A vaping levy has been denounced by free-marketeers, smokers’ rights lobbyists and the vaping industry but, unusually, welcomed by both public health campaigners and the tobacco industry.
The ‘smokers’ rights lobbyists’ referred to are Forest but for some reason (lack of space, I’ve been told) our actual quote (solicited by the paper) was omitted.
For the record, it read:
"If the government is serious about promoting e-cigarettes as a substantially less harmful alternative to combustible tobacco, a levy on vapes will send completely the wrong message to consumers.
"Vaping products are already subject to VAT. Imposing even a small levy will simply add to the confusion that exists in many smokers' minds about the risks of vaping.
"Worse, if the government hikes tobacco duty again to maintain the difference in price between tobacco and vapes, that will inevitably drive more smokers to the black market.
"Both measures would therefore be counterproductive and an unnecessary own goal."
Oddly enough, the day after Rishi Sunak announced he intended to introduce a generational tobacco sales ban, The Times ran a story headlined 'Smoking ban plan burns Big Tobacco'.
According to that report:
The tobacco industry and associated lobby groups denounced the government’s plan, warning that it would benefit the illicit market.
‘Associated lobby groups’ was another oblique reference to Forest and it followed a 5-10 minute conversation I had with one of the paper’s journalists that I assumed was on the record.
Despite that, Forest wasn’t mentioned by name, nor was anything I said quoted directly in the piece.
Now, five months later, it’s happened again which begs the question: why the aversion to mentioning Forest by name?
Thanks to political blogger Guido Fawkes for shining a light on the murkier aspects of the Government consultation on the generational tobacco ban.
Following the announcement by the prime minister in October that he wanted to raise the age of sale of tobacco by one year every year, the Government launched an eight-week consultation, with a closing date of December 6.
In my experience, most government consultations are scheduled for three, or sometimes four, months.
Likewise, the subsequent reports tend to be published three months after the closing date, although it can sometimes take much longer (eleven months in the case of the plain packaging consultation).
In this instance, the Government's response was published less than eight weeks after the closing date, and that period included the two-week Christmas period, so it's probably fair to say it was produced in half the time it normally takes.
Either way, the consultation attracted nearly 28,000 legitimate responses, and to no-one's surprise:
The large majority of responses supported the government proposal to create a smokefree generation. Respondents were mostly in favour of the proposed measures to tackle youth vaping, particularly restricting point of sale displays and restricting packaging.
Interestingly, however, the report failed to provide a list of respondents (notably the 896 organisations that responded to the consultation), despite the fact that this has been standard practice for most if not every government consultation Forest has ever contributed to.
The reason it's important is that we suspect that many of the organisations and NGOs that responded to the consultation will be public sector bodies or have links to the public health industry.
Of even greater concern, though, was the extraordinary revelation that the Government had chosen not to consider the views of the 307 respondents with disclosed links to the tobacco industry 'when determining our policy response' due to the 'vested interests' of the industry.
As you can imagine, retail groups with legitimate links to the tobacco industry are up in arms at the admission that their views on the proposed generational tobacco ban have not been considered, despite the fact that it could have a significant impact on their businesses.
Ditto the proposed ban on disposable vapes, for which views were also sought.
Meanwhile we're outraged that the views of law-abiding consumers have also been sidelined in this unprecedented fashion.
Forest has been contributing to government consultations for decades and this is the first time any government (including devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales) has told us that our views have not even been considered, let alone acted upon.
To get some answers from government, Conservative MP arl McCartney submitted several written parliamentary questions.
Far from addressing his legitimate concerns, the Government (via the DHSC and health minister Andrea Leadsom) simply doubled down and is refusing to publish the names of the organisations that responded to the consultation.
This includes organisations with disclosed links to the tobacco industry, so it's impossible to know for sure which groups have had their views disregarded by ministers and civil servants.
Not only is the lack of transparency breathtaking, but using the WHO's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) as the excuse for ignoring the views of legitimate stakeholders is both pathetic and and fundamentally undemocratic.
Furthermore, with retail crime at an all-time high, the Government has – incredibly – chosen to disregard the views of retail organisations just because they have links with the tobacco industry whose products they buy and sell.
It's one thing to ignore the views of the tobacco industry (although I believe that's wrong too), but disregarding the views of other organisations with a legitimate interest in the proposed legislation is scandalous and should be challenged in court.
One more thing: public consultations are usually designed to generate feedback on a particular proposal, following which the Government considers and then decides its next move.
In this instance, as Rishi Sunak made clear at the Conservative conference in October, and again when the new coalition government in New Zealand announced that it intended to repeal the generational ban legislation introduced by the previous (Labour) government, he had obviously made up his mind to introduce a generational ban long before the consultation closing date, and months before the report was published, so the whole process has been a complete sham from start to finish.
Anyway, now you can see what we're up against, I hope you will write to your MP and make even more noise.
The funny thing is, it only seems like yesterday that I was ‘celebrating’ my 60th birthday.
I wasn’t too fussed, if I’m honest, but my wife decided to mark the occasion by booking an evening, with an overnight stay, at a Michelin star restaurant at a secret location in rural Lincolnshire.
That much I knew in advance. What I didn’t know is that she had also arranged for two of our oldest friends to join us, which was an unexpected surprise.
It was only the second Michelin star restaurant we had ever been to (the first was in Cambridge), but since then we’ve developed a bit of a taste for them (no pun intended).
I don’t have a favourite because they’ve all been very different, but the one I remember most, partly because of its size, was Menu Gordon Jones, a tiny (and pleasantly informal) restaurant in Bath.
It was fully booked yet the eponymous chef not only did all the cooking, he also greeted guests at the door on arrival, and visited our tables to explain several of the seven courses on the menu.
That level of service, albeit in a very small restaurant, is pretty impressive, but I don’t envy the restaurateurs who have to maintain such a high standard every day to justify their Michelin star/s.
Anyway, for my 65th birthday today we’re driving to Norfolk where we will be staying at a Michelin star restaurant in Old Hunstanton.
En route I will reflect upon the fact that it’s not that long ago that men retired at 65 (when they could collect their state pension), with women retiring at 60.
Previous generations were sent on their way with a gold watch, but I can remember when the average age for men was 72 so the ‘golden’ years of retirement were relatively short, and something that people looked forward to after a hard working life.
More recently there was a period when my generation talked of being able to retire early, and I have a several friends who did just that.
One was 50 when he retired, and another was just 40, although it would be more accurate to describe him as semi-retired because he soon got bored and found work as a non-executive director with various companies.
Another friend retired from the civil service at 55 but he too found the days without work rather long so he took up dog-walking.
Today, if they live to their eighties or nineties, people who retire in their fifties or even sixties face the prospect of 20 or 30 years without work, which is why so many people, instead of retiring early, are voluntarily working longer, although money may also be a factor.
In my case I have no imminent plans to retire because I enjoy my job. Also, while it can be challenging, it’s not physically demanding so I reckon I’ve got a few more years in me before I embark on that round-the-world cruise.
According to a study led by UCL researchers, 'Most smokers wrongly believe vaping is at least as harmful as smoking'.
The UCL press release was embargoed until 4.00pm this afternoon and is getting quite a lot of coverage.
Yesterday I was invited by BBC News (online) to respond to the study so I sent this comment:
“Government is partly to blame for the confusion because banning disposable vapes and threatening to severely restrict the display and packaging of e-cigarettes is hardly the best way to promote a reduced risk product that has helped millions of smokers to quit.
“Furthermore, is it any wonder that smokers are confused about the perceived risk of vaping when the message coming from government and the public health industry is that the only people who should vape are adults who want to quit smoking, and no-one should vape long-term or recreationally.”
Vice started as a punk magazine called the Voice of Montreal in 1994 before it moved to New York, retaining its reputation as an edgy and often provocative publisher, with editions worldwide. It later branched out into news, audio and television.
Last year, however, the company filed for bankruptcy and was sold for $350 million having been valued ‘at about $5.7 billion’ in 2017.
I have no interest in Vice (I was too old, even when it was launched, to be part of the target audience), but our paths did cross once or twice.
In 2016 a Forest fringe event at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham was featured in an article that gave it a surprisingly positive review:
What the party was like: Actually really good. An upper-middle market bar packed to the gills with free booze, mini burgers, pocket ash-trays (a weird plastic wallet thing you can carry around) inscribed with the words, "Say no to outdoor smoking bans," and leaflets about how "A once benign nanny state has become a bully state, coercing rather than educating adults to give up tobacco."
Entertainment: It was advertised as "Eat. Drink. Smoke. Vape.", so like all good parties there were no frills beyond the amount of inebriants you could stuff in your body.
A few years later we were contacted by another Vice journalist and I spent two hours being interviewed for an article that was never published.
I was subsequently approached by a ‘casting producer’ who wanted to interview me for a subsidiary Vice project and nothing came of that either, but I wasn’t surprised because it was clear by then that the former ‘punk magazine’ was fully on board the anti-smoking juggernaut and any views that opposed the Establishment-led orthodoxy on tobacco had no place in the world of Vice.
(Oh, the irony.)
The most obvious example of Vice abandoning its punk origins was the launch in April 2019 of a £5 million ‘Quit Cigarettes’ initiative funded by the tobacco giant Philip Morris International (PMI), whose goal is a smoke-free (sic) world.
Featuring some of the most puerile articles I have ever read on any subject, headlines included:
How Smoking Increases Chances of Genital Warts
This Is How Smoking Makes Your Penis Shrink
How Smoking is Ruining Your Sex Life
Is Smoking a Deal-Breaker on Tinder?
Are Festivals Doing Enough to Phase Out Smoking?
How Cigarettes Blight British Seaside Towns
Why It’s Time to Ban Smoking in Airports For Good
Are You Being Bullied Into Smoking Cigarettes?
As I wrote here, the project ‘seemed determined to belittle smokers and their habit and was so tedious I eventually stopped visiting the site because I couldn’t imagine that anyone would take it seriously’.
To this day I would love to know how PMI execs justified the expense, but this is a company that also threw hundreds of thousands of dollars the way of the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World (before parting ways last year), so I guess £5 million was small change.
As for Vice, in 2016, when she was 19, my daughter offered this damning appraisal:
"It's written by a bunch of pathetic twenty somethings who hate anyone who doesn't agree with their uni politics.
"They pass their bitterness off as sarcastic humour. I much prefer Dazed and Confused if you're gonna read that stuff."
Visiting the Byre Theatre in St Andrews last week brought back a lot of memories.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I was in two school productions at the Byre, The Taming of the Shrew in 1974, and Our Town (by Thornton Wilder) in 1976.
In The Taming of the Shrew I played Lucentio who is ‘struck by love for Bianca at first sight’.
To be honest, I wasn’t a good actor and it didn’t help that I had to share the stage with Ron Porter, who was in Year 6, two years above me.
Ron played Petruchio and according to a review in the local paper:
Ron Porter’s affability shines out like the proverbial beacon ... as the most experienced member of the cast, he has the confidence to be able to establish an immediate rapport with the audience. ... [He] turned in his usual high standard of performance as the enormously arrogant Petruchio.
I didn’t even merit a mention but I console myself with the thought that, 50 years later, Ron is still enjoying a successful acting career under the name Ron Donachie.
We returned to the Byre for Our Town in January 1976. I played George Gibbs, a schoolboy who was falling for Emily, who lived across the street in a small provincial town in America, circa 1910.
As written by Thornton Wilder (in 1938), Our Town requires very few props and one of the props we employed was a step ladder.
For much of the play I sat on the top step which I think was supposed to represent George staring out of his bedroom window at Emily’s house, while George’s younger sister sat on a lower step giving him/me the benefit of her ‘advice’.
Well, that’s how I remember it. Either way, we spent what felt like a great many hours on that ladder in rehearsal prior to our three night run, so I can truly say we suffered for our art.
(Spoiler alert: George marries Emily who dies in childbirth in act 3, so not a happy ending, but it was a very happy production that I remember with great fondness.)
Between Shakespeare and Thornton Wilder I was in Charley’s Aunt, a Victorian farce that became a global success after it was first performed in Bury St Edmunds in 1892. Our production took place in school, in the assembly hall.
The weirdest production by far, though, was a series of short one act plays that we performed after our final exams in 1976.
The one I was in featured a young couple and their ‘dead’ baby and was set in a graveyard.
I played the man and a week before the performance the director took us to rehearse among the gravestones that sit alongside the ruins of St Andrews Cathedral.
At his insistence, the performance also featured my first (and last) on stage snog which might have been unremarkable had it not been for the location (a graveyard) and the ‘dead’ baby. Either way, it prompted several members of the audience to walk out.
Realising my acute limitations as an actor, I steered clear of the drama society at university and took part in just one play, an English Department production of a ‘domestic burletta’ first performed in 1826 that made a virtue of loud, overwrought acting with no need for nuance or subtlety.
Luke the Labourer did however enable me to share a stage, albeit very briefly, with the extremely talented Bill Anderson who went on to enjoy a stellar career as a writer and director in theatre and television.
Apart from an absurd student union pantomime, that was the last time I ‘acted’ on stage and the part I played was a far cry from my stage debut at Winbury School in Maidenhead in 1968.
Winbury was a small independent prep school and, if I remember, the school hall was an old Nissan hut that doubled up as the dining hall where we had lunch.
There was a stage at one end and because it was an all boys’ school someone had to play the girl and that someone was me.
According to my mother, the headmaster complimented me on how attractive I looked, which is probably the best review I ever got.
And the name of the play? Queer Street.
Update: I have found a cutting – a review of Luke the Labourer, no less – from the Aberdeen Press & Journal. Here's a snippet:
Last night, after the interval, the show took on a life and vigour that had been lacking earlier and although the players generally entered into the spirit of the piece, their enthusiasm ran away with them on occasion, when firmer discipline and less inclination to find the situation comic themselves might have paid dividends.
Below: Yours truly playing Farmer Wakefield and taking it very seriously.
Just back from a short break in St Andrews with my wife and my mother.
Although I visit St Andrews several times a year - usually after watching football in Dundee - this is only the second time my mother has been back to Fife since my parents returned to England in the late Seventies.
From 1969 to 1978 we lived in Wormit, a village that overlooks Dundee and the River Tay, and for six of those years (1970-1976) I went to school in St Andrews, twelve miles away.
From 1967 to 2021 Madras College was split across two campuses that were a mile-and-a-half apart.
The original building, in the centre of town, dates back to 1832, when the school was founded, and this week we stayed in an apartment in the old schoolhouse (above) that was once the home of the headmaster (or rector) and was built the same year.
In 2021 the school moved to a new £50 million campus on the edge of town and the original South Street site, with its Grade II listed building, has been bought by the university and is being redeveloped before its eventual unveiling as ‘New College’.
Anyway, on Tuesday morning we walked around the ruins of St Andrews Castle, which overlooks the sea and is home of the famous bottle dungeon, ‘one of medieval Britain's most infamous castle prisons’.
By coincidence, one of the guides was a former physics teacher at Madras, albeit long after I was there, and I was able to tell him about my physics teacher, a charismatic Cambridge graduate who ran off with the young French teacher (who really was French) and neither was seen or heard of again.
We then drove down the coast to Anstruther, a small fishing village I have written about many times, where we had lunch in the award-winning Anstruther Fish Bar, before returning to St Andrews to see a student production of Dr Faustus at the local Byre Theatre.
This was another trip down memory lane because I was in several school productions at the Byre including Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew (Easter 1974) and Our Town (January 1976), a three-act play written by American playwright Thornton Wilder in 1938.
(Of all the plays I was in at school and university, Our Town was probably my favourite, although you’d have to forgive my comically awful American accent.)
In the summer of 1976 I was also a body double in a professional production performed by the Byre’s resident company.
Sadly I can’t remember much about it apart from the fact that, late in the play, I had to fall out of a cupboard at the back of the stage whereupon the lights went out and I had to scramble off in the dark amid laughter and applause.
Founded in 1933 on the site of an old cow byre, the current building - opened in 2001 - is the third to be built since then (the building I performed in was the second) but the company that owned it went into administration a decade ago and the theatre is now run by the university.
I’m not sure that Dr Faustus (an Elizabethan tragedy by Christopher Marlow) would be high on my list of must sees, but it was entertaining enough, and a small but enthusiastic audience (mostly students) seemed to enjoy it.
Finally, a shout out to Haar, an award-winning restaurant where we had dinner on Wednesday.
Named after the thick sea mist that is common in St Andrews (and Wormit), Haar is on the same site as The Niblick, the first bar I ever bought a drink in, aged 15. The second was The Castle pub in North Street, a five minute walk from The Niblick.
Neither exists today (The Castle is now a private residence) but at least the old Niblick building is in good hands. Warmly recommended, should you ever find yourself in that neck of the woods.
PS. I don’t remember this but, according to Wikipedia, act one of Our Town ends with the Stage Manager (one of the leading characters) telling the audience:
"That's the end of Act I, folks. You can go and smoke, now. Those that smoke."
The anti-smoking group ASH last week announced the imminent retirement of their long-serving chief executive.
Deborah Arnott (above right) will leave her job, which she has held since 2003, on September 30th.
I wasn’t surprised. In fact, I half predicted it a year ago when I 'celebrated' the 20th anniversary of her reign by writing:
Deborah Arnott was 48 when she replaced Clive [Bates] as director of ASH … I'm not being ageist (I'm 64 myself!) but it does beg the question: could retirement be looming for this long-serving titan of tobacco control?
Last week’s announcement included tributes from some of Arnott’s allies in parliament and the public health industry, and it would be churlish of me to deny her ‘successes’, even though I fundamentally oppose much of what she, and ASH, represent.
Like it or not, she has been a tireless campaigner, even if some of her achievements have been slightly exaggerated.
Take the smoking ban. They say history is written by the victors and nowhere is this more apparent than in the infamous article that she and her sidekick, the late Ian Willmore, wrote for the Guardian after MPs voted for the legislation in England in 2006.
It was a remarkably self-congratulatory piece and I remember wondering what her fellow anti-smoking campaigners felt about them taking so much of the credit.
‘Smoke and Mirrors’ did however introduce us to two interesting concepts - the ‘swarm effect’ and the ‘confidence trick’.
According to Arnott and Willmore, they had some doubts that a comprehensive smoking ban would get through Parliament.
The ‘trick’ was to appear confident that the Bill would pass because by doing so they would win the support of politicians who want to be on the winning side.
The ‘swarm effect’ referred to the creation of a coalition of allies, an idea we took on board and adopted for our campaign against plain packaging a few years later.
For many years Deborah and I often went head-to-head on television and radio and I would be lying if I said I enjoyed it because, in person, she had an annoying habit of lecturing me even before the interview had begun.
I might be sitting quietly in the green room reading a paper and Deborah would arrive and start chiding me even before we went on air!
I don't recall any small talk, ever, but I had no problem with her in general. On one occasion I actually had reason to be grateful to her.
It was November 2009 and we were on the Alan Titchmarsh Show on ITV which was recorded as live on Wednesday and broadcast on Friday at 3.00pm.
The subject that particular week was the tobacco display ban which the then Labour government wanted to introduce.
There were four guests on the show and three of them - Deborah, Kelvin Mackenzie (former editor of The Sun), and another journalist, the fiercely anti-smoking Jaci Stephens - were in favour of the ban, so I was outnumbered three-to-one.
After the show, which was recorded in front of a live audience, I complained to Titchmarsh whose reaction was a little defensive.
Deborah overheard and ran after me to say she agreed with me - a first! It was a small gesture but one that I appreciated.
Sadly, it hasn’t always been like that. The nadir of our professional ‘relationship’ was probably ten years ago.
It was odd because Deborah should have been in a celebratory mood. It was a Monday night and MPs had just voted for a ban on smoking in cars carrying children.
We were booked to do an interview on the BBC News channel at Millbank studios in Westminster, just across the road from the Houses of Parliament, and what happened when she arrived took me by surprise.
“The people have spoken ... MPs have voted ... It's a victory for democracy ... You've lost ... Forest should shut up shop,” she told me, and this was off air!
Her bitterness towards Forest seemed to cloud any personal or professional satisfaction she must have felt about the vote, and when the interview finished she marched off without another word to me.
In 2011 I had asked ‘What’s become of ASH?’. Following the incident above, I went further and asked: ‘What does ASH do that justifies its continued existence?’
Looking back I made a pretty strong case, I think, but here’s the thing. That year (2014) marked a turning point for ASH, which I felt was running out of steam.
Indeed, Deborah Arnott’s greatest achievement in the past decade has arguably been the reinvention of ASH as an advocate of e-cigarettes as a smoking cessation tool, and it all began following the first E-Cigarette Summit in London in November 2013 when her ambivalence bordering on hostility towards vaping contrasted sharply with that of her predecessor Clive Bates.
Had she continued to be hostile to e-cigarettes ASH might have slipped into irrelevance.
Whether she recognised the danger I don’t know, but it was noticeable that over the next few years ASH not only became far more positive about e-cigarettes, but the go to authority whose research on the prevalence of vaping is quoted by everyone from government to a grateful vaping industry.
Arnott herself has became a permanent fixture at the E-Cigarette Summit on both sides of the Atlantic, frequently quoted by vaping advocates despite the fact that her vision is a future in which all forms of recreational nicotine have been eradicated and no-one smokes or vapes.
In recent years our paths have crossed less frequently. In fact, I can’t remember the last time we were in the same TV or radio studio together.
This is due partly to Covid, but also the changing nature of broadcasting. Today many interviews are conducted online and while it would be stretching things to say I miss our ‘head-to-heads’ in the studio, life is certainly a little duller without them.
So, what next for the outgoing CEO of ASH? As readers know I have been playfully lobbying for her and her counterpart in Scotland, Sheila Duffy, to be honoured in recognition of their services to the nanny state.
With a Conservative prime minister now driving that train, the time has surely come for them to be rewarded with an MBE or OBE.
But why stop there? Some people are even speculating that Deborah will be given a peerage, allowing her to continue her anti-smoking crusade in Parliament.
Meanwhile, this is how her retirement is being spun:
Before Deborah retires, parliament is expected to have passed revolutionary laws to create a smokefree generation; a fitting end to two decades of campaigning success.
But wait … when did ASH ever lobby the Government for a generational tobacco sales ban?
Raising the age of sale from 18 to 21 was the objective, not a generational ban. In fact, when plans to ban the sale of tobacco to future generations of adults were announced in New Zealand in 2021, ASH was noticeably lukewarm about the policy.
Likewise, until very recently, and unlike their counterparts in Scotland, ASH UK was opposed to banning disposable vapes. Since the Government announced plans to do just that, however, I don’t recall hearing a single word of protest from Deborah or her colleagues.
This chameleon-like quality to adapt to circumstances and abandon previous held positions is impressive, although it reeks (to me) of bare-faced opportunism.
Nevertheless, if all goes to plan over the next few weeks, the Tobacco and Vapes Bill will sail through Parliament, Rishi Sunak will have his legacy, and Deborah can walk off into the sunset, job done.
But is it?
Truth is, the holy grail for Deborah this past decade was not a generational ban, or even achieving smoke free status in England by 2030, but the introduction of a tobacco levy that would have forced the tobacco companies to fork out billions of pounds over many years, effectively funding the anti-smoking industry for decades to come.
That, I believe, is the real legacy Deborah hoped to secure before she retired, and unless Jeremy Hunt does a remarkable u-turn in the Budget next month (the Treasury has always opposed a tobacco levy), she will leave ASH with one of her principal goals unfulfilled.
As for her successor, one would imagine that Hazel Cheeseman, her deputy since 2021, is the hot favourite. Last year, having speculated that Arnott might retire, I wrote:
I’ve no reason to suppose Arnott's retirement is imminent, but it didn't go unnoticed that in 2021 Hazel Cheeseman stepped up from director of policy to deputy chief executive.
I may be wrong but I don’t recall ASH ever having a deputy CEO (or deputy director) before, so it wouldn’t surprise me if she is being lined up for the top job when Deborah does call it a day.
I still expect Hazel Cheeseman to be appointed but there has to be a recruitment process so it’s not impossible she could be pipped at the post by an external candidate. We’ll see.
Finally, I do want to pay a tribute (of sorts) to the outgoing CEO.
While ASH represents everything that’s wrong with a public health industry that puts regulation and coercion ahead of education and individual freedom, I recognise a committed and successful campaigner even if I don’t agree with the campaign.
I accept too that Deborah Arnott, an ex-smoker, is genuine in her belief that the world will be a better place without smoking or tobacco.
Of course I refute that because my experience tells me that, despite the health risks, a great many people enjoy smoking and a life without any risk is a poor substitute for living.
We must therefore agree to disagree.
Unfortunately, most tobacco control campaigners refuse to acknowledge that people like me hold views that are just as strong as theirs and, instead of respecting our differences, they insist we must be stooges of Big Tobacco.
Ringing in my ears, for example, is the repeated implication that people like me are driven not by principle but by money.
In 2010 Deborah told one interviewer:
“Well, to start with, Simon forgets to mention that his organisation is funded by the tobacco industry so his salary is paid out of their profits.”
In 2022 she was still banging the same drum:
“Well, first of all what Simon doesn't tell you is that he is a non-smoker, that he has made a very good living for over 20 years from being paid by the tobacco industry …”
I could of course have replied that Deborah Arnott has made an equally good living out of tobacco (control), earning significantly more than me, but I’m not that petty.
Also, I prefer to play the ball not the man.
That said, I bear her no ill will, so enjoy your retirement, Deborah. You’ve (cough) deserved it.
Monday, March 4, 2024 at 18:00 
