Whoops, something went wrong

I am currently experiencing an ongoing problem with this website.

It doesn’t stop me posting but it takes a bit longer because when I try to login and post copy I frequently get the message, ‘Whoops, something went wrong’.

In addition I occasionally get the message, ‘500 Internal Server Error’.

This also happens when I am not logged in and click on the URL, and I am curious if readers are experiencing the same issues.

It’s overcome easily enough. You just have to refresh the page and most of the time that reboots it, although edits have to be done again which is a nuisance if I haven’t copied them.

I’ve made Squarespace (the New York-based company that manages and hosts the site) aware of the problem (it’s not the first time this has happened), but although they replied within 24 hours I sense no urgency to fix it.

The reason, I suspect, is that this blog uses Squarespace 5, software that was originally released in 2008, and fixing problems with it is no longer a priority.

Squarespace 5 was superseded in 2012 by Squarespace 6, then Squarespace 7.0, and, more recently, Squarespace 7.1.

Users like me have been encouraged to upgrade, and I would but I'm nervous in case I lose 14 years of blog posts in the process.

This is how Squarespace describes the process:

1. Start a Squarespace 7.0 trial.
2. Import your Squarespace 5 content.
3. Update the site to Squarespace 7.1.
4. Set up, style, and add to your site. You may need to recreate content that didn't import automatically.
5. Upgrade your Squarespace 7.1 site to active billing.
6. Move your custom domain.
7. Cancel Squarespace 5 billing.

One thing that concerns me is the warning, 'You may need to recreate content that didn't import automatically', because that could be quite a big job that I simply don't have time for.

I am fairly certain too that if I were to try and switch the blog to Squarespace 7.0 myself I will inevitably press the wrong key and thousands of posts will disappear into the ether, never to be seen again.

Likewise many of the images that have been uploaded since this version of the blog was launched in 2011.

To be fair to Squarespace, I’ve been very happy with the platform, which is normally very easy to use. (I’m sure it’s only a matter of practise and familiarity, but whenever I’ve tried WordPress I've found it far less intuitive.)

Anyway, if you are experiencing the same gremlins as me when you visit this blog, do let me know.

I can live with it for now if I'm the only person inconvenienced, but if it's a wider problem then I need to get it fixed, or switch to Squarespace 7.0, or 7.1, sooner rather than later.

How Parliament works (or doesn’t)

Watching witnesses give ‘evidence’ to the Tobacco and Vapes Bill Committee yesterday, I was struck by several things.

First, the extraordinary anomaly whereby public health minister Andrew Gwynne, who - as a member of the committee - had spent much of the day asking questions of the witnesses, then ended the day as a witness himself, thereby giving ‘evidence’ to the very same committee he was a member of.

Weird as that seemed, I don’t think it was unprecedented because Andrea Leadsom, public health minister in Rishi Sunak’s government, was on the previous Tobacco and Vapes Bill Committee, although I can’t recall whether she gave evidence.

Either way, it strikes me as odd that there should be a place on a public bill committee for a minister who is effectively responsible for driving the legislation through Parliament, and who then gives evidence, as an 'expert' witness, to that same committee.

Poacher? Gamekeeper? Or both? I’m confused.

(It’s not entirely analogous, but would a member of the jury in a court of law be allowed to give evidence, as a witness, to that same jury? Ditto would a KC who has been cross-examining witnesses also be allowed to sit on the jury? I think we know the answer to both questions.)

At the very least, it has to be a conflict of interest, surely, and it’s a difficult situation for other members of the committee who might be reluctant to grill another committee member with whom they have to work.

(To be clear, I don’t have an issue with relevant ministers giving evidence. I do have a problem with them sitting on a committee that ought to be balanced and impartial and at least one arm’s length from government.)

Second, the response of the Conservatives on the committee was interesting, and equally curious.

I didn’t watch every minute of the morning and afternoon sessions, but from what I saw the Conservative response was led exclusively by shadow public health minister Dr Caroline Johnson, who voted for the Bill at second reading in November even though her party leader, Kemi Badenoch, voted against.

Neither Sarah Bool, who also voted against the Bill, nor Jack Rankin (who didn’t vote but is thought to be opposed) said a word or directed a single question to the witnesses - unlike their Labour counterparts who all chipped in with questions.

My question therefore is: what is current Conservative policy with regard to the Tobacco and Vapes Bill?

As far as I can see, while Tory MPs have been given a free vote (just as they were under Rishi Sunak), the party - even under Kemi Badenoch - still effectively supports the Bill.

I appreciate this is not a hill (or even a bill) Badenoch will want to die on, especially when there appears to be little prospect of affecting the outcome (Reform's Nigel Farage seems to be of the same mind), but it would be nice to see the Tories put up a bit of a fight in the name of choice and personal responsibility.

Those, after all, are the type of Tory values I had hoped Kemi would lead the party back to.

Instead, what we got from the mild-mannered Caroline Johnson was a series of questions that seemed designed merely to bolster the Bill.

Searching questions were noticeable by their absence, even when Labour minister Andrew Gwynne was giving 'evidence’. At one point, she even asked him why the Bill didn’t go further and include a generational ban on the sale of vapes as well as tobacco!

Third, I wondered at first about the brevity of most of the sessions. For example, after the four chief medical officers were given a full hour to give their evidence, the CEOs of ASH, ASH Scotland, ASH Wales, and someone from Northern Ireland, were allocated just 20 minutes.

Other panels were similarly truncated. Several were shorter than scheduled because committee members struggled to find questions to ask the witnesses. Their silence suggested two things: ignorance of the subject or, just as bad, a lack of interest in the detail.

In hindsight however I realised that this suited all parties because it could be argued that the principal purpose of the day was not to grill the likes of Hazel Cheeseman, chief executive of ASH, but to give her and her colleagues the opportunity to make statements that might generate a soundbite that could be posted and circulated on social media.

Cynical? Perhaps, but the less said about some of the ‘evidence’ the better. That said, I was particularly struck by the assertion by one witness that secondhand smoke costs the country £46 billion. News to me but naturally it went unchallenged.

I should add that, when we made a fuss about the composition of the original Tobacco and Vapes Bill Committee, I was disappointed when one Conservative MP (who was opposed to the Bill) brushed away our complaint, saying it was quite normal for public bill committees to be stacked like this.

Personally, I found his attitude rather complacent. If public bill committees are going to be manipulated to such a degree, what’s the point of them? (Or perhaps that is the point. It's a means to an end.)

Anyway, there is one further sitting scheduled for ‘expert’ witnesses, but don’t expect the Tobacco and Vapes Committee to invite anyone opposed to the Bill.

As for the tobacco and vaping industries, or representatives of the consumer (all of whom are valid and legitimate stakeholders), I would rate the chances of an invitation at somewhere between zero and nil.

Update: I have just been told that, while the Committee is scheduled to meet on January 9, 14, and 16, no more witnesses will be invited to give oral evidence. Incredible.

Tobacco and Vapes Bill Committee (part one)

The Tobacco and Vapes Bill Committee is meeting today.

When Rishi Sunak’s Tobacco and Vapes Bill reached the committee stage last year I wrote about it here, noting the appalling bias in the choice of committee members:

Despite the fact that there was substantial and well publicised opposition to the Bill at the second reading last week, with 165 Conservative MPs - almost half the parliamentary party - either abstaining or voting against (58), the 17-member Committee contains not a single MP who voted against the Bill.

Instead, 16 out of the 17 MPs chosen to sit on the Committee voted in favour of the Bill, and the only one who didn't (Labour's Mary Kelly Foy – no vote recorded) is vice-chair of the APPG on Smoking and Health (which is run by ASH) so we know she supports the Bill and would have voted Aye had she been present.

Incredibly, no fewer than FOUR members (almost a quarter) of the Committee are also members of the APPG on Smoking and Health. Apart from Mary Kelly Foy, the others are Bob Blackman (Conservative), who is chairman of the APPG, Rachael Maskell (Labour), and Virendra Sharma (Labour).

See 'Stitch up - how low will this government go?'. The Guido Fawkes website also ran the story here – Smoking banners run from scrutiny.

Sunak’s Bill was subsequently abandoned when he called an early general election but, following the second reading of the revised Tobacco and Vapes Bill in November, a new committee was appointed to consider the Bill, including possible amendments.

The 17 members of the new Tobacco and Vapes Bill Committee are Dr Zubir Ahmed, Alex Barros-Curtis, Sarah Bool, Phil Brickell, Dr Danny Chambers, Dr Beccy Cooper, Jim Dickson, Andrew Gwynne, Liz Jarvis, Dr Caroline Johnson, Mary Kelly Foy, Tristan Osborne, Taiwo Owatemi, Jack Rankin, Gregory Stafford, Euan Stainbank and Rosie Wrighting.

It’s almost but not quite as one-sided as before.

Eleven of the 17 are Labour MPs and, as we know, Labour MPs are whipped to support the Bill so every one of them voted 'aye' at the second reading.

More interesting are the other six members of the Committee, four of them Conservatives, plus two Lib Dems.

The Conservatives are Sarah Bool, Dr Caroline Johnson, Jack Rankin, and Gregory Stafford. Apart from Johnson (elected in a by-election in December 2016), the others were all elected in July 2024.

Johnson, who is currently a shadow minister (health and social care), voted in favour of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill at second reading in November.

Bool voted against the Bill, while Rankin and Stafford didn't record a vote.

Of the two Lib Dems on the Tobacco and Vapes Committee, Dr Danny Chambers and Liz Jarvis both voted for the Bill at second reading. In contrast, there is no place for even one of the seven Lib Dem MPs who voted against the Bill.

Therefore, of the 17 members of the Committee considering the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, just one voted against it at second reading. (Rankin is most likely against but I couldn't say for sure.)

Meanwhile, what of the ‘experts’ invited to give evidence to the Committee? This morning's witnesses (see here) were:

Panel 1: Professor Sir Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer for England; Sir Francis Atherton, Chief Medical Officer for Wales; Professor Sir Michael McBride, Chief Medical Officer for Northern Ireland; and Professor Sir Gregor Ian Smith, Chief Medical Officer for Scotland.

They were followed by Hazel Cheeseman, CEO of Action on Smoking and Health; Sheila Duffy, chief executive, ASH Scotland; Suzanne Cass, chief executive, ASH Wales; and Naomi Thomson, health Improvement manager, Cancer Focus Northern Ireland (panel 2).

Then Ian Walker, executive director of policy, information and communications, Cancer Research UK; and Sarah Sleet, CEO, Asthma + Lung UK (panel 3).

Quelle surprise! The only surprise (if you can call it that) was the time each group of witnesses were allocated.

The four chief medical officers had approximately one hour, but Cheeseman, Duffy, Cass and Thomson were granted a mere 30 minutes before the session concluded with Walker and Sleet, who were given 20 minutes (approx).

The next session (Panel 4) will start at 2.00pm this afternoon so I'll update you with the next group of witnesses when they appear.

Alternatively you can watch it here on the Parliament TV channel.

Panel 4: The afternoon session began with three more witnesses - David Fothergill, chairman, community wellbeing board; Prof Tracy Daszkiewicz, executive director of public health, Aneurin Bevan University Health Board, Gwent; and Alison Challenger, tobacco and vapes lead, Association of Directors of Public Health.

It won’t surprise you to hear that Fothergill (a Conservative councillor) began by welcoming the legislation, “from a local authority perspective”.

Panel 5: Next up is our old friend Linda Bauld who has the floor to herself.

Linda is introduced as “the Bruce and John Usher professor of public health and co-head of the the Centre for Population Health Science at the University of Edinburgh” but is better known to us as a long-standing advocate of further tobacco control measures.

Welcome Linda!

Panel 6: Moving swiftly on, the next panel of witnesses features Lord Michael Bichard and Wendy Martin, chair and director of the National Trading Standards.

No sign (yet!) of anyone representing the tobacco or vaping industries or the consumer. Don’t hold your breath!

Panel 7: Next up … Inga Becker-Hansen, policy advisor for retail products, British Retail Consortium.

Panel 8: Next witness … Matthew Shanks, chief executive of Education South West, a multi-academy trust in Devon.

Panel 9: Followed by Dr Laura Squire OBE, chief healthcare quality and access officer at the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA).

Panel 10: Professor Steve Turner, president, Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health; and Professor Sanjay Agrawal, National Specialty Adviser for Tobacco Dependency at NHS England, Chair of the Royal College of Physicians Tobacco Advisory Group.

And now, the final witness of the day … it’s Andrew Gwynne MP, public health minister and a member of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill Committee.

Seriously?

Live and let die

According to reports last week, including this one in the Guardian:

Researchers at University College London found that on average a single cigarette takes about 20 minutes off a person’s life, meaning that a typical pack of 20 cigarettes can shorten a person’s life by nearly seven hours.

Commissioned by the Department of Health (who else?!), the study was reported nationally and internationally and the intention was clear – to scare smokers into giving up in the new year.

Perhaps, if you are thinking of quitting, it might serve a purpose. My guess, though, is that the impact on most smokers will be minimal.

Yes, smoking poses a risk to their health, but that's what it is – a risk, like Russian roulette, not a guarantee of illness and an early death.

Most people accept that the more you smoke the greater the risk, but the idea that smoking poses a linear risk that can be measured, cigarette by cigarette, isn't borne out by the actualité.

As Daily Mail columnist Tom Utley wrote on Friday:

At the rate I smoke, I would have been knocking more than 12 hours off my life expectancy every single day for the past 52 years! Yet somehow I’ve made it to 71, with nothing more serious than a persistent cough.

Others could say the same thing. David Hockney, for example, 87 last year despite a lifetime of smoking. And there are thousands of similar cases.

As readers know, I don't dispute the health risks of smoking, but I do think there's far more to it than totting up the number of cigarettes smoked and calculating the years that could be lost.

Another journalist, Robert Crampton of The Times, estimated that as a result of his 12 cigarettes a day habit, he is set to lose seven years of his life, ‘but which seven years’?

Say I’d never smoked but nonetheless am scheduled to cark it on New Year’s Day 2032, aged 67, after a cerebral aneurysm. That’s not three score years and ten, let alone the big eight-oh, which is what you reckon on nowadays. Anything much less and people start waffling how “he was taken from us too soon” or some such.

But how about I’m on course to make it to 87? Which isn’t entirely unreasonable, given I’m not overweight, I don’t drink and my genetic inheritance is optimistic. But because I have smoked, I’ll actually croak at 80. And what if those seven extra years of nothingness, had they been spent above ground, were marked by increasing physical frailty, loss of independence, memory, potency, mental capacity, maybe even self-identity? In that case I’d welcome the early departure.

According to the Office for National Statistics' life expectancy calculator, my life expectancy is 85, but that can only be a very rough estimate because it doesn't take into account factors such as lifestyle, medical history, genes, or simple bad luck.

The point is, you may be able to calculate the average age a generation of men or women will die in a specific country, but calculating the exact lifespan of every individual is impossible, which is why some life expectancy calculators offer three results – including the best and worst outcomes, which may be a decade apart.

A friend of mine uses a life expectancy app that predicts the exact day you will die, and last year it gave him three possible dates, the worst case scenario being in 2030 when he will be 71.

The chances of it being accurate must be very small, but my question is: unless you have a bucket list of things you want to do before you go (or need to get your tax affairs in order), why would you want to know when you are going to die?!

Anyway, here's a photo of Tom Utley. It was taken at Smoke On The Water, the Forest boat party, on October 22 last year. Fingers crossed, Tom will be with us for a long while yet.

Happy new year!

My first quote of 2025 concerns vaping and the tobacco industry.

Published yesterday by The Journal (also known as TheJournal.ie), an online publication based in Dublin, it was included in a feature written by The Journal’s ‘investigations’ team.

The investigation, such as it was, appeared to be motivated by the thought that the tobacco companies’ interest in selling e-cigarettes might be driven not by altruism but by the need to fill a hole caused by the declining sales of combustible tobacco products.

Hence yesterday’s report:

Today, we can reveal that Irish tobacco businesses are increasingly turning to vaping as a way to mitigate falling sales from smoking.

You can read the result of The Journal’s ‘investigation’ here. As I say, it includes a short quote by me:

“Vaping has been a free market success story. Instead of obsessing about the motives of a legitimate industry, public health campaigners should work with the industry for the long-term benefit of adults who enjoy consuming nicotine.”

The full quote, most of which was not published, read:

“Vaping has been a free market success story. In Ireland alone hundreds of thousands of adults have quit smoking by switching to a product that, on current evidence, is far less harmful to their health.

“There will always be a demand for nicotine products so what matters is offering legal reduced risk alternatives that satisfy consumers who would otherwise smoke tobacco.

“Instead of obsessing about the motives of a legitimate industry, public health campaigners should put their prejudices aside and work with the industry for the long-term benefit of adults who enjoy consuming nicotine.

“The issue of children vaping does need to be addressed, but suggesting that vaping is a gateway to smoking is not borne out by most of the evidence.

“The answer is not to go to war with the vaping industry by imposing further restrictions on the sale and marketing of e-cigarettes, but to enforce existing age restrictions and punish retailers and illicit traders who sell vapes illegally to children.”

Anyway, having posted the edited version (with a link to the article) on X, I saw that it had been reposted by someone with the handle @irishmednews who added the pejorative comment:

Tobacco company shill is pro-vaping. There’s a surprise.

Beyond a social media account, there doesn’t seem to be much substance to the otherwise anonymous Irish Medical News other than a series of left-leaning tweets and retweets, including sarcastic references to Brexit and Mrs Thatcher’s privatisation policy.

Despite that I wish him (and you) a belated happy new year!

Review of the year

Our annual review of the year newsletter was sent out yesterday.

You can read it by clicking on this link.

If you do not subscribe to the Forest newsletter (and occasional action alert) you can do so by signing up here.

What I've been reading (and listening to)

Glen Oglaza, the former ITN and Sky News reporter, has written two books based on detailed diaries he kept during his long and successful broadcasting career.

The titles (When I Stories and More When I Stories) may seem a bit obscure but Glen explains that the phrase relates to foreign and political journalists sharing their stories, many of them fuelled by some prodigious drinking.

As it happens I know Glen (slightly) because we were at Aberdeen University at the same time and he was president of the students’ union when I was co-editing a Private Eye-style publication in which he occasionally featured, albeit not in a bad way.

Truth is, we had a soft spot for him, unlike some of our principal targets.

He had also written for the official student newspaper but I was nevertheless surprised when I saw him on national television, a decade later, reporting for ITN.

As he explains in the books, he worked for ITN from 1986 to 1997 before moving to Sky News where he focussed on politics until retiring from frontline reporting in 2013.

Our paths crossed a couple of times - once when I was being interviewed on College Green opposite the Houses of Parliament, and again in Bournemouth during a Lib Dem party conference.

On the first occasion he was walking past and came over to say hello, which was nice of him.

On the second occasion I was being heckled (very loudly) by anti-tobacco protestor Stuart Holmes whose use of a megaphone was drowning out whatever conversation Glen was trying to have on his phone on a balcony outside the conference centre.

I’m not sure he knew it was me who was the target of Holmes’ tirade. Either way, he gave the tiresome oik both barrels, shouting at him to "Shut up!". Thanks, Glen!

Anyway, I mention this because he was recently interviewed by LBC broadcaster Iain Dale for the latter's All Talk series of podcasts.

Naturally they talked about the period covered by Glen's books during which he reported on the miners' strike, the poll tax riots, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the war in Kosovo – and that was just the ITN years.

Having read the first book I can confirm that it was hugely entertaining, albeit a bit exhausting due to the sheer volume of information.

As Iain hinted in the podcast, it could probably have done with a bit of editing.

Nevertheless, as Iain also acknowledged, it's an obvious primer for anyone who has ambitions to be a reporter or political correspondent.

Either way, do listen to the podcast. If nothing else, it's a joy to listen to two broadcasters, neither of whom utters a single "umm" or "err" in 58 minutes.

Other broadcasters (including some top BBC 'talent'), take note!

To listen to Iain Dale's All Talk podcast featuring Glen Oglaza, click on the image below

Happy Christmas