A few weeks ago I reported that I had been asked to speak at a seminar in Cardiff entitled 'Improving health and wellbeing - public health programmes, legislation and integration'.
Organised by Policy Forum for Wales (a division of Westminster Forum Projects, a "private company with no policy agenda of its own which organises impartial and cross-party seminars on public policy"), it takes place on Wednesday January 22.
The invitation, sent on October 31, asked me to make a short presentation in a session entitled 'Prevention, and the role of legislation'.
It concluded:
We believe delegates would benefit from your perspective on the impact that public health legislation has on smoking in Wales.
I do hope that you will be able to take part in what promises to be a most useful event, and look forward to hearing from you.
We subsequently exchanged several emails. One began:
I am delighted that you will be joining us on the platform for the above event as a speaker.
Another requested a "100-word biography and a head and shoulders photograph" for the delegate pack.
This morning, two weeks before the seminar takes place, I received a further, somewhat apologetic, email:
Dear Mr Clark
Policy Forum for Wales Keynote Seminar: Improving health and well-being - public health programmes, integration and next steps for policy
I am writing to inform you that regretfully the Forum will no longer be able to include you as a speaker on the panel at the above seminar.
As you will be aware the Forum always endeavours to bring together a wide range of voices and options for the benefit of interesting debate and not to exclude any points of view as relevant to the discussion as part of our proposition of impartiality.
However, a number of our speakers, some of whom are directly linked to the Welsh Government have stated that they are no longer able to speak at the seminar if you were to participate. As I stated it is usual for the Forum to include a range of divergent opinions amongst speakers, however on this occasion we feel that in fairness to delegates that have registered to attend based on a programme that includes these speakers it would be unfair and impractical to continue the seminar without their involvement.
I am very sorry for the inconvenience that this causes and I very much appreciate the commitment that you have already made to the seminar. In recognition of this we would welcome you to attend as a delegate, this would of course be on a complimentary basis. There will be significant opportunity for you to engage on the key issues during the day from the floor.
My sincerest apologises once again for any confusion or inconvenience caused.
To be fair, I don't blame Policy Forum for Wales for this about turn. They were good enough to invite me in the first place and if a number of speakers ("some of whom are directly linked to the Welsh Government") threaten to pull out, what can they do?
Anyway, I'm not going to speculate about who refused to share a platform with me. For the record, though, here's the "current, live agenda".