No smoke without ire

I’ve been thinking of writing something along these lines since I first heard that there’s a campaign to amend the smoking ban, and I do so in the full knowledge that about three out of four of you are quite likely to disapprove of it.

Apart from Gordon Brown’s disgraceful attack on pension funds after becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1997, there are two other reasons why I hope Labour is voted out of office at the next election: one is the extremism of their total ban smoking in public places and the other is their ill-intentioned banning of hunting with hounds (which is not my topic for today).

As far as smoking is concerned, I don’t have any objection at all to banning it in restaurants. But I can see no rational justification for banning pubs, clubs, hotels, airport terminals, etc. from providing specially allocated smoking rooms (fitted, of course, with state of the art extractor fans and located a ‘safe’ distance away from non-smoking rooms).

The irrationality of the total ban has been highlighted, unsurprisingly, by market forces, as the rate at which pubs are closing down continues at a relentless and unprecedented rate.

NAPA NONSENSE

My first encounter with the kind of draconian discrimination against smokers we now suffer in the UK came when I was trying to find somewhere to stay in California’s Napa Valley.

One hotel’s website announced that a $500 surcharge would be added to the credit card of anyone found smoking not just inside the building, but anywhere within its grounds. My response was to send them an email pointing out that I’d obviously been completely misled by some of America’s core PR boasts on its own behalf, most notably:

(1) the USA’s oft-repeated claim to be the world’s leading example of individual freedom and liberty (for more on which, see also HERE) and

(2) the USA’s related claim to be the world’s leading proponent of market economics – which is hardly consistent with rational entrepreneurs voluntarily opting to reduce their sales by excluding (or deterring) 25% of the potential market.

Needless to say, they didn’t reply, and we made the economically rational decision to stay at another hotel in the Napa Valley, where smoking was permitted on a terrace in the garden.

A few days later, we signed in at a hotel in San Francisco, self-proclaimed and widely recognized as the most liberal of all American cities. But the only sign of it being any more liberal than the Napa Valley hoteliers was the lower credit charge surcharge of a mere $250 for smoking inside the building.

HUMIDORS FOR SALE

Several years later, and a day or two after the smoking ban came into force in the UK, we stayed at a hotel on the Dorset coast, where there was a large humidor displaying a fine range of Cuban cigars that could have kept Winston Churchill going for a quite a few weeks.

Fortunately, the August weather was mild enough for me to indulge in one with a glass of Cognac after dinner – outside on the terrace. But what if it had been raining and what if had been in December?

The full force of our government’s enlightened legislation began to strike home. The long-standing tradition of rounding off dinner with a relaxing and luxurious treat had been consigned to the past. It was now illegal, except when the weather’s fine enough to sit outside (or unless you're one of the privileged few who can drink in a bar in the Houses of Parliament).

So hotels like this will presumably have put their humidors and their valuable contents on E-bay, as the time it takes to enjoy a good cigar means that a quick puff or two in the car park is a pointless and irrationally expensive exercise (market forces strike again).

A PUFFIN ROOM

Last week, however, we stayed at a delightful hotel that had come up with as good a compromise as I’ve seen so far. Although I very much hope that their imaginative investment will bring them the financial rewards they deserve, I’m not going to reveal its name or where it is – for the simple reason that, if their local district council’s ‘smoking solutions officer’ (sic) is anything like ours, this particular smoking shelter would almost certainly be written off for being far too comfortable, not draughty enough and therefore illegal.

Next to the terrace they had built a tastefully designed summerhouse equipped with comfortable chairs, heating, lighting, tables and ashtrays. At first sight, the notice on the door saying ‘PRIVATE PROPERTY’ suggested it was off-limits to guests.

But it wasn’t, and I presume that the point of the notice was to define anyone in there as a private guest who had been invited into this particular piece of private property by its owners, who also happened to be the private owners of the hotel.

Whether or not it was technically ‘legal’ under existing legislation, I have my doubts. But I don’t know and don’t care – because it was such a welcome blast from the past to be able puff away, have a gin and tonic and inspect the menu at the same time – and, thanks to the heating arrangements, it would have been just as comfortable in December as it was in August.

What’s more, and this really is the point, the solution was as acceptable to me as it presumably was to other guests who chose not to sit in the Puffin room.

The Campaign to Amend the Smoking Ban is not campaigning to abolish the smoking ban. It is not campaigning to return things to where they were before the Act. Nor is it campaigning for the right to inflict smoke on recipients who have no choice in the matter.

It is, however, campaigning for arrangements that would allow greater freedom of choice for everyone, a by-product of which might actually help to preserve another long standing British tradition by slowing down the alarming rate of pub closures.

For more details, visit the Amend the Smoking Ban website, where there is complete freedom of choice as to whether or not to sign up.

Mrs Clinton's gem for interview collectors

A number of previous posts have featured classic interviews with top politicians, including
• A labour leader with no interest in spin
• A prime minister who openly refused to answer a question
• A Tory leader’s three evasive answers to the same question

Whether or not Hillary Clinton’s reply to a Congolese student who seemed to have asked her what her husband’s opinion was (though apparently the translator had mistakenly said ‘Mr Clinton’ instead of 'Obama’) qualifies as another classic remains to be seen.

But it's already had more than 50,000 views on YouTube and generated a good deal of heated debate.

In case you missed it, here it is, followed by a sample of positive and negative reactions from YouTube viewers.

See what you think:



SELECTED REACTIONS FROM YOUTUBE

FOR:

Hillary, it's about time these sexist assholes got a piece of American common sense. WHAT THE HELL DOES BILL CLINTON THINK? WHO GIVES A SHIT? what assholes! GREAT RESPONSE!

Are these students STUPID?she is right why should she answer for Mutombo or mr clinton, she said the record straight

Hillary has lots of good reasons to be pissed. A philandering husband who has humiliated her, a wet behind the ears newcomer who took the presidency from her, and the fact that even though she is Sec of State, Obama has severely crippled her authority by naming others to diplomatically handle other parts of the world.

if i asked a question that was so disrespectful of her intellect and position, yes. but i also wouldn't consider an honest answer a problem. she said, directly, i'm not going to tell you what my husband thinks. I work i a professional and public capacity and people are publicly direct all the time. This is nothing new. But when Hillary does it, everyone changes the standard and caps on her for it. I don't get why CBS has to frame that as a "snap." It's not and CBS is being sexist by doing so.

AGAINST:

"Rude" question or not (and I do not think the question was rude), Hill is representing the our nation. She should sit up straight, behave in a gracious manner and answer the question with a touch of class and humor versus arrogance and bitchiness. Ugh.

what a bitch! does she even stop to think about difference of culture??

Her true colors continue to shine through that fake 'serve our country' attitude she cultivates for show. If anyone can't handle a simple provocative question from a student without looking like a nasty villain, they don't need to be our head Diplomat. What is she doing, trying to start another world war with her attitudes?
Can you imagine her in the White House with all the pressures of the first 200 days? She can't even handle a student. We need to keep her far away from our Capitol.

what am embarrassment to the USA!

OTHER POSTS ON MRS CLINTON'S COMMUNICATION PROBLEMS:

• Clinton, Palin and the legacy of Margaret Thatcher
• Does Mrs Clinton really know someone everywhere she goes?
• Clinton on North Korea: "There are consequences to such actions"
• The ‘delicacy’ of Mrs Clinton’s ‘consequences’ for North Korea

Observing England’s cricket team in the face of defeat

The late great Erving Goffman’s studies of the minutiae of everyday life inspired thousands of researchers from the 1960s onwards and his books reached a much wider audience than most academics can ever dream of.

But, with the notable exception of two of his graduate students (Harvey Sacks and Emanuel Schegloff) who founded conversation analysis, few other sociologists ever managed to emulate the perceptiveness of Goffman's observations about the workings of everyday social interaction.

When he was a visiting professor at Manchester University in the early 1970s, someone asked him how he managed to come up with so many astute observations. His reply was along the lines of:

“By not looking at the people everyone is focused on in any particular situation but by concentrating on watching the behavior of the ones that no one else is looking at.”

I had a go at following his advice at Headingley on Sunday during the dying moments of the test match against Australia, and have some rather worrying observations to report about the England cricket team.

While everyone in the crowd was watching tail end batsmen Broad and Swann showing the main batsmen how they should have dealt with the Australian bowling, I turned my binoculars away from the pitch towards the balcony where the rest of the England team were sitting, fully expecting to see a collection of depressed and dejected faces.

Given their dismal failures over the previous two days, what surprised me was to see so much chatting, grinning and laughing going on. From a distance, the atmosphere among them looked far more casual, jovial and relaxed than seemed appropriate in such dire circumstances.

But what really shocked me was their apparent lack of interest in or support for the temporary successes of their colleagues out on the pitch: when the crowd cheered and applauded, the rest of the team could hardly be bothered to join in.

What, I wondered, does that tell us about the team spirit of the current England squad?

Then, not long after Australia had won the match, we went for a walk around the back of the stadium, and stumbled across some supporting evidence for a comment in Derek Pringle’s report on the match in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph, where he said:

‘A positive report on Andrew Flintoff would obviously be a good start but the process should have begun the moment they lost their last wicket yesterday, 33 balls after lunch, but didn’t. Instead of marching out onto the field to shake the Australians’ hands in public, all but the departing batsmen remained inside the dressing-room area leaving Strauss, their captain, to face the boos when he attended the post-match presentation’ [my italics].

It wasn’t just that the rest of the team had stayed hidden inside the pavilion, as Pringle noted, but they'd made an instant and hasty retreat. By the time we reached the players’ car park less than an hour after the game finished, the stewards told us that most of England team (except for Prior who was still massaging his ego by signing a few autographs) had already driven off – not in a team bus, but individually in their own cars.

Again, the same question arises: what does this tell us about England’s team spirit, let alone their management’s view of the urgent need for an extended team meeting?

Instead of biting that particular bullet there and then, England’s cricket leadership has apparently instructed the failures to go back to their counties and prepare for victory – which strikes me as worryingly reminiscent of former Liberal Party leader David Steel’s instruction to his members to “go back to your constituencies and prepare for government.”

England cricket fans can only hope for a bit more luck than the Liberals had in 1987, as recent performances suggest that 'luck' is the only chance left for regaining the Ashes.

Guardian ahead of record?

In a previous post, I’ve commented on the media’s peculiar preference for using the phrase ‘ahead of’ when they mean ‘before’ – even though it’s not in common usage among any other native speakers of English.

The record number of instances I’ve seen so far came in a Guardian website report on England’s pathetic performance in the 4th test match against Australia, where ‘ahead of’ appears in the headline, one of the sub-headlines and four more times in the article that follows.

Is this the 21st century version of longstanding proofreading problems at the Grauniad?

Or, given that the article is unsigned, could it be that it was written by a robot that’s been programmed to convert ‘before’ into ‘ahead of’ by another robot who can’t speak English either?

If you can bear it, here are the six specimens that that put the Graunaid ahead of everyone else in this particular race.

Ravi Bopara among five players sent back to counties ahead of fifth Test
• England No3 seeks form with Essex ahead of Ashes decider

'The England batsman Ravi Bopara, whose place in the side is under scrutiny after scoring 105 runs in seven innings, will receive an opportunity to rediscover some form with Essex ahead of the Ashes decider at The Oval.'

'.. managing director, Hugh Morris, said in a statement. "We are aware that we underperformed with bat and ball at Headingley and this decision is designed to give players an opportunity to spend time in the middle and get overs under their belt ahead of the decisive fifth Test at The Oval next week."

'Miller was also forced to defend the decision to omit Andrew Flintoff from the side for the fourth Test, insisting it was right to put the advice of England's medical team ahead of the all-rounder's wishes.'

'He will see a specialist today ahead of a decision on his fitness for the decisive Oval encounter ..'


As for which side comes out ahead of the other, we won't know before the final test match comes to an end.

PowerPoint program on BBC Radio 4

There was an excellent Word of Mouth programme about PowerPoint on BBC Radio 4 this afternoon (excellent because so many of the criticisms were the same as those in my books on speaking and presentation!).

You can listen to it again HERE for 7 more days as from today.

It included a Microsoft executive boasting about their program being a ‘blank canvas’ and saying that one of the best PowerPoint presentation he’d ever heard had no slides with bullet points on them (!) – which raises the question of why so many of their opening templates incite users to produce lists of bullet points.

The discussion also made me wonder why the producers of BBC Television News, who have become increasingly obsessed with PowerPoint style news reports (see HERE and HERE), don’t bother to listen to and take notice of the good advice coming from BBC Radio 4.

To be or not to be: a question for individuals or the state?

The Bloggers’ Circle is a new and interesting group aimed at helping bloggers to reach a wider audience. We receive regular links to other members’ posts and are invited to comment on anything that inspires us.

My first effort was about how to improve energy conservation, and this is my second, prompted by a posting by Liam Murray on the current debate about assisted suicide.

As the number Brits opting to die at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland has increased, so too has the number of people with strong opinions on the subject, such as those in this recent posting on the subject.

One of the things that’s intrigued me about it all is that, for at least the first 40 years since the Suicide Act of 1961, no one took much notice of the second Clause of the Act, which is the one that deals with ‘any person who aids, abets, counsels or procures the suicide of another’, and is the one at the centre of the current debate. The lack of interest in it until recently is hardly surprising given that, as far as I know, the same period saw no prosecutions at all being brought under the said Clause 2.

What seems to have been forgotten about the 1961 Act is that the Clause that’s now causing so much legal and political hullabaloo, was little more than a postscript to the main purpose of the Act, which was to decriminalize suicide as set out in its first clause:

"1. The rule of law whereby it is a crime for a person to commit suicide is hereby abrogated. "

Clause 2 addressed a possible consequence of decriminalizing suicide and amounted to an ultra-cautious insurance policy to deter people from doing something that that hardly anyone ever did or had ever thought of doing in those days (i.e. helping someone else to commit suicide). And, as far as I know, no such cases were ever brought for at least 40 years after that – until, of course, people started looking for help in getting them to places like the Dignitas clinic.

The main aim of the Act was achieved by a crucial implication of its first Clause, namely to decriminalize attempted suicide

For hundreds of years before 1961, suicide had been a felony, which meant that attempted suicide was an attempted felony (i.e. a misdemeanor). But changing attitudes towards mental illness had increased the pressure on government to relieve suicide attempters and their families from the added misery of having to face prosecution, or the risk of prosecution, when what they really needed was treatment and support. And the easiest way do decriminalize attempted suicide was to decriminalize suicide.

If current debates reflect confusion arising from a subsidiary clause of the 1961 Suicide Act, it’s not really surprising - not only because definitions of suicide and attempted suicide are not as simple as they might seem, but also because there’s quite a long tradition of confusion and uncertainty, sometimes verging on skullduggery, in the history of English law on suicide.

I first became aware of this while doing my PhD research into how deaths get categorized as suicides and discovered that none of the experts I asked, including more than one coroner, could come up with a precise legal definition of suicide (see Discovering Suicide: Studies in the Social organization of Sudden Death, London: Macmillan Press; Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 1978).

As for the peculiar question of why suicide became a felony in the first place – and why people who killed themselves were posthumously branded as felons – the most obvious, but not entirely accurate, answer is that it must have reflected religious, ethical or cultural norms of a bygone era.

Although it may have suited medieval monarchs to cite religion as a rationalization for criminalizing suicide, they had a much more materialistic motive in the form of a vested interest in the property of all convicted felons – because, once you’d been convicted of a felony, all your property passed to the crown.

So, to thwart the crown and keep their property in the family, some who were accused of a felony took the simple and irreversible step of killing themselves before their trial had taken place.

The crown’s answer to this wheeze was an equally simple win-win solution: by making suicide a felony, the monarch would still get his hands on the property, whether the accused killed themselves or failed to prove their innocence at a trial.

But this had the side effect of turning attempted suicide into an attempted felony, and so it remained until 1961.

I’ve always thought that the decriminalization of attempted suicide was a humane and worthy thing to do, just as I don’t believe that people should be punished for helping loved ones to end their lives.

The trouble is that revising the law looks set to be so long and drawn out that, by the time it eventually happens, it will be too late to benefit hundreds and perhaps thousands of people who will be left wrestling with their consciences in the meantime.

BBC plug-a-book show slot for aging new left author

Readers of my previous comments on BBC plug-a-book shows won’t be surprised to hear that I didn’t last longer than about three minutes before turning one off last night.

This week’s lucky book-plugger on Laurie Taylor’s Thinking Allowed programme (BBC Radio 4) was Tariq Ali, veteran Trotskyist campaigner of the 1960s and 70s – or, in the slightly more sanitised description of himself that the BBC website reproduced verbatim from Mr Ali’s own website: ‘novelist, historian, political campaigner and one of the New Left Review’s editors.’

For those too young to remember, there were a lot of Trotsky fans around in the 60s and 70s organised around rival acronyms like IS, WRP, and IMG. Tariq Ali rose to the dizzy heights of becoming leader of IMG (International Marxist Group) which, roughly speaking, was run by and catered for middle class intellectuals.

One of my colleagues in the sociology department at Lancaster University, where I then worked, was also a member of the politburo (or whatever they called their committee) of IMG and, in between ortgainising strikes at local factories, arranged for his leader to convey their particular version of Trotskyist truth to a packed lecture theatre of potential disciples.

My mistake wasn’t just to attend, but to ask a really stupid question along the lines of ‘If Marxism is as accurate an analysis of how societies work as you say, how come things have worked out so badly in all the communist countries of the world.’

Mr Ali's answer was, of course obvious, namely that they hadn’t followed IMG’s version of Trotsky’s version of Marx’s version, and all would have been well if only the Russians, etc. had been as smart and clever as members of IMG were.

Needless to say, Mr Ali, like so many social theorists then and now, has never let facts stand in the way of whatever theory he happened to be espousing on any particular day (or in any particular book). But why should he when he was and is a very articulate and plausible speaker, as you’d expect from someone who’d been president of the Oxford Union debating society?

Three minutes of hearing him pontificate about his latest book last night was quite enough to hear that was as articulate and plausible as ever and just as unconstrained in his theorising as he ever was.

As for how he came to get one of these prime plug-a-book slots, it’s anyone’s guess. It’s just possible that the producers of this particular BBC show are also New Lefties grown old, but I don’t have any evidence of that. All I do know is that there were rumours going around in the 1970s that Laurie Taylor was either a member of or sympathised with one of the aforementioned acronyms.

But I don’t have any hard evidence of that either.