The smoking breaks ‘story’ rumbles on.
This morning, eight days after the Swindon Advertiser reported that Don Bryden, MD of KCJ Training and Employment Solutions, had decided to give non-smoking staff an extra four days’ holiday a year to ‘compensate’ them for colleagues taking too many smoking breaks, the subject was featured on BBC Breakfast (above).
In the interim the story had gone national, then international. As I wrote here and here, I have given interviews to Jeremy Vine (Radio 2), Channel 5 News and several local radio stations.
In general however the policy has been reported with few if any opposing comments so I was pleased when a BBC Breakfast producer rang Forest yesterday to ask if we could put forward a spokesman to go head-to-head with MD Don Bryden.
“Yes,” I said, “I’d be happy to do it.” I even offered to travel to Salford, where the programme is broadcast, a six-hour round trip.
Thanks, they said, but no thanks. “We heard you on Jeremy Vine and even the callers were men. It was very male centric. We want a female voice.”
I protested, mildly, but suggested a couple of women, neither of whom proved to be available.
So who did they book to ‘oppose’ the policy? Why, none other than Kuba Shand-Baptiste, a journalist whose column on the subject (I'd quit smoking too if it meant four extra days of holiday – or at least, I'd pretend to) was published on the Independent website yesterday.
To be fair, Kuba was quite a bubbly presence on the programme. She had a sense of humour and I can’t deny that she was rather fun. In contrast, I suspect I would have been quite grumpy and far more inclined to argue with Don Bryden who sat on the sofa enjoying every moment of his 15 minutes of fame.
But that’s the point. This was not a proper debate. In fact, far from defending smokers from the charge that they work fewer hours because of smoking breaks, Kuba’s basic position was not that the policy is unfair to smokers, but that smokers are “sneaky” and “cunning” and will find ways round it.
The actual policy, she said, is a “really positive move. As far as health policies go it’s a really good thing.” Smoking, she added, is a “stupid habit”, a “stupid addiction”.
If that’s the BBC’s idea of balance, I give up.