Great British Pub Awards

The Great British Pub Awards are a national event organised by The Publican's Morning Advertiser.

The awards are recognised as "the one to win" by licensees, attracting hundreds of entries from pubs around the UK.

Best Smoking Area is one of 16 categories. It recognises pubs that provide excellent outdoor smoking facilities for adult customers.

Does your local pub provide excellent smoking outdoor smoking facilities? Nominate it now for Best Smoking Area. Email contact@forestonline.org or add a comment to this post.

As many readers will testify, since the smoking ban was introduced a lot of people who used to enjoy a beer and a cigarette in their local pub now stay at home.

If your pub has gone that extra mile to make smokers feel welcome, please nominate it for the Best Smoking Area award so it gets the recognition it deserves.

Deadline for nominations extended to May 24.

More on smoking during pregnancy

Further to yesterday's post ...

Women smoking during pregnancy is never an easy topic to discuss on air when you are restricted to a handful of soundbites so hats off to Pat Nurse and my colleague Angela Harbutt who did a number of interviews yesterday for local and national media.

I won't list them all but you can hear Angela on the Jeremy Vine Show (BBC Radio 2). Click here. It's about five minutes in.

Angela has also written an article on the subject. Here's a taste:

Extreme measures such as police-style breathalysers, that damage the fundamental relationship between midwife and pregnant woman, or cause stress and anxiety to the mother can hardly be good for a baby’s wellbeing.

And where does ‘protection’ of the baby end? Will NICE be advocating tests for alcohol consumption on pregnant women next? Will midwives have free reign to rummage in our kitchen cupboards to check our diets are up to scratch?

If this is truly where it is heading (and show me a smoking policy that doesn’t lead to similar calls for other lifestyle activities) then why doesn’t public health just lock up all pregnant women in a sanatorium for nine months and be done with it?

See Midwives made meddlers: a recipe for disaster (The Free Society)

I caught Pat on Look North (BBC1) last night, sandwiched (not literally) between a midwife and a spokesman for Mumsnet. You can see it here. If I remember it was about halfway through the programme.

This morning she added BBC Tees to her list of interviews.

Pat also brought to my attention an article published by the New Scientist in 2010. Written by journalist and author Linda Geddes, it's called Bumpology: Fed up of the booze and cigs police.

Worth reading.

Every breath they take - will be tested

Those nice people at the National Institute for Clinical Excellence are at it again.

Their latest proposal is to ask pregnant women to take a breath test to prove if they are smoking during their pregnancy.

I've had to deal with a couple of calls on the subject today.

The Mail wanted a quote - which I gave them - but the Today programme (Radio 4) not unreasonably wanted to speak to a woman who has smoked during pregnancy.

Without hesitation, and not for the first time, I recommended Pat Nurse.

Update: Pat tells me she recorded a brief interview but the item, to be broadcast between 7.00 and 8.00am, will primarily see midwives and NICE go head to head.

Update: Fury at smoking breath test for all mothers-to-be (Daily Mail)

I have been slightly misquoted. According to the Mail, 'Simon Clark, director of smokers’ lobby group Forest, said all mothers should be encouraged not to smoke when pregnant'.

What I actually said was, "We wouldn't encourage pregnant women to smoke." There's a difference.

The rest is reasonably accurate - apart from the words "slippery slope" which I swear never passed my lips.

Update: Pat is also on Five Live around 10.30am (Monday).

Update: Angela Harbutt will be on the Jeremy Vine Show (Radio 2) around 1.00pm 12.00.

Update: Angela will also be on LBC; Angela (or Pat) will be on BBC Cambridgeshire; Pat has also done BBC Three Counties and will be on BBC Look North after 6.30.

Lord Bell, advisor to Thatcher and Reagan, to speak at Freedom Dinner

On Wednesday I invited readers to watch this space.

Well, I am delighted to announce that Lord Bell, former political advisor to Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, has agreed to speak at the 2013 Forest Freedom Dinner.

His CV speaks volumes:

Lord Bell is chairman of Bell Pottinger Private. He is one of the best known figures in the UK communications industry.

He began his career in 1959 at advertising agency Colman Prentis and Varley. In 1970 he helped found Saatchi & Saatchi; by 1981, as Chief Executive and later as International Chairman, he had led Saatchi & Saatchi to become the biggest advertising agency network in the world.

Lord Bell was political advisor to Lady Thatcher from 1976 to 1990. He successfully ran election campaigns for the Conservative Party in 1979, 1983 and in 1987. He has served as a political advisor to F W de Klerk, Ronald Reagan, Boris Yeltsin, Jacques Chiraq and Thaksin Shinawatra, among many others.

He currently advises the chairmen and chief executives of many of Britain’s leading companies and organisations, as well as foreign heads of state and international business and political leaders all over the world.

As I reported last week, our other headline speaker is Mark Littlewood, director-general of the Institute of Economic Affairs. Not a bad pairing, I think you'll agree.

The Freedom Dinner takes place at Boisdale of Canary Wharf on Tuesday July 2. Tickets cost £90 and can be booked online here.

Read our lips - there was no promise so no government u-turn

Shameless.

Labour has issued a press release with the headline 'Diane Abbott: Cameron must explain plain packaging broken promise'.

Diane Abbott MP, Labour's Shadow Public Health Minister, urges David Cameron to explain plain packaging broken promise:

"This is deeply concerning, because behind all the chaos, confusion and dither, it's clear that Lynton Crosby and the government's friends in big business are pulling the strings, and public health is being quietly ditched by this government.

"David Cameron needs to get out of the bunker and explain why the government is breaking yet another promise, and whether he was aware of his main campaign strategist's business interests when he offered him the job."

ASH, needless to say, has tweeted the press release to its followers.

Others have been equally active accusing the PM of a u-turn and goodness knows what.

It's all spin and lies, of course. As anyone who has followed the plain packaging debate knows, David Cameron has not broken any promise nor done a u-turn.

The Coalition Government, bless 'em, never promised to introduced standardised packaging.

They promised a public consultation and they delivered.

Abbott knows that, Labour knows that - the entire tobacco control industry knows that.

Everything else is politics.

Update: More bleating, this time on a Cancer Research blog, but at least the writer doesn't accuse the PM of breaking a non-existent promise.

Instead Chris Woodhall has a pop at the tobacco industry, Forest, Hands Off Our Packs and more.

He mentions that 220,000 people supported standard packs campaigns but omits to mention that more than twice as many (500,000) supported campaigns against plain packaging.

He attacks the tobacco lobby but fails to mention the packaging and design companies that oppose plain packaging; or the retired and serving police officers who fear it will lead to an increase in illicit trade.

He writes that 'Forest has ... used their own single-issue front-group Hands Off Our Packs (HOOPS) to oppose standard packs: they receive the same veiled support from BAT, JTI and Imperial tobacco'.

Veiled support? It's there in black and white on both the HOOPS and Forest websites. We've never hidden it.

Compare our transparency with that of our opponents. It took a Freedom of Information request to find out how much public money Plain Packs Protect had received. (Over £450,000, thanks for asking.)

Woodhall urges readers to write to MPs and "ask them to do the right thing: introduce standardised cigarette packs".

They never give up, do they?

See: A sad day for public health (Cancer Research Science Update blog)

PS. Needless to say you can't comment on the CRUK blog. That would be too much to expect.

Update: My mistake. You can comment. Over to you ...

Update: I have just posted this comment:

This article isn't science, it's propaganda. Sad day indeed for CRUK and anyone who values both sides of a debate.

Epic fail

I wasn't planning to write about plain packaging today. (Give it a rest, I hear you cry!)

It's impossible however not to comment on the hysterical but manufactured reaction to the Government's decision not to include it in the Queen's Speech.

All the usual suspects are screaming blue murder, pointing the finger at Lynton Crosby, "the Tories' new campaign strategist ... whose PR and lobbying firm Crosby Textor has long-standing links with the alcohol and tobacco industries" (New Statesman).

This conveniently ignores both the lack of evidence in favour of standardised packaging and the fact that 500,000 people opposed the measure in a public consultation.

Amid all the name-calling and temper tantrums ("I'll thcream and thcream until I'm thick"), I detect shock and embarrassment.

Substantial sums of public money have been squandered by tobacco control on a campaign that failed to convince the PM and his Cabinet that plain packaging would work or had the support of the general public.

Publicly-funded websites were commandeered to persuade people to sign petitions in favour of plain packaging.

Former health secretary Andrew Lansley was at one point listed as a supporter of plain packaging on the Plain Packs Protect website.

Public health minister Anna Soubry has been actively (and sometimes furtively) lobbying for plain packs for months.

Despite this – and whatever may happen in future – they couldn't get the policy over the line. Advocates have failed in their quest.

Like a football manager whose team has been beaten by a goal in the last minute after a long unbeaten run, tobacco control lobbyists are lashing out.

We wuz robbed! The goal was offside! We should have had a penalty! The referee was nobbled! Disgusting tackle, their centre back should have been sent off! The opposition didn't play fair, we were supposed to win!

By any standards, this has been an epic fail.

See: Not fair! wail tobacco control industry (It's All Bollocks) and The final throw of the dice for plain packs is so predictable (Dick Puddlecote)

Also: Independent fires blanks as it misses the real story (Hands Off Our Packs)

Get the party started

At last, the long-awaited Queen's Speech.

For most people this archaic event is of very little interest. If you're engaged in a constant battle against excessive legislation, however, it's a harbinger of things to come.

Indeed, ever since the consultation on standardised packaging of tobacco closed in August last year we've had one eye on the consultation report, the other on the Queen's Speech.

As the months ticked by and there was still no sign of the report we had a sneaking suspicion that the Government might ignore the very strong arguments against plain packaging (and the 500,000 people who signed petitions against it) and include it in the legislative programme anyway.

Two months ago our fears grew when, quoting a "senior Whitehall source" now thought to be public health minister Anna Soubry, the Guardian ran a front page report with the headline, Government to legislate for plain cigarette packaging this year.

Although David Cameron denied a decision had been made, we couldn't be sure. Our campaign continued.

Today, a week after the Sun reported that plain packaging was not going to be in the Queen's Speech, I am looking forward to official confirmation.

Later, in a mood of quiet contemplation (!), I will join colleagues for a drink or three. After 15 months' relentless campaigning I think we deserve it.

After that? Watch this space.

PS. I'm not going to name all the people, including bloggers, who have helped the Hands Off Our Packs campaign, but you know who you are.

Thanks!

Chip off the old block

Email from a friend:

You might like to know that Cross Country Rail have blocked access to your website!!

Well, it wouldn't be the first time that a site containing the word 'tobacco' has been prohibited.

In February 2010 I posted this - Does Government Internet ban include Forest?. It was in response to a parliamentary question by the Rt Hon Francis Maude MP.

Maude, who was then in Opposition and chairman of the Conservative party, had written to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport to ask:

... for what reason websites featuring tobacco content are banned [on departmental computers]; if he will give examples of the types of tobacco sites which are banned; and whether the internet ban includes the Forest (Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco) website.

Two weeks later Hansard published a written reply from minister Gerry Sutcliffe. It read:

The filtering software used by my Department has a standard range of categories [that] are blocked by default. Filtering is switched off for those categories that are directly related to the work of my Department, currently tobacco remains blocked. The tobacco category covers tobacco promotional websites such as www.marlboro.com.

The Forest (Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco) website was inadvertently covered by this category by default. It has been unblocked.

As I wrote at the time, Woo-hoo! Government unblocks Forest website.

It's interesting to note, though, that tobacco-related websites were on a list of "unsuitable" categories that included 'violence' and 'criminal activities'.

Other categories blocked by the DCMS included pornography, extreme hate/discrimination, and gruesome content.

I would love to know what categories of websites are currently blocked by the Department of Health!