I am currently at sea, sailing from Lisbon to Gijon in north west Spain before returning to Southampton on Sunday.
Our home for the week is the Queen Anne, the newest Cunard ship. Launched earlier this year, it’s one of four Cunard ships, the others being Queen Mary 2, Queen Victoria, and Queen Elizabeth.
Queen Anne is not the largest Cunard ship (Queen Mary 2, an ocean liner built for transatlantic cruises, holds that distinction) but it accommodates more passengers - 2,996 compared to QM2 (2,695).
Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria are smaller, holding 2,081 passengers apiece.
To put those numbers in perspective, many cruise ships now accommodate upwards of 4,000 passengers, with the largest - the Royal Caribbean's Icon of the Seas - accommodating 5,610 guests (plus 2,350 crew members).
The reason I mention all this is because we were in Lisbon yesterday when the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, was announcing the details of her first Budget.
You can read Forest’s response to the predictable increase in tobacco duty here, but more noteworthy, perhaps, is the additional “one-off” hike in tobacco duty that will accompany the introduction of a flat rate tax on eliquid from October 2026.
That will be accompanied by an equivalent increase of £2.20 per 100 cigarettes in tobacco duty to "maintain the financial incentive to switch from tobacco to vaping".
But that’s not the end of it. Include VAT and the ‘one-off’ tax hike will actually add £3.30 per 100 cigarettes (or 66 pence per 20).
That of course is in addition to the annual tobacco escalator (inflation plus two per cent) that, following yesterday’s Budget, has added something like 54 pence to a pack of 20 cigarettes, and £2.33 to a 30g pouch of handrolling tobacco.
Anyway, Forest’s response was reported by The Sun and the Mirror so my efforts from the quayside in Lisbon weren’t entirely in vain.
Below: On board Cunard’s Queen Anne awaiting the Budget
