Letter of the week, I kid you not

I have just opened a letter that reads:

Dear Mr Clark,

I heard one of your members speaking on the Jimmy Vine Show (sic) today. I could not believe my eyes (sic) when he said that people should be allowed to smoke in and on NHS premises including hospitals! No, seriously, he did, I kid you not.

Now, as a single mother of five daughters with five different fathers, I am up for a bit of challenging the 'system'. However, I think you would agree with me that what he said was idiotical. Which, ipso facto, makes him an idiot.

Do you agree? I would love to know your views on this.

Thank you and best wishes.

[Name and address supplied]

You couldn't make it up.

As it happens "one of your members" was me and my correspondent means the Jeremy Vine Show which replaced the Jimmy Young Show several years ago.

Then again, I'd give anything to listen to Jimmy Vine. He sounds a hoot.

PS. To listen to the interview between me and Jeremy click here.

Victoria Coren on John Diamond and Nigella Lawson

Declaration of interest.

I've never met them but I like Victoria Coren and her brother Giles.

I liked their father Alan too. And I love Nigella Lawson.

Alan Coren, a brilliant humourist and former editor of Punch (which I enjoyed reading when I was a teenager), was a supporter of Forest for many years until he developed lung cancer.

After he was diagnosed he asked us to stop writing to him. I may have sent him one final note, expressing sincere sadness for his illness, but we removed him from our list, as requested.

A couple of years ago I invited Victoria – a professional gambler – to speak at a Forest/Free Society debate entitled 'Risk and the Pursuit of Happiness – Is smoking, drinking, gambling good for you?'.

She declined.

I wanted to invite Giles as well but I lacked the courage to ask. Given his powerfully expressed anti-smoking opinions it seemed like a red rag to a bull.

Also, I didn't want him to think we were taking the piss or being insensitive to the nature of his father's death.

Anyway, this is a roundabout way of drawing your attention to one of the best articles I have read in a long, long time.

If, like me, you have been following Nigella's recent travails, and if you read her first husband's extraordinary column in The Times when he was dying of throat cancer, it's a must read, full of empathy, insight and friendship:

A most treasured Diamond ... Nigella Lawson's first husband was a brilliant man who adored her and who led me astray (Observer)

It's a far cry from the comment said to have been made by an Irish broadcaster and reported here: Viewers' fury at Alan for Nigella 'bitch' quip (Irish Independent).

Having recently seen Philomena (lovely film, warmly recommended), I imagine there are some people in Ireland and elsewhere who think Philomena Lee was a "stupid bitch" as well.

Times change but some people remain exceedingly quick to judge others' behaviour.

Dan and Phil

Dan Donovan, who designed the Forest Christmas card (see Friday's post), was in Dublin this week.

He was filming a short video which we will post online in the New Year.

Dan is also a musician and while he was there his sound engineer took a picture of him standing next to a statue of the late Phil Lynott.

I'll be in Ireland myself this week. Should be fun.

I must be mad

Writing for Conservative Home this week LBC presenter Iain Dale declared:

I must be mad. I have just accepted an invitation to give a lecture on the NHS to 50 doctors, surgeons and consultants from a London hospital in late January. Why on earth can’t I just learn to say “no”? I don’t do a lot of speeches nowadays ... So when this invitation came in my instinct was to say “no” on the basis that it would involve too much preparation time, and that I wasn’t enough of an expert on the subject.

But then I thought, well, that’s never stopped me before and, frankly, I have learned a huge amount about the NHS from all the time I spend talking to people about it and getting them to give their experiences on my radio show. So I’ve chosen as my title 'The NHS: Things That Need to be Said'. That should give me enough rope to hang myself ... All ideas welcome.

This struck a chord because I recently received an invitation to speak at the Policy Forum for Wales Keynote Seminar: Improving health and wellbeing - public health programmes, legislation and integration, also in January.

Other speakers, I learned, are:

• Dr Sara Hayes, ‎Director of Public Health, Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Health Board
• Rhianon Urquhart, Senior Health Improvement Officer, Caerphilly County Borough Council
• Professor Stephen Monaghan, UK Board and Executive Member, The Faculty of Public Health (Royal Colleges of Physicians of the UK) and Consultant in Public Health Medicine, Public Health Wales
• Dr Graham Moore, Research Fellow, DECIPHer UKCRC Public Health Research Centre of Excellence, Cardiff University

There will also be a "senior representative" of the food and drink industry.

Like Iain my instinct was to say "no". But I hate saying "no", so I said "yes".

I must be mad.

Happy Christmas, comrades

Here's the 2013 Forest Christmas card designed by Dan Donovan.

The concept and salutation were inspired by Pat Harrold, a general practitioner in Co Tipperary, Ireland, and a lecturer at the University of Limerick medical school.

Two weeks ago Dr Harrold wrote:

We Irish are good at many things. We are world leaders in literature, music and, occasionally, rugby. Lately we have become famous for tobacco control. Ireland became the first country in the world to ban smoking in public places after some groundbreaking research into the health of Galway bar staff. We are now set to become one of the first countries to ban tobacco branding. This means that the box of twenty will have a plain cover and you can only tell the different types by the lettering. The boxes will look generic, rather like the government products in the old Soviet Union.

Well, that got me thinking because I've never forgotten visiting the food hall at GUM, the largest department store in Russia, in 1982 and seeing row upon row of tins with plain, unbranded labels.

It was the same in smaller shops, although a great many shelves were half empty and the queues outside were testament to severe food shortages.

The contrast with our own shops and supermarkets could not have been greater yet Dr Harrold seems to be endorsing Soviet-style packaging for tobacco.

Is he serious?

Anyway, we're sending the Forest card to several hundred MPs and journalists and I hope they get the message.

Plain packaging is a backward step with disturbing political connotations.

Doesn't that bother them?

Ireland: key findings in poll on plain packaging

James Reilly, Minister for Health in Ireland, will today present his proposed Bill for plain packaging to the Irish parliament's Health Committee.

As luck would have it, Forest Eireann recently commissioned a survey from established Dublin pollsters Red C and the results have been published in Ireland this morning.

They make for interesting reading. Here are the key findings:

• Nine out of ten think plain packs are not the best way to stop young people smoking

• More than half the population thinks health education in schools would be most effective in reducing smoking rates.

• Of four policy options considered in the poll, mandatory health education in schools (51 per cent), tackling the illicit trade (23 per cent) and banning adults from buying cigarettes for children (14 per cent) are all considered more likely to work than plain packaging (9 per cent).

• Given a list of four issues the Minister for Health should prioritise in 2014, plain packaging ranked last on just 4 per cent.

• 45 per cent want the Minister to prioritise the health budget overspend, 32 per cent childhood obesity, and 18 per cent under-age drinking

The poll consisted of a random sample of 1,002 adults who were interviewed on the phone by Red C between 18-20 November.

It will be interesting to see whether the survey gets any media coverage.

Full press release here.

Update: Well, fancy that. Tobacco control has a poll out today too.

The Irish Times has a report here - Two polls offer two different perspectives on plain packaging Bill.

The Journal covers both polls too but the headline favours the pro plain pack survey:

Over two-thirds in poll support plain cigarette packaging

Update: The Examiner has a report of both polls too. Again, the headline highlights the pro plain pack angle:

Backing for Reilly's tobacco plain package bill

Funny, that.

Paul lights up the airwaves

Love this interview on BBC Radio Somerset.

It was posted last week on YouTube and Facebook by Forest supporter Paul Toole.

I've written about Paul several times. In 2007, shortly after the smoking ban was introduced in England, he organised not one but three protest marches – in Wells, Glastonbury and Bristol.

I drove down to Wells in Somerset and invited him to address a Forest event at the Labour party conference in Bournemouth.

He gave a great speech and I'm delighted to hear he's lost none of his passion for the subject!

See: Walk this way (July 12, 2007), Paul's protest moves to Glastonbury (July 31, 2007), Paul and Chris walk tall (August 11, 2007), Protest and survive - the sequel (October 10, 2007), Bristol protest march (October 21, 2007).

See also: Another dose of hard Labour (September 26, 2007).

This is a good time of year to mention Paul because unofficially he's known as the 'King of Christmas Lights' after he appeared on a Channel 4 documentary of the same name.

Paul's Christmas Light Show is taking a break this year but will be back in December 2014. Click here for more information.

Media matters – Forest on TV and radio

Here are some TV interviews Forest did last week.

First up is a clip of me on BBC Breakfast discussing smoking on hospital grounds with Andrea Crossfield, CEO of Tobacco Free Futures.

The following day (Thursday) we were hit by the plain packaging story.

In chronological order there's the interview I did on ITV's Daybreak. This is followed by Angela Harbutt's soundbite on the BBC's Six O'Clock News and her head-to-head 'discussion' with Deborah Arnott of ASH on Channel 5's Newstalk Live.

If you don't have time to watch them all I recommend Angela's feisty appearance on Channel 5.

Forest was also in demand on the radio. Click here to listen to Angela on BBC Radio 4's World At One.

As for the hospital story, I've lost count of the number of interviews we did that day.

Angela alone did around 20 local radio interviews and I pitched in with LBC and a handful of local stations including BBC Radio Manchester, BBC WM, BBC Radio Solent and BBC Radio Leeds.

Click here to listen to me on the Jeremy Vine Show (BBC Radio 2).