarette vending machine company, Sinclair Collis, is seeking a judicial review of the relevant sections of the Health Act 2009 which seek to ban sales of tobacco from vending machines.

Chief executive Gareth Davis said: “Legal action is always a last resort but the Government’s decision to ban cigarette vending machines is so disproportionate and unnecessary that it must be challenged.

“We do not want children to smoke and supported the Government’s proposal to stop underage access through the introduction of electronic ID cards, token mechanisms and remote control technology.

“These are effective solutions which have been implemented in a number of other countries and it is a matter of great regret that the UK Government ultimately chose to disregard all of these options in favour of a ban that will result in significant job losses in the vending industry.”

I am told that the judge will review Sinclair Collis' application and the Department of Health's response. The process is expected to last several months.

Another One bites the dust

Will we ever appear on The One Show? Last year The Free Society was asked to provide a spokesman to discuss the nanny state with comedian Hardeep Singh Kohli. Filming was to take place in Scotland so we suggested Brian Monteith.

As it happens, Brian was flying in from abroad (via London) on the day they wanted to film so it was agreed he would meet the film crew near Edinburgh Airport. (Earlier they had offered to meet him near his home in Peebles.)

We waited and waited for confirmation but heard nothing more. Eventually I tracked down a member of the production team only to be told that the item had been "postponed".

I mention this because last Friday I got another call from The One Show. Phil Tufnell, the former England cricketer, was said to be making a short film about the impact of the smoking ban. We had a chat and I was asked if they could interview me. Filming, I was told, would take place in Hull on Wednesday (today).

I agreed but heard nothing more, even though I was told that someone would ring with further details.

On Monday I rang them and was told that someone would ring me back. No-one did. Yesterday I sent a text and received a call to say that the item had been, ahem, "postponed".

A source told me, apologetically, that The One Show is very different to other programmes. You can say that again.

Update on Thursday, February 11, 2010 by Simon Clark

Just fancy that! How Tuffers knocked smoking for six (The Sun, 11 February).

If you can't tweet 'em, join 'em

The Forest office is in a state of Twitter frenzy this week. Not only can you now follow Forest and The Free Society on Twitter (click on the links), you can also follow the Save Our Pubs and Clubs campaign HERE.

Update on Wednesday, February 10, 2010 by Simon Clark

A colleague has just told me: "I feel this twittering business could prove to be rather time consuming. And curiously addictive."

She added:

"Your edict on being strict on content is really not in the spirit of tweeting. The all-forgiving god of Twitter is in favour of a diverse and ecelectic band of followers, each exercising free will, and having the ability to speak without restrictions on any subject the twitterer desires."

As you can see, Twitter does strange things to (some) people.

More propaganda dressed up as science

"Nicotine in third-hand smoke, the residue from tobacco smoke that clings to virtually all surfaces long after a cigarette has been extinguished, reacts with the common indoor air pollutant nitrous acid to produce dangerous carcinogens" says a new study.

The BBC is reporting that researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a US Department of Energy laboratory in Berkeley, California, ran lab tests (my emphasis) and found "substantial levels" of toxins on smoke-exposed material.

Even though the threat, if any, to non-smokers including children is unclear (ie minimal), opponents of smoking have been predictably quick to call for the need to "protect children" and make "homes and cars smokefree".

Amanda Sandford of Action on Smoking and Health said: "The harmful effects of second-hand smoke are already well-established but this study adds a new dimension to the dangers associated with smoking and provides further evidence of the need to protect children, in particular, from exposure to tobacco smoke.

Ed Young of Cancer Research UK said: "This is an interesting piece of research that adds the possibility of an extra level of harm from tobacco smoke ... The most important step parents can take to protect their families from the dangers of cigarette smoke is to make their homes and cars smokefree."

To be fair, the BBC adds that:

Simon Clark, director of the smokers' lobby group Forest, remained sceptical. He said: "The dose makes the poison and there is no evidence that exposure to such minute levels is harmful. That doesn't seem to matter, though. The aim, it seems, is to generate alarm in the hope that people will be stopped from smoking or will give up.

"The real danger is not third-hand smoke but propaganda dressed up as science. Until the evidence of harm is irrefutable, scientists and campaigners should resist the urge to tell us how to live our lives."

Full story HERE.

For further comment about "third-hand smoke" (which I described as a "laughable term" when I was speaking to the BBC) I recommend articles by Michael Siegel HERE and Chris Snowdon HERE.

Join Forest on Twitter

I can't believe I've just written that headline. No, it's not a joke. You really can join Forest on Twitter. Click HERE. Oh, and you can follow The Free Society on Twitter HERE.

Greece fails to stamp out smoking

BBC mourns - see video report HERE.

Scots refuse to quit smoking despite ban

The Scottish Sunday Mail reports that "The smoking ban has failed to persuade Scots to pack in the habit ... Government figures show the numbers of smokers are about the same as when the ban was introduced in 2006."

Full story, including a quote from me, HERE.

Strictly corporate

Last night, courtesy of a company that shall remain nameless, I went to the O2 Arena to see Strictly Come Dancing Live (2010 UK tour). The last time I was invited to the O2 for a corporate freebie it was to see Girls Aloud. What are they trying to tell me?

Above: the view from our private box