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!

Done roaming

I have some sympathy for Michael Matheson, the Scottish health secretary who clocked up an £11,000 data roaming charge on his iPad when abroad.

It’s easily done - especially if children are involved - and the reason I know this is because something similar happened to a friend of mine a few years ago.

His daughter went on a school trip to Europe and a few weeks after returning home the monthly bill for her iPad had an excess charge of €20,000.

A brief investigation revealed that it was the result of the daughter using her iPad to watch a film, with all the excess data and roaming charges that involved.

My friend naturally took this up with the network provider, arguing that a 16-year-old couldn’t be expected to know the financial implications of using the iPad in exactly the same way that she used it at home.

If I remember, the company pointed out that she would have received warnings, but they had been ignored.

Nevertheless, my friend (who is quite well off) threatened the company with m’learned friends and they dropped the additional charge as a ‘goodwill’ gesture, but it shows how easy it is to rack up roaming charges when abroad.

Funnily enough, I was thinking about this even before I read the Matheson story because as soon as I landed in Cork on Monday and turned on my phone and iPad I received messages from Vodafone and Three on this very subject.

According to Three:

Love staying connected? We recommend our Data Passport. It’s just GBP5.00 for unlimited data which you can use for up to 24 hours, as Data Passports are valid until midnight GMT+1 (BST) on the day of purchase …

Significantly, it added:

In order to avoid incurring roaming charges before purchasing a Data Passport, we suggest using a local WiFi connection instead of your roaming data.

Vodafone, meanwhile, welcomed me to Ireland with the news that:

It’s one of our inclusive Zone A destinations - so you can use the calls, texts and up to 25GB of data (including Extras) from your plan here at no extra cost. If your data runs out, it's 0.31p per MB (£3.13 per GB) for any more data you use.

A second message read:

One more quick thing... if you've set a spending limit with Vodafone Spend Manager, relax - it's still working hard to protect you against unexpected charges on your travels. Just like it does at home.

Needless to say I ignored all these messages, which is why I have some sympathy with Matheson (although I did ensure I was on wifi for most of the time I was in Ireland).

His biggest mistake, however, was hoping the taxpayer would pick up the bill.

Ultimately the excess charges were his responsibility so he would have been better advised to accept culpability immediately and take it up with his network provider, as my friend did.

Had he done that he would have had many people’s sympathy, mine included. Instead, his efforts to ‘protect’ his family have made things ten times worse.

Still, if this episode highlights the danger of unexpected roaming charges, he may have done everyone a favour.

There but for the grace of God etc.

Plane speaking

Just back from Cork.

I popped over to catch up with John Mallon who has been Forest’s spokesman in Ireland for 14 years.

Having led the world with the smoking ban in 2004 - something Irish politicians are insanely proud of - the country is now playing catch up on a number of regulations, including a ban on tobacco vending machines and age restrictions on the sale of e-cigarettes.

Incredibly, the Public Health (Tobacco Products and Nicotine Inhaling Products) Bill began its long journey in 2014.

Four years ago it was called the Public Health (Tobacco Products and Nicotine Inhaling Products) Bill 2019, but this year it became the Public Health (Tobacco Products and Nicotine Inhaling Products) Bill 2023.

Now there are plans to add further regulations to the Bill - specifically restrictions on the sale and marketing of e-cigarettes - that threaten to delay it even further.

Thankfully there doesn’t seem to be any desire (yet) to follow in the footsteps of New Zealand or Rishi Sunak and introduce a generational ban on the sale of tobacco, but you know how quickly these things can change.

Anyway, I always enjoy my visits to Ireland, although I was a bit apprehensive on Sunday when I saw the weather forecast for Monday morning, when I was due to fly to Cork from Stansted.

Storm Debi was predicted to hit Ireland before continuing its journey across the Irish Sea and then the UK, with wind speeds of 50-60mph and gusts significantly more than that.

The weather warning for Cork was upgraded from yellow to orange and being a nervous flyer, even in good weather, I wasn’t best pleased.

My flight was due to depart Stansted at 7.55am but when I woke at 4.00 and heard the rain lashing down outside I thought better of it and booked a seat on an evening flight when the forecast was better.

As it happens, the early morning flight on which I was originally booked landed in Cork on schedule, but by the time I got to Stansted for the later flight it was blowing a gale right across Cambridgeshire and Essex.

Sod’s Law.

Thankfully, apart from a slightly bumpy take off and landing, plus some mild turbulence mid flight, it wasn’t too bad. (Sorry to disappoint.)

The (irrational?) unease I feel when flying (I wouldn’t call it fear) harks back to my honeymoon 31 years ago when a small plane we were on in America dived up and down like a rollercoaster as the pilot battled to navigate our way around a thunderstorm.

It was probably no more than 30 seconds, although it felt much longer, but that - and another turbulent flight to the Cayman Islands on the same holiday - has influenced my dislike of flying ever since.

To be fair, I didn’t experience anything like that again until a few years ago when I flew out of Dublin.

The wind was around 40mph (the limit, apparently, for a ‘safe’ take-off) and the plane shook and ‘bounced’ so badly on take-off, and for several minutes as it climbed to cruising height, that I had to hold on grimly to the seat in front as we were thrown around.

Not pleasant.

In contrast to this feeble flyer, my mother, who will be 93 next month, told me recently that she would love to go into space, and she wasn’t joking.

I can understand the appeal of being weightless and looking down on Earth, but it’s the few minutes it takes to get there I don’t fancy, and the re-entry.

Apparently, in the days when you could book a flight on Concorde, my father suggested they book seats on one of those flights that took passengers on a round trip to and from Heathrow and over the Bay of Biscay.

They didn’t do it in the end, not because my mother didn’t want to, but because she felt it was too expensive. I think she regrets that decision now.

Anyway, I’m pleased to report that my return flight from Cork this morning was about as smooth as you could hope for. If only flying was like this all the time!

Above: Returning from Cork this morning. Below: Terrace at the Montenotte Hotel overlooking Cork harbour

Nanny state of the nation

The King's Speech on Tuesday confirmed that the Prime Minister intends to press ahead with legislation to raise the age of sale of tobacco by one year every year until no-one can legally purchase cigarettes and other tobacco products.

In response to a policy that threatens to treat future generations of adults like children (see ‘King’s Speech: Activists decry generational ban’), Forest is inviting opponents of the proposed legislation to join us in London on Monday November 20.

The event, at Old Queen Street Cafe in Westminster, features me, Claire Fox (aka Baroness Fox of Buckley), Henry Hill (ConservativeHome), Reem Ibrahim (Institute of Economic Affairs), and Ella Whelan (Academy of Ideas), but we also want to hear from you.

As well as highlighting the absurd nature of the proposed legislation, the event will also mark the recent publication of a short essay I wrote for the Academy of Ideas’ Letters on Liberty strand. By coincidence (it was written in July), the title is ‘Freedom: Up In Smoke?’.

If you're unfamiliar with Old Queen Street Cafe, it was opened last year by the same people who run the online magazine UnHerd, whose office is next door.

The cafe is open from 8.00am to 11.00pm for breakfast, coffee, lunch, dinner, or events such as this and having visited it for the first time only a few weeks ago I can report that it's rather wonderful and definitely worth a visit.

You'll find us on the first floor where we've booked the Library and Club Bar for drinks and canapés from 6.15pm followed by what should be lively discussion at 7.00.

Places are limited so if you’d like to join us please reserve your place now. RSVP events@forestonline.org or register via Eventbrite.

The Institute of Economic Affairs will also be discussing the issue on Wednesday November 29 when the free market think tank hosts ‘Prohibition 2.0: the future of UK tobacco policy'.

Chaired by Reem Ibrahim, speakers include the IEA’s Chris Snowdon, Madeline Grant (Telegraph), Paul North (Volteface), and retailer Paul Cheema (Association of Convenience Stores). For details click here.

Happy birthday, Andy Partridge

I don't normally mention birthdays here, but I read that XTC’s Andy Partridge is 70 today.

Two years ago, at a rate of one a week, I featured my favourite XTC songs, most of them written by Partridge.

It culminated with this post, XTC – an appreciation, that concluded as follows:

Finally, a word about the sometimes maligned Andy Partridge, the band’s principal singer/songwriter, whose feud with producer Todd Rundgren during the recording of Skylarking in 1986 is still being written and talked about by XTC obsessives decades later.

Ironically Skylarking is many people’s favourite XTC album and the consensus seems to be that Partridge needed a strong producer to curb his excesses and in Rundgren he met his match. Or, as Partridge himself said, it was “like having two Hitlers in the same bunker.”

What cannot be denied is that for all his alleged bossiness in the studio which clearly drove band mates and several producers to distraction, Partridge can be irresistibly engaging and humorous. The evidence, if you want to look for it, is on the Internet – from appearances on the Multi-Coloured Swap Shop with Noel Edmunds, presenting a guided tour of Swindon, his home town, to more recent podcasts and interviews in which he is happy to talk at length about XTC and the process of songwriting. (Listen to him describe the making of 'Easter Theatre' from Apple Venus.)

Arguably the most evocative of the 30 songs listed above is a simple live acoustic version of ‘Train Running Low On Soul Coal’ that was recorded as part of a documentary (XTC - Play At Home) broadcast on Channel 4 in 1984. In my view it's far superior to the longer, over-produced version that appeared on The Big Express and even ends with a knowing, self-deprecating nod to XTC’s legendary ‘popularity’, even in their home town. Available only on YouTube, you can watch it here.

Since the final XTC album was issued 23 years ago, Partridge has kept himself busy releasing demos (the 8-CD Fuzzy Warbles collection), overseeing the release of remastered versions of XTC’s back catalogue, and (occasionally) writing with or for other musicians.

His recent projects include a 4-track EP written and recorded with Jen Olive and Stu Rowe and released as The 3 Clubmen. The lead track, Aviatrix, is worth a listen even if you have no interest in XTC.

A few weeks ago The Big Express, ‘the seventh in a series of expanded XTC album reissues’, was re-released and although it’s still far from my favourite XTC album you can’t fault the ambition of a track like the aforementioned ‘Train Running Low On Soul Coal’.

Meanwhile, I have bought myself an advance Christmas present - ‘Pop Artery’, a ‘deluxe 122 page book collecting 56 unique paintings by Andy Partridge that offer visual interpretations of XTC songs’.

It will go nicely, I think, with the ‘Dig For XTC’ print that’s on the wall of my office (below).

The serious point I wish to make, though, is this. Sometimes, when I read interviews with Partridge, you can sense frustration that XTC never enjoyed prolonged commercial success or greater recognition.

To most people XTC and Andy Partridge are at best a footnote in pop history, if that.

It’s regrettable, certainly, but thousands of talented musicians have fared much worse, and nothing can diminish the pleasure Partridge has brought to people like me (and I’m not even what you might call an uber fan), or the body of work he has created.

He may not be a household name (even in Swindon!) but most people would, and should, be extremely proud of such a legacy.

So happy 70th birthday, Andy Partridge. You’ve earned it.