Marianna Spring watch

Appointed in 2020, Marianna Spring is the BBC's 'first disinformation and social media correspondent'.

A few weeks ago she was also recruited to work for BBC Verify, the new fact-checking team that has been launched 'to counter disinformation'.

Recently she has been presenting a Radio 4 series (and podcast) called 'Marianna in Conspiracyland', a programme title that is quite an accolade for someone who was largely unknown until a few weeks ago, and even now is probably unknown to most people outside the media bubble.

Anyway, I mention this not because I have anything against her but because the name sounded familiar and it was only yesterday that I finally remembered why.

Readers probably won't remember this, but in 2015 I took part in an Oxford Union debate. It provoked some controversy, which I wrote about here, because the idea for a debate about the morality of the tobacco industry came originally from Imperial Tobacco, who offered to sponsor it and provide a speaker.

It all kicked off and the student journalist who reported the story for Cherwell, the Oxford student newspaper, was none other than ... Marianna Spring.

To be fair, it was a comprehensive, well-balanced piece, far better written than most student newspaper reports I've read (and I've edited two student newspapers so I have some experience of them!).

I hope for her sake though that her current role doesn't define her career, although she seems to have entered into it quite happily and over several years.

It's hard enough being a top journalist without having a target on your back, and when you've been appointed by your vainglorious bosses 'to counter disinformation' in order to meet 'the rigorous editorial standards the BBC is proud to uphold', the pressure will be enormous.

And while the BBC Verify team may be 60-strong, Spring appears to be its public face.

Anyway, I'm glad I finally remembered her Cherwell report (‘Union tarred by Imperial Tobacco sponsorship dealings') because it had been bugging me for weeks.

See also: 'The BBC’s phoney war on disinformation' (UnHerd) and From Cherwell to the BBC: Marianna Spring in Conversation (Cherwell).

Designing the future

My daughter was invited to Number 10 last week.

She was attending a reception to celebrate a project she’s been working on for the best part of a year.

The London Design Biennale is at Somerset House until June 25 and on Saturday we went to see it for ourselves.

Described as an ‘interactive, musical and kinetic exhibition of design and design-led innovation from across the globe’, it features contributions from multiple countries including Poland, Ukraine, USA, Malta, Chile, Taiwan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, and many more.

Spain and Peru, countries that share a cultural heritage, collaborated on a joint installation, as did Denmark and Switzerland (for reasons that were slightly less clear).

I can't pretend I understood the purpose or message behind every exhibit, but the award-winning Polish pavilion – featuring discarded but reusable windows that are being collected and sent to Ukraine to help repair buildings damaged in the war – left nothing to the imagination, and was all the more poignant for it.

Correspondingly, part of the Ukraine pavilion (named 'The Darkest Hour Is Just Before Dawn') features taped windows which in a war zone is intended, I think, to limit shards of glass injuring or maiming people following an explosion.

The meaning behind other exhibits was sometimes more opaque. Literally.

The Serbian pavilion was a darkened room infused with a strong scent and shafts of murky light. I’ve no idea what it was meant to represent but it certainly had a calming effect.

I also liked the Congo pavilion which 'reimagines the country's national museum as a vivid virtual world'.

It made maximum use of the space and featured, on one wall, a large screen featuring what appeared to be live pictures of passing traffic shot from a camera on the roof of what I assume is the national museum in Kinshasa.

Consequently it was one of the few exhibits that gave a direct glimpse of the country the pavilion was there to represent.

Arguably the most significant room was devoted to items made by Ai-Da Robot, 'the world's first ultra-realistic robot artist':

Ai-Da Robot makes history as the first humanoid robot to use artistic AI algorithms to design everyday items such as mugs, vases, plates and cutlery.

If I understood it correctly, however, many of the items are considered to be failures because of various 'mistakes'.

Nevertheless, the designs looked quite impressive to me, although how practical some of the items on display are I don't know.

It can only be a matter of time before the errors are eliminated, though, and what happens after that is anyone’s guess.

Pity the designers of the future, although it won't be the first time they've been threatened by new technology.

I remember, in the late Eighties and early Nineties, how the rapid advance of desktop publishing replaced skilled graphic designers with IT specialists who may have had an eye for design but were employed primarily for their IT skills.

To survive, graphic designers had to become computer literate extremely quickly, and that was quite a struggle for the older ones in particular.

Back at Somerset House there was also an exhibition within an exhibition. This was Eureka, a ‘showcase of design research from across UK universities’.

Strathclyde University (I think it was) had a design proposal for a High Line in Glasgow city centre.

Having been hugely impressed by the wonderful New York High Line when I was there in 2017, I would love to see something similar in other cities, and as a regular visitor to Glasgow I can imagine it being a huge attraction.

I was drawn too to the proposal for a new type of public toilet in Glasgow city centre:

Changes include increased floor space in cubicle … and posters of local events, history information, helplines and places of support to create sense of community.

I’m not sure how much of that is a priority when you’re bursting for a pee, but I do think Britain's public toilets are due a major overhaul, as long as they’re not unisex!

Somerset House, I quickly discovered, has a choice of male, female, and unisex toilets and on the two occasions I used the unisex toilets I had to queue!

No queuing was required for the male only toilet, but it was only late in the afternoon that I discovered there was one.

My daughter, I should add, isn't keen on unisex toilets either. According to her, men make too much mess.

But I digress.

Aside from the Biennale, I thoroughly recommend Somerset House as a venue, although navigating every room can be a little confusing.

Despite visiting the East and West Wings, and the basement and mezzanine in the main building, the Dubai pavilion, which was said to be one of the highlights of the Biennale, remained elusive.

It looked good in the brochure, though.

Somerset House has two excellent cafes and, outside, a lively terrace bar which appear to be open to the general public, not just visitors.

The Financial Times reviewed the London Design Biennale here and you can also read about it here and here.

Unlike my daughter (above), I have never been invited inside Number 10.

The closest I’ve been to the hallowed hall and staircase (with its portraits of every British prime minister) was standing outside the famous front door in 2014.

I was part of a small delegation tasked with delivering 53,196 letters to the then PM David Cameron opposing plain packaging of tobacco.

In fact, all but a handful were sent to another address because Downing Street, understandably, didn’t want them all delivered to the front door.

Instead we were allowed to deliver, by hand, 2,500 letters in a single cardboard box, but only after jumping through numerous hoops.

Full story here.

Aviatrix - The 3 Clubmen featuring XTC’s Andy Partridge

I don’t normally foist my very limited musical taste on to others, but readers will know that I am a big fan of the English band XTC.

See ‘XTC - an appreciation’.

Since the band stopped recording 20 years ago, principal songwriter Andy Partridge has kept himself busy (ish) with a handful of side projects.

The latest to see the light of day is a four-track collaboration with two fellow musicians, American Jen Olive and Swindon-based Stu Rowe, which is being released at the end of the month as The 3 Clubmen EP.

‘Aviatrix’, released in advance as a single, is described as ‘avant pop’. According to one review:

Flutes flutter, boy-girl harmonies are traded, and drums offer off-beat tattoos over a beguiling and consistent back beat. And as it heads towards its final destination, things seem to ramp up in intensity; the spaces lessen, the sonic ideas flow, the tones darken, and the textures deepen.

Do listen.

So. Farewell then …

So. Farewell then, Boris Johnson.

I’ve never hidden my fondness for the man, though goodness knows he was (and is) a hugely frustrating figure.

In 2012, shortly after he was re-elected as mayor of London, I wrote:

What a relief to know that London will be represented at the 2012 Olympics not by [Ken] Livingstone but by the slightly eccentric figure of Boris Johnston. With Boris at the opening ceremony I might even be persuaded to watch. Let's hope the occasion reflects the charming and slightly shambolic personality of the city's mayor – the complete opposite, in other words, of Beijing in 2008.

Sadly, it was the ‘shambolic personality’ I found endearing that arguably made him unsuitable as PM.

Anyway, following his resignation yesterday as the member of parliament for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, it’s time to dust off an interview he gave me 23 years ago, shortly after he was selected as the prospective parliamentary candidate for Henley-on-Thames.

Interview is perhaps too strong a word (it was a short and very fluffy piece) but, looking back, I am struck by one response in particular:

I still have a dream that I’ve been picked to play rugby for England and no-one can quite believe it. I can hear the commentary in my head. I get the ball. I’m going for the try line - and then something terrible happens and I wake up.

You can read the full piece here - Strange but true, my interview with Boris Johnson - and read into it what you like.

Thereafter our paths crossed only occasionally, and never directly.

In 2006, for example, he was the guest speaker at the annual lunch organised by the Association of Independent Tobacco Specialists (AITS) at Lords Cricket Ground.

In 2007, partly as a result of that, I invited Boris to be the main speaker at a dinner to mark the imminent introduction of the smoking ban.

Hosted by Forest at the Savoy Hotel, London, we contacted the speakers’ agency that handled him and were quoted £10,000 for a 20-minute speech.

To be fair, this was not excessive because we were also quoted £25k for Stephen Fry and £35k for Al Murray (aka The Pub Landlord) who was then at the height of his fame.

Booking Boris however came with a warning. He would arrive shortly before he was due to give his speech, and depart shortly after.

In the end it didn’t happen because the event was on a Monday night and we were told that Boris liked to keep Monday nights free for his family. (No sniggering at the back, please.)

Instead, via Boisdale MD Ranald Macdonald, we booked broadcaster and journalist Andrew Neil who gave a wonderful speech and, better still, arrived for the pre-dinner drinks reception at 7.00pm and stayed until 11.00. Now that’s what I call value for money!

Thereafter, as mayor of London, Boris opposed talk of banning smoking in public parks, calling it “bossy”, but it was also his sudden and unexpected support for a ban on smoking in cars with children (thereby siding with Labour) that increased the pressure on David Cameron to act.

(To be clear, Forest’s opposition to the ban was based on the fact that, by 2014, there was no evidence that large numbers of people were still smoking in cars carrying children so introducing a specific law to stop them seemed unnecessary and had the principal effect of stigmatising all parents who smoked.)

The rest, as they say, is history (Brexit, Foreign Secretary, etc) but I couldn’t have been happier when Boris became leader of the Conservative Party and PM and thereafter won the December 2019 general election with a mini landslide that enabled him to ‘Get Brexit done’.

Since then, of course, it’s all been a bit of a disaster.

Throughout the pandemic I remained sympathetic to a politician who, in my view, was clearly trying to stay true to his liberal instincts but was under huge pressure to impose excessive and, as it now seems (albeit in hindsight), unnecessarily rigid regulations.

In January 2022 I wrote:

Boris clearly deserves credit for the success of the vaccine roll-out. More recently his refusal to reimpose greater restrictions should also be applauded. Compare that to the policies imposed by the devolved governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and the contrast is clear.

Sadly I was forced to conclude (‘Has Boris blown it?’):

The PM can only blame himself for his current predicament and it’s a tragedy not just for Boris but for the country given what could have been achieved with an 80-seat majority and an allegedly liberal, pro-Brexit, pro-free market PM in power.

Arguably it’s not too late. My fear though is that the damage is done and it’s completely self-inflicted. What a waste.

Will he make a political comeback? Who knows, but perhaps we should be saying ‘au revoir’ rather than ‘adieu’.

The ex-smoking tobacco CEO who wants government to ban cigarettes

The CEO of Philip Morris International was in London a couple of weeks ago.

As I wrote here, the theme of Jacek Olczak’s short speech at the UnHerd Club in Westminster was ‘the impact of inaction when it comes to addressing smoking rates worldwide’.

He also says a date should be set to ban cigarettes:

‘Looking at what the UK is doing in the car industry, saying that as of a certain year you are not allowed to produce petrol cars, we could have this with tobacco too,’ he told the Mail.

I know, I know. Yawn, yawn.

This, after all, is not the first time PMI has called for a ban on the sale of cigarettes (in the UK at least). Two years ago the company generated global headlines with this announcement:

Philip Morris International says it will stop selling Marlboro cigarettes in Britain within a decade as it called on the UK government to ban the sale of its tobacco products.

If you're wondering why PMI is so keen for the UK government to prohibit cigarettes, it's worth noting (again) that the company's share of the UK cigarette market is less than ten per cent, far behind that of JTI and Imperial who between them have something like 80 per cent of the market.

With this in mind, who would suffer most from a ban on the sale of cigarettes in the UK? Not Philip Morris, that's for sure.

Furthermore, as Forest pointed out in our response:

"If Philip Morris want to leave smoking behind, good luck to them, but banning cigarettes won't stop people smoking. It will simply drive the product into the hands of criminal gangs who will happily sell illicit and counterfeit cigarettes to anyone who wants them, including children."

But back to CEO Jacek Olczak. According to the Mail:

Olczak was himself a smoker for two decades until he tried the brand’s IQOS heated tobacco device.

Oh, the joy of the convert! Not content with finding a pleasurable alternative to cigarettes that has enabled him to quit smoking after 20 years, Olczak wants to deny future generations the choice of doing exactly what he did as a younger man.

Funnily enough, I've been a mini cheerleader for IQOS, PMI's heated tobacco product, for seven or eight years, having first encountered it in Switzerland, before it was on sale in the UK.

Swiss radio presenter Mark Butcher, an occasional visitor to this blog, convinced me that it was a good product and a great replacement for the cigarettes he used to smoke.

Other users (not all) have said much the same to me, and I've passed the feedback on, both here and in media interviews.

But the point is this. If e-cigarettes, heated tobacco, and nicotine pouches are good enough there ought to be no need to ban a 'rival' nicotine product that's already hidden from view in shops.

That's not how a free market should work, which is why I find it disappointing that free market think tanks and consumer groups turn a blind eye to PMI's prohibitionist agenda.

Make cigarettes 'obsolete', if you can, by producing better, less harmful, and equally pleasurable products, but as we've said again and again and again, this is about choice, and as long as there are adults who prefer to smoke cigarettes rather than switch to other nicotine products, that choice must be respected.

Truth is, I'm getting a bit sick of PMI's grandstanding and hypocrisy on this issue.

We all know why the company can't or won't stop selling cigarettes unilaterally in the UK or globally. As I wrote here, it was spelled out by the company in an answer to a question on PMI's LinkedIn event page only two weeks ago:

Discontinuing cigarette sales without addressing the demand for cigarettes would not put an end to smoking. It simply would result in competitors and the illicit trade filling the market space. We are fully committed to doing all we can to ensure that #smokefree products that are scientifically substantiated to be less harmful replace cigarettes as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, to quote the Mail again:

PMI's sale of cigarettes are still strong in the Middle East, Africa, south-east Asia and the Americas.

In other words, the company is still dependent on the sale of cigarettes (currently two thirds of its revenue) and while PMI's investors may enjoy being associated with a company that likes to bathe in the warm glow of its own anti-smoking rhetoric, I can't imagine they want the company to walk away from what is still its major source of revenue, and profits.

To be clear, I don't have an issue with PMI going in whatever direction it likes. What concerns me is when the company calls on government to ban the sale of all cigarettes, that would (a) prohibit others from producing a product still enjoyed by millions of consumers, and (b) fuel a huge black market in illegal and counterfeit cigarettes.

If PMI execs hate cigarettes so much then the only credible path, surely, is to set their own date to unilaterally stop manufacturing and selling the product, after which they can focus exclusively on heated tobacco, vapes and nicotine pouches, leaving the cigarette market to others.

It won't end smoking, but at what point did that become PMI's great mission?

Wine in the office? Why not?

I was on GB News yesterday discussing smoking breaks at work.

It followed a report in the Daily Telegraph on Tuesday - ‘Cigarette breaks give smokers an extra week of holiday a year’.

According to the paper:

More than half (52 per cent) of smokers surveyed said they leave their desks for a cigarette or vape break multiple times a day, according to research from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

If I was surprised it’s because it’s not the sort of research I normally associate with the ONS.

Scrolling down, however, readers were then told that the survey ‘was carried out by tobacco-free nicotine pouch and vape company Haypp UK’, which made more sense.

The true source of the research was also confirmed by subsequent reports in The Sun (‘The amount of time smokers get off work just with cigarette breaks revealed – it’s more than you think’) and The Times (‘Cigarette breaks ‘add up to an extra week off work’).

(According to The Times, ‘In 2021, 13 per cent of people in the UK aged over 18 smoked cigarettes, which equates to 6.6 million people, according to the Office for National Statistics’, so perhaps that was in the original press release and the Telegraph got confused when initially attributing the Haypp research to the ONS.)

Throwing smokers under a bus has of course become de rigueur for the non-combustible nicotine industry, but I’m not sure it’s a particularly clever thing to do.

Vaping, for example, is now prohibited in many places where smoking is banned, which is the inevitable consequence of not fighting smoking bans because, for many people, vaping bans are the next logical step.

Pouches are a different proposition to cigarettes and vapes because it’s virtually impossible to see what someone has got in their mouth, so good luck policing that.

Nevertheless, I think it’s short-sighted to feed the anti-nicotine industry with ammunition that can be used to attack consumers of other nicotine products, including cigarettes, but there you go.

Surely it’s possible to promote the benefits and convenience of pouches without belittling smokers, your potential future customers?

But back to GB News.

I was interviewed by Dawn Neesom, who is a regular guest on both GB News and TalkTV. Yesterday however the former editor of the Daily Star (2003-2018) was presenting her own programme.

The topic of our discussion was ‘Should we dock the pay of smokers?’.

You can guess my answer but the conversation took a surprise turn when Dawn asked me, “Should we allow wine in the office as well?”

This is an interesting question to which there is no simple answer because it depends on a number of factors but, given the fact that the interview was coming to a close, I thought I’d better keep my answer short, hence my reply:

“I don’t see why not.”

I’m not suggesting office workers should be glugging back the wine on a regular basis, or getting drunk at their desk, but the odd tipple?

I know a man (who shall remain nameless) who enjoyed a glass of wine most days in his office, and fair play to him.

OK, it was during his lunch break (he wasn’t taking drink breaks!) but it was always in moderation and had no affect on his ability to do his job.

Perhaps it’s because I’m from an older generation, but I remember when drinking during working hours (albeit not at one’s desk) was perfectly normal.

I started work in 1980 and for several years it was not unusual to have a pub lunch that included at least one pint of beer.

In those days the culture in PR and journalism saw alcohol not as the enemy of work but a vital part of it.

Lunches with clients were expected to include an aperitif followed by wine with the meal.

At the same time many journalists in what was Fleet Street were fuelled by alcohol.

Today nothing makes my heart sink faster than the announcement that my lunch companion isn’t drinking.

Recently that included Ranald Macdonald, MD of Boisdale Restaurants, who was happy to be photographed with a glass of wine, but in reality not a drop passed his lips.

And he’s a restaurateur and wine connoisseur!

As for drinking in the office, there is a time and a place, I know that, but I also stand by my response to Dawn Neesom on GB News.

Likewise, I don’t see why staff shouldn’t smoke at work if it doesn’t interfere with their ability to do their job.

As I said to Neesom, many non-smokers take non-authorised breaks. What matters to an employer is whether they get the job done and, in my experience of working with smokers and non-smokers, smoking has never been a factor in their ability to do just that.

It’s worth noting too that smoking areas at work can be the most egalitarian - a place where staff rub shoulders with senior management on an (almost) equal footing.

In fact, someone once told me that the smoking area was the one place she regularly got to meet the managing director of the FTSE 100 company she worked for because he was a smoker too.

No rain in Spain (warmly recommended)

Just back from a week in Spain.

We stayed at Ikos, a resort near Malaga in Andalusia, although the nearest town was Estepona, which we visited on Wednesday.

The old town (above) was interesting. Over the last two decades there has been a huge project to revitalise what was apparently quite a run down area.

From what we saw the local authorities have done a great job, demonstrating that conservation and modernisation are not mutually exclusive.

Other than visiting Estepona, however, we stayed within the resort because the one place we really wanted to visit - Granada - was too far unless we stayed overnight.

This was our third holiday at an Ikos resort, the two previous ones having been at Dassia in Corfu (which I wrote about here and here).

Ikos is a Greek company but most of the guests in Corfu and Spain have been British. There were a few Germans and one or two Americans, and on Thursday we spoke to an elderly, Flemish-speaking couple from Belgium.

Apparently, apart from a day trip to Hastings, they had never been anywhere outside Belgium until their first Ikos holiday a few years ago.

This was their third trip to Ikos Andalusia (it only opened in 2021) and they have two more booked for later this year.

But Andalusia isn’t their favourite destination. That’s Ikos Aria on the Greek island of Kos, but it’s also the smallest which may explain why it’s harder to book.

Anyway, a clue to their many recent visits may be the fact that the husband revealed that his wife isn’t well, although she played this down.

He added that she shouldn’t be drinking but his wife just laughed and we all clinked glasses. (We were on adjacent tables having lunch.)

Finally, since our last visit to Ikos Dassia in Corfu in 2021, the company has ditched its fleet of Minis in favour of Model 3 Teslas.

Guests are offered the complimentary use of a car for one day so I can see the appeal of the deal to Tesla - thousands of potential customers being given what is, in effect, an extended test drive.

Unfortunately, on the day we had pre-booked our courtesy car, I had to do some unforeseen work (it always happens!), so I still haven’t driven a Tesla, or any other electric vehicle.

The good news is that fuel prices are coming down so I will stick with my diesel SUV for the foreseeable.

PS. The week before we arrived it rained heavily, apparently. Fortunately, apart from the occasional overcast sky, we enjoyed bright sunshine and an average daytime temperature of 24 or 25 degrees.

Warmly recommended.

ASH and Labour singing from the same hymn sheet

The Government has announced additional measures to crack down on children vaping.

No problem with that but what caught my attention was the remarkable similarity between the statements issued by Labour’s shadow health secretary Wes Streeting, and the CEO of ASH, Deborah Arnott.

According to Streeting, “This new announcement is a baby step when we need urgent action now.”

Echoing his words, Arnott said the proposals were “baby steps not the tough action that’s needed”.

Coincidence, or a sign of things to come?