Bittersweet biography

Today is the hardback publication day for Out Of The Blue, the Liz Truss biography by Harry Cole and James Heale.

I wrote about it on October 16 and again on October 30 and bought the ebook when it came out on November 1.

First, let’s acknowledge what an achievement it was to write the original draft in what I think was around two months.

To then rewrite parts of the manuscript, adding a new section that covered both her short period in office and her resignation as PM and get the book out ahead of the original publication date (December 8) borders on heroic.

You might conclude from this that the book will feel like a rushed job and will suffer in consequence.

Far from it. I’ve heard it described as a ‘romp’ but that’s a good thing in my book. It’s hugely readable and there is still a wealth of information from a wide variety of sources.

It’s also far from a hagiography. The authors may have started as sympathetic to Britain’s shortest serving prime minister but as other reviewers have noted the seeds of her demise were picked up by her biographers long before she and her Chancellor crashed and burned.

That said, and even with the benefit of hindsight, this is no hatchet job either. In the circumstances it’s arguably a bittersweet biography whose authors would have loved her libertarian brand of politics to succeed but regretfully recognise the errors and personal flaws that led to her shockingly brief term in office.

On a more prosaic level I’d love to know how a co-authored book such as this was researched and written. How, for example, was the work shared out?

In 1998, before I joined Forest, our late chairman Lord Harris co-authored a book about smoking with Forest researcher Judith Hatton.

Judith, I believe, did most of the research but the writing was shared between them with Ralph writing some chapters and Judith writing others.

And it was very obvious, Ralph’s more flowery style contrasting with Judith’s more intense, academic approach.

You would struggle to find a similar disparity in Out Of The Blue so I am curious how it was done.

Either way, and whatever your thoughts on Liz Truss and her brief premiership, it’s worth a read.

Libertarians in particular should weep. Power and politics does strange things to prime ministers, even those with firm beliefs, but Truss was arguably our best hope against a further strengthening of the nanny state.

What a pity she imploded so quickly.

Delete that retweet!

Alex Cunningham, Labour MP for Stockton North, was a prominent driver of the ban on smoking in cars with children.

He was also an enthusiastic supporter of plain packaging and last year he backed a bid to have health warnings printed on individual cigarettes.

This week, during a debate on the Government’s Autumn statement, the shadow minister for courts and sentencing (and vice-chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health) pointedly asked:

While I am on about health inequalities, why on earth will the Government not put a levy on tobacco companies’ profits to fund a desperately needed tobacco control plan?

A clip of Cunningham addressing the House on this issue was posted on Twitter by the Cancer Research UK policy team which added the comment:

Action to tackle tobacco - the biggest cause of cancer - was missing from last week's fiscal statement.

Thanks @ACunninghamMP for stressing this 👏

In what appeared to be a coordinated act several CRUK employees then added their support. Prevention policy manager Alizee Froguel tweeted:

Thank you @ACunninghamMP for raising this. 👏 Tobacco costs our economy far more than taxes bring in.

We need more money for the services that help people quit and it’s time we make Big Tobacco foot the bill for the damage their products cause.

Prevention policy advisor Olivia Cheek wrote:

Thank you for raising this @ACunninghamMP! It’s time the polluter pays for the damage it causes!

Prevention policy trainee Kerry Pearson added:

Smoking costs society £17b in England alone, whereas taxes from tobacco only bring in £10bn for UK as a whole. It’s surely only right that the tobacco industry pay for this damage? Thanks @ACunninghamMP for raising the question!

And public affairs officer Heather Laff gushed:

Brilliant thanks @ACunninghamMP!

I’m not quite sure how those comments fit in with CRUK’s charitable and therefore non-political status but I’ll let that pass, for now.

Meanwhile, and in response to the original tweet, Forest commented:

Successive governments have to date not introduced a tobacco levy because the cost would be passed on to the consumer, many of whom are from poorer backgrounds, thereby discriminating against the less well off who already pay punitive rates of tax on tobacco.

Surprisingly this was retweeted by none other than @ACunninghamMP but before we could congratulate the Labour MP on his open-mindedness someone must have alerted him or his office because the retweet was subsequently deleted.

Fortunately, in anticipation of exactly that, I took a screen shot of the evidence. And here it is:

PS. When I saw that Cunningham had retweeted our tweet I knew it must be an error because when I invited him to take part in a Forest webinar on tobacco control in March 2021 he replied, “Sorry Simon, I don't work with organisations like Forest.”

Deduce from that what you will.

Headwinds

Currently in Cork for what has become an annual pre-Christmas visit to catch up with Forest Ireland spokesman John Mallon.

My flight was scheduled to depart from Stansted at 07:45 this morning. Having boarded the aircraft however we were told there was a “technical issue” and an engineer had been summoned to investigate.

“Bad news, I’m afraid,” the pilot told us 15 minutes later. We were going nowhere on that plane.

Fortunately there was a spare aircraft available elsewhere on the apron and so, 30 minutes after we should have been airborne, we got off and were driven by bus to the replacement plane.

To cut a long story short, we took off around 09:00 and landed in Cork shortly after ten.

The good news is we avoided the high winds (40mph) that were forecast for later in the morning.

That was a relief because one of the worst experiences I’ve had when flying was taking off from Dublin airport into the teeth of a 40mph wind.

If I remember we sat on the runway for almost an hour waiting for the wind speed to drop to a safe (albeit uncomfortable) level and the experience of sitting aboard what felt like a bucking bronco (for the first ten minutes of the flight) left me a little spooked.

It was enough to persuade me to cancel a subsequent flight out of Dublin when similar winds were whipping around the airport. On that occasion I wimped out, checked back into my comfortable city centre hotel and booked a flight for the following day when the forecast was better.

Friends who live in Ireland tell me that high winds and bumpy landings are not uncommon over here but that doesn’t make it better if you’re not used to them.

To be fair, once we got off the ground today’s flight was fine but I shall be keeping a beady eye on the forecast before I fly out from Dublin on Saturday.

Anniversary message

OK, this is extremely trivial and probably not worth writing about but I received an email yesterday that began:

The 10th anniversary of the E-Cigarette Summit UK takes place in 3 weeks’ time, on Friday 9th December.

Then, after listing the speakers, it concluded:

We hope you can join our 10th anniversary Summit, either at the Royal College of Physicians or virtually …

But wait, on the E-Cigarette Summit website it states:

The inaugural E-Cigarette Summit was held at the Royal Society, London, in November 2013 …

That’s what I thought because I was there and wrote about it here.

But if the inaugural event was in 2013 surely that makes next month’s event the tenth Summit and the ninth anniversary (of the first event)?

Correct me if I’m wrong.

More important, it’s worth noting that the closing keynote address at the 2022 E-Cigarette Summit is being given by Deborah Arnott of ASH who also addressed the first Summit in 2013.

On that occasion I noted that:

… the only really sour note of the day came from Deborah Arnott, CEO of ASH, who tore into the tobacco companies with the help of selected quotes and an advertisement that were decades old.

It was fun however to watch her squabble with Clive Bates, her predecessor at ASH and now a leading advocate of e-cigs.

As soon as Clive finished his own presentation Deborah was on her feet pointing out that she, not he, was the current head of ASH. It's something she clearly feels prickly about.

I then added:

In contrast to her predecessor's ebullient performance there were times when Deborah seemed to be chewing on a wasp seasoned with lemon.

Her presentation included a tobacco advertisement featuring a good looking man and a beautiful woman. The man was holding a cigarette and the caption read, 'Blow in her face and she'll follow you anywhere'.

I'm not sure what response Deborah was hoping to get (a sharp intake of breath, perhaps, or shocked silence) but that line got one of the biggest laughs of the day.

Finally, I concluded:

If the E-Cigarette Summit was about the future someone really should have told Deborah. She and ASH are stuck in the past, fighting battles with the tobacco companies that are well past their sell-by date.

As for those pesky e-cigs, they are potentially highly addictive, she warned. Toxic too. And they could renormalise smoking.

She doesn't want to ban them but ASH want e-cigs advertised to smokers only. (How's that going to work?)

As it happens Clive is also speaking at next month’s event so I do hope they’ve overcome whatever differences they may have had.

The biggest change however is that in 2013 Deborah seemed a bit hesitant about e-cigarettes.

Now, nine years later, ASH is the go to resource for vaping statistics and even vaping advocacy (as a quit smoking tool), and Deborah is not just any old speaker, she’s giving the closing keynote speech which rather confirms what I wrote ahead of the ninth E-Cigarette Summit in 2021:

A very British coup - how public health took control of UK vaping advocacy.

Anyway, happy anniversary to the organisers but if I was them I’d keep the tenth anniversary celebrations on ice until next year when I might even be persuaded join them.

Vaping industry forum’s headline sponsor wants to ‘ban smoking for good’

The UK Vaping Industry Association is hosting its annual forum and dinner in London today.

The event was originally scheduled for Friday September 9 but it was cancelled at the very last moment following the Queen’s death the previous day.

Prior to that announcement (ie before the event was cancelled) I posted a piece about the headline sponsor.

Given everything that happened that day I can’t imagine many people - even regular readers - saw it so here it is again.

The event, I began, will be attended by more than 90 organisations, which is impressive.

I can’t help noticing though that the headline sponsor is VPZ, the UK’s largest e-cigarette and vaping retailer, which earlier this year used the peg of No Smoking Day to launch a campaign called ‘Ban Smoking For Good’.

Bizarrely the Edinburgh-based company joined forces with former England footballer Neil ‘Razor’ Ruddock to campaign for an ‘outright ban on smoking’ in Scotland.

I wrote about it here (No Smoking Day stunt or premature April Fool?), noting that:

If governments can ban combustible tobacco they can ban electronic cigarettes too. In fact, give politicians a taste for prohibition and they might just be tempted to ban several more consumer products that are deemed to be unhealthy.

Two days later I wrote a follow-up post that highlighted some of the tweets that had been posted in response to reports of the campaign ('Ban smoking for good’ campaign unites smokers and vapers in wave of revulsion):

Analysing these and other comments, together with the various ‘likes’ and retweets, suggests that VPZ has not only scored an own goal but has unwittingly unleashed a powerful coalition opposed to prohibition.

Whether the almost universal derision had any effect I don’t know (I always suspected the 'campaign' was a stunt that would have little longevity) but it went very quiet after that, despite VPZ inviting people to sign a petition to support their goal.

Now, I don’t claim to be the world’s greatest campaigner but I do know something about petitions having overseen several in my time, including a petition against plain packaging of tobacco that resulted in over 250,000 signatures being submitted to the Department of Health in response to a public consultation.

That number didn't happen overnight and it cost money. But it was also part of a broader, well-publicised campaign.

In the wake of No Smoking Day however I struggled to find any further promotion of the 'Ban Smoking For Good' campaign or the VPZ petition after it was posted on the Scottish Parliament website in April.

Click on it now and it reads:

PE1932: Ban smoking in Scotland and develop a strategy for vaping

Petition Summary
Calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to impose an outright ban on smoking and develop a transformative public health strategy for vaping.

Petitioner: Doug Mutter on behalf of VPZ
Status: Under consideration
Date published: 19 April 2022

A further link informs visitors that from May 17 ‘This petition is now under consideration by the Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee’ which begs the obvious question, how many people actually signed it?

I mean, are we talking tens of thousands?

Not even close. The total number of people who signed VPZ’s ‘ban smoking for good’ petition was (cue drum roll) … 103.

That’s right, one hundred and three.

Oh to have been a fly on the wall when, on June 15:

The Committee agreed to close the petition under Rule 15.7 of Standing Orders on the basis that the Scottish Government is not currently considering an outright ban on smoking in favour of vaping. 

Meanwhile the ‘Ban Smoking For Good’ campaign appears to have been abandoned for good which is a pity because I would love to have gone head-to-head with ‘Razor’ Ruddock in a public debate.

Update: I should add that VPZ’s campaign inspired the subject of Forest’s fringe meeting at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham last month.

We called it ‘Politics and Prohibition: Should smoking be banned for good?’ and it featured Baroness Fox (Academy of Ideas), Mark Oates (We Vape) and Chris Snowdon (IEA).

If you haven’t seen it click here.

Palace news

I shall be in London tomorrow for the world premiere of a new musical co-written by a friend and his daughter.

I first met Todd Buchholz in 1983 when I was invited to attend a Young Americas Foundation conference in Washington DC.

After studying law at Harvard and economics at Cambridge, Todd was a White House advisor under George Bush Sr.

His first book, New Ideas From Dead Economists, is perhaps his best known work (it’s been translated into 15 languages) but his most recent book, The Price of Prosperity: Why Rich Nations Fail and How to Renew Them, was nominated by the Washington Post as one of eight "must-reads" for the summer of 2016.

Todd was also one of the early backers of Jersey Boys, a global success story that began at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego where his wife is general manager.

Glory Ride is ‘based on the true story of a heroic conspiracy to rescue children from fascist Italy via bicycle’.

Like most musicals it’s been in development for years and as I understand it this ‘staged concert performance’ is merely the latest of many stages.

The three performances taking place this week are at The Other Palace in Palace Street, a short walk from Victoria Station and Buckingham Palace.

The Other Palace is at 12 Palace Street and directly across the road, at number 13, is Audley House, a smart Edwardian office block built in 1901, I think.

By coincidence Audley House was Forest’s home from 1998 to 2005 so I know the street very well although the immediate area has changed a lot since then.

The theatre is in a building that didn’t exist when Forest moved in to Audley House. Nor did Cardinal Place, the large office and retail complex that opened in 2005 shortly after we left.

Still there though, albeit dwarfed by the new buildings, is The Phoenix, a pub that stands directly opposite Audley House and next to The Other Palace.

In ‘our’ day The Phoenix was a bit shabby but once a week perhaps, usually on a Friday, we might pop in for lunch.

A few years after we left Audley House for Cambridge I was invited to speak to the Adam Smith Institute’s Next Generation group in an upstairs function room and the whole pub had undergone something of a transformation.

Following a refurbishment it appeared much lighter (and cleaner!), albeit in a slightly characterless way. I don’t remember much more about it but I intend to drop in for a drink before tomorrow night’s show.

The sight of Audley House across the road will bring back a lot of memories, good and bad, only some of which I have previously shared with you.

If you can bear it, watch this space!

Did the war on smoking help radicalise some of today’s young eco warriors?

Just Stop Oil protester Indigo Rumbelow was interviewed on Sky News last night.

Aside from the ‘shrieking’ and the ‘shouting’ (which wasn’t as bad as some reports have suggested) it was Rumblelow’s analogy with smoking that most interested me.

Speaking to presenter Mark Austin she said:

“So the way I see it is, we’re completely addicted to fossil fuels. Have you ever tried to ask someone to stop smoking? I’ve asked my dad to stop smoking and that’s because I loved him and he was told that if he keeps smoking he’s going to get cancer, and the scientists will tell him, you know, he’s going to get cancer, but it’s not a very pleasant process …”

At that point she was interrupted by Austin, who was struggling to control his errant and slightly eccentric guest, but what I think Rumbelow was trying to say was that, while the ‘process’ might not be nice, disrupting motorists’ lives (like asking her dad to quit smoking) is necessary because it’s for our own good.

That wasn’t the last reference to smoking because when Austin asked why she and her fellow protestors weren’t making their point at COP27 in Egypt she replied, somewhat obscurely:

“Yeah, and back to this idea, isn’t that disgusting? Imagine that. Think about my dad when he was smoking. Imagine if the Cancer Research [sic] invited Benson & Hedges [sic] into their debate on what they’re going to do about lung cancer …”

At this point she paused. Then, her voice rising to an even higher pitch of indignation, she screeched:

“It’s disgusting!”

If that final primal scream doesn’t become a meme I’ll be very disappointed but on a half serious note what are we to make of an eco warrior who sees a connection between her father smoking and the health of the entire planet?

Indigo is 28 which means she was 15 when in 2009 the Department of Health launched a new anti-smoking campaign with this press release (What children really want for Christmas):

Children are so concerned about the impact on their parent's health that they'd go to considerable lengths to get them to give up, including going without Christmas presents; giving up their pocket money; and even committing to complete their homework every night, according to new research ...

The research, which was conducted on behalf of Department of Health, reveals the anti smoking stance of a new smokefree generation of kids [sic] who are so opposed to cigarettes they've labelled smoking stupid, say they will never try a cigarette and that they wish that nobody in the world smoked …

Anne Milton, Public Health Minister, said: "What's clear from the research is that children really want their parents to give up smoking ..."

According to Campaign magazine (September 14, 2009):

The Department of Health will tonight launch its latest anti-smoking campaign, featuring children urging their parents to quit while they watch their favourite TV show.

According to the NHS Stop Smoking Services, a generation of children are growing up to be anti-smoking but are increasingly concerned about the health of their parents who smoke.

The campaign featured a series of TV advertisements. In one ad that ran during Coronation Street ‘Molly from Hammersmith’ said:

Hi Mum, I know you're watching Coronation Street. I don't want you to smoke because I don't want you to go through what your mum went through. Because it will just make me really, really sad and because I don't want you to die. I don't know what I would do without you.”

I’d love to know what happened to Molly and whether she’s now a member of Just Stop Oil or Extinction Rebellion because if you’ve grown up under governments that have encouraged you to question your parents’ lifestyle what are the odds that you’ll be drawn to a campaign that questions the lifestyle of your parents’ entire generation?

Anyway, it’s just a thought. As scientists like to say, more research is needed.

Stoptober 2021 campaign evaluation 'planned for end of December 2022'

Is the Department of Health and Social Care reading this blog?

Probably not but yesterday, 24 hours after I posted this (So much for freedom of information), there was interesting twist.

Sunday's post concerned an email I received on Friday from the DHSC. It was in response (or so I thought) to an FOI I submitted last month and it read:

Due to the extremely high volumes of correspondence the department receives, we must regretfully inform you that we are not able to provide an individual response to every enquiry we receive from the public. We are, however, continuing to record all the correspondence we receive so that we can track the issues being raised. I am sorry if this falls short of the service you may expect to receive.   

I was less than impressed, hence Sunday's whinge. Yesterday however, at 18:24, I received a further email from the DHSC and this time it included replies (if not answers) to all my FOI enquiries about recent Stoptober campaigns.

I discovered, for example, that the full and final costs for the 2019, 2020 and 2021 campaigns were £1,717,000, £1,566,000 and £2,090,000 respectively.

Add those figures to the cost of the 2017 and 2018 Stoptober campaigns and the list reads:

• 2017 – £2,100,000
• 2018 – £2,038,000
• 2019 – £1,717,000
• 2020 – £1,566,000
• 2021 – £2,090,000

In total those five campaigns (Stoptober was launched in 2012) have cost the taxpayer almost £10 million (£9,511,000 to be exact).

Included in the figures is the cost of hiring 'celebrity ambassadors' to work on each campaign.

We know, for example, that Public Health England hired four comedians – Al Murray, Bill Bailey, Rhod Gilbert and Shappi Khorsandi – at a total cost of £195,000 to help promote Stoptober 2015.

The adverse publicity may have had some effect because the following year (Stoptober 2016) the total sum paid to four more ambassadors (Phil Tufnell, Craig Revel Horwood, Chris Kamara and Natasha Hamilton) dropped from £195,000 to just £29,000.

Likewise Kym Marsh, Leila Morse and Graeme Souness were paid a total of £30,000 for Stoptober 2017 while Jeremy Kyle received £20,000 for working on Stoptober 2018.

Yesterday however, in response to my request for information about the cost of employing celebrity ambassadors in 2020 and 2021, the DHSC replied:

We are not able to provide a full answer to your request for individual celebrities/celebrity ambassadors and the amount we pay them. We consider that this information is exempt under section 43 of the FOIA, which exempts from the general duty to release information that would, or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of any entity, including the public authority holding the information.

In order to determine whether the above exemptions are sufficiently engaged DHSC must assess the public interest considerations. Accordingly, DHSC has set out below the factors it has taken into consideration in determining its disclosure position.

According to the DHSC, factors that were considered in favour of release include:

• The public interest in transparency and commitment to be open and transparent.

• Disclosing information to present a full picture.

Factors that supported the exemption include:

• Maintaining DHSC’s ability to negotiate fees, sometimes much reduced from commercial rates.

• Often DHSC relies on the specific celebrities to work on a particular campaign because of its association with the celebrities’ public/personal profile and disclosure of the unique fee arrangement is likely to undermine the core campaign message.

I’m a bit surprised they chose not to release the information because, as I mentioned before, in earlier campaigns the fees earned by Stoptober’s ‘celebrity ambassadors’ seemed to be fair game for public consumption. Why taxpayers should now be denied that information seems a bit strange although I understand some of the reasons put forward.

Anyway, while none of this is exactly earth-shattering, I'll leave you to ponder why the campaign evaluation reports are being published later and later.

According to Public Health England in 2016, a full evaluation of Stoptober 2016 was due to be published in February 2017, four months after the event finished (which seemed reasonable). Instead, and despite considerable prompting by Forest, it wasn't published until 26 October 2017, almost twelve months after the campaign it was evaluating finished.

Since then that timescale has become the norm for Stoptober evaluations. The 2017 campaign evaluation was published on 26 October 2018, the 2018 campaign evaluation on 3 October 2019; the 2019 campaign evaluation on 7 October 2020; and the 2020 campaign evaluation on 16 September 2021.

There is still no sign however of the 2021 campaign evaluation. Instead, in answer to our latest FOI request, the DHSC says publication is 'planned for end of December 2022', a full 14 months after the event finished.

Not that it really matters. Stoptober evaluations rarely offer much information and most of it is about brand recognition not smoking cessation.

If however our FOIs keep them on their toes it's not a complete waste of time.

See also: Evaluating Stoptober