Beach smoking ban and "tyranny of the majority"

Still in Dublin where I'm interviewing candidates to work for Forest Eireann as our media and public affairs manager.

Meanwhile, back home, Brighton and Hove City Council's health and wellbeing board (sic) yesterday voted to hold a public consultation on a plan to ban smoking on the beach and other outdoor public areas.

The BBC has a report here (with a quote by Forest) – Brighton seeks views on beach smoking ban.

Prior to the vote my colleague Rob Lyons (Action on Consumer Choice) was on ITV's Good Morning Britain (on the sofa, no less).

Other outspoken opponents of the proposed ban were Chris Snowdon (on Sky News) and The Freedom Association's Andrew Allison on Five Live Breakfast.

I did a couple of local radio interviews (BBC Sussex and BBC Northampton).

On BBC Sussex I was up against Amanda Sandford of ASH. On BBC Radio Northampton I went head-to-head with John Britton, professor of epidemiology, director of the UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies at Nottingham University, and a member of the ASH Board of Trustees.

As ever, Britton wasted no time raising the issue of Forest's funding. I hit back, saying he benefitted from taxpayers' money.

Only then did we address the issue of smoking on the beach but, given the final word, he chose to make another crack about me being paid to sell cigarettes (I paraphrase).

Needless to say Amanda (ASH) and John Britton were in favour of banning smoking on Brighton beach.

Clive Bates, former director of ASH and now a leading e-cig campaigner, is a big fan of Britton (A blunt challenge to some common arguments against e-cigarettes).

I wonder what Clive thinks about the proposal to ban smoking on Brighton beach. I suspect he's not against the idea. Perhaps he'd like to tell us, if he has time.

(As you can tell, my patience with these tobacco control campaigners turned e-cig advocates is wearing thin. Under the surface they're still control freaks.)

Update: Today's Times reports that 'One of Britain’s most popular beaches could become a smoke-free area in the latest curb on outdoor smoking'.

The Guardian has what I think is a fair and balanced article - Is Britain ready for outdoor smoking bans?. Includes a quote from me plus some interesting responses from some smokers in Millennium Square, Bristol.

Comments

[Misty]

Ah Brighton. Not the place it once was, that’s for sure. Over the years, I’ve seen it morph from a vibrant, slightly bohemian seaside town famed (and popular) for its extremely open and accepting attitude towards the gay community – from a time way before “gay friendly” was the “thing to be,” and thus a trailblazer in the early days – into a staid, solidly middle-class, homogenised place relying largely on its erstwhile “zippy” reputation to keep pulling the punters in. But today’s Brighton, for visitors expecting a different vibe there from any other, more traditionally conservative, British seaside towns (think Eastbourne or Worthing), is disappointing in reality.

Those who “run” Brighton fail to realise that a few shops selling joss-sticks, beads and self-help books simply aren’t enough to convince the visiting public that Brighton’s USP is long, long gone. So far gone, in fact, that it is (sadly) perhaps predictable, rather than surprising, that it should be this city - once the most tolerant and exciting of all British resorts - that is the first, rather than the last, to propose a measure more amenable to the tight-lipped, puritanical, Victorian-style traveller than to Brighton’s traditionally more colourful visitors.

And what a classic irony it is that those now proposing this unfriendly and unwelcoming measure are very likely resident in the area precisely because they experienced the kind of tolerance in Brighton not evidenced elsewhere, but which they themselves now seem incapable of showing to others who are “not like them.”