Oh dear, how sad, never mind

STV News reports that:

Not one fine has been issued since smoking was made illegal within hospital grounds in Scotland last year.

Oh dear, how sad, never mind.

Public health minister Jenni Minto MSP hopes the lack of fines means people are "taking heed" of the new rules and have changed their behaviour.

Well, that's one way of spinning it. According to a similar investigation by the Scottish Sun in January, however:

Smokers are stubbornly flouting the SNP's ban on lighting up outside hospitals – but not one was fined in the law's first three months.

(See also 'Scottish hospital smoking ban a failure'.)

I'm pleased because when it came to opposing a ban on smoking on hospital grounds, Forest was pretty much on its own. Remember this?

Plans to make smoking in hospital grounds a statutory offence have been branded "inhumane, petty and vindictive" by a pro-smoking (sic) group.

Simon Clark from Forest made the remark while giving evidence to Holyrood's health committee.

Hospitals have banned smoking in their grounds, but it is being flouted.

Mr Clark told MSPs: "Going to hospital as a patient or a visitor can be a very stressful experience. It's also quite stressful for many members of staff.

"To ban smoking on all hospital grounds, we think, is totally inhumane, it's totally vindictive, it's petty, far pettier actually than banning smoking in pubs. At least people can still go outside.

"To extend it to entire hospital sites, we think, is absolutely outrageous."

Full story: Hospital smoking ban plan 'petty', Holyrood committee told (BBC News, September 2015).

Whatever the reason for the lack of fines (ASH Scotland says it may be due to a lack of funding to pay for enforcement officers), I'm pleased that smokers aren't being punished unnecessarily.

It also supports our argument that NHS managers have far more important things on their plate than targeting patients, visitors, and staff for having a quiet smoke in the open air.

My interview with the plastic surgery queen

In 1991 I interviewed an American woman called Cindy Jackson.

She was in her mid thirties but looked younger:

Chemo peel, temporal lift, rhinoplasty, collagen lips, silicon breast implants, abdominal lipectomy – you name it, she’s done it. The question is, why?

A few years ago I posted the interview on this blog, adding the following note:

We met in a little cafe just inside the Cafe Royal in Regent Street. I was editing a magazine for an organisation she was a member of so I don't remember if I contacted her or she contacted me. Either way, she had an interesting story to tell that had already attracted the attention of other journalists. Her claim to fame was cosmetic surgery. When we met she had already had twelve 'procedures' costing £20,000 …

By 1999 that sum was reported to have risen to £60k for 27 operations, resulting in an unwelcome and arguably misleading entry in the Guinness Book of Records.

Now 68, the 'eternally youthful’ Jackson, who has been dubbed a ‘human Barbie doll’, has just published a new book, 'How Not To Get Botched', and last week the Telegraph conducted their own interview with the ‘plastic surgery queen'.

I have to say she sounds almost exactly the same as she did all those years ago - modest, down-to-earth, and genuinely anxious to help others learn from her experiences, good and bad.

Published 32 years apart, you can read the two interviews here and here.

Doug Naysmith (RIP) and a rather surprising claim to fame

They say you should never speak ill or disrespectfully of the dead, and I don’t intend to start now.

Nevertheless, I am a little stumped.

Yesterday the Telegraph published an obituary of former Labour MP Doug Naysmith, who died recently, aged 82, and the headline read:

Doug Naysmith, MP who campaigned successfully to have smoking banned in public places

How strange. Having campaigned against bans on smoking in public places for most of the period Naysmith was an MP (1997-2010), I can honestly say I don’t remember him at all.

There are many people I do remember campaigning to have smoking banned in public places, but the former MP for Bristol North West is not one of them.

According to the Telegraph however he was ‘a driving force within the Health Select Committee’ and:

His own proudest moment came in 2007 when the Government banned smoking in public places, in good measure as a result of his campaigning.

Seriously?!

I’ve done a quick online search and I can find just one news report about the smoking ban that features a quote by Doug Naysmith and it’s from October 2005:

Why UK differs on smoke ban policy (BBC News)

Ironically it features a lengthy comment from me as well, and I still don’t remember him!

Look, I don’t want to disparage the man and his achievements. He clearly dedicated himself to public service (he was also a Bristol city councillor for 21 years), which is something I respect.

But the Telegraph obituary seems to be re-writing history, and I’m not sure why.

Update: Neither the Bristol Post (Tributes to former Bristol MP Dr Doug Naysmith who has died) nor ITV (West Country) mention the smoking ban in their reports of Doug Naysmith’s death, far less the claim that it was introduced ‘in good measure as a result of his campaigning’.

So why the Telegraph?

Update #2: Today's ASH Daily News doesn't mention the Telegraph's obituary which rather supports my point.

Update #3: ASH has belatedly included the Telegraph’s obituary in its Daily News bulletin (July 13), adding this (barely intelligible) note:

Doug Naysmith was an active member of the Health Select Committee in a first for a Select Committee tabled all-party amendments removing the exemptions to the smoking ban in the Health Bill 2005 for licensed premises and private members clubs. The amendments were passed on a free vote by a majority of 200, paving the way for implementation of comprehensive smokefree laws in England in 2007

Frankly, I’m none the wiser. Are you?

West End guys (and girls)

Strange as it may seem, I happen to know the lyricists of two new West End musicals.

One is my godson. (More on him later.) The other I have known for 40 years.

I first met Todd Buchholz in 1983 when I was invited by the Young Americas Foundation, a ‘conservative youth movement’, to spend two weeks in Washington DC.

Todd studied law at Harvard, then economics at Cambridge, and was later a White House advisor during George Bush’s presidency.

Today he is best known as an economist and author whose titles include the bestselling New Ideas From Dead Economists.

In recent years, however, having been one of the original backers of Jersey Boys, the ‘global smash-hit musical’, Todd has acquired a new interest.

Together with his daughter Victoria, he has written his own musical inspired by the life of Gino Bartali, an Italian road cyclist who won the Tour de France in 1938 and 1948:

With his cycling career as a cover, Bartali cycled thousands of miles between cities across Italy. Hidden in the frame of his bike were falsified identity cards and other secret documents to help victims of the Second World War cross borders to safety from Mussolini’s fascist regime. His efforts saved hundreds of persecuted Jews and other refugees, many of whom were children.

Todd tells me that Gino Bartali, like most men at the time, was a smoker “who credited smoking with helping him win” the Tour de France and Giro d'Italia. “He felt it gave him energy.”

On stage however Todd admits that the only character who smokes is the baddy, Bartali’s former friend turned fascist collaborator, Mario. (Still, better than nothing!)

Glory Ride has been in development for the best part of a decade and in November 2022, after workshops in New York and Los Angeles, the show finally premiered in London when a handful of work-in-progress staged concerts were performed at The Other Palace.

The reviews were good enough to lead to the offer of a four-month run showcasing the full production at Charing Cross Theatre this summer.

By coincidence, in the mid Nineties I produced a one-off variety show at the same venue.

In those days it was known as The Players Theatre and specialised in Victorian style music hall entertainment, like The Good Old Days on TV (which older readers will remember).

The auditorium has around 300 seats, so it’s one of the smallest theatres in the West End. However it’s built under the arches at Charing Cross station - hence the long, curved ceiling - so it’s quite atmospheric.

The first performance of Glory Ride was in April and the show will close, after this initial run, on July 29.

I saw the staged concert last year and this week I am going to see the full show.

Reviews, it’s fair to say, have been mixed. The Times (‘great idea, executed with enough energy to power the most reluctant cyclist up a mountain’) gave it 3/5 stars, but what an achievement to devise and write a musical and get it on the London stage with a full cast.

As for my godson, Tom Ling, his achievement has been to co-write the lyrics for a new musical that will premiere at Soho Place, the first new build West End theatre in 50 years.

Based on a best-selling autobiography by Henry Fraser, a keen sportsman whose life changed for ever following a diving accident in 2009, The Little Big Things opens on September 2 and is currently booking until November 25.

I’ll write about it again when it opens. In the meantime I have a confession.

I have been a terrible godfather to Tom, rarely remembering his birthday or any other important occasion, for which I can only apologise.

If, however, The Little Big Things is a success I want him to know that I never doubted his talent and I am always here for him.

What do public vaping ban and 10mph speed limits have in common?

The name Rachael Maskell may not be familiar to most of you but give it time.

Two months ago the Labour MP for York Central suggested that councils should introduce speed limits of ten miles an hour in residential areas.

10mph!!

As someone who is struggling to adapt to the 20mph limits that have been adopted in much of central London and other areas around the country, the idea that it should be reduced further - to a speed significantly slower than the average cyclist (15mph) - is hard to bear.

It’s pretty clear that some politicians and campaigners won’t be happy until drivers have been driven off the road completely.

It’s further evidence too that some people are never satisfied. They always want to go one step further, like extending the smoking ban to outdoor areas.

Anyway, I mention Rachael Maskell because her name caught my eye again this week when the Government responded to a series of questions she had tabled in recent weeks about vaping:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy to ban all vape advertising.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy to ban vaping in all public indoor spaces.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy to ban the use of vaping devices in vehicles that contain children.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy to introduce plain packaging for vaping devices.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy to require all vape devices to be sold in plain colour.

That’s a pretty comprehensive list. Who could have predicted it?!

Er, me, and I made it clear time and time again that vaping advocates would be partly responsible - should such measures be introduced - because of their repeated reluctance/refusal to oppose similar anti-smoking policies.

Give the prohibitionists an inch and they won’t even stop at a mile. After smoking, vaping was always going to be targeted, but vaping advocates chose to stick their heads in the sand or, worse, throw smokers under the bus in the hope that it might buy vaping some goodwill.

Fat chance.

Anyway, in a written answer to Rachael Maskell’s questions, Neil O’Brien, the minister for health and social care, responded with a fairly straight bat:

The Government recently ran a call for evidence on youth vaping that explored a range of themes including building regulatory compliance, the appearance and characteristics of vapes, their marketing and promotion, the role of social media, the environmental impact of vapes and the vape market. The call for evidence closed on 6 June.

We are now carefully examining the responses to identify opportunities to reduce youth vaping and we will explore issues such as vape advertising, plain packaging and colours, vaping in public places and the use of vapes in vehicles with children. We will publish our response in early Autumn which will outline our next steps.

I would be surprised if the current Conservative government adopted any of the measures Maskell raises.

Plain packaging is a possibility, but surely ministers and civil servants have far more pressing things to do with their time than impose a policy that will arguably have no significant effect.

(If the Government wants to reduce the number of children vaping it needs to crack down seriously on rogue retailers and criminals who are selling vapes illegally to under 18s.)

Maskell’s questions could however indicate the direction of travel under a future Labour government, hence my concern.

After all, shadow health secretary Wes Streeting has already said it will be a “priority” for the next Labour government to reduce smoking and vaping, and if Labour follow the tobacco template nothing can be ruled out.

PS. Amusingly, following the recent local elections, Rachael Maskell wrote:

Power has moved. The country has spoken, rejecting the authoritarian orthodoxy of ruling parties and making Labour the lead party in local government, including here in York.

Oh, the irony (and lack of self awareness) that someone who is advocating 10mph speed limits and significant restrictions on vaping and e-cigarettes should be holding forth about the ‘authoritarian orthodoxy of ruling parties’.

You couldn’t made it up.

Peak practise

My friend Bill sent me this photo last night with a note:

Piz Palu this morning near St Moritz.

I’d never heard of Piz Palu so I looked it up.

It’s a mountain on the Swiss-Italian border that has three peaks - central, western and eastern summits.

Bill (at the back) and his fellow climbers (I’m guessing there were three of them including the one holding the camera) climbed the eastern summit (3,882m or 12,726ft).

The eastern peak was first climbed in August 1835. (There appear to be no records for when the central and western summits were first climbed).

Almost a century later a German silent film was made called The White Hell of Piz Palu (1929) with a fabulously tragic storyline.

You can read about it here.

I’m told that Piz Palu also features in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009).

I should add that Bill is an old schoolfriend. We met at Wormit Primary School in 1969, when my family moved to Scotland, and after that we both went to secondary school (Madras College) in St Andrews.

I later went to Aberdeen University and Bill went to Edinburgh, where he studied law.

After working in Edinburgh, then London (but only briefly) his career as a corporate lawyer took him to Hong Kong, Bermuda, and then the Cayman Islands.

Twenty years ago, possibly longer, he ‘retired’ to Ireland with his wife and family and I visit them whenever I’m in Dublin.

Since then his ‘hobby’ has been climbing mountains or going on expeditions to the Antarctic and other remote places.

In 2011, as part of a small team of climbers from Ireland, he even climbed ten previously unconquered peaks in Greenland, a feat reported by the BBC here.

I like to take some credit for all this because when we were at school we spent our summers camping, walking, and cycling, which must have been when he got the bug.

We began modestly and gradually got more ambitious.

In 1971, when we were 12, we camped overnight in a wooded area next to the beach overlooking Wormit Bay, a few hundred yards from my house.

We cooked sausages on an open fire until they were carbonised and my mother supplied a chocolate cake.

The following year we camped in a wood in Balmerino, a tiny hamlet overlooking the River Tay, four miles from home. We cycled there on our bikes, carrying our tent and supplies.

In ‘73 and ‘74, with two other friends from school, we pitched our tents in or near Pitlochry, 27 miles north of Perth, where stayed on local campsites for a full week.

(Pitlochry ‘74 was the year we were introduced, with terrible results, to Newcastle Brown Ale. Put it this way, I’ve never touched it since.)

In 1975 the four of us were driven to the Lake District by Bill’s father, whereupon we walked from Windermere to Keswick via Scafell Pike, camping in fields or campsites overnight.

Finally, in 1976, Bill and I spent a week or so cycling around central Scotland, staying at youth hostels including one at Loch Lomond that was more like a castle. It even had a library.

Today, while my old friend climbs some of the world’s highest peaks, I am happy to put my feet up on a cruise ship or chill out at an all inclusive resort.

I have enough memories of (modestly) walking, climbing and cycling to last me a lifetime!

Greatest lunch of the year?

On this day last year we hosted the first Forest Summer Lunch & Awards.

The venue was Boisdale of Belgravia and we had exclusive use of the restaurant and terrace from midday to 4.00pm.

A handful of guests stayed well beyond that and we were still on the terrace, drinking and, in some cases, smoking, when the news came through that health secretary Sajid Javid had resigned from Boris Johnson’s government.

Within half an hour our phones were lighting up all over again with the further revelation that Rishi Sunak had resigned as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

It was a remarkable few minutes - a real ‘Where were you?’ moment - because everyone realised that Boris’s days as PM were numbered and, whatever your opinion of him, it did feel like treachery.

The truth is though that the Westminster village lives for moments like that so there was a palpable sense of excitement and intrigue as we arranged to reconvene later at the Marquis of Granby, a pub close to the Houses of Parliament where Westminster politicos tend to hang out.

Anyway, this year’s Summer Lunch & Awards is on July 18.

After one or two false starts we put it back a couple of weeks because there were so many other events in June and early July we didn’t want it to clash with any of them.

Fortunately that decision seems to have been vindicated because the 2023 Summer Lunch has been fully subscribed for several weeks and we currently have a waiting list.

Guests include journalists and writers, think tanks, parliamentary researchers, and a handful of parliamentarians, so I’m looking forward to it.

I should add that Boisdale MD Ranald Macdonald is a busy man.

As well as co-hosting the Forest Summer Lunch with me on July 18, he is also hosting the Boisdale Editor’s Lunch on July 12.

The first Editor’s Lunch was at Boisdale of Belgravia in 2017. (I wrote about it here.)

The following year it moved to Boisdale of Canary Wharf, a much larger venue, where we held Forest’s 40th anniversary dinner in 2019 and, before that, the Forest Freedom Dinner that ran from 2012 to 2017.

The Editor’s Lunch was paused by Covid but returned in 2021 whereupon I found myself sitting next to the hugely entertaining Simon Bartholomew, guitarist with The Brand New Heavies, and ‘New Orleans singing sensation Acantha Lang'. (See ‘That’s life’.)

In an email to this year’s guests Ranald describes The Editor’s Lunch as ‘The greatest lunch of the year’, adding that guests will include ‘an eclectic bunch of journalists, economists, politicians, authors, musicians, generals, food writers, wine producers and chefs’.

He may be right but I hope our more modest event at Boisdale of Belgravia doesn’t disappoint!

How the harm principle was hijacked and weaponised against individual freedom

Letters on Liberty are exactly what they say they are.

Launched in December 2020 and published by the Academy of Ideas, they are short essays (less than 3,000 words apiece), each one dedicated to achieving a freer society.

Titles to date include Risking It All: The Freedom to Gamble (Jon Bryan), The Future of Free Speech (Jacob Mchangama), The Liberating Power of Education (Harley Richardson), and Freedom Is No Illusion (Frank Furedi).

Others include Liberty in a Narcissistic Age (Roslyn Fuller), Greens: The New Neo-Colonists (Austin Williams), and Beyond the Culture Wars (Jacob Reynolds).

Letters on Liberty are published in bundles of three and the latest titles, just out, are Against Reparations (James Heartfield), AI: Separating Man from Machine (Sandy Starr), and Beyond the Harm Principle (Rob Lyons).

All three are worth reading but it's Rob's essay that will arguably be of most interest to readers of this blog.

He takes John Stuart Mill's 'harm principle' – which first appeared in On Liberty in 1859 and is often quoted by libertarians – and demonstrates how it has been hijacked and weaponised against individual freedom.

According to Mill, the actions of individuals should only be restricted or punished if they harm others.

That, of course, was the justification for the smoking ban, which was introduced in the UK after it was claimed, but never remotely proved, that 11,000 non-smokers were dying each year as a result of passive smoking.

The problem, writes Rob, is that, 'If we take the notion of harm to its extremes, almost anything we don't like could be described as harmful', and that's exactly what is happening today.

Today the concept of 'harm' covers not just physical harm but anything that may cause offence and therefore 'harm' us in other ways.

But as Rob correctly points out, 'If we want to live in a free society, we have to tolerate things we don't like.'

How, then, can we rescue the harm principle from the 'meddlesome opponents of freedom'? According to Rob, there is a strong case for amending it as follows:

We should be free to do what we want as long as it does not harm others where they cannot avoid that harm.

Would that make a difference? In theory it might. In practice, I'm not sure. As Rob himself admits:

The trouble with trying to rescue the harm principle, by trying to find a more modest and reasonable version of it, is that reasonableness seems to be in short supply.

Nowhere is this more pronounced than in the war on tobacco.

As we know, anti-smoking zealots are never happy and as soon as they achieve one goal they immediately target another, regardless of whether it's fair or reasonable or based on proven physical harm to others. (Outdoor smoking bans, for example.)

Freedom of speech is also under threat because of perceived 'harm' to others, and Rob covers that issue too.

Beyond the Harm Principle is available to download free here.

Alternatively, to purchase or subscribe to the print edition of this and other Letters on Liberty, click here.