Milk bars and an American diner

If you're interested in social history there's an interesting piece on the BBC website about National Milk Bars.

Contrary to its name, National Milk Bars were never national. At its peak the company had 17 branches in Wales and the north-west of England.

Nevertheless, there was a period when milk bars were far more common than they are today.

The idea came from America in the Thirties and they were popular in the Forties and Fifties when they were recommended by the temperance movement as an alternative to the pub.

It's not strictly true to say that the National Milk Bars café in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, is the very last of its kind because milk bars do exist elsewhere, although you'd have to look hard to find one.

As it happens, I will be in Scotland next week and if I have time I am hoping to visit Powmill Milk Bar near Kinross.

It's in a very rural location and I stumbled on it by complete chance a few years ago when I took a detour en route to St Andrews.

As I wrote at the time, there was a great selection of cakes, coffees and milk shakes!

It reminded me of the first time I experienced an American-style diner – which wasn't in the States, funnily enough, but in Covent Garden.

Fat Boy's Diner was described as a 'classic 1950s-style chrome-and-neon diner with counter stools, for burgers, hot dogs and milkshakes'.

Other Fat Boy's Diners were purpose built but this one was a converted train carriage that had been renovated and shipped to the UK from the US in the Nineties.

The Maiden Lane location was only temporary, though, because it sat on a small parcel of land that was due to be redeveloped.

I went there several times before the novelty wore off and when I back a year or two later it had gone.

I have never forgotten that first time, though. Truly, it was like stepping on to the set of Back To The Future!

Rights and responsibilities

More on Andrew Gwynne whose indiscreet WhatsApp posts have derailed – for how long we don't know – his political career.

I've lost count of the number of people – many on the so-called 'libertarian' right and left – who are arguing that he should not have been sacked because he had every right to rant in private.

One writer has even made an impassioned plea for clemency on the grounds that, by its very nature, WhatsApp encourages bad jokes among friends.

Look, I get these arguments, and it's clearly preposterous that Gwynne's posts have been classified as a 'non-crime hate incident'. Likewise the absurd suggestion that he should be prosecuted. (For what? Making a tasteless joke?)

I deplore too the actions of whoever it was who grassed Gwynne to the Mail on Sunday. If you join a WhatsApp group your fellow members have a right to expect a substantial degree of privacy and, if you don't like what's being said, leave the group.

But let's not make him out to be a martyr because there is one very important factor the free speech and privacy lobby are forgetting. Andrew Gwynne was not just an MP, he was a junior minister with the ambition, perhaps, of being in the Cabinet.

If all these posts were published when he was a teenager, or a student, or before he became an MP, I would have a great deal more sympathy for him. But he wasn't. He is now 50-years-old and was first elected as an MP in 2005.

He was a shadow minister in the last parliament, and a junior minister in the current Government. That brings with it responsibilities, both in public and in private.

No-one's perfect, everyone makes mistakes, but the public deserves MPs and government ministers who, at the very least, are able to demonstrate good judgement.

I don't care therefore if these comments were made among 'friends' in the privacy of a WhatsApp group. How stupid do you have to be to make some of the comments that have been attributed to the former health minister, even if they were in jest?

Politics is notorious for the fact that not only do you make enemies, most of your enemies are in the same party.

I've no idea how many people are in the 'Trigger Me Timbers' WhatsApp group, but I cannot believe that every member was a close personal friend of Andrew Gwynne, and he should have known he was playing with fire.

I can't tell you the number of emails I have deleted before pressing the 'send' button. Likewise social media posts to my small number of followers.

I learned a long time ago that once something is in print (or, more recently, online) there's no going back. It cannot be erased.

Even private comments intended exclusively for friends go through a mental filter.

Likewise, having been sued for defamation as a young student journalist, I learned that even things written in jest can come back and bite you. Bigly.

It's jaw-dropping to me that people who should know better are defending the former health minister.

Forget free speech and the right to offend (which I support). In this instance the most important issue is that a government minister has demonstrated extremely poor judgement, and for that reason alone he deserved to be sacked.

See: Andrew Gwynne has every right to rant in private (Spiked)
Andrew Gwynne and the truth about WhatsApp (The Spectator)
Ex-Labour minister’s WhatsApp chat recorded as non-crime hate incident (Telegraph)

Update: According to a report in The Times today (February 13) there were 'roughly 16 involved' in the 'Trigger Me Timbers' WhatsApp group, which suggests a fairly tight group of people – albeit not tight enough to stop someone leaking the messages.

Meanwhile, writing in The Spectator, Rod Liddle takes a different view to me, arguing that 'Gwynne's remarks ... were simply a few slivers of black humour regarding people who had got on his nerves'.

The gist of Rod's argument is that MPs have a terrible job and should be allowed to mouth off in private. I don't disagree with that but I still think that if you're in Andrew Gwynne's position you need to be more circumspect, in public and in private.

Face to face with civil liberties

In Dublin last week I was shown a facial recognition app - still in development - that calculates someone's age.

Theoretically it could be used by retailers to enforce the generational tobacco sales ban which is due to be introduced in 2027.

But how well does it work? Well, I’m almost 66 and it calculated that I am 61.

A friend, 54, was reckoned to be 43 which was flattering for her but could be problematic for potential users, notably retailers.

Imagine, for example, if in 2030 someone was 25 but the app insisted they were 20 and below the legal age of sale for tobacco.

Awkward.

I dare say the technology will improve but it won't be foolproof and, even if it is, Big Brother Watch (Defending Civil Liberties, Protecting Privacy) may have something to say about it.

Keep the Red Flag flying

While I was in Ireland last week it was reported that Dublin-based Red Flag Consulting had been sold with an anticipated payout of €33m to founder Karl Brophy.

According to the Irish Times:

While the sum paid for the Irish business has not been disclosed, industry sources put the value of the deal at about €45 million … Mr Brophy owns 75 per cent of the firm, indicating a payout for him of just more than €33 million.

I don't suppose many (if any) of you will have heard of the company but let me disclose my interest in this story.

Red Flag was founded in Ireland in 2013. Within a year I was introduced to the company through a mutual acquaintance, and that led me to visit their modest office in Dublin where, at that time, they employed no more than four or five people.

Today, it's reported that Red Flag has 65 staff, offices in Dublin, Brussels, Cape Town, London, and Washington DC, and clients including Diageo, Google, and Coca-Cola.

Meanwhile:

Séamus Conboy, who is head of Europe at Red Flag, owns 5.8 per cent of the company and stands to earn about €2.6 million from the sale.

Would that be the same Séamus Conboy I had coffee with ten years ago?

And there's more:

It is understood that a seven-figure sum will be paid to employees who don’t hold shares in the company, by way of a completion bonus.

How lovely.

To be clear, my brief acquaintance with Karl Brophy and Séamus Conboy can be measured in minutes rather than years.

Nevertheless I love success stories like that and I can only congratulate them all on their windfall. Richly deserved!

Tobacco control lobby loses a close ally

The defenestration of Andrew Gwynne has arguably lost the tobacco control industry one of its most vocal supporters.

Here, for example, is the former health minister tweeting in July 2024:

A few months later (October 14, 2024) he spoke at the inaugural meeting of the new APPG on Smoking and Health (run by ASH), an occasion recorded here by his Labour colleague Mary Kelly Foy, co-chair of the APPG.

Two days before that he spoke at a parliamentary event organised by ASH ...

In July 2023, as shadow public health minister he could be found at another parliamentary event reflecting 'on the strong cross-party support for tobacco control and the Smokefree 2030 ambition, and the role of both Labour and Conservative governments in taking us closer to ending smoking'.

But his support for tobacco control goes back long before that. Writing for Labour List in 2015, for example, he claimed that 'The new car smoking ban is a landmark moment for public health'.

Landmark moment? To the best of my knowledge, only one person has been prosecuted for smoking in a car carrying children since the law was introduced, for which there are three possible explanations:

One, the law has been a spectacular success, dissuading millions of smokers from lighting up in car with a child present.

Two, the police are not enforcing the law because it's almost impossible.

Three, when the law was introduced very few smokers were still smoking in cars with children so the impact has been negligible.

You decide.

Either way, Gwynnne has been a keen supporter of tobacco control for a long time, and it seems he had his eye on pubs – the last refuge of the smoker – as well. (Pubs could be forced to close early as Labour considering crackdown on opening hours, health minister says.)

Although he will be quickly replaced as public health minister, his cocksure performance during the Tobacco and Vapes Public Bill Committee meetings suggested a politician comfortable in his brief and in a hurry to get the legislation through parliament, so he will undoubtedly be missed by the tobacco control lobby.

Speaking of which, keep an eye on the social media accounts of all those groups he declared "It was great to meet" – ASH, British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Asthma + Lung UK, Mental Health Foundation, and Age UK.

A penny for their thoughts today.

You couldn’t make it up

On January 30, public health minister Andrew Gwynne wrote on Instagram:

“I'm very happy to say that the Tobacco and Vapes Bill has now passed the Committee stage.

“I’m incredibly proud of this Bill and all the brilliant scientists, academics, and parliamentarians who have brought it to fruition.”

Helpfully, he then listed some of the policies he was “incredibly proud” of:

• No tobacco sales to anyone born on/after 1 Jan 2009
• Smoking banned outside hospitals, schools and playgrounds
• Ban on vape advertising
• Smoke-free areas to include ban on vaping

Fast forward to yesterday evening.

I was watching the rugby on TV when a news alert popped up on my phone: ‘Health minister sacked over WhatsApp messages’.

According to the Mail on Sunday, which ‘exposed his racist and sexist messages’:

Andrew Gwynne also made anti-Semitic slights and ‘jokes’ about a constituent being ‘mown down’ by a truck.

Keir Starmer stripped Mr Gwynne of his job as Health Minister and suspended his membership of the Labour Party when he was told about the content of the WhatsApp messages yesterday.

Meanwhile, the MP himself apologised for his ‘badly misjudged comments’.

Who saw that coming?

The irony is, if there’s one politician who has been in my head more than any other during the past month - as I have read and re-read the Hansard transcripts of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill Committee meetings - it’s the (former) minister for health Andrew Gwynne.

You couldn’t make it up.

My favourite Kay Burley moment

I’m currently in Dublin on business so I’ll make this brief.

Sky News’ presenter Kay Burley yesterday announced, on air, that she was stepping down after 36 years.

Burley is a Marmite figure to many viewers but I like her. She grew on me when she appeared in an episode of The Kumars in 2014 (the Sky version not the original BBC show broadcast a decade or so earlier).

It demonstrated that she had a good sense of humour and didn’t take herself too seriously.

My favourite Kay Burley moment however is due largely to the former Brexit and Conservative Party MEP Lucy Harris whose wonderfully arch response to Burley’s questions (including “Which way do you think I voted?”) still makes me laugh.

A tale of two committees

A lot of people are angry at the way the committee stage of the assisted dying bill has panned out.

Writing for Spiked, Lauren Smith comments:

As the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill has worked its way through the committee stage, we have seen just how low the pro-assisted-dying contingent is willing to stoop in order to ram this legislation through parliament.

The committee stage has been stacked massively in favour of the assisted-suicide lobby from the start. Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP who introduced the bill and has made assisted dying her pet cause, ensured that the MPs who sit on the committee are disproportionately on side.

As Conservative MP Nick Timothy has pointed out, 61 per cent of the MPs sitting on the committee voted in favour of the bill, versus the 55 per cent who voted for it in November at its second reading in the Commons.

I'm not sure it helps Smith's argument to talk about the 'assisted-suicide lobby' because that's a pejorative way of looking at assisted dying. Nevertheless, she has a point about the committee, which is shared by many people who have watched, agog.

What makes me sigh, though, is that the same could be said of the Tobacco and Vapes Public Bill Committee which has also been very one-sided and stacked with supporters of the Bill. Not once, but twice.

Last year the Guido Fawkes website reported that:

The government has now published the members the Tobacco and Vapes Bill Committee – they’ll be considering amendments to the bill in May. Guido is surprised to see that, despite 165 Tory MPs either abstaining or voting against the smoking ban, the 16-member Committee contains exactly zero MPs who who voted against it. The whips don’t want any more trouble from pesky fans of free choice…

16 of the 17 committee members voted for the bill and the one who didn’t, Labour MP Mary Kelly Foy, is vice-chairman of the APPG on Smoking and Health which has been pushing the ban constantly. Almost a quarter of the committee members are from the APPG, which is run by the anti-smoking lobby group ASH. Sorry news for MPs who hoped amendments might be considered fairly.

Simon Clark, director of smokers’ rights group Forest tells Guido: “Committees don’t need to be balanced but this is such an obvious stitch-up it’s embarrassing. The make-up of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill Committee is effectively a f*ck you to every MP who voted against the Bill, and every member of the public who opposes the generational smoking ban.”

Assisted dying is equally contentious, perhaps more so, and Leadbeater‘s bill deserves close scrutiny. But I would argue that the generational tobacco sales ban – which has far-reaching consequences for individual freedom – deserves the same unbiased scrutiny.

Instead, when we complained about the composition of the committee that was drawn up by party whips to consider Rishi Sunak's original Tobacco and Vapes Bill, one MP (who was on our side) airily dismissed it as something that was quite normal and we shouldn't get too het up.

I was disappointed then and I'm disappointed now because the public bill committee that has just finished scrutinising the revised Tobacco and Vapes Bill was just as one-sided as the first one.

No fewer than 15 of the 17 members of the committee were in favour of the Bill, most having voted for it as second reading in November.

In committee only two members were opposed to the main policy (the generational ban) but that issue never got properly debated because the only amendment that would have derailed it was an amendment to raise the age of sale from 18 to 25, and that was proposed by a Lib Dem MP who wasn't even on the committee (nor was it supported by the two Lib Dems who were on the committee!).

The only members of the committee who consistently questioned elements of the Bill were two Tories new to Parliament (Jack Rankin and Sarah Bool), but the principal Conservative voice on the committee was Dr Caroline Johnson, the shadow public health minister, whose enthusiasm for the Bill seemed at times to be even greater than that of Andrew Gwynne, her Labour counterpart.

At one point she even grilled the minister on why the Bill didn't ban vaping in public places where smoking is prohibited.

As for 'expert' witnesses, don't get me started. Actually, I've written about this already, but it's worth repeating that of the 22 witnesses invited by the committee to give oral evidence, all but three were in favour of the Bill, including the generational ban.

The other three (two of whom were from Trading Standards, the other from the British Retail Consortium) could be best described as neutral, but there was not a single 'expert' witness who was actively opposed to the generational ban or extending public smoking bans to outdoor areas.

Nor was there any attempt to question the evidence on harm caused to non-smokers from smoking outdoors. Hardly surprising, because there is none. Instead we had to listen to the argument that if you can smell it (tobacco smoke) it must be doing you harm. (Whatever happened to the 'dose is the poison’ argument?)

In contrast, while the assisted dying committee was undoubtedly one-sided in its composition and choice of witnesses, it wasn't so one-sided as to exclude opponents completely. And yet few people seem bothered.

The problem is, if you turn a blind eye to bias on one issue that should be open to debate and unbiased parliamentary scrutiny, you create a precedent for the same thing to happen again and again on other issues.

Last month it was the Tobacco and Vapes Bill. Currently it's the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. Next month it will be something else.

The irony is that, with the spotlight of the media on it, the committee stage of the assisted dying bill has been a disaster for proponents of the Bill, and I would be surprised if MPs don't vote it down at third reading.

Meanwhile the committee stage of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill passed largely unnoticed because the creeping prohibition of tobacco is no longer news – especially when you deliberately exclude every conceivable opponent, including retailers and consumers, from your panel of 'expert' witnesses whilst stacking the committee in your favour by 15:2.

See: Stitch up (how low will this Government go?)

Also: Who are the MPs who will scrutinise the assisted dying bill? (BBC) and The assisted-dying bill brings shame on parliament (Spiked).