Comedy gold

The latest issue of Irish Pharmacist (nope, me neither) has devoted its editorial to Forest Ireland.

A recent press release criticising the Irish Government’s plan to ban tobacco vending machines prompted an outburst of mirth from editor Pat Green.

Under the headline ‘50 Years Go Up In Smoke’, he wrote:

Many press releases darken my inbox each month relating to devastating illnesses and the myriad failings in our healthcare system, but rarely one lands in the inbox that is jaw-dropping and hilarious in equal measures.

Green then outlined our concerns including the financial cost (to hoteliers and publicans), the loss of jobs (at vending machine companies) and the inconvenience (not great, admittedly) to smokers.

[Forest] also describes the proposal as a “nanny measure” that is “designed to reduce adult freedoms that will do nothing to protect children from taking up smoking, nor will it reduce the number of adults who smoke.

Instead of offering a cogent response to even one of these arguments, Green commented:

My first reaction was to check that I had not unintentionally subscribed to the satirical news outlet The Onion.

The real ‘comedy gold’, he added, was our statement that ‘many people choose to smoke because they enjoy it, not because they are addicted’:

Suddenly, I had a Rambo-style Vietnam flashback to America in the 1950s, when doctors, pharmacists and even Santa Claus were used to promote the ‘benefits’ of smoking.

How droll.

If anyone deserves to be ridiculed it’s Pat Green whose holier-than-thou attitude says far more about him than it does about us.

As well as inviting him to read ‘The Pleasure of Smoking: The views of confirmed smokers’ (Centre for Substance Use Research, 2016), I’d love him to meet a smoker such as Pat Nurse (of this parish).

Or Joanna Lumley. Asked by a journalist in 2015 if she still smoked, Lumley replied, only partly in jest:

‘Plenty! I put a whole packet in my mouth and light 20 at a time. No, I don’t, darling. I just smoke. I haven’t had one today, for instance. That reminds me, I ought to smoke. I try to smoke. I’d very easily give it up. It just slips away from you and I think: “Damn, I ought to be smoking!” I do like it - and you’ve got to die of something.’

Understanding the many reasons why people still smoke, decades after the health risks became widely known, should be a prerequisite for people like Pat Green.

Instead he prefers to mock and misrepresent our position as antediluvian. More fool him.

Kill Big Tobacco and you risk killing vaping

‘Tobacco industry has least influence on the UK, watchdog ranking reveals’.

This headline, in the Telegraph last week, relates to a report published by the self-styled ‘global tobacco industry watchdog’ STOP (Stopping Tobacco Organizations and Products) funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies.

“The index shows that the UK is an international leader in resisting the unremitting attempts of the tobacco industry to influence policy,” said Dr Mateusz Zatoński from the tobacco control research group at the University of Bath. “This in turn explains why the UK is routinely ranked as having the most robust tobacco control policies in Europe. 

Quick to applaud the finding was Martin Dockrell, head of Tobacco Control at Public Health England and former head of policy at ASH. ‘Delighted to see UK top for resisting tobacco industry influence,’ he tweeted.

Imagine being in a job where one of the main indicators of ‘success’ is a child-like refusal to engage with one of the principal stakeholders.

I know one of the forces that drives many anti-smoking campaigners is a hatred of Big Tobacco and a desire to see the industry go out of business, but if you are genuinely interested in harm reduction surely it is self-defeating to deny the role the tobacco industry can play in developing and promoting risk reduction products?

They may claim the policy is helping to drive down smoking rates, but tobacco control campaigners like Martin Dockrell remind me of Japanese soldiers who, decades after 1945, refused to accept the war was over.

More interesting than Dockrell’s tweet however was the list of people or bodies who retweeted and/or ‘liked’ it.

It included Make Smoking History Greater Manchester, well-known anti-smoking voices such as Linda Bauld, Robert West and Kevin Fenton, the New Nicotine Alliance and two NNA trustees.

Meanwhile I shall resist identifying the individual who tweeted the picture below. Suffice to say I found it a little hypocritical and lacking in self-awareness.

Like it or not, the tobacco companies are pivotal to the development of e-cigarettes and other risk reduction products as a convenient mainstream method of consuming nicotine.

Kill Big Tobacco and you risk killing vaping.

Lost and found - some childhood memories

A few weeks ago I mentioned that my mother is about to move house.

My parents moved to Derbyshire 40 years ago, when I was at university. I moved to London soon after graduating so I have never really lived there.

Inevitably, most of my childhood possessions have 'disappeared' since I grew up in Scotland. Occasionally however something is discovered in the attic or the back of a cupboard.

This week we found the typewriter I used as a teenager. The Remington portable dates back to 1920. I’m not sure how old this particular model is but it’s definitely pre-war. Online I’ve seen it described as 'vintage' and in good condition it seems to be selling for up to £250.

It was handed down to me by my grandfather and I used it a lot between the ages of 12 and 16. I even typed my Sixth Form dissertation on it. I remember the keys would get stuck if I typed too quickly, but overall it worked quite well.

Today it seems incredible that we would continue to use something that was decades old (think how quickly we replace iPhones and laptops) but at the time I was grateful to have any sort of typewriter.

I was at university before I got my hands on a ‘modern’ electric typewriter. Although it had been around for years, the IBM 'golf ball' typewriter we used to produce our student newspaper looked and felt like a huge step forward but within a few years even that had been relegated to history by the personal computer.

Something else my mother and I stumbled upon was my father’s old reel-to-reel Grundig tape recorder which dates back to the late Fifties.

As far as I can remember my father used it to record three things: bird song, family breakfasts (when my sister and I were very young), and Pick of the Pops with Alan Freeman.

Only a few tapes have survived. One or two I recognise as mine because as my father’s interest in pop music waned I took on the role of recording songs off the radio on a Sunday evening.

The Grundig was eventually 'retired' in the early Seventies when I was given a Philips cassette recorder for Christmas. At that point I graduated to cassette tapes, including pre-recorded tapes.

Last, and definitely least, we also discovered my old Meccano set. I'll keep the typewriter and the reel-to-reel tape recorder, but the Meccano set? Nah.

Update: I switched on the Grundig last night and it works, just! It struggles to fast forward (or go back) at any speed but it plays at the right speed so there is no distortion in sound. Considering it hasn’t been used for almost 50 years that’s pretty amazing.

The main problem is the volume. Even at the highest setting it’s very quiet. (Not muffled, just quiet.) I don’t know whether it’s an issue with the machine or the tapes (which seem in pretty good condition) but it still looks great!

Above: The Remington typewriter, Grundig tape recorder and Meccano set, plus a photo of me circa 1975.

Money talks

Ireland this week regained its place as the most expensive country in Europe in which to buy tobacco.

The country with which it competes for the title is of course the UK.

Budget 2020 was delivered in Dublin by finance minister Paschal Donohoe and although most of the attention was on financial measures that might ease the impact of a no deal Brexit, the 50c increase in the price of cigarettes - and a pro rata increase on other tobacco products - didn’t go unnoticed.

A pack of 20 cigarettes in the most popular price bracket now stands at €13.50 (£12), with tax accounting for about 80 per cent of that.

Forest’s John Mallon was in Dublin to give our response and his comments were broadcast or reported by a wide range of media including Newstalk, The Journal, Irish Sun, Irish Independent, Irish Post and many more.

It’s a bit of a hassle but I’m told that, if you are a smoker resident in Ireland, you can catch a cheap Ryanair flight to a UK airport at a cost of, say, €25 (round trip), buy 200 cigarettes duty free at your destination, and return the same day to Ireland where you can buy a further 200 cigs duty free before leaving the airport.

Following this week’s Budget 400 cigarettes would cost approximately €270 if bought from a legitimate retailer in Ireland. I’m not sure what the current duty free prices are, but as a general rule they tend to be less than half price at the airport.

It doesn’t take a mathematician to work out that, even if you add the cost of a cheap flight, the saving is substantial. Travel outside the EU (as, God willing, the UK will be in a few weeks) and there is no restriction on the number of cigarettes you can buy duty free for your own personal use, although questions may be asked if it’s more than 800.

That, at least, is my understanding of the situation (I’m no expert - check first!) so if the UK finally leaves the EU smokers resident in Ireland would be mad not to take advantage.

After all, apart from the inconvenience, why would you pay full price for tobacco in your local store when you can save so much money only a hop, skip and jump across the Irish Sea?

As John Mallon told reporters on Tuesday, “This could be a massive own goal.”

Facebook hides image of cigarette pack because of 'graphic content'

Notification received from Facebook this morning:

We added a cover to your link because it may show violent or graphic content.

I clicked on the link, wondering what the heck I had posted in recent days that featured ‘violent or graphic content’.

What I found was an article from the Guardian, dated May 19, 2017, and posted by me that same day, concerning the introduction of plain packaging.

The image Facebook has decided to hide, over two years later, features a ‘standardised’ pack of cigarettes.

But it was clearly not the cigarette pack itself that prompted Facebook to act because last week I posted a link to another article that featured an image of a cigarette pack without a picture warning, and that photo hasn't been hidden.

The problem would seem to be the image of a gangrenous foot that appears on the front and back of the featured pack.

So in this increasingly weird world, Facebook has decided unilaterally that UK government-approved graphic warnings are too graphic to show without prior warning.

Perhaps the government should now demand that tobacco companies cover cigarette packs with an opaque film and the caution, 'This product features graphic content'.

Only then will we feel truly safe.

Below: The image hidden by Facebook because of its 'graphic content'

Joe Jackson on XTC

Three years ago I mentioned that Joe Jackson was writing a music blog on his website.

It was called ‘What I’m Listening To’ (WILT) and I always enjoyed reading it, even when the artists and albums he was writing about were incredibly obscure (to me at least).

Earlier this week I re-read ‘What Joe Jackson is listening to’ - in which I quoted several passages from WILT - and bits of it made me laugh because Joe can often be very funny in a rather dry way.

Sadly, the last WILT appeared in December 2017 and that seemed to be that. The good news is that, for two posts only, WILT is back and the subject is Joe’s 2019 US and European tour (I went to his sold out show at the London Palladium) plus reviews of a handful of records he’s currently listening to.

The second of the new WILT posts (Tour Edition, Part 2) appeared on Thursday and it features a very generous appreciation of XTC who just happen to be one of my favourite bands.

I bought my first XTC album, Drums and Wires, in a tiny record shop in Kendal (in Cumbria) in 1979. It was brimming with ideas and sounded fairly unique, to my ears.

The band enjoyed a few hit singles before commercial success ebbed away, their situation not helped by the fact that they stopped touring in 1982 and never played on stage again.

However, as ‘This Is Pop’, a wonderfully warm and engaging documentary broadcast on Sky Arts in 2017, made clear, having more time to write and record brought out the best in the band.

From 1986 to 2000 XTC produced a series of outstandingly good albums. Skylarking (1986), Oranges and Lemons (1989), Nonsuch (1992), Apple Venus (1999) and Wasp Star (Apple Venus Pt 2), the latter released in 2000, are all marvellously inventive and melodic. No two songs sound the same and the attention to detail is remarkable.

The seven-year gap between Nonsuch and Apple Venus was the result of a long-running dispute with their record company and when they were finally released from their contract a large pile of songs had built up.

I believe that Apple Venus was originally intended to be a double album, with one half favouring a more orchestral sound, the other being more guitar focussed.

I read however that the band’s new record company balked at the cost of a double album, so the songs were released as two separate albums. According to Joe:

Apple Venus is rather serious and very beautiful, taking XTC's acoustic/orchestral leanings to new heights. Wasp Star (Apple Venus Part 2) is simpler, happier, and more 'back to basics'. Taken together, they stand with XTC's very best work, but I can't help feeling that releasing them as two contrasting albums, a year apart, took something away from each.

He may be right but if you enjoy lush, melodic and occasionally quirky pop music, beautifully performed and produced, I imagine you would enjoy both albums and probably any XTC album from Skylarking on.

Anyway, it’s rare to read what is effectively a fan letter from one highly regarded musician to another (in this case two, Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding) so do read Joe’s comments on XTC. He concludes:

XTC seem to be gone for good, but to quote Spinal Tap (which Andy would probably like): Their Legacy Lives On. There are so many things I love about XTC: their misfit awkwardness, their omnipresent humour, their gleeful mishmashing of irresistible pure-pop catchiness and seriously out-there ideas, their creative ambition, all the clever little references to the music they love, and their Englishness - a very particular timeless, rural and small-town, rather than London-cool, Englishness. I could say much more; I haven't even mentioned any individual songs, because if I started, I wouldn't know where to stop. And like most of what I've written about music, this is just an appreciation, and a signpost for anyone who's interested. Which they should be.

Funnily enough, I was looking for a video of ‘Mayor of Simpleton’, one of my favourite XTC singles and one of many that inexplicably failed to trouble the charts, to embed in this post when I found a cover version by none other than ... Joe Jackson.

Apparently, Joe has only performed it twice. I love the fact that it’s very different to the original. You can listen to them both below.

Update: Joe has been nominated for a Boisdale Music Award. The 2019 Awards, hosted by Jools Holland, take place at Boisdale of Canary Wharf on Thursday (October 10). To book click here.

Regrets? I have one

I was reminded this morning of something that happened on the Internet TV station 18 Doughty Street twelve years ago.

For those who don’t know, 18 Doughty Street was a brave but short-lived enterprise that was possibly ahead of its time.

From 7.00pm to midnight, five days a week, the station would broadcast via the Internet a series of mostly studio-based news and discussion programmes on the issues of the day.

Iain Dale, now on LBC, was one of the main presenters, and I was invited on his programme four or five times.

It was quite informal and I remember on one occasion being asked to stay on and take part in the following programme, a review of the next day’s newspapers.

The biggest problem for me was that guests were often booked weeks in advance when it was impossible to predict the news, so you could often find yourself being asked to talk about subjects you knew nothing about. (Or was that just me?)

Iain was very good at creating a relaxed, informal atmosphere and one evening I was so chilled I read out a passage from a blog post by Dizzy Thinks that jokingly referred to the then transport minister Stephen Ladyman as ‘Stephen Ladyboy’.

Truth is, I was oblivious to the deliberate error until Iain started to corpse. At that point I realised what I had said and I too began to giggle.

For the next minute or so we both struggled to suppress our laughter. When Iain stopped, I would set him off again, and vice versa. In terms of our reaction, the only thing I can compare it to is the famous ‘leg over’ moment on Test Match Special.

Sadly the clip (which Iain and Dizzy both posted on their blogs at the time) has long been unavailable. When 18 Doughty Street closed down just about everything went offline.

It’s one of my greatest regrets because if there’s one clip I’d like friends and family to see at my funeral (or the party afterwards) it’s this.

Foreword to Nicotine Wars

Rob Lyons, author of the new Forest report, ‘Nicotine Wars: The Fight for Choice’, has written a related piece for Spiked.

Taking aim at cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris whose executives say there is “no reason” to keep smoking cigarettes, Rob writes:

The tone of PMI’s campaign is particularly instructive. It is saying that smokers are wrong, that they have no good reasons to do what they do. Their reasons for smoking are incomprehensible to the great and good, whether it is corporate executives, public-health campaigners, government officials, chattering-class commentators or politicians. The nicotine wars are, in part, a branch of the wider culture wars between the new elites and the great unwashed. We can’t be understood, we can only be controlled, for our own good.

It’s an excellent piece well worth reading. Click here.

Meanwhile, here’s the foreword I wrote for ‘Nicotine Wars’.

ACCORDING to Peter Nixon, managing director of Philip Morris UK, “There is no reason why people should smoke anymore.” This comment – inflammatory to many smokers – is just the latest in a series of statements issued by the tobacco giant over the past three years.

Others include the headline-grabbing claim that the company wants to stop selling cigarettes in the UK by 2030. Another was the announcement, in September 2017, that Philip Morris International will donate one billion dollars to a new organisation, the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, over twelve years.

If smokers won’t quit, the company wants consumers to switch to products such as e-cigarettes and heated tobacco. I don’t doubt the company’s commitment to tobacco risk reduction – an honourable cause that Forest fully supports – but abandoning long-standing customers who enjoy smoking and don’t want to stop is questionable and quite insulting compared to the more liberal strategy of ‘extending choice’ to consumers.

There is a good reason why millions of adults continue to smoke and it is not because they are all addicted to nicotine. Research shows that it’s because a great many smokers enjoy smoking and don’t want to quit or switch. They know the health risks but the pleasure is such that they choose to continue smoking.

Public Health England and Action on Smoking and Health also advocate vaping in preference to smoking on the not unreasonable grounds that, on current evidence, vaping is a significantly safer alternative. It is increasingly clear however that the long-term goal of many public health campaigners is not a ‘smoke free’ world but a nicotine free world. Vaping, in their mind, is merely a step towards that joyless, puritanical target.

Meanwhile their immediate aim is a society in which smoking is not just ‘out of sight and out of mind’ but completely ‘eradicated’ from existence. To achieve that ambition they will support or promote almost any policy – smoking bans, punitive taxation, standardised packaging, ‘legally-binding’ smoking cessation targets – in order to ‘help’ smokers quit.

Sadly it is not just governments, public health campaigners, the World Health Organisation and Philip Morris whose goal is a ‘smoke-free’ world. Many vaping activists are also committed to a future in which two billion smokers have quit or switched to e-cigarettes. A billion lives will be saved and we’ll all live happily ever after, or so we are told. What is clear is that relatively few advocates of vaping are genuine champions of choice.

And this is where Forest comes in. As the name, Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco, suggests, our primary aim is to defend the interests of adults who enjoy smoking tobacco. In practice however we don’t discriminate between different nicotine products nor do we discriminate between smokers and vapers, many of whom are dual users.

When we’re asked to defend vaping, or criticise regulations designed to restrict unreasonably the sale and use of e-cigarettes, we speak out. Our message is clear: choice and personal responsibility are paramount. As long as you don’t harm others, your lifestyle – including your choice of nicotine product – is nobody’s business but your own.

As a lifelong non-smoker I don’t care if you smoke, vape, use snus (an oral form of tobacco currently prohibited in the UK) or do none of these things. That’s your choice and I’ll ‘die in a ditch’, to coin a phrase, to defend it. Unfortunately many vapers seem to have a limited grasp of what choice actually means. Siding with tobacco control against smoking has become commonplace when smokers and vapers should be fighting side by side.

Some vapers are even opposed to heated tobacco, a product they apparently see as a threat to e-cigarettes. Personally I’m delighted that, as well as e-cigarettes, tobacco companies are developing reduced risk products that appeal to smokers who don’t want to give up tobacco. Time will tell but I think there’s room for both devices, and other products yet to be invented.

The reality is, e-cigarettes are not universally popular with smokers. Research commissioned by Forest in 2016 and conducted by the Centre for Substance Use Research (CSUR) surveyed over 600 committed smokers and found that, although many had tried vaping, they still preferred to smoke because smoking gave them greater pleasure.

The crucial thing is to offer smokers a choice of traditional tobacco products and reduced risk devices, inform and update them with the latest evidence about the risks and benefits, and empower them to make their own informed choices. In short, let the people – not politicians or over-zealous public health campaigners – decide. Most important, respect their choice, even if you disagree with it.

Finally, thanks to Rob Lyons for writing this booklet about the choices currently available to consumers of nicotine in the UK, and for reasserting the values for which Forest has spent 40 years campaigning – freedom of choice and personal responsibility.

‘Nicotine Wars: The Fight for Choice’ by Rob Lyons can be downloaded here.