How The Times has changed

Bit late to this because I've been busy with other things.

Last Friday, the day after it was reported that Cancer Research UK want the Government 'to take tougher action to stop smoking, such as raising the age at which people can legally buy tobacco', The Times threw its weight behind that and other anti-smoking policies.

In a leading article headlined 'Stub It Out' the paper urged the Government to introduce laws similar to those recently passed in New Zealand where 'Smoking will be made more expensive, the nicotine content will be reduced and the number of shops allowed to sell cigarettes will be cut from 6,000 to 600'.

'Britain,' it added, 'should levy punitive taxes and follow New Zealand in steadily raising the legal age for buying tobacco'.

I wasn't in the least bit surprised because The Times currently rivals the Guardian when it comes to a nanny state attitude to smoking. The difference, if any, is that the latter is arguably driven more by its hatred of the tobacco industry than the actual habit.

Last week's piece was also similar to another leading article published by The Times in June following the publication of the Khan Review. On that occasion the paper urged the Government to 'progressively ban the sale of tobacco products to the young', echoing one of Khan’s key recommendations.

Sajid Javid, the man who commissioned the Khan report, was still health secretary at the time (the longest serving health secretary in 2022!) but a few weeks later he resigned and was replaced by Stephen Barclay who was replaced, in September, by Thérèse Coffey.

When Coffey’s alleged lack of enthusiasm for a new tobacco control plan was reported in October The Times was naturally indignant. 'The government,’ it spluttered, ‘should not abandon its anti-smoking agenda'.

(See also 'In defence of Thérèse Coffey' in which I defended the then health secretary who was later replaced by Stephen Barclay who had previously replaced Sajid Javid.)

The Times’ most recent call to action not only urges the Government to raise the legal age of sale of tobacco but implies that it would support other New Zealand-inspired policies including significantly reducing the number of shops that sell tobacco.

Should we be bothered? Not really. The days when a leading article in The Times had much influence are long gone, I would think.

How far the paper has fallen can be gauged by comparing its calls for more curbs on smoking with what is arguably its most famous leading article, written by the late William Rees-Mogg and published in 1967.

‘Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?’ is recalled and celebrated here and although it’s explained that Rees-Mogg was defending the right to a fair trial rather than drug use, it’s clear he also believed the sentences imposed on Mick Jagger (for possession of four amphetamine tablets bought legally in Italy) and Keith Richards (for permitting the smoking of cannabis resin in his property) were excessive in relation to the ‘crime’.

In 1967, even as the health risks of smoking were becoming better known, almost half the population were smokers. The idea that the sale of tobacco to young adults might one day be criminalised and smoking itself might be eradicated by the enforcement of strict laws would have been incomprehensible to most people.

Rees-Mogg died in 2012 but had he still been alive I wonder what he would have made of the newspaper he edited with great distinction urging the Government to make it progressively illegal to sell tobacco to young and eventually older adults while imposing punitive taxation and other restrictions on the product.

If that’s not breaking a butterfly upon a wheel (ie using unnecessary force to destroy something fragile, in this case personal liberty), I don’t know what is.

PS. For a wonderful antidote to the pompous editorialising of The Times I recommend ‘An ode to smoking’ by Kara Kennedy (Spectator).

It’s brilliant and sure to win a Forest award for best article of 2023 - and we’re still in the first week!

Oxford Union blues

The Oxford Union is 200 years old this year.

The only reason I know this is because I follow James Price, a former President of the Union, on Facebook and a few days ago he posted this:

As the founding Chairman of The Oxford Union’s Bicentenary Committee, I’m so excited that 2023 has arrived!

The amazing (and quite new) team at the Union, staff and student committee, are working so hard to put on a range of events to commemorate this epic milestone.

The Union has a unique place in the history of our country (and the world) and we will make sure we reflect that heritage as well making the place more accessible to future generations of students.

And finally, we will make sure the Union remains, in the words of Harold Macmillan, “the last bastion of free speech in the Western world”.

I’m proud to say that I have taken part in two Oxford Union debates. The first time was in February 2005 when I teamed up with TV chef (and Forest patron) Antony Worrall Thompson to oppose the motion that ‘This House would ban smoking in all public places’.

Proposing the motion was Professor Sir Charles George, president of the British Medical Association, and Lord Faulkner of Worcester.

The result was a win for the ayes, 118 - 82, which was ironic because only a few months earlier the Union had been forced to reverse a self-imposed smoking ban after students deserted the Union bar in favour of the local pubs!

Ten years later the IEA’s Mark Littlewood and I were asked to propose the motion ‘The tobacco industry is not morally reprehensible’.

Australia’s leading anti-smoking campaigner Professor Simon Chapman was approached to oppose the motion but Chapman rejected the invitation so our principal opponents were Baroness Finlay of Llandaff, the peer who proposed the bill to ban smoking in public places in Wales, and Professor Gerard Hastings, founder of the Centre for Tobacco Control Research and a special advisor to the House of Commons’ Health Select Committee.

You can read my report of the debate here but the bottom line is I was on the losing side, again, with the ayes winning 77 - 60. So not my finest hours and I can’t say I fully enjoyed either experience.

Don’t get me wrong. I was thrilled to be invited and I enjoyed the theatre of the occasion - the pre-dinner drinks followed by dinner with the committee and fellow speakers, then the debate in an historic location and the knowledge that we were following in the footsteps of presidents and prime ministers - but public speaking makes me nervous and walking into the debating chamber was a bit like being led to the gallows.

It doesn’t help that I’ve never mastered the ability to give a speech without notes or a full script. I wish I could because I envy those who can.

The last time I remember giving even a short speech without notes was when I addressed the ASI’s Next Generation Group in the upstairs room of a pub in London.

The space was quite small and the audience (who were standing) were so close some people were almost in my face so although I had a written speech prepared it wasn’t possible to read it.

It therefore remained in my pocket and I blurted out what I could remember - for ten minutes. Funnily enough it was probably one of my better received speeches although, to be fair, alcohol had been consumed (by everyone).

It taught me though that sometimes it’s not what you say but how you say it (the conviction, the energy) that people remember.

I doubt I will get another opportunity to address the Oxford Union but at least I can say I’ve done it and one day perhaps, in a few hundred years, an historian writing about the Union’s 500th anniversary will stumble upon a reference to a 2005 debate about banning smoking in public places and ask, “What was that all about?”

By coincidence the subject of yesterday’s post, ‘Arise Sir Julian’, resigned his life membership of the Oxford Union in 2007 in protest at the Union’s decision ‘to offer the privilege of a platform to this country’s best-known Holocaust denier and also to the leader of the British National Party’.

You can read the full letter here.

On a lighter note see: Oxford Union elects ‘joke’ candidate president seven years after he graduated (Independent).

Below: Yours truly addressing the Oxford Union in 2015

Arise Sir Julian

Happy New Year.

My first task at the weekend was to check the New Year Honours List for anyone I might know.

Bad news: still no recognition for Deborah Arnott, CEO of ASH, or Sheila Duffy, director of ASH Scotland. It’s nine years since I first raised this injustice and it’s a scandal, frankly.

One familiar name, awarded a knighthood, did appear on the 2023 list - The Rt Hon Dr Sir Julian Lewis MP.

I first met Julian 40 years ago. We were introduced by a mutual friend, George Miller-Kurakin. At the time Julian was director of the Campaign for Peace through Security (CPS) which supported Britain having a strong nuclear deterrent.

This was a far bigger political issue than it is today. Labour leader Michael Foot had been a founding member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Labour Party went into the 1983 General Election actively committed to unilateral nuclear disarmament which is one reason why their election manifesto was described as the 'longest suicide note in history'.

Although the Conservative party, led by Margaret Thatcher, won the election by a landslide (144 seats), CND were determined to fight on. In October 1983, a few months after the election, they organised what they claimed was their 'biggest ever protest’ in London against nuclear weapons.

Why am I telling you this? Well, Julian and his team worked from a small office in an old and rather gloomy building at one end of Whitehall, a stone’s throw from Trafalgar Square. (According to Julian's Wikipedia entry, which is well worth reading, it was rented from Jeffrey Archer.)

Opposite the CPS office was the Whitehall Theatre (now the Trafalgar Theatre) which was owned at the time by Paul Raymond, a controversial figure who also owned much of Soho including numerous strip clubs.

The story I heard is that Raymond agreed to let CPS hang a banner across Whitehall with one end attached to the CPS office, the other to his theatre on the other side of the road.

Whether Raymond was directly involved I don’t know but on the morning of the march a large banner duly appeared high above Whitehall. It read:

1983 ELECTION - LOSERS’ EXIT

It wasn’t the most subtle message but it enraged the marchers below who had no choice but to walk beneath it en route to Hyde Park via Whitehall and Trafalgar Square.

I had a great view because I was on the roof of the CPS office that day watching and waving to the protesters as they ambled past with their own banners and placards.

I later joined friends on the ground and heard some of the marchers' comments as they walked under the CPS banner. That was quite amusing too.

CND estimated there were 400,000 protestors on the march but aerial photography commissioned by Julian showed the claim to be wildly exaggerated.

The real figure was nearer 100,000 but it was nevertheless a major event during a momentous period in British politics.

The Falklands War had been fought, and won, in 1982. In 1983 Margaret Thatcher won her second General Election and two years’ later, after a 12-month struggle that began in 1984, she defeated the same mineworkers’ union that had brought Ted Heath’s Conservative government down a decade earlier.

Oh, and she also survived an IRA bomb that destroyed part of The Grand Hotel in Brighton where she was staying during the 1984 Conservative party conference.

While much of this was going on I was producing, with a little help from Julian, a national student magazine that was fighting its own ideological battle - against the National Union of Students.

Another issue Julian wanted to address was political bias on television current affairs programmes that had far bigger audiences in those days and therefore had the potential to be significantly more influential than they are today.

And so the Media Monitoring Unit was born whereupon I was recruited by Julian to do the research and publish a series of reports.

The MMU operated from 1985 to 1990 after which I got married and moved to Edinburgh. Julian, who also ran a political consultancy, Policy Research Associates, continued to pursue his political ambitions, eventually becoming the member of Parliament for New Forest East, a seat he has held for a quarter of a century.

I must confess that although we exchange Christmas cards I’ve seen him only a few times in the intervening years. The last time was at an event to celebrate the life of our old friend George Miller following George’s sudden death at the age of 54. As I wrote here:

Julian Lewis, Conservative MP for New Forest East, captured the mood well when he spoke not only of George's achievements but also of his warmth, charm and immense good humour. When Julian mentioned George's "chuckle" there were nods of recognition …

Today Julian is chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, having previously been a member of the Defence Select Committee.

In my opinion he would have made an excellent defence minister but he and several other Conservative MPs who might have expected government roles after 2010 were denied them when the Conservatives went into government with the Lib Dems. As a result positions that would have gone to Conservatives (had there been a majority Conservative government) went to Lib Dems instead.

A small consolation perhaps is that in 2015 Julian was appointed to the Privy Council, hence The Right Honourable designation.

In recent years he has acquired a reputation as a bit of a maverick but I think that’s unfair. He may plough his own furrow but it’s entirely consistent with his long-held beliefs and principles, and I admire that.

I admire too his loyalty to friends such as John Bercow who is not everyone’s cup of tea. Although their politics are now very different I have never heard Julian criticise his old friend.

Something else I observed from working with him all those years ago was his forensic, almost obsessive, attention to detail. At the time it could be a bit tiresome when something I had written came back with multiple minor corrections or amendments. In hindsight it taught me some valuable lessons.

Anyway, I’m delighted that his ‘political and public service’ has been recognised.

If Julian was to write a memoir I would recommend it to anyone. Unfortunately a combination of his own discretion and the Official Secrets Act will probably kibosh any chance of that but I live in hope!

Forest | Review of the Year 2022

Twelve years ago a journalist wrote an article suggesting I was defending the indefensible (ie smoking).

I’ve never seen it like that. Founded in 1979, what Forest does is promote freedom of choice and personal responsibility. We believe the current role of government in relation to nicotine is to inform and educate smokers about the relative risks of e-cigarettes and other reduced risk products (compared to the far riskier combustibles), letting adults make their own choices with proportionate but not excessive or unnecessary restrictions on any product.

Switching from smoking to vaping should be market driven and voluntary and we will support any smoker who wants to make that switch, or quit nicotine completely. Our primary purpose however is to support adults who make an informed decision to smoke in full knowledge of the health risks and what we will never do is abandon those adults who enjoy smoking and don’t want to quit a legitimate and, for many people, enjoyable and comforting habit.

On that note thanks to everyone who continues to support our work. It’s very much appreciated. Click here or on the image below for our Review of the Year 2022.

CRUK’s free propaganda pass is so annoying!

As I suspected it would, the tobacco control industry has exploited the lack of news this week to press the Government to do more to meet its ‘smoke free’ target.

Cancer Research UK has published a new report that claims the Government is unlikely to meet its 2030 target unless (yawn) it raises the age of sale of tobacco to 21 and imposes a levy on the tobacco industry to pay for smoking cessation services.

The reason I’m fuming though is because the report has been widely publicised without a single comment questioning either the smoke free target or CRUK’s advice on how to reduce smoking rates to meet that target.

The chief culprit is the Press Association which has issued a report that is clearly based on an embargoed press release, but the nationals must take some responsibility too.

After all, it only takes a minute - having read the press release or PA copy - to pick up the phone and call Forest (or whoever) for a reaction.

A few years ago I complained to a journalist at the PA that Forest wasn’t being given enough opportunities to respond to tobacco control press releases and she replied by saying (I paraphrase) that we were welcome to send her quotes but she didn’t have time to call us.

I said that it was difficult to respond to a press release from the likes of ASH or CRUK if we had no knowledge of it (not being on their media mailing list), but the point seemed to escape her.

Anyway, here’s our belated reaction to the latest CRUK report whose message is very similar to another CRUK report published in February 2020 (Report says England will not be smoke free by 2030 as proposed).

On that occasion CRUK claimed ‘it is likely it would be 2037 by which England could be smoke-free’. Now they estimate it will be 2039.

Our response to this familiar trope was issued in the early hours of this morning but only after I was alerted to the story by reading it online so it was almost certainly too late.

For the record it read:

Campaigners have urged the Government to abandon its “odious” smoke free target.

The call follows a new report by Cancer Research UK that claims that England is unlikely to meet the Government’s smoke free target by 2030.

Simon Clark, director of the smokers’ rights group Forest, said:

“The Government should never have set a target for England to be smoke free. 

“2030 was always unrealistic and it’s become an unnecessary distraction from the fact that smoking rates in England continue to decline in all age groups, albeit at a slower pace than the tobacco control industry would like.”

He added:

“Smoke free targets are odious because as long as tobacco is a legal product adults have every right to smoke without further harassment or discrimination.

“Smoking is a choice and if you are an adult that choice must be respected.”

Rejecting calls to raise the age of sale of tobacco to 21 and impose a levy on the tobacco industry to pay for more stop-smoking services, Clark said:

“If you can drive a car, join the army, purchase alcohol, and vote at 18 you are old enough to make an informed decision to smoke. 

“Raising the legal age of sale won’t stop young adults smoking. It will drive them to the black market where they will be sold unregulated products.

“The cost of a tobacco levy would be passed on to the consumer. Smokers already pay punitive rates of tax on tobacco. Punishing them even more during a cost of living crisis would be brutal and unfair.”

One journalist has just responded to my complaint (emailed to him at 07:07 this morning so apologies for that!) by replying:

Sorry, Simon - I often do phone you for comment. I didn't approach any groups yesterday, so it wasn't a conscious snub. I'm more likely to come to you when I'm also quoting ASH …

Interesting, isn’t it, that he’s more likely to ‘balance’ a quote from ASH with a comment from Forest but CRUK gets a free propaganda pass. So annoying!

See also ‘Shedding light on CRUK’s relationship with the Press Association’ (January 2015)

Update: Credit where credit’s due, the Mail has included a quote from our press release in this online report - Government is almost a DECADE behind its target for England to become smoke-free by 2030.

My Christmas work experience

Reports that the Scottish Greens want to ban sweet flavoured vapes reminds me that the period between Christmas and New Year can be a great opportunity to get media coverage for your cause.

The reason is obvious but not always acted upon. At the tale end of the year with parliaments in recess and relatively little happening during the holiday season, news stories are in short supply so journalists and broadcasters can be desperate for copy.

It also explains why every year after Christmas Radio 4’s Today programme invites ‘guest editors’ like Jamie Oliver to self-indulgently address their personal interests or obsessions.

When I was director of the Media Monitoring Unit in the Eighties we made a point of publishing all bar one of our annual reports a day or two after Christmas.

Each volume assessed hundreds of British current affairs programmes for political bias and were quite substantial in size so in those pre-Internet days we would courier printed copies to journalists several days before Christmas with a press release embargoed until the 27th or 28th December so they had time to read the summary if not the whole thing.

Funnily enough the first Media Monitoring Report - published not at Christmas but in November 1986 - was a rare case of an embargo being broken but in a strange way it worked out well for us.

The report’s findings were splashed across the London Evening Standard the day before we were scheduled to hold a press conference to launch the report at the Oxford and Cambridge Club in London’s Pall Mall.

Fortunately the Standard gave it the best possible coverage. It was the lead story on the front page with a banner headline that read ‘YES, THE BBC IS BIASED’.

Not only did the headline appear on newsstands throughout London, the following day the story ran in just about every national newspaper.

We went ahead with the 11.00am press conference but although the embargo had been broken it wasn’t a complete damp squib because several senior executives from ITV and BBC News turned up and I was later interviewed by Jimmy Young on Radio 2.

(As an aside Young was said to be Margaret Thatcher’s favourite interviewer. He was mine too. Well-informed, he was unfailingly polite but no soft touch. Interviewees who underestimated him usually came unstuck.)

The Telegraph also sent a journalist to the Oxford and Cambridge Club and ran a full page feature the next day. You can read it here - Pedigree of a TV watchdog.

But I digress.

Each subsequent Media Monitoring Report was published between Christmas and New Year to take advantage of what we hoped would be a slow news day and the strategy worked pretty well.

The print media never tired of giving their broadcast rivals a jolly good kicking so our reports always got their attention.

It meant however that I had to be in London and available for interview because in those days there were no mobile phones or Internet.

Year after year my Christmas break was cut short as I travelled to London from my parents’ home in Derbyshire but it was a pilgrimage I was used to because in my very first job as a junior PR exec I had no choice but to return to work on December 27 to man the office phone in case a client rang.

In practice two of us were assigned to the office for the Christmas-New Year period but when it became clear - usually by lunchtime - that no-one was going to call we would head to the pub for the afternoon.

I’m not sure why we didn’t give clients our home telephone numbers but that wasn’t the culture at the time. If you were working you had to be at your desk in the office.

Things began to change with the arrival of mobile phones in the Nineties. By then I was freelance but I know that working in the office between Christmas and New Year was no longer compulsory for an increasing number of people.

After I joined Forest in 1999 we would organise a rota so that calls to the office were diverted to one of our mobile phones.

The mobile phone also meant you could do interviews without being tied to a landline or a specific location, although broadcasters still liked you to get to a studio if possible.

One year, two days after Christmas, I remember being interviewed in a shopping centre car park off the Edinburgh by-pass. The year was 2001 and I was talking about a new Forest report - Health Wars: The Phantom Menace.

Written and researched by my colleague Jo Gaffikin - who was simultaneously being interviewed by Five Live’s Peter Allen - it was a compilation of all the health scares that had been published by the UK media that year.

We published it on December 27 - having sent hard copies to journalists the previous week with an embargoed press release - and it was widely reported by both the print and broadcast media.

The Guardian, for example, reported that:

Britons are being "scared to death" because of hysterical and irrational health fears, a pro-smoking campaign group claimed yesterday.

Josephine Gaffikin, author of Health Wars: The Phantom Menace, and a researcher at the pressure group Forest, claimed the "hysterical and often dubious nature of many warnings" were signs of an increasingly unhealthy preoccupation with health. "The British public is being scared to death," she said.

Her report, published by Forest, says warnings which emerged in the last year included reports that liquorice eaters have babies earlier, thinking too hard can put a strain on your brain, and vets linking a full moon to animal ailments. The report also lists more mainstream fears such as the MMR vaccine, flying, mobile phones, hair dye and suntan cream.

Ms Gaffikin said: "Just as some of the health scares featured in the report are grossly exaggerated, so you find similar distortions in the smoking debate." Lord Harris of High Cross, chairman of Forest, said: "With so many hazards to strike us down, how will the medics know which did us in when the time comes?"

See Pro-smoking campaigner scoffs at health scares (Guardian).

Prior to that Forest used to announce, also a day or two after Christmas, a series of awards, rather like the New Year’s Honours List.

They were mostly tongue-in-cheek but always got some coverage, usually in the regional press. A hospital in Leeds, for example, might have been commended for installing a comfortable smoking shelter. That would be news in Yorkshire, less so in Cornwall.

Like Jo Gaffikin’s report, the timing (between Christmas and New Year) was crucial.

Governments too aren’t averse to taking advantage of a slow news period, and the time of year, hence the public health messaging that often happens around New Year.

For a while it became de rigueur for a new anti-smoking campaign to be launched by the UK Government in the week after Christmas but I’ve seen less evidence of that in recent years.

Covid may have been a factor but I also think warning fatigue - and the perceived nannying - is an issue as well, and the Government knows it.

I suspect too that Forest’s formal complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority about one campaign may have made the Department of Health more cautious about promoting similar contentious claims, at New Year or any other time.

Anyway I’m happy for you if you’re still enjoying your Christmas break with no plans to return to work until the new year.

For some of us, though …

PS. When my family moved to Scotland in 1969 my father - who managed a factory in Dundee - initially worked on Christmas Day, and Boxing Day too.

In those days there was relatively little concession, work wise, to Christmas in Scotland. The big event was New Year.

That changed significantly in the Seventies - partly, I think, because thanks to television Christmas got so big even the Scots couldn’t ignore it.

Scottish Greens threaten ‘sweet flavoured’ vapes with prohibition or display ban

Welcome back.

My first post Christmas media enquiry was a phone call at 9.47am yesterday (Boxing Day) about vaping.

The Daily Record had reported that the Scottish Greens want to ban or hide the display of “sweet flavoured” vapes in shops to “protect” children.

The Times asked Forest to comment and today’s edition features this response:

Simon Clark, director of Forest, the smokers’ rights group, said that policies on vaping must be evidence-based and that there was very little evidence that vaping was a gateway to smoking, which carries more health risks. He added that the sale of e-cigarettes was already prohibited for under-18s and a ban would deny consumers access to products that might help them quit smoking.

“A ban on flavoured vapes would be a massive own goal because it would deter many smokers from switching to a far less harmful product,” Clark said.

“Adults like sweet flavours too so restricting their choice of vapes is not only illiberal, it could be counter-productive in terms of public health because the banned flavours will almost certainly appear on the black market, where unregulated and potentially more harmful products could be sold to children as well as adults.”

Full report here.

As I also wrote on LinkedIn (where I am followed by several vaping advocates) I will always defend an adult’s right to vape but it would be nice if advocates of vaping extended the same courtesy to adults who choose to smoke.

The debate about smoking and vaping, I suggested, is not just about health. It’s also about choice and personal responsibility. If adults choose to take greater risks with their health (by smoking, for example) it’s their life, not yours, and that choice must be respected, publicly.

The Scottish Greens may be a minority party in Holyrood but they’re in government with the SNP so they have some influence and with this policy they may be pushing on an open door in Scotland.

That makes it even more strange that apart from the UK Vaping Industry Association (in the Herald) I haven’t heard a peep from other pro-vaping groups in response to the Greens’ initiative.

I know it’s Christmas and many people are still on holiday but shake off the turkey, folks, and wake up! If Forest can find time to respond to threats like this so can you.

PS. Forest has also been quoted by the Scotsman and The National.

Merry Christmas

Regular reader or occasional visitor, thank you for popping by.

I’ll be back next week with some reflections on 2022 and what may lie ahead.

In the meantime I hope you have a very happy Christmas.