Is it time for the CEO of ASH to get on her bike?
Monday, February 17, 2014 at 8:45 Further to my previous post, I've been thinking about the reason for Deborah Arnott's bad mood.
This is pure speculation but could it be the gradual marginalisation of ASH London within the tobacco control movement?
Think back to 2006 when Deborah and her then deputy Ian Willmore were happy to claim credit for persuading MPs to vote for a comprehensive ban on smoking in public places ('Smoke and mirrors', Guardian).
Halcyon days. Mind you, I've always wondered how that went down with other tobacco control campaigners. Perhaps they were too busy patting each other on the back to notice.
Since then - and I'm sure it's not my imagination - ASH's influence has waned. The campaign for plain packaging has been driven by Smokefree South West, Cancer Research and other bodies; the ban on smoking in cars with children was a triumph for Labour's public health spokesman Luciana Berger and the British Lung Foundation; and since the BBC's move to Salford, Forest spokesmen are far more likely to be sat alongside Andrea Crossfield of Tobacco Free Futures, formerly Smokefree North West.
The North East is ably covered by Fresh so one has to question the purpose of a 'national' London-based group whose role is duplicated by so many other organisations. Do we really need them all?
In Scotland the anti-tobacco crusade is driven by the far more dynamic ASH Scotland whose CEO, Sheila Duffy, is rarely out of the papers and probably never sleeps. (I imagine she's composing a letter to the Scotsman even as I write.)
Likewise ASH Wales - and associated campaigns such as The Filter - prove that anti-tobacco campaigns can have style and occasional flashes of humour. Compare that to the leaden, po-faced pronouncements favoured by Deborah Arnott's ASH.
As for the All Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health, which is run by ASH, it seems very quiet. I don't even know who the new chairman is, the previous incumbent, Stephen Williams, having stood down when he became a junior minister last year.
On e-cigarettes ASH is hopelessly conflicted. Are they for or against? Who knows. A belated attempt to 'own' the issue at the recent E-Cigarette Summit backfired spectacularly with Deborah Arnott's extraordinary presentation, highlighted here by Chris Snowdon.
No Smoking Day is run by the British Heart Foundation and Stoptober is an NHS initiative, I think.
So what does ASH do that justifies its continued existence? I'm damned if I know.
Forest may not, ahem, be the most successful pressure group in the world but at least we have a unique selling point and don't cost the taxpayer a penny.
The same can hardly be said of ASH who, let us not forget, spend most of their time pushing on an open door.
"You want to stop people smoking? Come in, m'dear. How can I help?"
It's hardly challenging work, is it?
Perhaps - and I say this with great respect - it's time Deborah got on her bike and cycled off into the sunset.
As for her replacement - if indeed ASH has a future - I believe Clive Bates is available.
If I was a vaper I'd start a campaign to get Clive (re)appointed as soon as possible.
Now that would be fun, wouldn't it?
Reader Comments (8)
I wouldn't support an ASH with Clive Bates because he would just push for tobacco to be made illegal and smokers to be criminalised while forcing us all on to to e-cigs. They save lives, right? They look the same and are similar to use so he'd argue that we dirty, filthy smokers should know what's good for us and go on an ecig or face jail. Yes, I believe he is that extremist.
Forest has been brilliant these last 7 years and if your campaigns fail it isn't for want of trying or lack of expertise in running such campaigns but because the establishment's prejudicial mind is made up on tobacco. They give basic lip service to Forest in hope that they seem to appear to be listening on things like plain packaging when they've already decided and have the defecated packs in production already.
Keep up the good work. We need Forest. We certainly don't need ASH and it's brand of hate among all the other hate mongering groups that depend on bashing legitimate adult consumers for their jobs, salaries and funding and that's why they belong to an industry every bit as powerful and profit driven as Big Tobacco itself.
Two contributions to her bad mood may be,
As Frank Davis points out, she wanted smoking banning in all cars. The debate has been restricted to possible harm to children, and the proposed ban looks like a position of stable equilibrium. The Anti Tobacco Industry hates stability as it requires from them a huge effort to get the prohibition ball rolling again. Imagine if the smoking ban were restricted to pubs selling food and remember how elated ASH was (their gleeful boasts of their "confidence trick" ) when it ended up applying to all pubs.
Secondly Anti Tobacco must be worried about ecigs. They put out vapour, deliver nicotine efficiently and enjoyably, are harmless, cheap and enable smokers to continue smoking the occasional cigarette while mainly vaping. It must be their worst nightmare.
Hear hear, Pat!
Clive Bates is sticking to the 'tobacco-free England' plan. He's clever enough to see past the 'but it looks like smoking so it must be just as bad' rhetoric of his contemporaries in tobacco control, towards e-cigs. For him, e-fags will do as well as approved nicotine replacements in 'weaning' the smoker off his smokes.
And, once we're all sucking on little plastic tubes, he will suddenly discover that they're just as bad as the real thing and so we will be weaned off vaping too.
The useful idiot vapers think he's a friend. They'll find out how much of friend if proper smoking is ever completely outlawed.
As far as Arnott - perhaps she's poorly? She doesn't look very well
I believe the lady mentioned is pulling down something in the region of £60,000 p.a. That's about the only reason I can think of for the continued existence of ASH. Now that there is some real action going on - like smokers turning into vapers overnight - don't laugh, I did that 4 years ago after 60 happy years of smoking - she and the rest of them are running around like headless chickens wondering why the sky has fallen in. Maybe they'll find another group of people to persecute - Marmite eaters, coffee drinkers, who knows. One thing for sure, it won't be the real destroyers of society like pay-day loan sharks or the gambling wizards. Cigarettes never tore families apart - gambling and booze do exactly that but if that's your choice, so be it. Go Ms Arnott, for God's sake Go - for all our sakes Go!
As an "Idiot Vaper" I see no future for you or your kind at all.
Simon wrote "cycled into the sunset" sounds a bit too romantic for me. I would prefer cycled into the storm, given the turbulence she has caused LOL
Dragonmum: £60k per year? No, it's in excess of £80k plus generous pension.
Having said that, ASH did have to make some sacrifices for her to receive the rise ... they had to cut their lower-paid staff by trimming the payroll from 12 to 8 in recent years.
I'm baffled, though, why Debs can be so grumpy considering she has enjoyed a 66% pay rise - at least - since 2004 when she was in the £50-£51k bracket!
I do think that Simon has a point, though. With the ASH office in that Mecca for anti-smokers, Australia, being unceremoniously closed down, the recent news of the cut in funds to Smoke Free South West (and with austerity measures all over the country other councils must surely be considering similar moves re their own little local hate-groups - and that must clearly include her stamping-ground), with more and more anti-smoking functions now becoming more mainstream through NHS services and Dept of Health adverts etc, and with the smoking ban’s unwelcome effect of making everyone – smoker and non-smoker alike – keenly personally aware of the true nature of the results of capitulating to the demands of the anti-smoking lobby, and bringing the undeniably deleterious effects of that capitulation on the economy to the attention of politicians, if I were in Arnott’s shoes, I’d be pretty worried about my position, too!
Never best known for her jolly, light-hearted or carefree attitude towards her fellow man, I hate to think what the poor remaining eight staff in the ASH offices have to put up with when she marches in of a Monday morning. Not coffee and the traditional celebratory cream cakes, I’ll wager …
Incidentally Simon, when you say the "fragrant" Andrea Crossfield do you mean she stinks of perfume? The sort of sweet sickly smell that blocks your sinuses, sticks in your throat and makes everything you eat and drink thereafter taste of someone else's perfume? The sort that really fouls the taste of your food if someone is sat close to you in a restaurant while wearing it? The sort that damages your health according to a woman in the USA who sued her coworker for wearing it because she claimed "it was like being assaulted every time she walked past." ?
As Simon Chapman is always saying : "If you can smell it then it is harming your health."
Perhaps you meant "fragrant" in that Ms Crossfield is a lovely sweet sort of person who doesn't screech at you every time you're head to head in debate?