Passive smoking and blood pressure in children

I was invited yesterday to comment on a new study involving more than 6,400 young people.

Researchers have assessed the effects of passive smoking on blood pressure in children and the results have been summarised as follows:

Boys who inhale second-hand tobacco smoke at home may experience significant levels of raised blood pressure. In later life this could lead to high blood pressure, or hypertension, and an increased risk of heart disease. But in girls passive smoking appeared to be associated with a lowering of blood pressure.

According to Dr Jill Baumgartner from the University of Minnesota:

"While the increases in blood pressure observed among boys in our study may not be clinically meaningful for an individual child, they have large implications for populations.

"The relationship between second-hand smoke exposure and blood pressure observed in our study provides further incentives for governments to support smoking bans and other legislation that protect children from second-hand smoke."

So, let's get this right. According to the research (reported by several papers today):

Boys who inhale second-hand tobacco smoke at home may [my emphasis] experience significant levels of raised blood pressure. This could [my emphasis] lead to high blood pressure and an increased risk of heart disease.

The increases in blood pressure observed among boys may not be clinically meaningful for an individual child [my emphasis] yet the research provides further incentives (not evidence, note) for governments to support smoking bans and other legislation that protect children from second-hand smoke.

My reaction?

"This sounds like yet more scaremongering designed to stigmatise adults who smoke at home.

"By their own admission the result of the study is not clinically meaningful for an individual child, so I don't understand how it supports smoking bans and further legislation.

"A more reasonable response would be: nothing to see here, move along."

The Scotsman has the story (with most of my quote above): Passive smoking fumes raise boys' blood pressure ... but lowers girls'

In contrast the Guardian not only omits any mention of the lowering of girls' blood pressure in its headline, it's not even mentioned until the ninth paragraph of the report: Passive smoking raises blood pressure in boys, study reveals.

See also: Passive smoking lowers blood pressure in girls, study reveals (Velvet Glove Iron Fist)

Belgium: another one bites the dust

On Thursday night I joined a dozen colleagues for dinner in a restaurant in Brussels.

The evening began with pre-dinner drinks in a designated smoking room that felt more like the drawing room of a small country house. Guests lit up, staff wandered in and out serving drinks, and all was well with the world.

From July this little oasis will be lost when Belgium extends its smoking ban to remove most of the exemptions that were included in the 2007 legislation.

The decision to introduce a comprehensive ban immediately (instead of waiting for the exemptions to be phased out by January 2014) was made in March when Constitutional Court judges ruled that "drawing distinctions between establishments was actually harmful to competition".

In other words, the exemptions that allowed bars and restaurants to have separate smoking rooms are being removed not to 'protect' public health but to create a level playing field. Choice, it seems, is anti-competitive.

Unlike Britain, though, smoking will still be permitted in restaurants and other public buildings (including offices) with special smoking rooms equipped with decent ventilation. Nothing to celebrate, but better than here where even that tiny exemption is outlawed.

See also: Belgium expands smoking ban to all cafes, casinos (Independent), Belgian barkeepers demonstrate against smoking ban (Yahoo) and Reflections on a 'non-country' (Dick Puddlecote)

Update on Sunday, May 1, 2011 at 19:56 by Simon Clark

Hungary 'fell' earlier this week. See here.

Review of the week

Headlines from the Forest website:

• Hungary: tough new restrictions on public smoking
• Government to cut tobacco guidelines
• USA: e-cigarettes to be regulated as tobacco products

From The Free Society:

• What's wrong with being posh?
• History is not an obstacle to economic freedom - look at Chile
• Why rally against debt?

Elsewhere:

• Reflections on a 'non-country' (Dick Puddlecote)

Bad news for republicans

Wall-to-wall coverage of the Royal Wedding on US and European TV.

From my hotel in Brussels I can report that it is currently featuring on CNN, BBC World, France 24, La Une, EEN, Ned 1 (Netherlands), ZDF (Germany), ERT (Spain) and Al Jazeera to name a few.

Update on Friday, April 29, 2011 at 12:30 by Simon Clark

Everyone is talking about it.

"So sorry that you had to miss the wedding" several people said to me this morning.

Our meeting broke up at midday (11.00am UK time) with the chairman saying she wanted to see what the bride was wearing. Others expressed similar sentiments. Not one of them was British. In fact, I was the only native English speaker there.

A few minutes ago a taxi driver taking me to Midi station said, in broken English: "You're late."

"Late?" I said. "I don't think so. The train doesn't leave until 2.30."

"Not the train," he said. "The wedding!"

Royal wedding fever

I shall miss the Royal Wedding because I'll be in Brussels for a meeting.

When I get back tomorrow evening however I hope to join friends and family for the tail end of a party to mark the occasion.

How different it was 30 years ago when Charles married Diana. I was 22 and I had been living in London for less than a year.

For the first month I stayed in a hostel near Paddington. After that I moved to a flat in West Ealing. But it was so cold (there was no central heating) I didn't need persuading to move to a better flat in another area.

My new address was a short walk from Marble Arch and Hyde Park and an even shorter walk to the Edgware Road and the No 6 bus that, conveniently, took me to within a few yards of my office in Fleet Lane.

I mention this not because it's interesting (it's not!) but because the locations are central to my recollection of the 1981 royal wedding.

As its name suggests, Fleet Lane was close to Fleet Street, and as anyone with any knowledge of London will tell you, Fleet Street leads directly on to Ludgate Hill and at the top of Ludgate Hill is St Paul's Cathedral.

In the days preceding the wedding we therefore had a grandstand view as hundreds of visitors bagged their places on Ludgate Hill.

When we left the office for a lunchtime drink (or sandwich) there were bodies everywhere. We were literally tripping over them. It was an extraordinary sight and it was hard not to be impressed by the atmosphere and people's determination to get a front row seat, even if it was only sitting on the pavement.

The night before the wedding there was a free open air concert in Hyde Park and because I lived close to the park my flat became a magnet for friends (and friends of friends) who wanted to go.

It finished with a firework display set to music (except that no-one could hear the music because the fireworks were so loud). Afterwards we walked back to the flat and had a party that lasted well into the night.

Dawn was breaking when the last person left so I don't remember much about the wedding itself, which we watched on TV, but I do remember this. Away from the route of the procession the streets of London were almost totally deserted. If you weren't in the crowds lining the route between Buckingham Palace and St Paul's, you were almost certainly watching the event on television.

I know this because after the wedding ceremony we decided to walk to the Palace and join the crowds outside and I don't remember seeing anyone until we got to Constitution Hill where the roars told us that Charles and Di had returned from St Paul's and were on the balcony with other members of the royal family.

But what I remember most is the extraordinary atmosphere. Writing in the Daily Telegraph last week, Charles Moore commented:

Next week, the preacher at the wedding will be Richard Chartres, the Bishop of London. He knows the Royal family better than any other clergyman, dating back to his time at university with the Prince of Wales. Last month, he confirmed Miss Middleton. In 1981, when Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer, the young Chartres was chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, so he attended the wedding in St Paul’s. After the ceremony, he was walking down the street in his clerical clothes when he found himself surrounded by a gang of skinheads. Had he just been to the wedding, they asked him. Nervously, he admitted that he had. At this news, the skinheads all hugged him and sang the national anthem.

As a young journalist in Fleet Street at the time, I can testify that the skinheads authentically represented the national feeling. Then, as now, the country was undergoing financial austerity. There had been riots. But suddenly all the anger melted away. The vast crowds for the fireworks the night before the wedding were the friendliest I have ever seen. On the day itself, the delight was genuine. I think this will be true again next week.

I remember coming across a similar gang. They were punks rather than skinheads but their response to us was the same. On any other day we would have ignored one another. But on that day something (excitement, national pride?) drew us together. We left them waving and wreathed in smiles.

Moments like that I will never forget.

Will we look back on tomorrow's events with equally fond memories? I've no idea, but if you are in London tomorrow I hope you have as good a day as we did 30 years ago.

Update on Thursday, April 28, 2011 at 8:32 by Simon Clark

Inspired by some of the media coverage of the royal wedding, Simon Hills, associate editor of The Times Magazine, has written a great piece for The Free Society. See: What’s wrong with being posh?

Government cuts tobacco guidelines

A few weeks ago there was a lively discussion on this blog concerning cross-Channel shopping.

Today the Government will publish Tackling Tobacco Smuggling – building on our success (a renewed strategy for HM Revenue & Customs and the UK Border Agency) and what I feared might happen has been confirmed – the Government is set to reduce the guidelines on the amount of tobacco you can bring into the country for your own personal use.

The Guardian has the story (Treasury to cut duty-free tobacco guidelines in £2bn tax clawback effort). According to the paper:

The proposed change, which sets a guideline limit of 800 cigarettes and 1kg of rolling tobacco, will reignite a battle with campaigners such as smokers' rights group Forest. Simon Clark, director of Forest, described the move as "shocking", noting that current limits of up to 3,200 cigarettes and 3kg of rolling tobacco were set in 2002 after an attempt to clamp down further met with outrage and legal challenges.

Treasury minister Justine Greening is to set out plans to slash existing guideline limits, bringing them in line with Ireland and many other parts of Europe. "It doesn't actually change the rules," she said. "People who are holidaymakers or travellers from the UK, who maybe want to bring back some cigarettes when they come home for personal use, they are not affected at all. But we do believe this will do is start to deter those people who are actually just using minimum indicative levels as a way of bringing in wholesale amounts of cigarettes."

"The levels people [will still be able to] bring in are more than enough for their own personal use — that is not something we would, or should, challenge."

This claim was immediately challenged by Clark said: "The Labour government was forced to increase the limit from 800 to 3,200 because there was chaos at airports and ports around the country, with goods and vehicles being seized all over the place. We have absolutely been there with the 800 guideline. It didn't work."

I understand the Government's position. They want to reduce the £2.2bn lost to tobacco smugglers each year. But this isn't the way to do it. The people they should be targetting are the criminals who smuggle millions of cigarettes into Britain each year.

Reducing the guidelines won't stop some of our more determined friends who know the law, can prove that the tobacco is for their own use, and aren't afraid to argue with Customs officials. But many more people will have their luggage and their cars searched and I won't be surprised if a lot more law-abiding shoppers have their goods seized in the months and years ahead.

To put the 'new' strategy in perspective, it threatens to take us back to the days when thousands of cross-Channel shoppers were victims, we felt, of over-zealous officials whose heavy-handed attempts to crack down on genuine smugglers caused a great deal of anger among ordinary, law-abiding consumers.

The Government can't have it both ways. Having only recently increased tobacco taxation above the rate of inflation, it is only natural that more people will take the opportunity to buy their tobacco, quite legally, abroad.

I understand that cigarettes will keep for at least 12 months. A 20-a-day smoker will consume 3,200 cigarettes in 160 days; the same person will consume 800 cigarettes in just 40 days. The current guideline (3,200) is a reasonable compromise that most people can live with. The new guideline is unreasonable and, if history is a guide, will cause more problems than it solves.

Politicians never learn, do they?

My Olympic marathon

I am doing my best to get tickets for the Olympic Games and failing miserably.

It's 23:20 and the deadline is 23:59. I have been sitting at my computer for a good two and a half hours but every time I try to create an account to register my interest in athletics, boxing, cycling (track), equestrian, gymnastics, rowing and volleyball (without which I can't even begin to apply for tickets), I get a message that reads:

We're experiencing high demand. You will be automatically directed to the page requested as soon as it becomes available. Thank you for your patience.

Patience? I ran out of that when I started to write this. (I've just checked and the registration page is still 'processing', which to me means 'frozen' because it hasn't changed for 45 minutes.)

In hindsight I should have applied earlier but I've been away and the organisers must have anticipated a last minute surge of interest, surely?

I imagine there must be thousands of people, just like me, staring at their computer screens, too scared to go to bed and tell their wives or partners that they have, er, missed the deadline but it really wasn't their fault because, well, the server couldn't cope with the amount of traffic and ...

The least they could do is extend the deadline.

Oh well, I guess we won't be going to the 2012 Olympic Games, after all. Perhaps I'll use the money for a holiday, somewhere far, far away from the Olympic Stadium.

I'll give it one more go ....

23:43 ... I'm in! Message on my screen now reads:

You're almost done!
A message has been sent to the email address you provided so you can activate your account. Please click on the link to activate your account. If you don't activate your account, we won't be able to send you any information.

23:47 ... Where the hell is that email?!

BREAKING NEWS: Olympic 2012 ticket website deadline extended until 1am GMT after site experienced delays (Guardian website).

23:55 ... Still waiting for the email that will allow me to activate my account and apply for tickets. Where is it?

23:59 ... It's arrived!

Update on Wednesday, April 27, 2011 at 0:54 by Simon Clark

00:55 ... "Your London 2012 Olympic ticket application has been successfully submitted".

Well, that was a close call. I beat the extended deadline by five minutes but it was mighty confusing for a while. If I'd had more time I'd have done things differently but I didn't so I applied without really thinking for a total of 22 tickets for six events: gymnastics (artistic), equestrian (jumping), boxing, athletics, rowing and cycling (track).

How many tickets will come our way I have no idea. Mindful of the cost (some of the tickets are mind-boggling expensive), I applied for the cheapest (or second cheapest) available. That will almost certainly condemn my application to be entered into a ballot for most if not all of the events I applied for, but you never know.

Enough. It's one o'clock and it's time for bed.

Why I'm supporting Rally Against Debt

I support radical public spending cuts. There, I've said it.

I'm no economist but even I can see that Britain is borrowing far more than it can afford and something has to be done to reduce public expenditure and the size of the public sector in general. As Mrs T once said, "There is no alternative".

Personally, I believe that excessive debt is a serious threat to 'freedom' in the sense that it leads to greater taxation (higher VAT, higher National Insurance, and an extended period of higher rate income tax) and other controls with the result that more power is placed in the hands of government and unelected civil servants at the expense of ordinary people.

The longer it takes to tackle the debt problem the longer we are subservient to government, in much the same way as people who have a long-term mortgage or other debts are subservient to banks, building societies, loan sharks etc etc.

If there is a problem it lies in the fact that public spending is not being cut as much or as quickly as many of us believe it should. (As for the NHS and overseas aid being ring-fenced from public spending cuts, the only question is – why???)

As I wrote a few weeks ago, Cuts in public spending are something to celebrate (The Free Society):

I want to see less not more government. That means a leaner, more efficient public sector and fewer public sector workers. The Government shouldn’t need an excuse to reduce public spending because it is the right thing to do ...

Clearly there is a huge amount of waste and inefficiency in the public sector which is staffed by hundreds of thousands of unelected mandarins (the same mandarins who draft tobacco control regulations) ...

The economic crisis has given Britain an unexpected but wonderful opportunity to cut public expenditure and reduce inefficiency in the public sector.

Long term the benefits should include lower income tax and less government interference in our lives. Demonstrate? We ought to be celebrating.

Other reasons to support Rally Against Debt:

The TUC's March for the Alternative was supported by Labour leader Ed Miliband who, unbelievably, seemed to compare anti-cuts protestors with the suffragette movement, the anti-apartheid movement, and the civil rights movement in America.

Opponents of the cuts, including members of UK Uncut, a direct action group, staged a sit-in at what one columnist called the "upmarket food emporium Fortnum & Mason", while a group of black-clad activists in masks smashed some of the windows at the neighbouring Ritz Hotel.

For further information about the Rally Against Debt in London on Saturday May 14, click here.

See also: Why rally against debt? (The Free Society)