It's radio but not as we knew it
Sunday, July 19, 2020 at 11:46 The days when I could do a radio interview in my dressing gown or similar attire are gone, it seems.
This morning I was invited to go head-to-head with Cllr Paulette Hamilton, vice chair of the Local Government Association's community wellbeing board, on Five Live.
The BBC asked if we could use FaceTime Video so they could "visualise" the interview with a view to possibly posting a clip online.
This meant I had to shave and get dressed, a far cry from many radio interviews I have done from home.
Nothing however beats a former tobacco industry spokesman who told me he once did an interview with Radio Scotland naked on the balcony of his holiday home in Majorca. (Too much information!)
Anyway, a quick reminder.
Yesterday the LGA called for new eating and drinking areas outside pubs, cafes and bars to be smoke free 'to make them more family-friendly and healthy spaces as high streets look to recover from the lockdown'.
On Five Live this morning Paulette Hamilton tried to justify the policy on the grounds that it will help the Government achieve its goal of a 'smoke free' England by 2030.
The Government however has made it clear that it does not support an outdoor smoking ban.
Paulette also focussed on two other issues: one, attracting families and, two, the fact that many people want to eat in a 'smoke free' environment (which I get).
This line of argument ignores the point that many pubs are not designed to be 'family friendly', nor should they be expected to be. "Pubs aren't health clubs" as David Hockney has often pointed out.
A total ban on smoking in these new al fresco eating and drinking areas will also hit pubs, bars and cafes disproportionately because there are many people who just want to have a drink outside on their own or with other adults.
That is why individual businesses MUST be allowed to decide for themselves based on customer demand.
It doesn't take a genius to see where the LGA is going. Once councils have banned smoking in these new outdoor seating areas it's only a matter of time before anti-smoking campaigners will demand that all outdoor licensed areas must be 'smoke free' too.
After that, who would bet against smoking being prohibited in all pedestrian areas as well?
Anyway, if you want to listen to the Five Live interview (in which I was fully clothed), click here.
I'm also doing BBC West Midlands in a few minutes.
Reader Comments (4)
I get that a minority of people want to eat in an area where there are no smokers but why don't they get that smokers want to eat in an area where they can smoke?
As I said, tolerance and consideration will resolve this issue but how can smokers be considerate when anti smokers are so damn intolerant.
Simon, I should have liked to hear what you were trying to say about the government when Paulette Hamilton was talking over you.
But I was also intrigued to know why a Labour councillor was so keen to help a Conservative government achieve it's pledge to "end smoking in England by 2030."
It turns out that it wasn't this government, the Green Paper came out in the dying days of the last one.
Pledge to end smoking in England by 2030
23 July 2019
"The government is pledging to end smoking in England by 2030 as part of a range of measures to tackle the causes of preventable ill health.
Promoting physical activity, developing guidelines on sleep and targeting those at risk of diabetes are also set out as priorities in the green paper.
The policy document aims to reduce the number of years spent in poor health.
Currently men and women spend over a fifth of their lives in ill health - 19 years for women and 16 for men.
Those in deprived areas experience the longest periods of poor health.
The green paper, which will now be consulted on, proposes a number of ways of tackling this."
Why publish now?
"The manner of the green paper's publication left most in the health world scratching their heads.
It was slipped out online late in the evening by the Cabinet Office and not the Department of Health and Social Care. There was no press notice.
It's understood Theresa May was determined to get it out in the last days of her premiership, while Health Secretary Matt Hancock wanted to delay it till the new administration was formed.
Front-runner Boris Johnson has made it clear he is opposed to more sugar taxes and similar interventions."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-49079515
Perhaps she thinks Theresa May is still in power.
(They'll try anything won't they)
This is one more thinly veiled step toward incremental prohibition. The antismoking legislation needs to be amended to allow accommodation for all--smokers and non-smokers. That means designated smoking areas indoors and out.
Can anyone point the difference between this, and many previous, governments and the taliban?