Thursday, June 26, 2025 at 16:00 
After 14 years Taking Liberties has moved.
The blog has also been given a makeover. The new URL is taking-liberties.uk and as of today you will find me there.
Come on over!
Wednesday, June 25, 2025 at 17:18 The future of liberty is the subject of a special event in London on Saturday.
Students for Liberty, the organisers, have invited a number of speakers - including Chris Snowdon, Mark Littlewood and me - to take part.
Venue is The Miller, a pub that features regular comedy shows. This, I can assure you, isn’t one of them.
The event starts at 4.00pm with former government minister Steve Baker the first to speak.
I understand the discussion part of the event will be three to four hours, but the venue has been booked until 11.00pm which leaves plenty of time for drinking.
Tickets are free and are available here.
Sunday, June 22, 2025 at 12:13 I did a couple of interviews last week about smoking on beaches.
One was for BBC Look North (Yorkshire and Humber), the local evening news programme. The other was for the BBC Radio Lincolnshire breakfast programme.
They followed a report that suggested there is ‘overwhelming support' to ban smoking on beaches in East Yorkshire.
Published on June 13, the report was based on a YouGov poll commissioned by ASH. According to the survey, ‘61 per cent of [local] residents support banning smoking on beaches’.
The national poll was conducted several weeks ago and the beach issue was barely commented upon, so I’m not sure why it was raised in East Yorkshire last week.
It was the lead story on Look North on Thursday and before interviewing me on Zoom they ran a report that featured vox pops with several people.
One was a smoker who seemed fairly relaxed about a ban, suggesting that smokers would adapt in the same way most did following the workplace smoking ban. (What he didn’t mention is that smokers adapted because they were threatened with prosecution and fines if they didn’t.)
The reporter also spoke to a vaper who had no problem with a ban on smoking as long as it didn’t include vaping as well. (The short-sightedness of such people never ceases to amaze.)
The BBC News website then asked the question, ‘Should smoking be banned on beaches?’ and included this quote from me:
Simon Clark, director of pro-smoking group Forest, thinks the ban is "absolutely ridiculous".
He says: "Of course smokers should be considerate to people in their immediate vicinity but there is absolutely no justification for a ban on smoking on beaches because there is no health risk to anybody apart from the smoker themselves."
‘Forest,’ it added, ‘encourages smokers to use pocket ashtrays and for local authorities to provide more cigarette bins in public spaces.’
The joke is that for most of the year beaches in Britain are hardly crowded with families sunbathing or picnicking on the sand.
Most smokers know that it’s probably inconsiderate to light up in close proximity to other people, children especially, and for that reason they don’t do it.
For much of the year though beaches are largely empty, bar the occasional dog walker. And just like dog poop, smokers should take their detritus away with them.
But banning smoking on beaches on environmental or public health grounds seems a ludicrous over-reaction to a ‘problem’ that could easily be addressed with a few friendly signs that ask smokers to be ‘considerate’ to other people and the environment.
The issue here is that the anti-smoking industry doesn’t want people to smoke, full stop, so the idea that this issue can be resolved with an agreeable compromise is never going to satisfy their craving for prohibition.
Meanwhile, it’s worth pointing out to the 61% who support a ban on smoking on beaches, be careful what you wish for.
As I said to Peter Levy, presenter of Look North, before you know it the environmental/public health lobby will be wanting to ban adults from taking a bottle of beer on to the beach.
Personally, I added, I hate having to listen to other people’s portable radios on the beach, but I’m not campaigning to have them banned.
Live and let live and all that.
Friday, June 20, 2025 at 16:35 Further to my previous post, the TaxPayers Alliance has posted its latest podcast online.
Hosted by broadcaster Duncan Barkes, it also features the TPA's Benjamin Elkes and me. No guesses for what we talked about.
The War on Smokers: Freedom Under Fire is available on YouTube (audio only) and Spotify.
Wednesday, June 18, 2025 at 14:53 Great to speak to Duncan Barkes and Benjamin Elkes of the TaxPayers Alliance for the TPA podcast, A Nation of Taxpayers, yesterday.
Duncan's Wikipedia entry describes him as a 'journalist, political commentator and radio presenter' and his CV includes LBC, talkSPORT, BBC Radio Five Live and BBC Radio London.
He's interviewed me several times over the years but, until yesterday, we had never met.
The last guest he interviewed as host of A Nation of Taxpayers was the former Conservative minister Steve Baker.
Other recent guests have included Toby Young (aka Baron Young of Acton), founder and director of the Free Speech Union, and our old friend Henry Hill, deputy editor of Conservative Home.
The podcast will 'drop' tomorrow, although I'm not sure anyone still says that. Either way, I'll post a link here.
Monday, June 16, 2025 at 14:00 I've witnessed some car crash interviews in my time but rarely one as bad as this.
Interviewed by Nick Ferrari on LBC this morning, Emma Reynolds - Economic Secretary to the Treasury and City Minister - was asked about the new Lower Thames crossing that has just been granted £590 million by Chancellor Rachel Reeves and will eventually cost an estimated £10 billion.
Clearly unprepared, she couldn't say where the crossing is going to be, or what it is going to cost. Embarrassed, and no doubt wishing she was anywhere else, she shuffled her notes and read some bland press release until an exasperated Ferrari said:
"I don't wish to be rude to you personally, but is there much point in continuing this conversation because you don't know where a bridge starts, you don't know where it ends, and you don't know how much it costs, so is there any point in continuing?"
I've done hundreds if not thousands of interviews and I've very rarely come away thinking, 'I absolutely nailed that'. However I can't think of any that have come close to being as bad as this.
The ‘good’ news is that, compared to an interview that goes well, you learn far more from a debacle like this.
For example, many years ago I was invited to talk about e-cigarettes on the BBC World Service. While I could talk about the subject in general terms, I lacked detailed knowledge so when I was asked to explain how an e-cigarette actually worked and how much they cost, I didn’t have an answer.
Thankfully I was rescued by a fellow guest, the former director of ASH, Clive Bates.
Now, I haven’t always seen eye to eye with the patron saint of vaping, but he must have heard the hesitation in my voice because he stepped in and seamlessly answered the question himself.
I was (and still am) extremely grateful!
Since then I have done my best to be better prepared and foresee awkward questions, but it's impossible to predict every one. Sometimes you just have to admit your ignorance.
What you can't escape today are those social media clips that compound every misstep or slip of the tongue.
My biggest faux pas on air was to refer to a minister in the Blair government by the wrong name. Instead of calling him Stephen Ladyman, I said "Stephen Ladyboy".
It was a genuine mistake and I got away with it because it was broadcast on 18 Doughty Street, an internet TV station that very few people watched because it was years ahead of its time.
The irony is, I wish more people had seen it because what happened next still makes me laugh almost two decades later.
In fact, if I say so myself, the subsequent corpsing was up there with the famous 'Leg Over' incident with Jonathan Agnew and Brian Johnston on Test Match Special.
Presenter Iain Dale was the first to crack, then I joined in, setting him off again, and so it went on for what felt like several minutes.
Sadly the clip no longer exists because I would love to have it played at my funeral. It may not be my finest moment, but it's definitely the funniest.
Below: Watch Treasury minister Emma Reynolds on LBC. The fun starts from 40 seconds in …
Saturday, June 14, 2025 at 11:53 When was the last time you watched a film at a cinema?
I still go, but only occasionally.
I do think most films have more of an impact on a big screen, but I’m not a huge fan of modern multiplexes.
Also, the idea of a ‘big’ screen is relative these days unless you go to an IMAX cinema, which we very rarely do.
The first IMAX feature film I saw was Fantasia 2000 which isn’t surprising because it was the ‘first ever feature film presented in IMAX’.
The most recent was Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, in 2017. I don’t think there were many in between. I vaguely remember seeing one of the Batman films at an IMAX in Glasgow, but that’s about it.
Today, though, even IMAX screens aren’t the giant size I remember, unless it’s somewhere like the BFI cinema at the Elephant and Castle in London which is said to be taller than four stacked London buses.
When I was a small child the nearest cinema (of any size) was in Maidenhead, where we lived for six years from 1963 to 1969.
As was normal then, the cinema was huge in comparison to most cinemas today. There was a single, genuinely large, screen and the auditorium was like a theatre, with stalls and a dress circle or balcony.
Many of those old cinemas were subsequently demolished or converted into something else - a bingo hall, perhaps, or, decades later, a Wetherspoons pub.
Some kept their cinema status but were redeveloped with the single large auditorium replaced with a number of smaller auditoriums with screens of diminishing size, each one able to show a different film - and so the concept of the multiplex was born.
Back in the day some older cinemas were referred to as ‘flea pits’, although the only genuine flea pit I ever experienced was in Derby in the early Eighties. Thinking about it still gives me the urge to scratch!
The last cinema I went to that had an old style auditorium with theatre style stalls and balcony was The Coronet in Notting Hill.
According to Wikipedia, it opened as a theatre in 1898. In 1916 it screened its first films, becoming a full-time cinema in 1923.
The original capacity was 1,143, which dropped to 1,010 when it became a cinema. Thereafter the number of seats gradually fell, for a variety of reasons.
Initially only the theatre boxes were removed, but in 1950 the upper tier (above the dress circle) was closed, which reduced the capacity to 515 (196 in the dress circle, 319 in the stalls).
Ownership changed hands at least twice before a proposal to demolish the building in the early Seventies was challenged on architectural grounds and it survived.
Thwarted, Rank sold it in 1977 to an independent cinema operator who ‘replaced the seating in the stalls to provide more legroom, reducing the total cinema capacity to 399 seats … In 1996, a second screen with seating for 151 was opened in the stage area’.
In 2004, the Coronet was purchased by a local Pentecostal church but ‘continued to offer mainstream independent cinema programming’.
Ten years later however it was bought by a theatre company and reverted to its original purpose, and name - The Coronet Theatre.
I mention the Coronet because when I started working for Forest in January 1999 we had yet to sell our house in Scotland, so for the first five months I travelled to and from London each week whilst renting a single room in a town house in … Notting Hill.
The Coronet was a five or ten-minute walk from the house and my brief acquaintance with the area coincided with the release of (you’ve guessed) Notting Hill starring Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant.
Naturally, I watched it at The Coronet, seated in the old dress circle, and even if the film is a bit cheesy it was great fun to see the local neighbourhood on the big screen.
Back in the Sixties, when I was a small child, the films that made the biggest impression on me were Doctor Who and the Daleks (with Peter Cushing), Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, and The Jungle Book.
My parents rarely went to the cinema on their own, although I remember them going to see the latest Bond movie (probably Thunderball in 1965), leaving my sister and me with babysitters.
After we moved to Scotland at the end of the Sixties I don’t remember ever going to the cinema as a family, or even with friends.
I remember seeing Mary, Queen of Scots, featuring Glen Jackson as Elizabeth I, but that was with my history class at school.
The cinema, The New Picture House, was a short walk from the school in the centre of St Andrews.
Opened in 1933, it was purchased a year ago by a consortium including Tiger Woods and is due to reopen later this year as a sports bar.
In the late Seventies, after my parents moved to Cumbria, I remember seeing 2001 Space Odyssey - several years after its original release - at a tiny cinema in Windermere. (Have I ever been tempted to watch it again? No.)
Around that time (1979) I also saw Monty Python’s Life of Brian at the Capitol cinema (another old theatre) in Aberdeen. It’s hard to describe just what a wonderful, and funny, occasion it was - a full house, rocking with laughter.
Arguably it’s the best experience I’ve ever had at a cinema, matched only by Back to the Future at the Odeon, Leicester Square, in 1986. (The sequels let it down, but the original, seen for the first time, was incredibly entertaining.)
I remember too seeing For Your Eyes Only in the week of its release in 1981. It’s a distinctly average Bond film but the Odeon in Leicester Square was sold out and there was a fantastic (dare I say, patriotic) atmosphere.
The original art deco auditorium had 2,116 seats; today, although it’s the largest single-screen cinema in the UK, there are only 800.
This year I’ve seen three films on the ‘big’ screen, each one at the new Everyman cinema in Cambridge.
The first I can’t remember. (Literally. My mind’s a blank.)
The second, Black Bag with Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender, was brilliant - one of the best, most stylish films I’ve seen in years with a great ensemble cast and a sizzling, pulsating soundtrack.
The third, The Salt Path with Gillian Anderson and Jeremy Isaacs, had a short run in cinemas last month.
Filmed in Cornwall, it’s based on a book, a true story about a couple made homeless after losing their life savings following an investment that went disastrously wrong.
With nowhere to live they decide to walk the South West coastal path, a distance of 600 miles. Oh, and the husband (played by Jeremy Isaacs) had been diagnosed with a debilitating disease that impaired his mobility.
Like the walk itself I found it a bit hard going, but it was well reviewed and is predicted to drive even more tourists to Cornwall.
I’m not so sure. The South West coastal trail can be beautiful but it’s often steep and rugged, and the weather (as the film demonstrated) can leave a lot to be desired.
As I know from first-hand experience, Cornwall out-of-season is often windswept and bleak. As for the picturesque fishing villages, they are lovely but over-crowded for much of the year.
Finally, while we’re on the subject, I do love an Everyman cinema.
They don’t offer the ‘big screen’ experience of my youth, but now I’m in my sixties I appreciate the significantly greater comfort (and legroom).
As it happens, the best cinema experience I’ve had in recent years was at the Tivoli in Bath, which has since been purchased by the Everyman chain.
We found ourselves in the smallest of three auditoriums. It was called the Director’s Lounge and it was like attending a luxurious private screening. I loved it.
PS. You can probably tell that my taste in films is strictly mainstream.
That said, I have zero interest in seeing any Marvel/Avenger type film, and don’t get me started on films that are three hours or longer.
In general, no film should be more than two hours.
For example, I’ve watched From Russia With Love so many times I couldn’t even guess the number.
The running time is one hour 55 minutes.
Skyfall and No Time To Die (two of the three most recent Bond movies) are two hours 23 minutes and two hours 43 minutes respectively.
Neither are bad films but repeat viewings? Not for me.
Likewise, Mission: Impossible (1996) was one hour 50 minutes. But Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025) was two hours and 50 minutes.
Even in the comfort of an Everyman cinema, life’s too short.
Tuesday, June 10, 2025 at 18:45 David Seymour, leader of the ‘neoliberal’ ACT Party in New Zealand, is currently on a private visit to the UK.
Last night, at an ‘Enlightenment Evening’ event hosted by the Adam Smith Institute at the National Liberal Club in London, Seymour was asked about the generational tobacco ban which he helped repeal in his own country.
ACT, I should explain, is one of two junior partners in a three-party coalition government led by the centre right National Party, and two weeks ago Seymour was sworn in as deputy prime minister.
ACT was strongly against the generational tobacco ban introduced by Jacinda Ardern’s Labour government (which was due to be implemented from 2027), and according to some reports the party was "insistent", prior to entering into a coalition, that the law be reversed.
Seymour’s role in persuading the National Party to repeal the ban can’t be underestimated because in 2021 it was reported that Christopher Luxon, leader of the National Party and now PM, was ‘broadly’ supportive of the policy.
In December 2022, responding to a New York Times report about the New Zealand tobacco ban, Seymour wrote:
Some people have forgotten that, in a free society, politicians shouldn’t force their authoritarian worldview on adults who are hurting no one but themselves.
Last night, when asked about the generational ban, he didn’t hold back. It’s “quite evil in a way”, he said.
“Smokers are fiscal heroes,” he added. “If you want to save your country’s balance sheet, light up.”
Guido Fawkes has the full quote, and exclusive story, here.
See also: New Zealand - meet the new boss, same as the old boss? (January 2023)
