Flashback to Arran (and Alaska)

There are some things you try to forget, but Facebook won’t let you.

See also: Staycation news: escape from Arran

Meanwhile, on this day in 2019 BC (Before Covid), we were in a rather different location, 4,000 miles away.

The temperature was much the same, though!

See: Ship to shore

Get me to Gail’s

Until a few days ago I had never heard of Gail’s bakery. Suddenly, I seem to be reading about nothing else.

According to the Telegraph:

Gail’s, the upmarket bakery chain, is facing resistance to its plans for a new shop in a trendy east London area, over fears it will force independent cafes out of business.

Local business owners have also sided against the plans because of the pro-Brexit and anti-lockdown views of Luke Johnson, the company’s minority investor.

The story has also appeared in The Times, Daily Mail, inews, Time Out, and the London Evening Standard, among others.

I’m a big fan of independent cafes, but competition is good, is it not, and if the independents are well run and provide a satisfying service, they should continue to prosper.

As for resisting the incursion of a new business because of the (mainstream) political views of a minority investor, that’s something else, and my immediate reaction was to go online and find out more about the bakery chain I had never heard of.

First off, I discovered there is a Gail’s bakery in the centre of Cambridge which is 20 miles from where I live.

As you can imagine, my first instinct was to drive into Cambridge and check it out, but the name of the investor, Luke Johnson, rang a bell - and not just because he’s a former chairman of Pizza Express and Channel 4 and much more besides.

According to a Guardian profile in 2004:

Mr Johnson is aggressively anti-smoking and has been known to storm out of parties when too many people have lit up. In his writing, he has often criticised the tobacco industry, asking why protesters target oil and drug firms when Big Tobacco kills so many.

So I’m torn. Or at least I was before I read this piss poor article in The Times this morning.

A gap year job in the upmarket bakery taught Charlie Aslet to smile maniacally at customers and led to pin-up status. But he’ll never buy a cinnamon bun again.

See: I was the face of Gail’s — I’ll never forget the smell

Neither the headline nor the sub-heading reflect the true awfulness of the piece, which says far more about Charlie than the bakery for which he worked for all of three months in his gap year before going to university (Oxford, since you ask).

So tomorrow morning I intend to get up early to beat the traffic and the tourists, and visit Gail’s, following which I shall report back.

Watch this space.

PS. To be clear, I wouldn’t boycott a bakery because of the anti-smoking views of a minority investor, but it does annoy me when people in the hospitality industry - Tim Martin of Wetherspoon, for example - support comprehensive smoking bans.

If you want to ban smoking on your own premises, fair enough, but don’t demand that government imposes the same policy on your competitors. That’s anti-competitive, isn’t it?

Update: My wife tells me that branches of Gail's are "everywhere". Where have I been?

Caution - spin doctors at work

According to analysis by ASH, based on research conducted by YouGov, ‘nearly three million people in Britain have quit smoking with a vape in the last five years’.

Can this be true? Experience has taught me to be extremely wary of any ‘analysis’ conducted by ASH and I’m not going to change now.

This after all is the organisation that in July 2020, just five months after the outbreak of Covid, declared that ‘A million people have stopped smoking since the Covid pandemic hit Britain’.

It wasn’t true but it made a good headline.

So call me old fashioned but I prefer to stick with the figures published each year by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) whose annual reports concerning adult smoking (and vaping) habits in the UK present a rather different picture (albeit we are still waiting for the 2023 figures which should be published next month).

According to the ONS, the number of adult smokers in the UK dropped from 7.4m (15.1%) in 2017 to 6.4m (12.9%) in 2022 (the last figures that are available).

In that five year period the number of smokers therefore fell by one million. According to ASH, however, the number of adults who quit smoking in the five years since 2019 (thanks to vaping alone) was nearly THREE million.

Even allowing for ‘new’ smokers (ie adults who started smoking during that period), it’s still a stretch to declare that three million smokers have quit after switching to vaping in the last five years.

In any case, if you accept ASH’s analysis, the number of smokers who have stopped smoking in the last five years should be considerably more than three million because what about the many smokers who have quit via other means (cold turkey, for example, which to the best of my knowledge is still the number one method of giving up).

Meanwhile, according to ASH, an estimated eleven per cent of the adult population in Britain now vape, the equivalent of 5.6 million people and the highest rate ever.

That’s a significant increase on the ONS figure for 2022 (4.5 million) which was based on the annual Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN).

I’m not saying the YouGov/ASH figure is wrong (it’s based on a survey), but it’s important to stress that a significant number of vapers are dual users who smoke and vape.

In fact, according to ASH, 2.7 million (53%) of the 5.6m are former smokers, which means that 2.9m vapers are still smoking.

But wait. If ‘nearly three million people in Britain have quit smoking with a vape in the last five years’, and there are currently three million former smokers who vape in the UK, what about the smokers who quit and switched to vaping before that?

I’m guessing that many have subsequently quit vaping as well because - if I have read this correctly - the average period people vape after quitting smoking is two years, which is bad news for the vaping industry because it demonstrates the finite nature of vaping and the limited lifespan of e-cigarettes as a smoking cessation tool.

In truth, though, it’s not my experience because most of the vapers I know have been vaping for the best part of a decade and have no plans to quit because yes, they may be addicted to nicotine, but they enjoy it. (Sound familiar?)

As I say, I would caution against quoting any ASH analysis as fact because in my experience it’s usually based on estimates and calculations, added to which there is often a significant degree of spin behind their interpretation of the data.

In this instance I suspect that the aim is to normalise vapes as the number one quit smoking tool until such time as ex-smoking vapers substantially outnumber smokers.

After that vaping will be public health enemy number one, leapfrogging smoking, alcohol, and ultra-processed food.

Undeterred by (and possibly oblivious to) such thoughts, the UK Vaping Industry Association tweeted:

New data from @AshOrgUK found more than half of ex-smokers in Great Britain who quit in the past five years - amounting to 2.7 million adults - used a vape in their last quit attempt.

Further, it revealed the main motivations for vaping amongst current smokers included to cut down on smoking, protect others from the risk of second-hand smoke [my emphasis] or to help them quit.

Alarmingly, the leading public health charity [my emphasis] also reported that misperceptions around vaping are at an all time high, with 50% of smokers wrongly believing vaping to be as or more harmful when compared with smoking.

The funny thing is, the same organisation described by the UKVIA as a ‘leading public health charity’ continues to demand more and more restrictions on the sale and packaging of e-cigarettes, which is surely partly to blame for many smokers ‘wrongly believing’ that vaping is just as harmful as smoking.

Reap what you sow, and all that, but I genuinely don’t see how being a lickspittle to ASH is going to end in anything other than tears.

Happy 70th birthday, Joe Jackson!

Bit late to this but happy birthday to musician Joe Jackson who was 70 on Sunday.

Joe (pictured above at Forest’s 35th anniversary party in 2014) came to our attention as a potential ally when he wrote an article for the New York Times opposing the New York smoking ban. That was in 2003.

Thereafter he supported our campaign against the ban in England, appearing on TV and radio (including, on at least one occasion, the Today programme). He also wrote another article, this time for the Telegraph, recorded a protest song, and published an essay, ‘The Smoking Issue’ (later updated as ‘Smoke, Lies, and the Nanny State’).

During that period Joe attended several Forest events and spoke at a fringe meeting at the 2005 Labour Party conference in Brighton when he shared the platform with another friend of Forest, David Hockney.

The following year we presented Joe with our Smokers’ Rights Champion of the Year Award at the Groucho Club in Soho, and although he spends much of his time in Berlin and New York, we have kept in touch, on and off (mostly off!), ever since.

He was kind enough to invite my wife and I to see his band at the London Palladium a few years ago, and I once met him backstage at the De Montfort Hall, Leicester, when he was sharing the bill with Todd Rundgren.

But enough of the name-dropping. In truth, I can’t quite get my head around the fact that it’s 45 years since I bought Joe’s second album, I’m The Man, in a small independent record shop in Aberdeen.

Funnily enough, another record I bought that year (1979) was XTC’s Drums and Wires. Decades later I discovered that Joe is a big fan of XTC too and we ended up swapping lists of our top 30 XTC songs, which was a bit surreal.

Meanwhile (and I know this is subjective), more recent albums such as Rain (2008), Fool (2019), and What A Racket! (2023) are as good as anything Joe has done. (If anyone is interested, he’s on tour in the UK in October, performing songs from the new album with a small nine-piece orchestra. Naturally, it includes a song called ‘Health & Safety’.)

So, happy birthday to a great talent whose memoir, A Cure For Gravity (1999), is beautifully written and a great read. It ends, though, just as his career was about to take off, so don’t expect any showbiz gossip. It’s far better than that.

Remarkably, I discovered when reading the book that long before we met we both lived in Camberwell Grove, a tree-lined avenue in south east London, albeit at slightly different times. What are the odds?!

PS. To be honest, I was unaware of Joe’s birthday until I stumbled, late last night, on a cutting from the Saturday edition of The Times that had been copied and posted on social media.

Under ‘Birthdays Tomorrow’ Joe was one of a long list of distinguished people including Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, professor of psychology and cognitive neuroscientist, 50; Simon Clegg, chief executive, British Olympic Association (1997-2009), 65; Chris Hemsworth, actor, Rush (2013), 41; Hulk Hogan, wrestler, 71; Lord (Anthony) Hughes of Ombersley, justice of the Supreme Court (2013-18), 76; Richard Scudamore, executive chair, Premier League (1999-2018), 65; Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer, Inc, 74; and many more.

It was Joe however who the subs chose to feature in the picture that accompanied the list, but there was one small problem.

The person in the photo was not ‘Joe Jackson, musician, Is She Really Going Out with Him? (1978)’, but the late Joseph Walter Jackson, patriarch of the Jackson family and father of Michael Jackson.

An easy mistake to make!

Update: How did I miss this?

‘Rock stars are idiots’: Even at 70, Joe Jackson is our greatest angry young man … ‘Pretentious’ music critics; US soft rock; the killjoys who banned smoking from pubs… The Steppin’ Out singer has declared war on them all (Telegraph, August 9)

Very enjoyable.

Below: Joe with Ranald Macdonald, MD of Boisdale Restaurants, and photographer (and fellow musician) Dan Donovan in November 2014

Unfinished Business - Tobacco Reporter

A few weeks ago I gave an interview to the trade magazine Tobacco Reporter.

I met George Gay, TR’s European editor, at the British Library in London and, although it was teeming with visitors, we soon found a quiet spot where we could talk without interruption.

George and I have crossed paths many times over the years, and he and the editor of Tobacco Reporter, Taco Tuinstra, have always been generous with their coverage of Forest events and campaigns, for which I am grateful.

You can read the interview - Unfinished Business - online, and I believe it will also appear in the print edition of the October issue.

In the meantime, here are a couple of passages:

Forest, almost uniquely, has been willing to stand up publicly for the rights of cigarette smokers, who, though still amounting to more than 6 million people, have been treated like outcasts by much of polite society - like people of the wrong class, people considered to be without agency, without the mental capacity to make the “right” choices for themselves.

And, regrettably, it is not only the public health community that has tried to “denormalize” cigarette smokers in this way. In recent years, so too have large swathes of the tobacco/nicotine industry - those who would sell cigarette smokers alternative lower-risk nicotine products, some of them while still selling cigarettes.

Also:

One of Clark’s big concerns is that governments are increasingly interfering in all manner of people’s lifestyle choices by attacking those choices rather than their likely causes. Noting that smokers are more prevalent in deprived areas, governments have chosen to double down on anti-tobacco activities in those areas rather than taking the more difficult route of attacking the cause of the deprivation.

Despite that:

“I still enjoy my job,” he said. “I still think I have something to offer. I still get a kick out of it. And I still think we have a role to play.”

See also: Rebel With A Cause (Tobacco Reporter, December 2017)
Forest Turns 40 (Tobacco Reporter, June 2019)
Celebrating Choice (Tobacco Reporter, August 2019)
Hear, Hear! (Tobacco Reporter, August 2022)
Food for Thought (Tobacco Reporter, May 2024)

PS. After meeting George it took me four hours to get home because, due to signalling failure, the train I was on made an unscheduled stop at Potters Bar, just outside London, and everyone had to get off.

No trains were running north from Potters Bar and the only way I could get home (a further 54 miles) was by taxi but taxis were in such demand I had to queue for the best part of an hour.

Given I only travel into London by train a few times each month, what were the odds?!

Rambling on

Pleased to read that ‘Grandad’, aka Richard O’Connor, author of the long-running and often very funny Head Rambles blog, is recovering well after a recent and serious operation.

I won’t go into details and I wouldn’t have mentioned it at all if it wasn’t for the fact that, thanks to Grandad himself, much of it is already online and in the public domain.

All I will add is that Richard’s courage and quirky good humour in response to recent events is not only remarkable, it’s genuinely inspiring.

I’m sure that having an irrepressible sense of the absurd helps, but perhaps blogging is a form of therapy too. Who knew?!

Full story, including an update from his daughter (who seems to have a very similar sense of humour), here.

Party conference - hotel watch

My application to attend the Labour Party conference in Liverpool next month has been approved.

However, because I had no plans, until recently, to attend, I didn’t book accommodation in advance.

That was stupid of me because, as you might expect, every hotel within easy walking distance of the conference centre is now fully booked.

In contrast, I had no problem last week booking a hotel for the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham.

How different to a few months ago.

When I checked my preferred hotel, and several more besides, every room was booked. Last week, when I checked again, the same hotels were offering a choice of rooms.

Clearly, in the wake of the election, lobbyists and other interested parties are abandoning ship and cancelling rooms booked in anticipation of the Conservatives still being in power ahead of a November election.

So the former PM’s final gift to the nation is a potentially serious loss of income to the city’s hotels, restaurants and bars as hundreds of delegates cancel bookings or stay away.

Well done, Rishi, you’ve played a blinder!

All at sea - how I missed the London Olympics but delivered a petition

Throughout the Olympics in Paris commentators have found it impossible not to talk about the London Olympics in 2012.

By common consent, the London Olympics are now considered something of a triumph, not least the opening ceremony that celebrated James Bond, Mr Bean, the Industrial Revolution and, less appropriately, the NHS.

Prior to the 2012 Games, however, I was one of many sceptics. Writing in December 2011, I noted:

A colleague told me about a conversation he had with a friend who works for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.

Apparently, there was no great enthusiasm within the department for Britain to host the 2012 Olympics. Indeed, some people hoped that Paris would win the nomination and save us a large fortune.

London, it was argued privately, would still benefit because lots of Olympic visitors would stay here and travel to Paris on Eurostar. France would bear the cost of the whole thing and Britain would be sitting pretty.

However there was one minister who really wanted the Olympics to come to London and it wasn't Tessa Jowell, former Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, now shadow minister for the Olympics. It was the prime minister, Tony Blair.

Allegedly there was even an attempt to nobble Blair's visit to Tokyo where the IOC was meeting to decide the nomination. Sadly the plot was foiled and the PM (with a little help from Seb Coe, David Beckham and others) triumphed.

Cue long faces at DCMS.

Now, I am told, officials privately laugh at the idea that the Olympics will come in on budget. For example, the current figure (£9 billion) doesn't cover the cost of security which could add a further £2-3 billion.

A year before the event I nevertheless applied for £800 worth of tickets, but demand (as I explained here) was so high the only thing I got were two tickets for the boxing (South Arena 2, ExCel, Session BX001, July 28, 13:30hrs) which I hadn’t asked for.

Unable to see any of our preferred events in person, and still a bit ambivalent about the whole thing, I decided instead to book my family on a 12-day Mediterranean cruise that largely overlapped with the Games back home.

Apart from the opening ceremony, we therefore missed almost every moment of note including Super Saturday, the penultimate day, when Team GB won three gold medals on the track in just 45 minutes.

I don’t regret my decision, though, and looking back on my notes at the time the cruise wasn’t without incident.

Ports of call included Cannes, Cadiz/Seville (extremely hot), Rome (ditto), Sardinia, Barcelona, and Gibraltar (more of which in a minute).

Things were complicated by the fact that the government consultation on plain packaging had been extended by a month and the closing date for submissions was now August 10 when I was due to be at sea.

The issue was, it wasn’t just a question of submitting a digital response. That was easy enough, and I may have done it before we left Southampton.

The major problem was how to physically submit the 235,000 signatories we had continued to gather via a street petition in 30 towns and cities when I wasn’t there to oversee the task.

Thankfully, we worked out a plan and at 10.20am, on Wednesday August 8, 2012, 29 boxes were successfully delivered to the Department of Health in Waterloo Road, London.

Each one contained the names and addresses of people who had signed the Hands Off Our Packs petition against plain packaging.

The delivery, as I wrote here, ‘was conducted with (almost) military precision by a crack team of Forest operatives’.

Meanwhile I was in Gibraltar liaising with the team in London before sending out the press release that led to these and other reports:

235,000 sign petition against plain tobacco packs
Plain packaging petition sent to Department of Health

Funnily enough, it transpired later that we had underestimated the number of signatories. The final figure - taking into account both the petition and postcards submitted to the Department of Health via the Hands Off Our Packs campaign - was 269,854.

But that wasn’t confirmed until July 2013 when the DoH finally published its report on the consultation, eleven months after the closing date.

As for Gibraltar, perhaps it was the stress I was under that day (had we not delivered our petition signatories to the DoH it would have been an absolute disaster), but I struggled to see the attraction.

I’m not sure what I expected but the reality was a far cry from the 1950s chocolate box image of England I had erroneously imagined.

Perhaps my (unrealistic) expectation of finding a little piece of England on the Spanish peninsula had set the bar too high, but I know better now.

See also: Return to Seville and Rome for a day. Same cruise but several days earlier. Now that’s what I call stressful!