Planes, trains and automobiles

Skip this if you've read it before.

There's a reason I remember the introduction of the smoking ban in Ireland. I was there.

Ten years ago Sky News invited me to Dublin to take part in the Richard Littlejohn Show which was broadcast live from the famous Shelbourne Hotel on St Stephens Green on the eve of the ban.

If I remember, the ban was introduced at 6.00am on Saturday March 29, 2004, and the programme was going out at 7.00pm on Friday evening.

To give myself plenty of time I flew to Ireland on Thursday and stayed overnight with friends in Greystones, south of Dublin.

Sky had booked me a room at the Shelbourne for Friday so at noon I boarded a train at Greystones expecting to check in an hour or so later.

Instead I boarded a train going in the wrong direction.

After 15 minutes I realised what had happened. (The rolling hills of Wicklow and the absence of any housing were a bit of a clue.)

When the ticket inspector arrived I asked him where the first stop was. I think he said Wexford, which is 70 miles from Dublin.

"Not to worry," he added breezily, "I can ask the driver to drop you off before then."

And he did. A few miles down the line the train slowed to a halt and I was invited to jump off, with my two suitcases, in the middle of nowhere.

"See those houses?" the ticket inspector said, pointing to some buildings about a mile away. "You'll be able to get a bus back to Greystones from there."

The short version of the story is this:

I walked in the direction of the houses where I found a small town that was officially shut. (Remember half-day closing?)

I found a bus stop where I stood for, oh, 60 minutes waiting for a bus. In that time I saw perhaps one person and half a dozen cars.

Eventually a bus arrived and I did indeed get back to Greystones via several picturesque villages, and from there I caught a train (going in the right direction) to Pearse Station in Dublin.

Time was flying by and when I arrived it was almost six hours since I began my journey.

From Pearse Station I ran (still with my cases) from the station to the Shelbourne Hotel, a distance of about a mile.

I remember it vividly because I think it's the last time I ran anywhere. I have never breathed more heavily or sweated more profusely.

I checked in, showered, and with ten minutes to spare reported to a rather agitated Sky News producer.

The good news? There was no time to be nervous. I was just relieved to have got there on time.

The bad news? I was one of several people flown over by Sky and put up in one of Dublin's top hotels and on average we got 20 seconds each to make our point.

TV, eh?

The rest of the evening is a bit of a blur but the following morning the streets were full of English rugby supporters because England were playing Ireland that day.

There was a carnival atmosphere. It was bright and sunny and no-one seemed to mind standing outside to smoke. Then again, how many knew about the ban is debatable.

Of course it dominated the Irish media and what I remember most were the leading articles - the Irish Times in particular - revelling in the idea that Ireland was the centre of world attention, if only for one day.

It felt, to me at least, that the smoking ban had less to do with public health and more to do with putting Ireland on the map.

Now Irish politicians want the country to be the first nation in Europe to introduce plain packaging. I sense deja vu all over again.

Ireland: how the battle against the smoking ban was lost

My biggest regret as director of Forest was our failure to launch a campaign in Ireland sooner than we did.

In 2002 the threat of a public smoking ban in Ireland was clear yet few people took it seriously. It won't happen, I was told. Or, if it does, the Irish will ignore it.

This was followed by a warning: don't interfere in Ireland. They won't like the English telling them what to do.

Did they think I was stupid? I grew up in Scotland so I am well aware of the sensitivities.

Anyway, in 2001, in response to devolution, we had launched a new campaign – Scottish Forest – with a Scottish spokesman, Charles McLean. It was a short-lived project but the launch was a huge success, attracting an enormous amount of media coverage.

I was convinced we could achieve the same level of interest in Ireland. Instead we were forced to watch helplessly as others tried unsuccessfully to fight the ban.

The vintners spoke out but they were an uncoordinated lot, with one organisation representing the rural pubs and another representing Dublin-based pubs and bars.

It didn't help that they had almost no popular support.

In 2003 Forest was invited to take part in a debate at University College Dublin. It was more Comedy Store than Oxford Union but I discovered real anger towards the vintners.

Publicans were blamed for the high price of beer and there was resentment that so many members of parliament were publicans or ex-publicans.

The smoking ban, it was suggested, was an opportunity to give them a bloody good kicking.

Something else struck me. Unlike the UK, where a lot of publicans had spent good money improving ventilation or introducing no smoking areas so there more choice for non-smokers, the pub industry in Ireland had been slow to act and had done little to improve air quality or cater for non-smokers who didn't want to socialise in a smoking environment.

Another problem - shared with the UK - was that most smokers only woke up to the ban after legislation was introduced, or the moment it was enforced, by which time it was far too late.

In 2004, after the ban was introduced in Ireland, Forest was approached by a Waterford based group called SAD Ireland (aka Smokers Against Discrimination).

I met the chap behind it. He took me on a tour of Waterford pubs and showed me bars that had been forced to reduce their opening hours because elderly lunchtime customers in particular were staying away.

The old codgers who would meet on a Tuesday to smoke their pipes and play bridge in the pub had effectively been ostracised.

But they represented Old Ireland and in 2004 that was sneered at by the metropolitan elite. In many ways Ireland's smoking ban was a signal to the world: look how modern and clean living we are!

In Cork there was another group that called itself ESAD (European Smokers Against Discrimination). Again, there were only one or two people behind it and like SAD Ireland it never really got off the the ground.

Interestingly, one of them was John Mallon, now spokesman for Forest Eireann. When he's accused of being a tobacco industry stooge, John often points out that he was fighting smoking bans and defending smokers long before he had any association with tobacco companies.

This letter, published by the Irish Examiner on April 14, 2005, proves it: Smokers invited to campaign against the ban.

Back home we could do nothing to help consumers in Ireland because by 2004-5 the focus was exclusively on our UK campaign, Fight The Ban: Fight For Choice.

I'm not suggesting an earlier incarnation of Forest Eireann, which was eventually launched in 2010, would have derailed or even delayed legislation in Ireland, but it would have been nice to try.

Instead what opposition existed was easily defeated. See How the smoking ban was won (Irish Times).

I'm not sure if I fully accept this vainglorious version of history which is written, as always, by the victors. Perhaps one or two Irish readers would like to comment.

PS. To support my contention that Forest Eireann could have made a difference pre-smoking ban, here's a list of radio stations John Mallon gave interviews to in the past week:

RTE Radio 1
RTE News
NewsTalk
Kildare FM
Ocean FM
Phoenix FM

And here's a list of newspapers that have featured comments by Forest Eireann in the same period:

Irish Sunday Times
Irish Examiner
Irish Independent
Irish Daily Star
Evening Echo
The Herald
Midland Tribune
Checkout Ireland

Since the turn of the year John has also been interviewed on:

Today FM
Cork 96FM
WLR FM
Red FM
South East Radio FM
Clare FM
Mid & NorthWest Radio
Tipp FM
Northern Sound
Midlands 103
Shannonside Radio

He has also given interviews to:

Clare Champion
Longford Leader
Waterford News & Star
Tullamore Tribune

Contrast this with ten years ago. When the smoking ban was introduced in Ireland in March 2004 there was no-one representing the consumer.

Times have changed but is it too little too late? I guess we'll know in 2025, the year health minister James Reilly wants Ireland to be "smoke free" with the smoking rate reduced to five per cent or less.

Reflections on the Irish smoking ban

Today is officially the tenth anniversary of the public smoking ban in Ireland.

There's relatively little about it in the papers today because the story was covered extensively earlier in the week following a 'symposium' at the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (which I wrote about on Monday).

This led to some journalists reporting that the anniversary was on March 24 which demonstrates the grip tobacco control has on the media!

Fortunately you can always rely on the Irish Examiner and today the Cork-based newspaper has published two more articles celebrating the ban.

One – by Micheál Martin, who introduced the ban and is now leader of the main opposition party Fianna Fáil – is entirely predictable.

What is breathtaking is the extent of the propaganda, then and now.

See: Many lives have been saved with smoking ban but we’ve more to do and 10 years after smoking ban, Martin questions Coalition’s commitment.

The other article, billed online as the 'top story', is headlined Smoking ban breathed new life into pubs. I'll let you read it for yourself.

Inevitably there are proprietors who have done well since the ban. Or perhaps they have increased business relative to their competitors by spending large sums of money on comfortable smoking areas.

But what about the 1000+ publicans whose bars closed in the aftermath of the ban (ie before the recession hit the country)?

Take this research published by Forest in 2010:

Using data from the Revenue Commissioners, researchers found that the number of pub losses demonstrate a very close statistical relationship between the introduction of the smoking ban in 2004 and the rapid decline of the Irish pub.

This relationship, says the report, is considerably stronger than those that could be attributed to other factors such as the recession, alcohol duty or supermarket competition, although all of these are likely to have been contributing factors.

Analysis of statistics set out in the Statistical Report on the Revenue website showed that Ireland lost 1,097 pubs in the four years following the ban.

See Smoking ban to blame for decline of Irish pub, says new research.

To put that in perspective, in 2008 1,097 pubs represented eleven per cent of Ireland's entire pub estate. Sadly those publicans are no longer in business and are therefore unavailable to debate whether the smoking ban has indeed 'breathed new life into pubs'.

Needless to say that story has not been reflected in any reports in Ireland this week. We are simply asked to accept, without dissent, that without the ban Ireland would be a poorer, unhealthier place to live.

Or, in the words of Micheál Martin:

Ten years on it is clear that the ban has been a success and that its impact has been positive and everyone can take pride in the fact that Ireland led the way in Europe on this matter.

Workplace smoking bans improve children's health, apparently

The media is reporting the results of 'new' research by tobacco control.

According to BBC News, Smoking bans cut asthma and premature births by 10%, study says.

The report is based on a press release issued by The Lancet:

The introduction of laws banning smoking in public places and workplaces in North America and Europe has been quickly followed by large drops in rates of preterm births and children attending hospital for asthma, according to the first systematic review and meta-analysis examining the effect of smoke-free legislation on child health, published in The Lancet.

The analysis of 11 studies done in North America and Europe, involving more than 2.5 million births, and nearly 250 000 asthma exacerbations, showed that rates of both preterm births and hospital attendance for asthma were reduced by 10% within a year of smoke-free laws coming into effect.

An edited version of Forest's response is included in the BBC report. Here it is in full:

"The researchers appear to have reached their conclusions by cherry-picking eleven studies to generate a highly questionable meta-analysis.

"The report suggests there has been a significant reduction in cases of childhood asthma in countries or states that have introduced comprehensive smoking bans.

"If children are exposed to second hand smoke it is mostly in the home so workplace smoking bans would have little or no impact on children.

"If the report is suggesting that environmental tobacco smoke is the only or principal cause of childhood asthma that's ridiculous.

"In the UK the number of people suffering from asthma has tripled in the last 40 years. During that same period the number of people who smoke has halved and today relatively few children are exposed to tobacco smoke in confined spaces such as homes and cars.

"Calling for more countries to introduce comprehensive smoke-free legislation is a gross over-reaction and makes little sense."

Forest is also being quoted on Radio 4's Today programme. Well, I say quoted. Our response was distilled to:

The smokers' group Forest said the study was "highly questionable".

Better than nothing, I suppose.

Diane Abbott on UKIP voters and "people like him" (points finger at me)

I was on the Daily Politics today with former Labour health spokesman Diane Abbott.

Full story to follow. But first I need a drink.

PS. Click on the image above and it will take you to this page on the BBC News website – Cigarette plain packaging: Diane Abbott and Simon Clark – where you can watch a clip of the interview.

Guido Fawkes also posted this piece: Out of touch Diane Abbott snobbishly sneers at constituents.

Nothing to celebrate as campaigners call for more measures to tackle smoking

Predictably, campaigners are using the tenth anniversary of the smoking ban in Ireland to repeat tired old propaganda and demand further action against smoking.

This morning at the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland they were lining up to celebrate legislation that has done enormous damage to pubs and bars throughout Ireland.

Michael Martin, the health minister who introduced the ban, was there to bask in the applause.

Current health minister James Reilly, who wants to secure his place in history by introducing plain packaging, was also present.

Luke Clancy, former chairman of ASH Ireland, was there along with Professor John Crown who has supplanted him as Ireland's leading anti-tobacco campaigner.

Meanwhile the publicans who went bust and lost their livelihoods as a result of the ban were conspicuous by their absence.

Smokers would have been absent too had it not been for Forest Eireann's John Mallon standing outside the RCPI talking to RTE News. (They had to interview him outside because the RCPI wouldn't let him in the building.)

To give you an idea of the propaganda that's been doing the rounds these past 48 hours, consider the claims reported – without fear of contradiction – in this BBC report:

Ten years of workplace smoking ban in Republic of Ireland (BBC News)

Or try this report:

Smoking ban saves 4,000 lives since 2004, says Martin (Irish Times)

Anyway, not content with pumping out these contentious and frankly unbelievable claims, tobacco control campaigners have spent the day calling for more measures to tackle smoking.

The Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, for example, wants the Irish Government to get a move on and ban smoking in cars carrying children.

They also want a smoking ban across all publicly funded institutions (ie outside all public buildings).

I wouldn't have expected anything less, of course. After all, this is what tobacco control does.

See: Reilly aiming for smoke-free society by 2025 (RTE News)

Update: TheJournal.ie which makes no effort to disguise its anti-smoking bias ran this article today:

Heart attacks fell by more than 10 per cent after the workplace smoking ban

It is also inviting you to vote on this poll:

Has the smoking ban changed your attitude to smoking?

You know what you have to do!

Forest Eireann barred from Royal College of Physicians of Ireland

This week tobacco control campaigners in Ireland will celebrate the tenth anniversary of the public smoking ban.

Introduced on Saturday March 29, 2004, it was a big day because overnight Ireland became the first country in the world to ban smoking in all enclosed public places.

I'll be writing more on the subject but I just wanted to flag something up.

This morning Ireland’s most-listened to radio show, RTÉ Radio 1's Morning Ireland, is broadcasting live from the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland in Dublin where "the RCPI, together with ASH Ireland and the TobaccoFree Research Institute Ireland, will mark ten years of the workplace smoking ban in Ireland with a symposium featuring a number of international guest speakers".

Between 7.00am and 9.00am Morning Ireland will interview some of the speakers who include Minister for Health Dr James Reilly; Professor Luke Clancy, director general of the TobaccoFree Research Institute (and former chairman of ASH Ireland); Dr Pat Doorley, Faculty of Public Health Medicine in Ireland; and our old friend Professor John Crown.

Having been tipped off about the programme we offered Forest Eireann's John Mallon as a representative of smokers who have been adversely affected by the ban.

There was interest from RTE but there was also a problem. RCPI didn't want John on the premises because he "had been at some event in their place".

It took a moment for the penny to drop. Then we remembered the 'debate' organised by the IEA in Dublin last October. (See Chris Snowdon's report, An Evening in Dublin.)

Not only did Forest have nothing to do with the event, John wasn't even on the panel of speakers. He was simply an interested observer, a position he shared with every other member of the audience, the overwhelming majority of whom were anti-smoking.

The RCPI's reaction demonstrates yet again that the medical profession has no interest in engaging with smokers, the people they keep saying they are trying to help.

Their behaviour smacks of third world dictators who refuse to acknowledge anyone whose views don't match their own. From their ivory tower they merely want to lecture and harass ordinary people until we bend to their will.

Fair play to Morning Ireland, though. John will still be a guest on the programme - at 7.20am - but he will be interviewed at RTE's Dublin studios instead.

Funnily enough, the post I wrote about the IEA event was given the title Tantrums and tobacco: the ugly face of public health.

I could just as easily use the same headline to describe their behaviour now.

Update: John was on Morning Ireland at 7.40. Oddly, they didn't mention him when tweeting a list of interviews.

Update: John is being interviewed by RTE News at 11.00am outside the RCPI. I'm told a press conference is taking place inside but John's not allowed in!

Update on Monday, March 24, 2014 at 7:02 by Simon Clark

John was also due to be on Tonight with Vincent Browne (TV3).

Brown is one of Ireland's leading journalists. A non-practising barrister, he's a columnist for the Irish Times and Sunday Business Post.

Sadly the proposed item on the smoking ban has been shelved in favour of a breaking news story that says everything about Irish politics.

John described it to me like this:

A Garda [police] whistleblower came out about a month ago with startling evidence of Gardai cancelling penalty points retrospectively for the rich and famous. Earlier last year our Justice Minister Alan Shatter was stopped by a Garda roadblock under suspicion of drink driving. He invoked an ancient law where a Dail Deputy on his way to the Dail was not subject to being stopped by the force.

Shatter suspended the whistleblower and later the Garda Commissioner went public, calling the whistleblower "disgusting". Then last Thursday the Transport Minister Dr Leo Varadkar went public in his support for the whistleblower and shortly afterwards the Minister for Social Protection publicly agreed with that stance.

A very angry Enda Kenny (Taoiseach) was then interviewed and strongly supported Shatter and the Commissioner suggesting that his own front bench should shut up. After that the head of the Labour Party (the coalition partner) came out in defence of the Garda whistleblower. The news pundits sniff a government crisis so the right to smoke in pubs has shot way down the agenda.

Interesting stuff.

Memories of Ravenscourt Park

H/T Al Murray who posted this photo on Twitter earlier today.

It shows Ravenscourt Park in west London which is a minute's walk from where I lived, and worked, for two years in the mid Eighties.

Excuse the self-indulgence but it brings back a lot of memories.

In 1985 I moved from a shared flat in West Kensington and rented a tiny studio flat in a quiet tree-lined road that runs the length of the park.

Although it was very small it was the first time I'd had a place to myself. At university I'd either shared a room or a flat.

When I moved to London from Aberdeen I went from one flat to another, always sharing. Flatmates came and went so when I got the chance to have my own place – size didn't matter – I leapt at it.

I was offered the basement of a terraced house close to Ravenscourt Park, between Hammersmith and Chiswick. It had its own entrance which led into two rooms, a bed sitting room with a tiny galley-style kitchenette at the back, and an equally small bathroom.

The owners lived in the house above with their (three?) daughters. My landlord was an actor who appeared quite regularly on TV; his wife was an actress too but she had given up acting to bring up their children. Instead she wrote articles for magazines.

I wish I could remember their names. The writer Julian Barnes was a friend of theirs so it felt quite bohemian.

To this day I have never forgotten the magical moment I put my key in the lock for the very first time, knowing there was no-one else there.

If I wanted peace and quiet, I could have it. If I wanted the TV on I could watch the programme of my choice.

It was a little claustrophobic at times (there was no garden or patio) but it was cosy and I liked that.

It was also perfectly situated. It was a no through road so there was no passing traffic; it was a few hundred yards to the District line station; Hammersmith and Chiswick (where I later worked in an old converted warehouse) were one and two stops away; the river was within easy walking distance; and there was the park.

I was beginning to think I should move on and buy somewhere when something happened that left me no choice.

Each year I invited a handful of friends to a pre-Christmas lunch at my place, wherever that was.

Although the Ravenscourt Road flat was tiny I could still cater for 6-8 people if they didn't mind rubbing elbows and sitting on each other's laps. (Once seated around the table moving was not an option.)

With the turkey in the oven and the Christmas pudding gently steaming I sent everyone to the pub on the other side of the park.

Five minutes later I joined them and after two or three pints I'd forgotten all about the pudding.

Walking back to the flat an hour later I got an inkling all was not well when I saw smoke pouring from a basement window. My window.

To cut a long story short the water had evaporated, the saucepan had melted (there was a huge hole in the bottom) and every wall and surface (with the exception of the bathroom) was thick with soot.

Miraculously the turkey, which was in the oven, survived the carnage and here's the thing. After the smoke cleared we sat down and ate our lunch as if nothing had happened. Surreal.

One of my guests was Todd Buchholz, a young American economist who later worked in the White House during the Bush administration. I'm still in touch with Todd (we stayed with his family in San Diego last year) and the experience has clearly left a lasting impression. Good or bad, it's hard to say.

Sadly I couldn't hide the damage from my landlords (they weren't that bohemian) and after Christmas I was asked to leave, in the nicest possible way. They wanted, they said, to create a granny flat and the fact that the space had to be redecorated gave them the perfect opportunity.

Well, that's what they told me.

Anyway, when I was in Chiswick last year I took my daughter to where I used to live and pointed out the house. She loved the location as much as I did.

Sadly her chances of living there would appear small. I have just Googled properties in Ravenscourt Road, London W6, and a house identical to the one in whose basement I lived is on the market for £4 million.

That's right, four million pounds.

You'd have to be Al Murray to afford that.

PS. One other memory of Ravenscourt Road.

I once woke up in the middle of the night to find someone trying to climb in to my basement room via the sash window.

I heard a noise and saw a figure struggling with the window lock. Perhaps because I was half asleep I felt no fear and didn't think twice.

"Fuck off!" I shouted as loudly as I could.

He must have thought the basement was empty. He probably thought he could climb in and make his way into the main house.

The shock of hearing me scream must have been enormous because it was otherwise so quiet.

All I know is, whoever it was fell off the window ledge, ran up the steps, and was off down the road like a scalded cat.

In hindsight, it was quite funny.