My deadline day debt to Andy Murray

I hate, hate, hate writing responses to government consultations so I invariably postpone the dreaded deed until the last possible moment.

Two consultations closed this week, one on Thursday, the other on Friday.

What complicated matters was the amount of travelling I had to do – Stansted to Edinburgh, Edinburgh to Dublin, Dublin to Cork, Cork to Dublin and, finally, Dublin to Stansted.

I also had to appear before the Scottish Parliament's Health and Sport Committee and fulfil several appointments in Dublin and Cork that took up the best part of a day in total.

Anyway, one leg of my journey came to my rescue. On Thursday evening, hours before the deadline, I had two uninterrupted hours on board the Cork-Dublin train to write Forest's submission to the Department of Health consultation on the implementation of TPD2 (the EU's revised Tobacco Products Directive).

Truth is, I've always worked better to a deadline. It's stressful but it focuses the mind. Consequently, by the time we arrived in Dublin shortly before 9.00pm, most of it was written.

All I had to do was catch a taxi to my hotel, check-in, whip out my laptop, open the draft document, do a final edit, and email it to the DH. I had until midnight, or so I thought.

At 11.00 it was finished but before sending it to the DH I decided to pop down to the bar and proof read the final version with the aid of a pint of Guinness. (It wasn't very long, just five pages).

At 11.35 I returned to my room. I don't know why but a little voice inside my head told me to double-check the exact time the consultation closed.

Dear reader, when I looked (and I still don't know why I did) my heart skipped a beat. The deadline wasn't midnight, as you might expect, but 11.45.

Fingers trembling on the keyboard, I wasted no further time. The email to the DH was timed at 11:41. And, yes, I did get an automated response confirming all was well.

Ironically I have Andy Murray to thank because when I was in the bar he was in the process of recovering from two sets down in his US Open second round match against some Frenchman or other.

So while I re-read our submission I also kept an eye on the large TV screen and had Murray not won the match when he did – had there been an extra game or two – I would not have gone back to my room when I did and I'd have missed the deadline.

So, thanks, Andy. You did me a big, big favour.

I'll post our response to the DH consultation later. Ditto our response to the Welsh Assembly consultation on the Public Health (Wales) Bill that closed yesterday.

The good news is I sent the latter at 12:02 yesterday, at least five hours before the deadline. I wasn't going to make the same mistake again.

Comments

[Pat Nurse]

Good luck. I hope they read it after your efforts but I doubt it. Today I had a response via my MP on the smoking issue generally and the discrimination against smokers and Ms Jane Ellison made very clear that the Govt intends to force people to quit because we murder children.

A response from Forest, I am sorry to say, is likely to be ignored because it doesn't agree with the Govt agenda and we do know that modern consultation is a scam.

Gotta go through the motions though, I suppose.

[jredheadgirl]

Thanks for all that you do Simon. You deserve a holiday:-)