Good morning, Alaska

View from our balcony at 7.00am this morning.

Update: It’s clearing.

Notes from abroad

I am currently aboard a cruise ship, Celebrity Eclipse, with my wife and two friends, sailing to Alaska.

We left Vancouver yesterday evening and will be at sea until we arrive at Icy Strait Point on Chichagof Island tomorrow afternoon.

If you follow me on Facebook you would be forgiven for thinking I have done nothing but eat since we arrived in Seattle last Wednesday.

I can neither confirm nor deny it but if I come home less than half a stone heavier it will be a miracle.

Another miracle is that we arrived in America almost on schedule having missed by minutes the “temporary systems issue” that hit British Airways last week and led to 25,000 passengers having their flights cancelled.

Although our flight was delayed it was a relatively minor inconvenience. However, when we landed in Seattle nine hours later, the friends with whom we are travelling were short of two suitcases.

Given that we were due to embark on a seven-day cruise a few days later it wasn’t good news but they took it remarkably well and were rewarded when their ‘lost’ luggage turned up the next day.

Meanwhile our first full morning in Seattle was spent visiting a ‘scenic wine-producing estate’ just outside the city. This included a short tour followed by a tasting session that, combined with some serious jet lag, left me feeling more than a little woozy.

In the evening we made our way downtown where we found, quite by chance, a rather wonderful restaurant that served some of the best food - including octopus and fried chicken - I have ever tasted.

After dinner we explored Pike Place Market, a tourist trap during the day but quieter after dark. The original Starbucks coffee shop can be found here but it was closing time when we walked past so we didn’t go in.

On Friday we drove to the Boeing factory north of Seattle. We were booked on the 90-minute ‘Future of Flight’ tour but it was a bit of a letdown, to be honest.

It began with a short promotional film that offered no insight into the ‘future of flight’ beyond what is already on the production line.

Thereafter, in between jumping on and off coaches as we moved from one part of the factory to another, all we saw - from a distance - were a handful of planes in various stages of production but it was a bit underwhelming.

The tour finished, naturally, with visitors being ushered into a gift shop where, inexplicably, I bought a dark blue rain jacket with the word ‘Boeing’ emblazoned on the front.

Back in Seattle it turned out that our hotel was a only short walk from the Seattle Center that features the famous Space Needle, opened in 1962 for the World’s Fair, and other attractions.

The 1962 World’s Fair also saw the opening of the Monorail that connects Seattle Center to the Westlake shopping mall in the city centre.

Running every ten minutes it’s only a mile long but I’m surprised more cities haven’t built something similar and on a larger scale. There must be a reason but I’m struggling to think what it is.

Anyway, I started writing this aboard the Amtrak train that took us from Seattle to Vancouver on Saturday night - a journey of four hours - but there was a technical issue that meant I couldn’t post it.

The taxi driver who drove us to our hotel said it had been very hot in Vancouver the previous week but yesterday it was cool and wet.

It cleared up though after we boarded the ship in the afternoon and we had a good view of the city as we set sail at 7.00pm.

It’s now 7.55 on Monday morning and I am sitting in bed with the balcony door open listening to the sound of the waves.

The Internet connection may be intermittent but if I can post any updates I will. Watch this space.

Below: View from the Seattle Monorail

The erosion of tolerance and the freedom to choose

Within the next hour I shall be on a flight to Seattle.

I leave you with my foreword to Forest's new report, written by Josie Appleton, '40 Years of Hurt: The hyper-regulation of smokers 1979-2019', published on Monday.

(To promote the report Josie also wrote an article for Spiked – First they came for the smokers.)

I began by explaining the inspiration for the title:

ADDRESSING guests at Forest’s 40th anniversary dinner in London in June, Mark Littlewood, director-general of the Institute of Economic Affairs, struck an appealingly optimistic note. “It may feel like 40 years of hurt, but that never stopped me dreaming. Freedom,” he said, “is coming home.”

I do hope he’s right. A few months ago, during an ‘In Conversation’ event at the IEA, I was asked what was the biggest change I had noticed in the 20 years I have been director of Forest. “When I started,” I replied, “there were voluntary agreements and codes of practice. Today there is far more legislation. Coercion has replaced common sense.”

Reading Josie Appleton’s report I am reminded how true that is. In 1999 (let alone 1979) policies on tobacco were often agreed without the need for legislation or heavy-handed regulation, and they were arguably more effective. As Josie notes, the sharpest fall in smoking rates in the UK took place between the mid Seventies and the early Nineties when there were relatively few laws concerning the sale, marketing, promotion or consumption of tobacco.

Smoking was increasingly prohibited in the workplace but that was a matter for individual employers in consultation with staff and the unions. No-smoking areas were becoming a feature of many pubs and restaurants, and some proprietors chose to ban smoking completely, but it was their decision not the government’s.

Politicians and stakeholders, including the tobacco industry, generally got together and adopted reasonable policies that most people could agree with. The outcome, by and large, were measures that took into account the interests of all parties, including consumers. Increasingly however power and influence has shifted to professional activists and unelected mandarins in the Department of Health and quangos such as Public Health England.

Voluntary codes have given way to laws banning all tobacco sponsorship and advertising. Policies that allowed for smoking and non-smoking areas in the workplace, including pubs and restaurants, were ruthlessly stubbed out. Even private members’ clubs were forced to obey the arbitrary new laws.

‘The pariah status of smoking does not reflect public mores,’ writes Josie. And she’s right. The tragedy is that many of the anti-smoking laws introduced in the new millenium do not reflect public opinion. The results of surveys and ‘public’ consultations have consistently been ignored or disregarded. The smoking ban was introduced despite surveys that showed that only 30 per cent of adults supported a comprehensive ban. (Even today opinion polls throughout the UK consistently find that a majority of adults are in favour of allowing separate smoking rooms in pubs and private members’ clubs.) Plain packaging of tobacco was also pushed through parliament despite the fact that a public consultation generated a huge majority (2:1) opposed to the policy.

The consequence of such measures has been a gradual erosion of tolerance with a small but vociferous group of anti-smoking activists dictating government policy. Having been forced to smoke outside despite the fact that modern air filtration systems were perfectly capable of reducing environmental tobacco smoke to a level acceptable to most people, smokers today find themselves under attack from zealots who want smoking prohibited outside as well. ‘Now,’ writes Josie, ‘our noses twitch at the slightest whiff of tobacco smoke.’

Launched in 1984, No Smoking Day went from being a well-meaning initiative that helped smokers who wanted to quit, to an event that positively encouraged an anti-smoking culture. But at least it was only one day. Today, thanks to the taxpayer-funded Stoptober campaign, smokers have to endure an entire month of state-sponsored nagging.

The increasingly brutal approach to smoking cessation is epitomised by Public Health England which is currently demanding that all NHS trusts ban smoking on hospital grounds, a policy that actively discriminates against patients who may be in rm or completely immobile. Taking advantage of people’s physical condition to take away one of their few pleasures when they are at their most vulnerable, mentally as well as physically, is truly despicable.

Meanwhile punitive taxation (between 80 and 90 per cent of the cost of tobacco goes to the government) has one main aim – to coerce people to stop smoking. Low earners who can’t or won’t quit are pushed further into poverty, leading to more hardship. Despite this, anti-smoking policies are often characterised as an act of charity. Action on Smoking and Heath, the anti-smoking pressure group that drives the anti-smoking agenda in the UK, likes to be described not as a political lobby group, which is more accurate, but as a ‘quit smoking charity’. I fail to see what’s charitable about whipping up hostility towards a significant minority of the population.

‘Smoking,’ writes Josie Appleton, ‘is the canary for civil liberties.’ Again, she’s right. If we don’t stand up for adults who enjoy smoking, what’s next? Armed with the tobacco template, are public health campaigners going to move from informing the public about nutrition and healthy eating and drinking to banning more and more products that are deemed ‘unhealthy’ while dictating the amount of sugar, alcohol or calories we are permitted to consume?

Any review of the last 40 years would have to conclude that the freedom to choose what we eat, drink and smoke has been eroded alarmingly to the extent that, in 2020, an entire category of tobacco – menthol cigarettes – will be prohibited. All is not lost, though. As the IEA’s Mark Littlewood commented, when addressing Forest’s 40th anniversary dinner:

“Fellow smokers and lovers of freedom, let’s not worry about the tactical battles we may have lost. Let’s make sure that in 2059, when we come together again to celebrate 80 years of Forest, that we are able to light up, drink up, and reflect that the battle for freedom has been won.” Amen to that.

40 years of hurt - the persecution of smokers

Forest has a new report out today.

It's called 40 Years of Hurt: The hyper-regulation of smokers 1979-2019, a title inspired by Mark Littlewood's speech at Forest's 40th anniversary dinner in London in June.

The report, which you can download here, was written by author and civil rights campaigner Josie Appleton, director of the Manifesto Club.

According to Josie:

“Smokers are the canaries for civil liberties. In the past decade there has been a series of novel and unprecedented incursions on public and private rights.

“Smokers are increasingly stigmatised and discriminated against not to protect the health of other people but ‘for their own good’.

“This directly violates the harm principle that assumes a person has autonomy over their own life and body as long as they do not hurt other people.

“Outlawing smoking in places of residence, whether it be prison, mental health units or social housing, demonstrates a worrying erosion of our rights to autonomy and privacy.

“Smoking is prohibited on hospital grounds and patients, some of whom are infirm or elderly, are forced off site or targeted with patronising messages on public address systems.

“Banning smoking in outdoor public places such as parks and beaches is justified not because there is a direct risk to anyone else’s health but to prevent smokers setting what the authorities consider to be a ‘bad example’.

“What began decades ago as a legitimate public health campaign to educate people about the risks of smoking has become a moral crusade that threatens our culture of tolerance and diversity.

“The war on smoking is not about smoking. I have seen the same move towards direct state coercion in many areas of social life, including regulation of the homeless and young people.

“It is also telling that the kinds of restrictions imposed on smokers are now being proposed for food and drink. All of us, whether smokers or non-smokers, have a fundamental interest in defending personal and civic freedoms so we can live our lives as we think best, rather than as the state tells us to."

The press release includes the following quote by me:

“Since Forest was founded 40 years ago anti-smoking policies have evolved from education and voluntary codes to coercion and legislation.

“It’s time to stub out the increasingly brutal approach to smoking cessation that includes the deliberate persecution of millions of consumers.

“In a free society adults must be allowed to make choices concerning their lifestyle without excessive state intervention.

“After four decades government must end the war on smoking and focus on choice and personal responsibility.”

I thought twice about using the word ‘persecution’ in relation to smokers but I checked and the definition includes ‘hostility and ill-treatment, ‘oppression’, and ‘persistent harassment’, all of which apply to smokers in 2019.

To read the report click here.

Update: Josie has written an article for Spiked - First they came for the smokers. You might like to comment.

Life in the air age

On Wednesday, God (and Unite) willing, I shall be flying to Seattle from Heathrow.

I won’t bore you with my (mild) fear of flying or my thoughts on air travel in general because I’m sure they are no different to most people’s. To sum up:

The drive to the airport. Parking in the long/mid stay car park. The bus to the terminal. The queue to check-in. The queue for security checks (and the command to remove belt and shoes). The stop and search if you’ve left something in your pocket (a coin perhaps) or failed to remove a tube of toothpaste from your suitcase.

The wait in the crowded departure zone. The long walk to the departure gate and a further wait (possibly standing) in the departure lounge. The queue to board the plane. The confined and claustrophobic space otherwise known as ‘Economy’.

In the air, the queue for the toilet. Occasional (and unannounced) turbulence. For long haul flights you can add extensive periods of boredom plus ‘numb bum syndrome’ which can be excruciatingly painful (or perhaps I’m alone in this).

On arrival more queuing - for baggage (who doesn't get nervous waiting for their luggage to appear?), passport control and, finally, transport (bus, taxi, hire car) to your destination.

It’s hell yet we willingly submit to the ritual humiliation for what is sometimes no more than a few days abroad.

The strange thing is, while I am no fan of air travel and find the whole experience quite stressful, I love reading about the history of commercial flight.

What I still find staggering is the speed at which air travel took off (no pun intended), from the Wright brothers’ first powered flight in December 1903 to the first international passenger flights in 1919.

This year therefore marks ‘One hundred years of international passenger flights’. It’s a remarkable story that includes, for a short period, the airship which was far safer than the commercial planes of the pre-war era but was slower and couldn’t accommodate as many passengers.

Smoking was of course the norm in 1919 and you may be interested to note that:

In a report to the Civil Aerial Transport Committee, Brig-Gen Maitland described the facilities a future passenger airship might offer: “It will have a speed of 90 to a 100 miles per hour with ample accommodation for passengers in the shape of saloon, drawing room, smoking room and state rooms with a lift giving access to a roof garden on the top.”

Elsewhere we read:

In an interview at Rooseveldt Field in Long Island before the return of the R34, the airship’s commander Major George Herbert Scott said: “I predict that in five years we shall have ships of 10,000,000 cubic feet capacity … five times the capacity and twice the length of the R34.

The passenger accommodation would be such that the journey could be made in complete comfort. The cars would be slung under the main envelope and would include drawing-room and dining cars, besides sleeping accommodation. Each passenger could have a daily bath and, as there is no connection between the cars and the envelope, could smoke as much as he pleased. The ship would be quite quiet and there would be plenty of space to move about.”

Aeroplanes, in contrast, were noisy and, because they flew much lower than today’s commercial jets, they experienced far more turbulence.

Despite that - and a far higher number of fatal accidents - we have a rose-tinted view of commercial flying which in the Fifties and Sixties was seen as rather glamorous.

Long before I boarded my first flight (to Portugal) at the age of 12 in 1971, that’s certainly how I regarded it.

In the Sixties we lived not a million miles from Heathrow and I remember my father would drive to the perimeter and we would watch the planes take off and land.

I remember too being taken to Heathrow to see my aunt, who would have been 30, catch a flight to somewhere exotic.

There was little security in those days so anyone could walk in and watch the planes from the viewing gallery which was an open rooftop terrace.

Passengers would walk across the tarmac to the waiting aircraft and wave at friends and relatives on the terrace above. We would still be waving as the plane gathered speed on the runway and took off.

I loved all that which is why I also have a fascination with the airport terminals of the period.

Most are long gone but Dublin airport still has its original terminal building, built in the Fifties, I think.

It’s still in use - not for passengers, obviously - but what I love about it is not just the design but the scale. It’s dwarfed by today’s more modern but less characterful buildings but that itself gives you a sense of history and the relatively small number of people who used to fly.

For that reason too I am fascinated by the old Croydon airport terminal building which is still standing almost a century since it became the world’s ‘first modern, purpose-built airport’.

The grade II listed building (Airport House) now features a visitor centre that is open on the first Sunday of each month (like today, in fact).

A volunteer led ‘micro museum’, it features ‘exhibits and visual images charting the history of Croydon Airport from World War I airfield, London’s international airport, Battle of Britain airfield and closure in 1959.’

I haven’t been yet but it’s on my list of things to do this year. In the meantime I’d better start packing. Terminal 5, Heathrow Airport, awaits.

PS. ‘Life In The Air Age’ from Live In The Air Age by Be Bop Deluxe. One of my favourite albums. Play it LOUD.

Photos courtesy Croydon Airport Visitor Centre

May, Mordaunt and Mary Poppins

What a remarkable week. I refer of course to the departure of Theresa May from Number 10, the arrival of the blonde bombshell, the overdue sacking of many of the Brexit naysayers in government, and the spirit of optimism that has returned to Westminster. It may of course go badly wrong but let’s enjoy it while we can. This is what politics could and should be like (not all the time, that would be exhausting) but at moments like this it’s exhilarating. Can you imagine if Jeremy Hunt had won? A safe pair of hands, perhaps, but guaranteed to send the whole country to sleep. Boris is the man for the moment.

Talking of sackings, many people were surprised that Penny Mordaunt lost her job as defence secretary. I wasn’t. Leaving aside her support for Jeremy Hunt (which suggested an appalling lack of judgement for what the country actually needs at the present time), I unknowingly heard her on the Today programme (or was it PM?) a month or two ago. It was only at the end of the interview that I found out who it was but before that I was struck by how lame she sounded. At one point - still in the dark as to who she was - I even shouted at the radio, “Answer the question!” The idea that this was a potential PM in waiting was laughable. Which brings me to the interview with her in last week’s Sunday Times. ‘Had she run for the leadership,’ readers were told, ‘media-shy’ Mordaunt ‘could well have been our next prime minister.’ Her response to being asked why she didn’t put her name forward was to look ‘rather wistful’ while ‘leaving the door open for a future leadership bid’. Ironically, instead of building her up as intended, I suspect the article helped bring her down.

According to reports the government green paper slipped out on Monday evening was part of Theresa May’s determination to leave a ‘legacy’, in this case the eradication of smoking in England by 2030. Like Brexit on her watch, I’m confidant this is another May pledge that will never happen. It did remind me though of an article I wrote for Conservative Home shortly after her appointment as PM in 2016 - ‘If May really wants a fairer Britain, she should end the war on smokers.’ Instead she left office determined that government should renew battle until all smokers have given up. To paraphrase a song from The Mikado, ‘I've got a little list/Of society offenders/Who never would be missed.’ I am of course referring to the former PM not England’s six million smokers.

I spent three days last week helping my mother find a new home in Chester. My father died five years ago and the house they bought in the Peak District 40 years ago is now too much for my mother, the garden especially. Situated in a tiny Derbyshire hamlet without a bus service or local shop she also needs to move before she can no longer drive. My sister lives in Chester and together they had looked at a number of flats in the city without success. Last week my sister was visiting my aunt - my mother’s sister - in Zurich so I offered to join the hunt. I decided however to extend the search from two-bedroom flats for sale to two-bedroom flats/houses for sale or to rent.

The list of viewings included two small but beautiful Georgian terraced houses with pretty yards rather than gardens. They had been modernised but still had bags of character. Crucially however the staircases were so steep they were an accident waiting to happen for an 88-year-old who is not as nimble as she was. The flats we saw, whether to rent or to buy, were generally very small, very dark, or both. The exception was a furnished apartment to rent in a very modern complex overlooking Chester racecourse. The floor to ceiling windows offered an incredible view but I knew long before we walked in that it wasn’t the home my mother was looking for. The leopard print rugs and matching cushions applied the coup de grace.

Fortunately, on Wednesday morning, we found two very nice flats for sale on the other side of the racecourse, a bit further from the city centre but with balconies overlooking the river. Not the perfect location but not bad. She made an offer on one, which was accepted, and - fingers crossed - will move to Chester in the autumn. Mission accomplished.

I watched Mary Poppins Returns on DVD yesterday. I missed it on its cinema release but I really enjoyed it. I was five when Mary Poppins came out in 1964. It was the first or second film I ever saw and I don’t mind admitting that the sequel brought a little tear to my eye.

Pat Nurse: Why I will not quit or switch

According to the Government green paper, ‘Advancing our health: prevention in the 2020s’, slipped out on Monday evening during the death throes of Theresa May’s ill-fated regime:

We are setting an ambition to go 'smoke-free' in England by 2030. This includes an ultimatum for industry to make smoked tobacco obsolete by 2030, with smokers quitting or moving to reduced risk products like e-cigarettes.‘

The sheer stupidity of this statement is staggering. Tobacco companies can offer smokers reduced risk products but they can’t force consumers to quit smoking and switch to vaping.

If they stop selling cigarettes in the UK many smokers would buy them abroad. At the same time illegal tobacco factories would churn out millions of illicit cigarettes to feed demand.

As for e-cigarettes, the more they are promoted as nothing more than a quit smoking tool the less attractive they will become for smokers like Pat Nurse (below) whose attitude to vaping is already ambivalent.

The following post was written by Pat for the New Nicotine Alliance blog but (understandably perhaps!) the NNA decided it wasn’t for them.

In the wake of the prevention green paper, however, I thought it might be a good moment to read the opinion of a committed and unapologetic smoker who doesn’t want to quit or switch.

Vaping advocates and tobacco control campaigners could learn from it. Health Secretary Matt Hancock, who survived Boris’s thrilling cull of Theresa May’s abject Cabinet on Wednesday night, should read it too.

Note: This is an edited version of the article submitted to the NNA.

Guest post | Why I will not quit or switch | Pat Nurse

As a lifelong smoker from childhood to grannyhood I can say, hand on heart, that I don’t need saving and there is nothing I find more patronising than the view that, as a smoker, I need rescuing from myself.

I want a joyful life. I don’t care how long it is. My never smoking sister died recently of cancer aged 61 which only confirmed in my mind that I would not want to live a puritan life only to find that denying myself the things that give me pleasure just leads to a miserable and premature end anyway.

It’s arrogant, frankly, to promote the idea that e-cigarettes are ‘better’ for every smoker. It’s one of the most cringeworthy messages coming from the vaping fraternity who come across as evangelical in their belief that their preferred product is a lifesaver.

In truth, any mention of tobacco harm reduction gets my hackles up because it is usually a veiled shorthand for quitting or switching and I intend to do neither.

Harm reduction doesn’t have to involve stopping smoking. It can also include smoking differently (smokers don't have to inhale for the taste, for example) or smoking less (the dose makes the poison and no-one can convince me that smoking five cigarettes a day is as potentially harmful as smoking 40).

The debate should be about choice, respecting choice and fighting for everyone’s right to choose.

Vapers who are serious about defending their habit would do well to distance themselves from vaping advocates and public health campaigners for whom smoking cessation appears to be the only thing that matters.

They look and sound exactly the same as those anti-smoking activists who have waged a 12-year hate campaign against people like me for no other reason than I won’t quit, I’m not ill and I’m not dead.

While vaping remains a genuine choice - not something that is forced on smokers by removing the right to smoke and replacing tobacco with e-cigarettes - it will be an attractive option for many smokers, especially those who are priced out of smoking with punitive taxation.

Once it gets owned by public health however any appeal that e-cigarettes have for smokers like me could be lost for good. Many smokers who have yet to switch will back off because - and I can only speak for myself and friends I have spoken to - sucking on an ecig already makes me feel like a nerd.

I also feel people are looking at me as if I’m an addicted nerd sucking on a toy because I can’t have a fag. Can you imagine how we’ll feel if we’re expected to switch to vaping just because it’s advocated by public health?

While smoking remains legal smokers have a right to smoke in the same way that any consumer has the right to use a legal product, especially one on which we pay so much tax.

Vapers cannot win by claiming their product is safer - even if it is - because waiting down the line is the 'definitive study' that shows that vaping is 'far more harmful than we thought'.

Thanks to the junk studies attacking vaping, vapers already know the issue is not about health. How many Dame Sallys are there out there who think they have a right not to be 'assaulted' by vapers' 'smoke' as they walk down the street?

When I first heard about the New Nicotine Alliance I was really excited because I thought that here was a new group taking ownership of nicotine in all its forms, including smoking, and a new message about choice and responsibility would emerge.

I also thought, wrongly, that we beleaguered fighters for choice and freedom to live life as we choose would be strengthened by new friends with a common interest.

By excluding smokers like me from their nicotine club it transpired that the NNA was just another smoking cessation campaign. Far from being a friend to all consumers of nicotine, it promotes vaping at the expense of smoking.

That said, I wonder if for some of us the issue is about nicotine at all. I smoke for the smoke. If it was just about nicotine surely I would be happy vaping when it walks like a duck, acts like a duck, and sounds like a duck? And why wouldn’t patches or gum satisfy my senses like a good hand-rolled cigarette?

If it was just about nicotine why can’t I enjoy a manufactured cigarette which I quit about 30 years ago? And why, when I have no tobacco, am I happier smoking tea leaves than vaping an ecig?

If vapers want to win the war they need to distance themselves from the public health industry but it’s too late to persuade me to switch because of the way the battles have already been framed and fought.

I love smoking and I know I will never quit. In a free society where smoking is not yet illegal I have a right to exist and do as I like. Where and when I smoke in private is no one else's business.

I also know I have never harmed another living soul and I absolutely resent the junk science that claims my smoking harms others – the same junk science that says e-cigarettes give people popcorn lung and change the behaviour of young people who get 'sucked in' to vaping.

I don’t believe any of the scare stories about vaping because over 51 years I have heard them all before about smoking.

But if vaping is not to go the same way as smoking vapers have to grit their teeth and fight for the right to smoke as well as the right to vape. Only then, when we are all back inside socialising together, will I even begin listening to how wonderful vaping is.

Above: Pat Nurse photographed by Dan Donovan

Update: Interesting. Although they didn’t publish Pat’s article, her message hasn’t been lost on the NNA.

Earlier today this appeared on the group’s website:

‪‘Many smokers are suspicious of vaping because they feel it may just be a tool that government might use to coerce them into quitting.’

To read the full post click here: ‘Government’s Green Paper is the wrong approach’ (NNA).

It’s a good piece, worth reading - and overdue!

$20 million for this?!

The FT today reported the launch of an online database called Stopping Tobacco Organisations and Products.

Announced in Cape Town in March 2018, STOP describes itself as a 'partnership between the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath, the Global Center for Good Governance in Tobacco Control, The Union, and Vital Strategies.'

I expected something quite impressive but, unless I'm missing something, what a letdown.

Take, for example, what appears to be the principal resource. It's a list of 'more than 90 organisations in nearly 30 countries' that are allegedly 'Tobacco Industry Allies'.

It includes all the usual suspects including Forest, the IEA, ASI, TaxPayers' Alliance etc.

On first inspection, however, when you click to 'Learn More' about each organisation it merely redirects visitors to the Tobacco Tactics website operated by Bath University's Tobacco Control Research Group.

If you want to know how poor that is, read my review written in October 2012.

Aesthetically the Tobacco Tactics website always looked terrible, even at launch. How difficult would it have been to transfer the information to a shiny new database on the STOP website, giving researchers the opportunity to edit and update it at the same time?

The STOP project is being given $20 million by Bloomberg Philanthropies over three years.

$20 million to create an online database whose principal resource is an existing database? If I was Bloomberg I'd be asking questions – or demanding my money back.

See 'Tobacco campaign group looks to name and shame' (FT).

Update: I've just found another 'resource'.

Click on a link and you can download an Excel file (!) that lists all 92 organisations referred to as 'Tobacco Industry Allies'.

To save you the trouble of visiting the STOP website you can download it here, if you want to.