The NHS and me

Fair play to the NHS.

While I believe there are better health systems and providers, I've certainly been getting my money's worth since I turned 60 a few years ago.

It began with my local surgery booking me in for what felt like a service or MOT.

Within days I was prescribed statins to reduce cholesterol in my blood, and since then I’ve been prescribed two more pills that I have to take every day.

One is to control my blood pressure, the other is to allow the blood to flow more freely around the body.

However, it was when I described to my GP symptoms that suggested a rather more acute problem that the system really kicked in.

I was immediately told to double the dose of one (multi-talented) pill and a few weeks later I was booked in to my local hospital to undergo series of scans – ultrasound, CT, and MRI –with the aim of checking my various organs for signs of wear and tear, or worse.

Now, I'm not going to pretend that my body is a temple, but the results weren't too bad, all things considered.

High blood pressure is still the main issue, not the condition of my liver, kidneys and prostate.

Anyway, last week I had another appointment, this time for an ‘abdominal aortic aneurysm screening’.

The letter inviting me to have what was effectively another ultrasound scan arrived out of the blue a few weeks ago.

The purpose, I was told, was to 'help find an aneurysm' in the main blood vessel that supplies blood to the body.

What they were looking for was any swelling – which can be serious – but they couldn't find anything so I passed that test and we move on.

I suppose I should be grateful that the NHS is taking such an interest in me, and I am.

My GP, in particular, is a very pleasant fellow who has never once told me to lose weight, although common sense would suggest that it’s the major reason for the high blood pressure.

He knows I know that, and he doesn’t push the point, which I appreciate.

He also knows what I do for a living and, having asked, has never mentioned it again. (Perhaps he thought I was joking.)

In the meantime the only side effect of the pills I take each day is occasional drowsiness and the fact that I’m advised not to drink grapefruit juice, which I miss but not as much as I thought I would.

I don’t want to sound facetious, but the thing I worry about most is not a sudden and possibly fatal heart attack, but the thought of long hours in hospital.

My father, who underwent two heart by-pass operations and then a heart transplant before he was 70, spent the last few years of his life on dialysis - four hours at a time, three days a week - and that didn’t include getting to and from the hospital.

His quality of life plummeted but he kept going (until he was 84) largely for the sake of my mother, although it was difficult for her too.

With that in mind, I am already making plans to equip myself with one, and possibly two, portable batteries, and even a spare tablet, because I know that if I was to spend long periods in hospital the one thing that would make the experience vaguely tolerable would be my iPad - and the access it gives to books, podcasts, news, and so much more.

Without it, and I speak with some experience of sitting in hospital waiting rooms for hours on end, I think I might die of boredom.

See also: ‘Scanned alive’ and ‘What’s up, doc?’.

Nanny Sunak fights on but for how long?

More on the news that the incoming coalition government in New Zealand is to repeal the law banning the sale of tobacco to future generations of adults.

When I wrote about it yesterday I mentioned that the mainstream media in the UK seemed to be ignoring the story, despite the obvious implications for what appears to be one of Rishi Sunak’s flagship policies.

Put simply, having adopted the idea from New Zealand, the PM now finds himself in charge of a policy that has been abandoned by its parent.

Consequently, apart from Sunak’s Government, the only other governments that are currently backing a generational ban on tobacco are the devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales, led by the SNP and Labour respectively.

However you spin it, those are interesting bedfellows for a Conservative prime minister who, lest we forget, will almost certainly need the votes of Labour MPs to get the legislation through parliament.

With that in mind, you would think the story would have generated a lot more coverage. Instead, only the MailOnline, Express, and Telegraph belatedly published reports online, and they took several hours to appear.

The Times, Guardian and Sun, who all support the generational ban, ignored the story completely. As did the FT, Mirror and, predictably, the BBC.

Thankfully the Press Association stepped up and issued a report that had a quote by me and embedded in the report was a tweet (by Forest) that featured the illustration of Sunak that we commissioned a few weeks ago precisely for moments like this!

The PA report was published by, among others, the Independent, London Evening Standard, and Lancashire Telegraph.

The PA also had the wit to approach Downing Street for a response and, although Sunak’s spokesman insists the Government’s plans for a generational ban are “unchanged”, I’m convinced this is not yet over.

Not least, our ‘Conservative’ prime minister has some explaining to do to his backbenchers to justify a policy dreamt up by a Labour government in New Zealand that has now been rejected by a centre-right coalition in that same country.

See also: New Zealand government u-turn on tobacco sales ban (Convenience Store), New Zealand’s smoking ban u-turn is bad news for Rishi Sunak (The Spectator).

Below: The Forest tweet that featured in the PA report

A VERY good morning!

A VERY good morning!

Reports from New Zealand suggest the country’s next government will scrap the new law that bans the sale of tobacco to future generations. According to Bloomberg:

Legislation banning tobacco sales to people born after 2008 will be dumped by the new administration, according to coalition agreements released Friday in Wellington. The new government, which comprises the National, ACT and New Zealand First parties, will also stop a plan to reduce in the number of retail outlets allowed to sell cigarettes.

I’m pleasantly surprised but not shocked because I wrote about the possibility only last month when I noted that David Seymour, leader of ACT, had last year tweeted:

Labour’s authoritarian prohibition of tobacco has been signed up to by every party except ACT. Prohibition has never worked and it always has serious unintended consequences.

I added that:

In January [2023] the Sunday Times even reported that Seymour ‘would seek to reverse Labour’s anti-smoking legislation if his party gains office'.

“This has gone beyond a public health initiative to a public control initiative,” he said.

Realistically, I would be surprised if tobacco policy is a hill Seymour will choose to die on.

Nevertheless, if the National party does need ACT's support, the issue should at least be on the table for discussion.

Either way, Sunak would be well advised to watch developments closely.

Well, it seems the issue was indeed up for discussion, despite the fact that Christopher Luxon, leader of the centre right National Party and the incoming prime minister, was on record saying he was "broadly supportive" of the previous government’s plan (as I also wrote here).

Where this leaves Rishi Sunak’s policy (which he stole from a Labour government on the other side of the world) is anyone’s guess, but it ought to give the PM pause for thought because he is now the driver of the most illiberal anti-smoking measure in the world.

In the short period that remains of his premiership, is that what he wants to be remembered for when there are so many other, far more pressing, issues he needs to address?

PS. ASH New Zealand has tweeted:

One of the coalition's first health measures is to essentially grant a pardon to tobacco companies, and allow them to continue selling products that kill almost 5000 New Zealanders every year.

Good to see they’re taking it well.

Update: Chris Snowden has written a short piece for CapX – An about-turn on tobacco – pointing out that:

Sunak stands alone. It is left to the Conservative Party in Britain to carry the torch of the New Zealand Labour Party.

How embarrassing. For the moment, though, the mainstream media in the UK is completely ignoring the story. I wonder why?

Chancellor declares war (again) on working class smokers

In my brief speech on Monday night (see previous post) I repeated something I have said several times before:

Today smoking, obesity and alcohol are frequently mentioned in the context of levelling-up, and there seems to be an unchallenged consensus that tackling all three should be part of that process.

I don't see it that way at all. For me reducing smoking rates by forcing people to quit isn't levelling up, it's dumbing down, because it treats smokers – the majority of whom are from lower socio-economic groups – as if they're stupid, uneducated idiots for choosing to smoke in the first place.

In my view, instead of insulting people’s intelligence and curtailing their freedoms with further restrictions on the sale of tobacco and where you can light up, governments should concentrate instead on creating the conditions for them to make 'healthier' choices for themselves, because it's clear that while many people smoke for pleasure, many also smoke to relieve some of the stress that may be caused by their circumstances or their environment.

In other words, instead of punishing adults who smoke with punitive taxation and other measures designed to force them to quit, often against their will, government should focus on the underlying reasons why a greater proportion of people from lower socio-economic backgrounds are smokers.

It may take substantially longer to achieve the Government’s ‘smoke free’ target but that’s a small price to pay if, in the meantime, ministers are addressing far more important issues like housing, jobs and poverty.

That, to me, is the essence of levelling up – improving people's lives not through coercion and prohibition, but by tackling some of the factors that lead us to eat, drink and smoke to excess.

As if on cue, the Chancellor has today doubled-down on smokers from lower socio-economic groups with the extraordinary decision to raise duty on hand-rolled tobacco by a whopping TEN percent above the tobacco escalator (which is inflation plus two per cent).

That means, as of tonight, the cost of hand-rolled tobacco will increase by almost 17 per cent.

The reason he's doing this is because hand-rolling tobacco has been less expensive than manufactured cigarettes, which is why many smokers have switched in recent years, but it seems petty beyond belief to target poorer smokers like this.

In particular, what really strikes me is the contempt for working class smokers and others on low wages, or even unemployed.

I get it, I really do, that if money is tight everyone has to make sacrifices, which may include smoking or drinking less, but I always come back to something former Labour health secretary John Reid once said.

That's something else I mentioned it in my speech on Monday when I said:

I come from a comfortable middle class background so it’s probably not my place to say this, but listen to the words of former Labour health secretary John Reid. A former heavy smoker, Reid represented one of the poorest constituencies in the country, and he understood why many people smoke.

In 2004, when anti-smoking campaigners were demanding a ban on smoking in all enclosed public places, including every pub and working men’s club in the country, Reid resisted calls for a blanket indoor smoking ban. He even gave a speech in which he said that for a young single mother living on a sink estate, a cigarette might be one of the few pleasures she had.

Naturally the middle class do-gooders in the public health industry came down on him like a ton of bricks but, given John Reid’s background and the constituency he represented, I’d take his word ahead of theirs any day.

Anyway, here's my response, on behalf of Forest, to today's Autumn Statement:

"The Chancellor has just raised two fingers to working class people across the country.

"Raising duty on hand-rolled tobacco by such a punitive amount is going to push more smokers further into poverty or into the hands of illegal traders including criminal gangs.

"This is a clear attack on smokers from poorer backgrounds, many of whom use hand-rolled tobacco because until now it's been cheaper than buying manufactured cigarettes.

"Instead of punishing adults who smoke with punitive taxation designed to force them to quit, the government should focus on the underlying reasons why a greater proportion of people from lower socio-economic backgrounds are smokers.

"Often it's because of their environment but, instead of improving the conditions in which many people live, this Tory government is determined to force smokers to give up a habit that may relieve some of the stress caused by their environment."

How depressing that four years after winning one Red Wall seat after another on the back of the slogan 'Take back control', the current Tory prime minister and his chancellor are determined to impose their middle class anti-smoking agenda on those very same people on the grounds that 'we know best and we are going to force you to comply'.

Update: I understand that the duty on cigarettes has gone up as well, albeit by not as much:

Tobacco Duty Rates – Duty rates on all tobacco products will increase by RPI +2%. To reduce the gap with cigarette duty, the rate on hand-rolling tobacco will increase by RPI + 12% this year. These changes will take effect from 6pm on 22 November 2023 and will be included in the Autumn Finance Bill 2023.

It's my understanding, therefore, that having increased duty on cigarettes by approximately 12% in March, a further increase of RPI +2% (in October RPI was 6.1%) will add an additional 8%, so the total increase on duty on cigarettes in 2023 will be close to 20%.

The exact figures are a bit unclear so don't quote me, but there have nevertheless been whopping increases in duty on both cigarettes and hand-rolling tobacco this year.

In defence of freedom

Thanks to everyone who attended our ‘Nanny State of the Nation’ event in Westminster on Monday.

It was good to see both new and familiar faces, and I apologise if I didn’t speak to more than a handful of people individually on the night.

Guests included a number of parliamentary researchers, but I was especially pleased to see our old friend, and Daily Mail columnist, Tom Utley.

I first met Tom at Auberon Waugh’s Academy Club in Soho 23 years ago.

Bron was a supporter of Forest and he persuaded me to sponsor a series of monthly drinks parties for writers and journalists.

The Academy Club (a delicious misnomer) was actually a small, extremely spartan, room on the first floor of rather Dickensian building adjacent to the offices of the Literary Review where he was the editor.

Apart from some wooden tables and chairs, there was nothing other than a tiny bar where ‘members’ could help themselves to tea, coffee, or alcohol.

Most of the guests at our monthly events were people he had persuaded to write for the Literary Review - almost certainly without payment - and this was his way of saying thank you.

I recall the air being thick with smoke (most guests were smokers) but that merely added to the atmosphere, which I loved, and if it got too uncomfortable you could sit by one of the two open sash windows that overlooked Lexington Street, but I don’t think it ever did.

Another person I met for the first time at one of those Academy Club soirées was Claire Fox, and by coincidence Claire was on our panel of speakers on Monday night.

How we would have laughed had we known that, almost a quarter of a century later, she would be a member of the House of Lords and a baroness!

At that time she was the publisher of LM (formerly Living Marxism) and a former member of the Revolutionary Communist Party.

Chaired by Ella Whelan (Academy of Ideas), the other speakers on Monday were me, Henry Hill (ConservativeHome), and Reem Ibrahim (Institute of Economic Affairs).

Apart from a short introductory speech by yours truly, we kept it reasonably informal, with the audience given plenty of time to make points or ask questions.

The discussion was filmed (a video will be posted on YouTube later) and streamed live, which was a first for a Forest event such as this.

We had the UnHerd team to thank for that, and I must say something about the venue.

Old Queen Street Cafe is run by UnHerd, the online magazine founded by investor Paul Marshall who is also one of the major financial backers behind GB News.

The cafe/restaurant and the UnHerd office sit side by side, a short walk from Parliament Square.

The former is on the ground floor, and on the first and second floors are a number of rooms that can be hired for private events, although they are in frequent use for UnHerd events that are also streamed to members of the UnHerd Club.

Compared to the Academy Club, it’s like night and day. Goodness knows how much money has been spent to create its comfortable coffeehouse ambience that harks back to those 17th and 18th century establishments, but they share a similar spirit, I think, even if Old Queen Street Cafe is clearly run as a serious business, unlike the Academy Club that, if I remember, relied on patrons paying voluntarily for their coffee, biscuits, and booze.

For Monday night’s event we hired the Club Bar and Library, which was perfect for the number of guests we anticipated. (Eighty people registered, around 55 attended, a disparity that in my experience is normal for a free event like this.)

It went pretty well, I thought, and we’ve had plenty of positive feedback.

People will nevertheless question the point of events such as this, but with a very limited budget what should we do - nothing?

Yes, it was a relatively small gathering but that doesn’t mean it won’t have a ripple effect.

On its own it won’t stop the Tobacco and Vapes Bill but that’s no reason not to try and, as Claire Fox pointed out, freedom is always worth defending.

PS. Thanks to Stuart Mitchell for the photos. Full gallery here.

‘Smoking ban rebel’ closes pub for good

According to reports, the Blackpool bar run by ‘rebel landlord’ Hamish Howitt has finally closed for good after 27 years.

Older readers will remember Hamish.

Following the smoking ban in 2007 he ‘was fined £500 and ordered to pay £2,000 prosecution costs … after he admitted flouting the smoking ban in public places in England’.

According to Reuters, ‘Howitt has set up a political party called Fight Against Government Suppression (FAGS) to fight the ban and says he is prepared to go to jail’.

Thankfully it didn’t come to that but I believe he did have his licence revoked, albeit briefly.

Determined to fight the ban, he also stood in two by-elections, including the Haltemprice and Howden by-election precipitated by David Davies in protest at the Labour’s government's plan to detain terror suspects without charge for up to 42 days.

Standing on behalf of the ‘Freedom Party’, Hamish attracted just 91 votes and lost his deposit, but he wasn’t alone - another 21 candidates lost their deposit too in a by-election described (rightly) as a ‘stunt’ by Labour PM Gordon Brown.

I first met Hamish in October 2007 when we invited him to speak at a drinks party at the Conservative conference in Blackpool, an event I listed at #8 in Forest’s top ten conference events.

The following year he spoke at another Forest event, this time in London, when another guest speaker was the then Ukip leader Nigel Farage.

I was impressed by Hamish’s sincerity and courage but, as I wrote here, I was concerned he was being encouraged to fight (legal) battles he had no chance of winning, to the detriment of his business.

Anyway, the ‘rebel landlord’ label stuck and every so often I’ve read articles or seen archive pieces reminding readers of his battles with the local authority.

And, true to form, Hamish hasn’t gone quietly, blaming the closure of his pub on Blackpool Council.

Full story: ‘Blackpool pub 'Crazy Scots Bar' in Rigby Road closes after 27 years’, and ‘Crazy Scots Bar closure 'not our fault' says Blackpool Council’.

See also: ‘The Blackpool landlord who fought the 2007 smoking ban and nearly lost everything’, and ‘17 memorable photos of Blackpool pub Crazy Scots Bar as it closes after 27 years’.

Below (left to right): me, Roger Helmer MEP, ‘rebel landlord’ Hamish Howitt, and former MSP Brian Monteith in Blackpool, October 2007

Pete Doherty - now and then

I haven’t watched it yet, but I’ve read some excellent reviews of Louis Theroux’s interview with Pete Doherty, broadcast on BBC2 last week.

The Telegraph gave it five stars, The Times four, while the Mail reported:

Pete Doherty wins praise from BBC viewers for his 'fascinating, authentic and unpretentious' interview with Louis Theroux as they praise the unlikely pair's connection: 'Just wonderful chemistry'.

I mention this because a few months ago I wrote about a short film, produced and directed in 2001 by Sharon Peng, who at the time was a student at Bournemouth University.

Smokers’ Corner featured several faces familiar to Forest supporters - including Forest researcher Judith Hatton, our patron Antony Worrall Thompson, and James Leavey, author of two Forest guides - but the star of the film was a young Peter Doherty.

As I wrote here, Doherty’s ‘contributions were (and still are) absolutely priceless - charming, amusing, pretentious, and often all three at once!’.

‘The film,’ I added, ‘is bittersweet because several participants are no longer alive, and in the intervening years Pete Doherty has had his demons but, watching this, you can't help but like him.’

Smokers’ Corner still exists on YouTube, albeit in very poor quality, but if you can overlook that it’s definitely worth watching.

Click here or on the image below.

New York and the Holy Grail

I see that Spamalot, the musical based on the 1976 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, is enjoying its first revival on Broadway.

It’s had mixed reviews but I want to write about the original production because I was lucky enough to see it during a brief trip to New York in 2005.

It was my first visit to the Big Apple and to say it was a catalogue of woe is an understatement.

I flew from Toronto, where I had some business meetings, and that set the tone for the next few days.

If I remember, the scheduled flight was cancelled after we had checked in and we had to re-book on the next available flight.

However there was a technical problem with the second plane so, having taken our seats, we all had to get off.

Worse, we had to go to the baggage area, reclaim our luggage, and go through security all over again.

Hours later we eventually took off on the replacement aircraft and it was late, and dark, when we finally arrived in New York.

The hotel had been recommended by a top PR exec whose daughter lived nearby. In hindsight I wish I knew then what I know now because although the area was nice and quiet the hotel was … average.

On the first night, for example, the air conditioning didn’t work, which is not great when you’re staying in New York in the height of summer.

Talking of heat (this was in August), it was so hot during the day that even walking in Central Park was a no-no for most people, and the open air theatre was closed because even in the evening it was considered too uncomfortable.

The biggest disappointment though was my failed attempt to meet Audrey Silk of NYC Clash, a New York based smokers’ rights group.

Audrey had been fighting the New York smoking ban and I was keen to meet her. She lives in an apartment in Brooklyn where she grows her own tobacco.

She kindly invited me to lunch and I was looking forward to it.

I jumped in a taxi outside Macy’s, gave her address to the taxi driver, and within minutes we were driving over the famous Brooklyn Bridge. It was like being in a film.

Thirty minutes later, however, with the meter heading north of $50, it was clear the driver hadn’t got a clue where he was or where we were going.

His English wasn’t great and at one point he even rang his brother to ask for directions.

His brother couldn’t help and I couldn’t reach Audrey by phone because my Nokia mobile phone wouldn’t connect to the US network.

After 45 minutes of increasingly aimless driving, I gave the order to about turn and we retreated, defeated, to Manhattan.

I did meet Audrey eventually but not until 2017 when I invited her to speak at GTNF in New York.

Given this context, you can understand perhaps why Spamalot was the highlight of my visit.

Officially the show was sold out but the concierge at my hotel had ‘contacts’ and managed to get me a ticket, albeit well in excess of the advertised price.

Nevertheless, I desperately needed a laugh and Spamalot delivered so it was money well spent and I look back fondly at that evening and the gales of laughter that swept the theatre.

It made me proud to be British!