A neighbouring council has allegedly spent £55,000 a head on getting 21 smokers to quit!

The above figures come from a fascinating article, Council anti-smoking campaigns are an expensive failure,  by Harry Phibbs, published on Conservative Home yesterday. The council in question is Hammersmith & Fulham, and their grotesque squandering of the Public Health Budget - which comes from general taxation rather than the rates - should be enough to make anyone, whatever their political leanings, weep with frustration. Ultimately, that represents £1.2m taken from the private sector (where all the tax ultimately comes from - the tax paid by public sector workers was taken from the private sector in the first place) to help a handful of nicotine addicts who could have visited either Totally Wicked or Shop E-Cigarette on King Street and...

I'll leave it to the Bonzo Dog Band to explain why I'm not posting much about politics these days...

I'm not bored with anything else - just...

45 years on, and the Hard Left is still banging on about gypsies and travellers!

When I were a lad at t'college, many of my friends were members of the Cambridge University Labour Club (or Association - I forget which). This was because the two most charismatic members of our "gang" were student politicians, rather than because the rest of us were particularly left-wing. I wasn't much into politics, and what beliefs I had were distinctly right-wing, but the Labour Club was where all the action was - that was where, in terms of the university, the big political ideas of the day were being thrashed out by the humongously self-important politicians of the not-too-distant future (actually, only one them "made it" - he proved useless). Ted Heath was leading a Tory government at the time (1972-1974), but there was nothing particularly right-wing or conservative about him or his party. Socialism had, essentially, won: the question wasn't whether Britain was going to be a right-wing or left-wing country - it was a matter of how left-wing it was going to be. That wasn't the reason I hung around with lefties and pseudo-lefties: it was because the Labour Club was the focus of a fun...

That's it, I've had it with Facebook - it has just cost me a friendship I truly valued

I gave my Facebook timeline a bi-weekly glance yesterday - and promptly lost a friend, Not a "friend" in the social media sense, but a genuine chum whom I've truly liked and admired for over 15 years. We've never been kindred spirits politically - he's a bit left, I'm very definitely right - but that has never seemed to matter. And then he has to go and spoil it all by posting the following bizarre message:

Arise, Sir Roger! - the award of a knighthood to Roger Scruton shines out like a good deed in a naughty world

Sir Roger Scruton

I suffered a moment of confusion while scanning the knighthood recipients in the Queen's 90th. Birthday Honours list when I saw the name of Angus Deaton among them. The coke-sniffing, two-at-a-time sex romping former Have I Got News for You? presenter? Had he, I wondered, done a Profumo by devoting himself to good works in order to atone for past transgressions? He might very well have done, but it turned out to be a professor at Princeton, whose name is spelled slightly differently.  Anyway, my friend David Moss reminded me - in a comment on a post I'd written about our old university supervisor, Roger Scruton, in 2011 - that I'd concluded it with a bold (some might say rash) promise. Responding to Scruton's claim that "it’s still possible to gain a vision, to stand on a little peak - perhaps not the peak on which Spinoza stood, or Plato, but a peak of one’s own -  and look across at all this sea of ignorance and confusion and hysteria… and smile at it", I wrote:

The deranged new vaping/tobacco rules could only make sense to EU bureaucrats. Help Tory peer Lord Callanan fight them!

JAC Vapour Series E vaporiser and Vapemate Key Lime Pie eliquid

Unless I've misunderstood the latest EU Tobacco Products Directives, we will no longer be allowed to buy packets containing 10 or fewer cigarettes. This (we're told) is because smaller packets aren't big enough to carry the obligatory new "Smoke this and die in pain" warnings. Of course, they could redesign the warnings so they would fit on smaller packets - but that would obviously be far too difficult: far simpler to make people buy more cigarettes than they wanted to, because that will undoubtedly encourage them to smoke less. Or something. Meanwhile, as of last week, e-cigarette companies will no longer be allowed to sell e-juice (the vaping equivalent of tobacco) in large 30ml bottles: from now on, we vapers will only be allowed to buy our e-liquid in 10ml bottles, because... well, just because.

The government tells us that eating and drinking too much, smoking, and not exercising is bad for us! Who knew?

The government agency Public Health England has launched a campaign called "One You" (which sounds distinctly Chinese to me) whose aim is to inform middle-aged people that they're less likely to be ill later in life if they adopt a healthier lifestyle now. No kidding! Because, when I was middle-aged, I simply had no idea that smoking, eating and drinking too much, and not exercising might be bad for me. The problem, of course, was a lack of information. Whenever I read a newspaper or watched television, these things were simply never mentioned - in fact, I remember endless articles and TV programmes strongly advising me to avoid exercise, consume masses of sugar and fast food, drink myself insensible every night, and to try my best to get through at least 40 Benson & Hedges a day.

E-cigarettes are improving our health and saving lives - so, obviously, the EU wants to stamp out vaping

Big Bertha

The only thing that makes scare stories about the dangers of e-cigarettes bearable is that you know - with absolute certainty - that a far more credible rebuttal will appear within an hour or two. My favourite "vaping is just as harmful as smoking" fiction of the last three months was the scary news that most brands of e-juice (i.e. vaping liquid) contains diacetyl, a flavouring agent known to cause a horrible condition known as "popcorn lung", (so-named  because it has been found in some people working in popcorn factories). I thought about panicking when I read the news, but decided to wait a bit. Turns out that diacetyl is also present in cigarettes - at concentrations up to 750 times higher than in e-juice. Oddly, this rather pertinent piece of information didn't find its way into this NHS Choices article on the "findings" linking the lung-wrecking chemical and e-cigarettes.

Reprint of my Salisbury Review article "The BBC, Dressing to the Left"

There's a new issue of The Salisbury Review due out next week (you can take out a subscription here), so I reckon it's safe for me to reproduce my article from the current edition of the quarterly without being accused of harming sales (it can also be read - for the next few days at least - on the magazine's website, here). I used the article to try to explain why my former employers seem impervious to evidently justified charges of chronic left-wing bias. After all, I'm sure the BBC doesn't set out deliberately to annoy up to 40% of its licence-fee payers by dismissing their views, so why does it keep on doing it? I'm convinced it has something to do with malfunctioning feedback loops:  

So farewell then former BBC Political Editor, John Cole – I had to do an impression of you for your BBC leaving video

The only time I can remember John Cole, the BBC’s political editor between 1981 and 1992, letting his socialist beliefs colour his reporting was during Labour’s triumphal Sheffield Rally a week before the 1992 general election. Older readers will remember that this was the glossy event, attended by 10,000 Labour supporters, during which an overexcited Neil Kinnock turned the stomachs of English voters by repeatedly bellowing “Well, All Right!” in an American accent as the hall went wild (Brian Hanrahan’s sober BBC report can be seen here – for those with strong stomachs, Kinnock’s passage of vote-losing madness starts at 1’30).

I should have guessed that Damian McBride cut his political teeth in the Cambridge University Labour Club

Watching former Blairite cabinet minister Tessa Jowell spitting tacks about a former Brownite Labour spin-doctor’s “vile behaviour” on TV news this lunchtime, I was powerfully reminded of the fantastically vicious internecine struggles I witnessed 40 years ago between the Cambridge University Labour Club’s bewildering plethora of factions. Gosh, how fiercely socialists seem to loathe each other!

A Guardian journalist knees editor Alan Rusbridger in the groin – all part of the culture of News

That living embodiment of the left-liberal politico-media establishment, Alan Rusbridger, has been writing about his attempts to learn to play Chopin’s Ballade No. 1, Op 23. As the Telegraph reported this morning (I’d link to it, but I can’t find it on the paper’s website), this resulted in an  outbreak of splendidly vicious snarkiness from one of Rusbridger’s journos, in the form of an online comment . The comment, needless to say, has subsequently been removed:

Julian Assange - those poor Ecuadorians are probably smelling a rat by now

Julian "Stinky" Assange

The media is full of reports that Julian Assange is a bit of a stinker. Not morally – his behavioural deficiencies couldn’t be more obvious – but literally. He is, apparently, somewhat careless about personal hygiene. Which suggests that if the British government were to leave him holed up long enough, the Ecuadorian embassy would eventually throw him out into the street and call in the fumigators for a top-of-the-range de-whiffing session.

Hail Roger Shrimplin, Planning Inspector! You’ve saved us from a famous actor and his “green” wife

The decision by Hounslow Council to turn down an application by Libdem-supporting actor Colin Firth and his eco-enthusiast Italian wife to stick a large solar panel on their London home has been ratified by the aforementioned Mr Shrimplin, who, whatever his politics, will henceforth be regarded as a conservative hero in this house. (You can read the full story here.) The great man had this to say:

“The proposed solar panel would erode the architectural qualities of the listed host building itself and would cause actual harm to the character and appearance of the Bedford Park conservation area… I am convinced that the harm done to the historic setting and the street scene clearly outweighs the benefits of the project.”

Mr Shrimplin – I want your babies.

TV news reports often reduce foreign wars to meaningless televisual wallpaper

I know how horribly mean and insular this is going to sound – but I’ve just seen a report on this evening’s BBC News about the state of emergency declared by Sudan regarding its border with South Sudan, and I couldn’t help wondering why the BBC bothered risking the life of reporter Andrew Harding and his cameraman in order to bring it to us.

The casual cruelty of NHS bureaucracy

I phoned my GP surgery on Monday, having received a letter from them about some recent blood tests. The letter said I needed to speak to a doctor about the results: I could either arrange an appointment or speak to them on the phone.

I phoned the surgery immediately, to be told that the earliest they could manage to get a doctor on the phone was Friday sometime between 12 and 2. Not having felt all that well in recent weeks, and having, in recent months, heard from a friend needing intensive and prolonged treatment after blood tests revealed a serious medical condition, I spent the rest of the week in a state of mild agitation.

A great cultural start in life - gold stars and Nelson duffing up Frogs

When my parents brought me to this country at the age of six, I hadn’t had any form of schooling – in Norway, children’s state of prelapsarian innocence didn’t end until the age of seven in those days. My first day of formal education (at Wimbledon Common Preparatory School, or Squirrels as it was better known) must have taken place shortly before my seventh birthday. I couldn't read, write or add, but I picked up the three “R”s almost instantly - whatever methods were used to teach this late starter proved quick, painless and effective.

30 reasons to be cheerful – Chris Huhne's resignation, for a start!

I try not to delight in the misfortune of others (well, not more than three or four times a day), but Chris Huhne is evidently such an unmitigated shit, and his energy policies are doing such untold damage to this country, that it would have required a better man than I not to roar with approval on hearing that this utter blister has been forced to resign from the Cabinet. I will spend the rest of the day walking with the extra spring in one’s step that betokens cheefulness.

The wisdom of Conservative sage Roger Scruton - another leading GLE contender

             

The Archbishop of Canterbury makes it rain on our parade

Every year around this time, St Michael and All Angels Church holds its two-day Green Days fête on Acton Green, across the road from Turnham Green Tube Station. This event kicks off the annual two-week Bedford Park Festival, which consist of a series of cultural events (concerts, recitals, readings, art exhibitions etc.).