I'd rather have throat rot than be lied to

A while ago, I care not exactly when, cigarette packets began to be adorned with gory pictures and threatening words. At the start there were just advisory messages, all of which said nothing more in substance than "smoking cigarettes might make you ill". Things were quite honest in those days. Of course that wasn't enough for the hectoring single issue fanatics, so then we read "smoking kills" and "smoking causes lung cancer". Now we have pictures of rotten teeth and nasty red masses on necks. Yesterday I bought a packet of ciggies adorned by the image of a curved cigarette. The picture appears within a rectangle. The filter end of the cigarette is at the bottom left corner and arches upwards and to the right, then there is a length of white gently curving to the top of the rectangle, then a length of ash curving down from the top-centre towards the middle-right of the rectangle. Beneath the image is the terrifying warning "Smoking may reduce the blood flow and causes impotence".

I had to think about the warning because it seemed on first reading to be garbled and contradictory. The lack of clarity is emphasised by the way the warning is written, there is a change of colour, it reads like this: "Smoking may reduce the blood flow and causes impotence". I'm not a one to be picky but there really does seem to be an awful lot wrong with this whole thing.

The image of a curved cigarette is, presumably, meant to suggest a drooping penis that would be firm and proud if not for its owner's smoking habit. So why does it start by heading upwards and maintain a curve that eventually heads down? Is that what the impotent experience? Do they have sufficient blood flow for the old pecker to start its excited journey on a steep upward path only to find that it can manage nothing better than a smooth curve leaving the tip some thirty degrees above the starting point? Or are they, in fact, not able to get anything like this initial upward thrust? I don't know, but I would guess restricted blood flow into the pecker would almost always mean a state of general firmness can be achieved for some time but without any significant upward movement. I would guess everything heads south albeit with slightly more girth than when the good lady has a headache.

And why do they use a cigarette to illustrate it? They tell us that smoking causes our teeth to rot and show a graphic image of blackened stumps and fetid gums. They tell us smoking causes throat cancer and show a photograph of a man with a massive and, frankly, thoroughly unpleasant scarlet growth on his neck. Why do they get all coy rather than showing a limp, impotent willy doing its inadequate best to prepare itself for the most sticky of matrimonial duties?

The written warning is nothing short of bizarre. It is divided into two parts: (i) "Smoking may reduce the blood flow", (ii) "and causes impotence". Red script is used to emphasise "reduce the blood flow" and "causes impotence".

I can't resist it, I'm sorry but I just can't, I have to be picky. "Smoking may reduce the blood flow" is meaningless. "May" is permissive: "You may have an extra scone, Vicar, if you take your hand off my knee", "Thank you, I'll forgo the scone". "Might", in this context, is concerned with probabilities. They mean "Smoking might reduce the blood flow". As far as I know that would be accurate, as far as I know smoking can cause or accelerate the clogging of arteries, therefore it might reduce the flow of blood around the body including to the willy. But only "might", it does not have that effect on every smoker.

Because smoking might or might not restrict blood flow, it might or might not cause or contribute to impotence, yet there is no qualification on the second part of the warning. It states in bold terms "and causes impotence". That is absolutely true in those instances where it causes impotence, but it is not a universal truth. When it cause impotence it does so by reducing the blood flow, not, as far as I am aware, by any other mechanism. What I find troubling is that the first part of the warning (despite the incorrect use of "may" rather than "might") states that reduced blood flow is a risk associated with smoking cigarettes, yet the second part asserts without qualification that smoking causes impotence.

No doubt those who drafted this incompetent warning would seek to justify it by isolating the words "smoking ... causes impotence" and arguing that this is indeed the case sometimes. That is no justification. The first and second parts of the warning work in tandem, impotence is a sub-set of reduced blood flow. Yet "causes impotence" is given red lettering all by itself. All they have to do to tell the truth is change two words so that the warning reads: "Smoking might reduce the blood flow and cause impotence". No one could argue with that without looking a bit of a chump. As it is, the warning is simply wrong. Perhaps it is just incompetence, perhaps it is deliberate deceit, either way it makes warnings on cigarette packets even more of an absurdity than they have ever been.

The most incoherent climate change clap-trap ever?

There was a most extraordinary letter in yesterday's Times. Extraordinary not just for its factual inaccuracy and it's blatant assertion of an obvious untruth but also for asserting a conclusion that doesn't follow from its flawed premise and for displaying a poor knowledge of English. I will not bother trying to correct their grammar and syntax, no doubt they are too old to learn. The letter was signed by a number of people involved in the field of medicine. I could call them doctors but wouldn't want to mislead because I don't know whether any of them actually holds a doctorate.

Their starting position is that many people assert "climate change doesn't exist". How breathtakingly stupid of them to put their case in this way. "Climate change doesn't exist" is another way of saying "the climate is not changing" and/or "the climate does not change". For all I know there might be some existing in hermetically sealed mental bubbles who do indeed assert one or both of these preposterous nonsenses, but I have never read anything to suggest that such people exist outside secure psychiatric facilities. No sane person could ever assert that the climate is not changing or does not change. Of course it changes and of course it is changing now, it always has and it always will.

They then assert that many say climate change is not caused by humans. This is true enough provided one defines "climate change" accurately. The buffoons who signed the letter clearly have not defined it with any care. Let's go back to the days before human beings found a way to make life comfortable, back to the days before the industrial revolution and the development of processes that keep us alive but produce atmospheric carbon dioxide in order to do so . The climate was not stable then any more than it is stable now. What caused climatic instability in those days? I'm no expert but I would suggest two (no doubt there are many more but no one can argue with these two).

First, the sun. That's the big yellow thing in the sky. It does its thing and the result is more or less heat at the earth's surface. If it is busy we get more, if it decides to put its feet up and read a good book we get less. It changes the climate and human activity has nothing to do with it

Secondly, the oceans, they are those watery bits that appear as two thirds of the earth's surface in atlases and on globes. They are not just surfaces they go down a long way and slosh a vast amount of water about. Some of that water is cold, some is not so cold. Both the warm and cold bits are vast quantities of matter. It moves about, churns itself around and oceanic surface temperatures vary according to what the churning produces. We can have years of relative warm waters at the surface and years of chilly stuff exposing itself to the air. The churnings of the oceans change the climate and human activity has nothing to do with it

There we have it, two hugely powerful factors that change the climate regardless of human activity. It is axiomatic that human activity does not cause these climatic changes. You have to narrow down the field to find a contributory factor to changing climate that can be blamed on people. We all know what that factor is - production by human activity of carbon dioxide that is released into the atmosphere. From there we have to ask what detrimental effect carbon dioxide is alleged to have in order to know what the allegation against we naughty people is, because unless the allegation is defined clearly any denial cannot be placed in its proper context.

The case put against carbon dioxide is that increased levels of that gas in the atmosphere lead to higher surface temperatures because of the so-called "greenhouse effect." It's not actually anything to do with the way greenhouses retain heat, it would be more accurate to call it the "duvet and storage radiator effect". Atmospheric gases are said to act like a duvet in that they prevent heat escaping as fast as it would in their absence (yes, I know it's not actually "heat" but energy which at surface level is translated into heat). They also act like storage radiators by releasing energy to heat the surface when it is cool.

But that's only a tiny part of the picture and it is not the part that matters. Nice Mr Pogo has been kind enough to remind me of this point when I have been too loose in my use of language in previous offerings on this topic. The worse case scenarios produced by computer models and by applicable mathematical formulae suggest that a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere might, of itself, cause average surface temperatures (whatever that means) to rise by around one degree Celcius. That is equivalent to moving from Brighton to Birmingham. The newspapers are not swamped with tales of emigres from the south coast of England to the middle of the country being troubled by the changed climatic conditions. It is only when the great hypothesis is added that people start to fret.

The great hypothesis is that adding further carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will give rise to an amplification effect. The starting point is that adding carbon dioxide will increase both the duvet and storage radiator effect because more carbon dioxide means a greater storage capacity for the "blanket" around the earth. The crucial hypothesis is that various factors will result in an increase in surface temperatures far beyond those that the increased storage capacity would produce by itself. Some argue that this amplification process will happen, some argue it will not, some argue that it is impossible to tell but are inclined towards one position or the other. The one thing of which we can be sure is that it hasn't happened yet.

When the medical buffoons asserted that many say climate change is not caused by humans what they should have said, in order to have any credibility, is that many dispute the hypothesis that increased emissions of carbon dioxide will result in an amplification process causing significant and detrimental increases in surface temperatures. Being buffoons, they did not say this. Instead they asserted that many say climate change is not caused by man. Not only does this misrepresent the argument put forward by those who decry the Chicken Licken scenario but it is hopelessly misleading because it adopts the weasel words du jour of "climate change" rather than "man made global warming". Unless human production of carbon dioxide will trigger dramatic and damaging warming, the whole Chicken Licken argument falls to the floor.

That deals with the untruth in their letter. Factual inaccuracy is proved by their ridiculous assumption that "nearly 2,000 of the world's leading climate scientists who consitute the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change" agree with the Chicken Licken hypothesis. I call this an assumption because there is absolutely no evidence at all to support it. Yet, tellingly, the buffoons assume that all those who contributed their thoughts and analyses to the IPCC agreed with every apocalyptic word in the conclusions written by politicians. Even in real science people can contribute their views and be noted as contributors to a report without agreeing with a single word of the final report. I wonder how many of the buffoons have been involved in a research project as a contributor of ideas and analysis only to find that the authors produced something they consider to be utter tripe.

And so we get to their conclusions. How appropriate it is that I have just used the term "utter tripe". This is what they wrote: "there are immediate benefits to be had from action now, mainly about how we move, how we eat and how we redistribute resources more fairly around the globe - all of which are fundamental to health and welfare." I am almost lost for words. But I'll try my best to find some.

Take the first two phrases: "there are immediate benefits to be had from action now". No. No, no no. If you are looking at influences on the climate there are, by definition, no immediate benefits. Nothing we do now will affect the climate immediately even if you believe the most extreme of the computerised projections. Maybe they did not mean climatic benefits. We need to look at the rest of their conclusion to see whether they are actually addressing the climate at all.

What is it that they say we must do? They identify three areas. The first is described as "how we move". I know I said I wasn't going to pick at their use of English but I have to. What in the world of living buggery does "the way we move" mean? My best guess is that they might be referring to aeroplanes and motor cars because these are pet hates for the greenies. But that can't be what they mean because changing our motorised travel habits cannot have an immediate effect on climate and giving up air travel and the internal combustion engine is not "fundamental to health and welfare".

Then they say we should take action about "how we eat". I'm beginning to lose the will to live at this stage. Do they mean importing runner beans out of season from Kenya? Fine, let's bankrupt Kenya's farmers. Well, actually, not fine at all. It may be fine for the buffoons but it's the absolute opposite of what I want to see. Maybe they mean we should all turn vegetarian so as to do away with flatulent cows. No, that can't be it, you'd just transfer the production of flatus from cows to humans. Sorry, I don't get this one at all.

Maybe their third idea carries weight: "how we redistribute resources more fairly around the globe". And the connection to human incuded climate change is ...? Yes, that's right, it has absolutely no connection at all to what industrial plants, cars and cargo planes full of Kenyan runner beans might be doing to the environment. It is a totally different topic, a purely political topic. No climate science is involved. No medicine is involved. I would say no sense is involved but that opens another subject for another day.

These idiots started by saying there are many who deny the climate is changing, and ended by saying that people working in medicine "will be reminding" those who question the effect of human activity on the climate that "immediate benefits" will result from changing the way we move, eat and distribute resources around the world. The whole thing is incoherent clap-trap.

The lead signatory carries the title "Professor". Now words do fail me.

Pensions are not optional extras

An interesting survey in today's Times suggests that very few people are making a serious effort to provide themselves with a pension. Although you can't draw any conclusions about the precise proportion of people who are not making their own provision from a snap-shot survey of fewer than 1,400 individuals, the results point towards something of a problem. It was found that almost half of those aged 41-60 are not currently paying into a pension fund and barely a third of those under 30 have a pension. Of course we were assured that this would not happen when the government introduced "stakeholder pensions", yet another of their gimmicks that has sunk almost without trace after costing millions in "consultation" and feasibility studies. Now they are planning a new scheme known as the "personal account". I knew nothing about this until reading the article in the Times, although that is probably a failing on my part.

Pension provision is a huge problem in this country because of institutionalised reliance on the welfare state. We are told the State will look after us from cradle to grave. In relation to pensions the cost of providing a modest subsistence level of income for all is absolutely enormous. Both my regular readers will know that when the state old-age pension was first devised it was to be funded by National Insurance contributions by which everyone would pay into a massive savings pot which would then be dipped into to pay us a modest weekly sum when we reach the defined retirement age. Right from the beginning there was a problem with this because payment-out started immediately and used such a large proportion of NI contributions that the pot never grew. In addition, once government had received money it could not resist the temptation to spend it. It was, therefore, hardly surprising that NI contributions quickly became just another form of income tax. I believe they are still accounted for separately from receipts from income tax itself, but that is just a bean counting exercise; the reality is that all the money is treated as being available for current expenditure and any dream of a pension pot being created evaporated many years ago. What should be quite a sensible arrangement of compulsory payments into a fund from which pensions will be distributed is in fact a giant Ponzi scheme in which the return on our "investment" is paid out of other people's "investment" and there is in fact no investment at all.

Nowadays the basic state pension is added to by various means tested top-ups and some lump-sum payments. Lying behind it all is the presumption that the first port of call for every retired person should be the State. It is rarely mentioned that the state old-age pension was originally extremely modest - well below subsistence level, was paid at age 70, was means-tested and was only paid to those of good character. It was so modest that anyone who thought they might live beyond 70 (which ruled out a vast chunk of the population in the early 20th century) was encouraged to make their own provision. Over time the ever-growing welfare state has shifted perception. Now a shortfall between the value of the state pension and the real cost of living is met with cries of "I paid my stamp, I demand a proper pension". Against this background we find a widespread resistance to making personal pension arrangements, it seems to be viewed as the wrong thing to do because we have already paid for a pension through NI contributions and making our own arrangements is letting the government off the hook.

The new scheme, due to come in in 2012, is nothing other than compulsion to take out a private pension if you have not done so already. It is probably sensible because the alternative is to force people to do it by simply cancelling the state pension, which would be political suicide. The irony is that the State machine encouraged the little people into an attitude of reliance and can only reduce reliance by using the force of the State to make them do so.

I don't know how much should be set-aside by individuals to allow a sufficiently large pot to build up so that it can be relied on for their income in retirement, I have read estimates between 5% and 14% of annual gross income, perhaps 10% is a fair average. That might seem a lot but average life expectancy now suggests the likelihood that most people will draw a pension for at least ten years following a working life of about forty-five to fifty years. If you were paying into the pot for, say, forty years and your income increased steadily throughout that time, the sums you paid-in at the beginning will be very small in cash terms compared to what you paid-in at the end. The smallest sums will have had time to grow but the largest sums will not. Assuming real growth of 2% a year, £100 invested over forty years turns into about £220, over thirty years it would grow to about £180, almost £150 over twenty years and just £120 over ten years. If your pot is used to buy an annuity giving a 5% yield, a pension of £10,000 a year requires a pot of £200,000. It takes a lot of investment to build a pot of that size even over forty years yet it will give you less than £200 a week and if you want the payments to be index-linked throughout your dotage the initial pension will be well under £200 a week. This is a very rough-and-ready example, but it gives an indication of the amount you need to accumulate through your working life if you are to have a bearable pension at the end.

To my mind, pensions are a good illustration of what happens if you don't live within your means. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that our means must be measured by taking into account the amount we should set aside for a pension. We are now in remedial territory. The huge black hole caused by decades of inadequate personal provision is being addressed and the cost will be a reduction in disposable income for all those who do not already have an occupational or personal pension scheme. It comes at a time when remedial therapy is also required for government expenditure because of past mistakes. By 2012 the recession will have ended and modest economic growth will probably have resumed. Then the new compulsory pension will come into effect, initially requiring employees to pay 1% of their gross income into the pot then 3% in 2013 and 5% from 2014 onwards. So disposable income will be forced down, for good reason, just as the economy is picking up. But, it will mean that disposable income will then be measured more realistically than in the past.

Putting off the cost of pensions is a form of credit just as insidious as equity-lending secured against perceived increases in house values. It encourages a false assessment of real wealth and requires a painful adjustment at a later date. I'm all for adjustment where it is needed and for painful adjustment where that pain cannot be avoided. All those in the Times survey who said they are not currently making any provision for a pension are simply putting off the day they have to do so and making that day more painful. As much as anything it is a matter of culture. To date the culture has been for the State to pay for our old age. That aspect of the welfare state has been exposed as rotten to the core. The initial system was right, the way it has been altered over the last century has led to an unaffordable mess that cannot deliver because it has made it impossible to deliver by fostering a sense of entitlement and reliance wholly out of proportion to the practicalities of the issue.

The ethos behind the new regime is something I find very encouraging. Pension provision is treated as a normal cost of life for the individual to bear just as he bears the cost of food and clothing. It is not a matter of shifting the cost from the taxpayer to the individual because the taxpayer would never be exposed to the cost of a decent pension for all. It is far more subtle than that. The paltry state pension will remain and the new system is about something different, it is about making people face up to the reality that a decent income in retirement is attainable, that it must be paid for and that the more they pay the more they will receive (subject, as always, to the ups and downs of any investment scheme). It marks a shift in emphasis towards self-reliance.

I am a great believer in promoting self-reliance because I have a great belief in the ability of people to provide for themselves if only the State would get out of the way and let them do it on their own terms.

Proportional misrepresentation

We have today been treated to the most blatant challenge yet to Gordon Brown's leadership of the Labour Party. One of the few members of his Cabinet capable of stringing together a sentence without using jargon has called for a referendum on our voting system. Writing in The Times, Alan Johnson called today for the next general election to be accompanied by a referendum in which we would be given the choice of retaining the present first-past-the-post system and something called "alternative vote plus". In doing so he knows there is virtually no chance of it happening, but that is not what troubles me.

A referendum is a serious thing. In my lifetime there has only been one for voters in England and the same one is the only one in history for voters throughout the whole United Kingdom. It was held in June 1975 and concerned our membership of the European Economic Community. The referendum was held as a direct result of a general election manifesto commitment by Harold Wilson's Labour Party to hold a referendum on continued UK membership of the EEC once his best efforts to re-negotiate the terms of our membership of the EEC were known. The general election was held in February 1974 and the re-negotiation took almost a year (another general election occurred in this time, in October 1974). By mid March 1975 a new deal had been reached and the following month Parliament voted for a referendum.

Membership of the EEC was a very hot topic at the time. It split both main parties then as membership of the EU (an entity those arguing for continued membership of the EEC in 1975 said was never a prospect) does now. Politicians of both parties expressed their views freely and it was one of the most widespread topics of debate. The referendum was held not just because of the February 1974 manifesto promise but also because the issue was a festering sore, a big red boil that needed lancing. One way or another an answer had to be provided so that the country could move on from an argument that threatened to engulf every aspect of political debate.

Today, completely out of the blue, we find a cabinet member arguing for a referendum on something that was nothing more than an aspiration in general election manifestos. The Labour Manifesto of 1997 included these two sentences tucked in the middle "We are committed to a referendum on the voting system for the House of Commons. An independent commission on voting systems will be appointed early to recommend a proportional alternative to the first-past-the-post system."

The "independent commission" was headed by former Labour Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer, Roy Jenkins. Labour's Manifesto for the 2001 election watered down the position put forward in 1997. After mentioning that the new devolved authorities for Scotland and Wales, the London Assembly and European Parliament elections had different electoral systems they said: "We will review the experience of the new systems and the Jenkins Report to assess whether changes might be made to the electoral system for the House of Commons. A referendum remains the right way to agree any change for Westminster."

Showing no evidence that they had undertaken the promised review, their Manifesto for 2005 abandoned any proposal for altering the voting system to the House of Commons saying: "Labour remains committed to reviewing the experience of the new electoral systems - introduced for the devolved administrations, the European Parliament and the London Assembly. A referendum remains the right way to agree any change for Westminster."

This is hardly the necessary background for holding only the second national referendum in history. The issue wasn't on the national radar in 1997 when it was a firm manifesto commitment, since then it has even been dropped in importance by the Liberal Democrats who have argued for proportional representation for decades. So, why is it now important? The simple answer is that it is just as important or unimportant as it ever was. What it is not, however, is something to be sprung on us with no more than a year to the next election. The Jenkins report might have recommended "alternative vote plus" and I might have heard or read about it at the time, but it rings no bells in my drink-sodden mind.

I am no fan of proportional representation systems because I believe it is healthier for one party to be able to do its worst and be shot down than to have a series of compromise solutions that satisfy no one. That, however, is not my objection to Mr Johnson's proposal. Mr objection is that the issue is far more complex than choosing between the current system and a proposal Mr Johnson's government has abandoned. If the current voting system is to be challenged through a referendum it should only be after full debate about all the options. I find it fundamentally objectionable that an idea should be brought out of mothballs and presented as not only the solution to current ills but the only possible solution. And why is it said to be the solution? Because of a plea to authority. An "independent commission" considered the matter and we should bow down and accept their wisdom. A wisdom which, as far as I am aware, has not been adopted in any other country. No, it doesn't work like that.

The issue needs mature consideration, not a knee-jerk reaction.

The upside-down Archbishop

One of the greatest challenges for those interested in politics is to decide where to draw the line between political and personal criticism. As a general rule, the higher someone climbs up the greasy pole of political power the more open he or she is to personal attack. Jeremy Clarkson famously described our current so-called Prime Minister a "one-eyed Scottish idiot", I suspect he would not have described Gordon Brown in that way were he a junior minister. As a matter of inescapable fact he would still have been a one-eyed Scottish idiot, but he would not have been in the firing line for that sort of personal attack.

High rank puts one in the firing line for personal attacks whether or not they are fair or accurate. It's part of the territory - set yourself up above the little people and the little people expect a lot of you. In real life it is necessary for some to be above the little people. Like it or loath it, we need government and that means we need government ministers, and that means we need a hierarchy of government ministers, and that means there is someone at the very top of the pyramid. The higher you climb the more we little people will expect of you and, it has to be said, the more you will profit when your time in office has ended.

Let's go down a few ranks to workaday MPs. They don't have the glory of wielding real power but they are the Parliamentary representatives of all their constituents, on average something like 80,000 people. Of that 80,000, on average something like 78,500 will earn less than an MP's salary. Only a very few of those that earn more than their MP will not be under any pressure to justify their income. Maybe they are authors or musicians raking in royalties, or the sons and daughters of wealthy people living on the produce of historic family investments. Such people are few and far between. The other high earners are in business and answerable to customers and/or shareholders every day of the year. MPs' customers are their constituents, the vast majority of whom struggle to balance the family books from one month to the next. News that our MP has been paid by us for a personal rather than a work expense might receive a "tut, tut" when times are good, but in a recession it receives a "how dare you?"

The single reason we criticise our MPs for using loopholes and manipulating the rules as we might in our lives (if only we could) is that they are above us. They are above us constitutionally and practically, so we have every right to expect them to behave at least as ethically as they tell us to behave. That we might have turned a blind eye for years is neither here nor there, when circumstances change so does the way we all look at things. In particular something we would not have been too concerned about at one time can become a matter of fundamental importance which must be changed. There is no once and for all, right-or-wrong assessment of the matter. In relation to MPs' expenses/allowances it cannot rationally be said that the widespread criticisms being made of MPs now lack merit because they were not made before, nor can it rationally be said that we were wrong not to raise these criticisms earlier. It is all a matter of context. For example, adultery by senior politicians was far more of an issue after John Major launched his "back to basics" campaign than it was before because the government was openly promoting fidelity. Similarly, hearing politicians from all sides tell us to tighten our belts because of recession makes their financial waistlines fair game for comment.

Only time can determine when the criticisms have run their course. It's not like a guillotined debate in the House of Commons in which a vote is forced after a certain time whether everyone with a desire to speak has had their turn, these criticisms will be made by real people for as long as they feel there is a need to make them. Any MP who resigns or announces they will not seek reelection might find they drop off the comment radar, any who do not answer criticism satisfactorily will find they are just delaying the inevitable. In an article in yesterday's Times newspaper the Archbishop of Canterbury said "the continuing systematic humiliation of politicians itself threatens to carry a heavy price in terms of our ability to salvage some confidence in our democracy." I could not disagree with him more.

What is happening now is an essential part of a mature democracy. You do not damage a system based on the notion of representation of the people by forcing the main representational institution to meet the standards required of it by the people. No damage is being done to confidence in our democracy, only to confidence in the way Parliament is behaving. The answer is to force it to change, and that is happening. It is happening because, not despite, "continuing systematic humiliation of politicians".

Confidence in democracy is a deeply ingrained cultural force in Britain. Democracy is often described as the least bad system of government but it is much more than that. It is something that helps to hold the country together. We all know that our personal, individual power to change the law or influence government policy is so small as to be virtually nil, we also know that both the law and policy can be altered where the public mood (expressed in countless different ways) is so strong that government and Parliament have to accede to that mood. In recent times we have seen significant changes of policy on petrol taxes, the 10p income tax rate and, most recently, rights of settlement for Gurkhas; all of them brought about by public pressure and criticism. This has not damaged our democracy, it has enhanced it by showing that it works.

The only way our democracy can be damaged is by damaging the ability of the little people to influence the big people. If it takes the humiliation of dozens of big people in order to ensure that influence remains in place, so be it.

Getting around the smoking ban, or not

The landlady of a pub in Yorkshire tried to evade the smoking ban by nominating a room in her pub as a research facility. As I understand it she placed questionnaires about smoking in the room in the hope that that would make it a research facility and allowed patrons to smoke provided they completed a form. The owners of the pub put a stop to it (here). Donning my curly horsehair wig I want to explain why I think they were right to do so. It really pains me to write this.

The smoking ban operates by defining certain types of premises as "smoke-free". If your premises fall within the description it is an offence to smoke there and to allow smoking there. The general rule is that work premises are "smoke-free", although exceptions may be made. The power to make exceptions is contained in section 3 of the Health Act 2006. Exceptions may be made by providing that "specified descriptions of premises" are not "smoke-free". In other words, where premises of a certain description are identified as being not "smoke-free" people may smoke there without it being a criminal offence and those in charge of the premises will not commit a crime by permitting smoking. One of the descriptions is "A designated room in a research or testing facility". The landlady of the pub in Yorshire tried to get into this description.

There is a specific provision in sub-section 3 of section 3 aimed at restaurants, pubs and clubs with a licence to sell booze. When exempt premises are being described, the description may not include the fact that it is licensed to sell booze. In other words, there may be no exemptions for restaurants, pubs and clubs by reason of them being restaurants, pubs or clubs. That does not necessarily mean that a room within a restaurant, pub or club cannot be exempt under any circumstances, but it cannot be exempted by reason of it being part of licensed premises, although it might be exempt despite being part of licensed premises.

This sub-section is important because it emphasises that the ban is intended to apply to all licensed premises. That does not mean that licensed premises, or a room in licensed premises, cannot be exempt but it sets the scene. Any attempt to circumvent the smoking ban in restaurants, pubs and clubs must be genuine and not just a ruse.

The exemption relied upon in the case under discussion is that relating to "research and testing facilities". It is created by Clause 9 of The Smoke-free (Exemptions and Vehicles) Regulations 2007. Clause 9 paragraph (1) says "A designated room in a research or testing facility is not smoke free while it is being used for any research or tests specified in paragraph (2)". This makes clear that the premises must be a research or testing facility and the designated room must be part of that facility. No doubt there could be a research or testing facility comprising a single room that is not part of a larger unit, but apart from that situation the "specified description of premises" requires the premises to be fairly described as a "research or testing facility". A pub is not a research or testing facility except in the loose sense of it being somewhere people can research and test their liking for and hepatic tolerance of alcoholic beverages. Although people do in fact research and test their liking for and hepatic tolerance of booze in pubs, pubs are not "research and testing facilities" in any real sense. A room in a pub is, therefore, not part of a research and testing facility, it is part of a pub.

The only way a room in a pub can be a "research and testing facility" is if it ceases to be just a room in a pub and becomes a stand-alone "research and testing facility". I have no doubt that this could happen, although it would be a rather strange arrangement. For example, a scientist might need to set-up a laboratory and might hire a room in a pub for that purpose. In that situation the room is essentially separate from the pub, it ceases to be a room in a pub and has its own identity as a research and testing facility. In that situation the room would cease to be part of the pub and would have a status of its own. That is different in substance from a room in a pub being used for some sort of research whilst retaining its essential character as a room in a pub. Say a room is used for a wine tasting evening, that might fairly be described as an exercise in research and testing, yet in substance it is still a room in a pub rather than a research and testing facility.

I don't intend to get bogged-down in analysing the type of research and testing that allows smoking to take place in premises that would otherwise have to be "smoke-free". The details are in paragraph (2) of Clause 9, to which I have provided a link. What is not stated in terms in that paragraph, but is implicit in each of its sub-paragraphs, is that smoking must be part of the research. Just because a laboratory tests the reaction of a piece of cloth to a smouldering cigarette does not allow those working in the lab to get through twenty Benson & Hedges while they are awaiting results from their experiment. Similarly, an organisation that invites people into its office to answer questions about their smoking habits does not trigger the exemption and should not expect the completed forms to be covered in cigar ash. A laboratory in which people smoke so that their physiological reactions to ciggies can be measured does not give carte blanche to the examiners to smoke before, during or after the tests. To suggest otherwise is to ignore the clear purpose of both the primary legislation (the Health Act 2006) and the Regulations made under that primary legislation.

As for the room in the pub containing written questionnaires, frankly it's just a ruse. It is research of a sort but it doesn't make the pub a "research and testing facility". Filling in a form does not require smoking to take place while pen is in hand. As always it is necessary to look not at the form of what is happening but at the substance. The substance is that the room is part of the pub, nothing more, as such it is covered by the smoking ban. Were it a genuine "research and testing facility" the landlady would soon find a condition imposed on her licence preventing her from selling or supplying booze to those using the room and she could have no complaint about that.

Nice try, madam, better luck next time.

"Howzatt?" Guilty as charged.

Today a former England cricketer was sentenced to 13 years in chokey for smuggling cocaine. Chris Lewis was an excellent player when he tried, sadly he didn't try often enough and his career was littered with lost opportunities. From the little I have read about it, his venture into drug smuggling was equally half-baked. He and a friend imported liquid cocaine in containers labelled as fruit juice. Most comical of all was the pair's decision to blame each other - the classic "cut-throat" defence.

Smuggling drugs is fraught with difficulties. Actually, I'm not in a position to say how difficult the smuggling itself is but I can say something about the difficulties faced if caught. You see, there's no such thing as a good defence. The tin of pineapple chunks in your luggage turns out to be full of cocaine, what can you say that might possibly make sense?

"My mum likes pineapple chunks so I bought them as a present." OK, so how did it happen that the tin of innocent fruit turned into thousands of pounds worth of Colombia's finest? How did it get onto the shelves of the QuickyMart in the first place? And how very lucky that it was intercepted by HM Revenue & Customs before dear old Ma wolfed it down a drop of Carnation milk.

Or you could try this one: "I never knew it was there, it must have been planted in my luggage by an unknown stranger." Bit tricky that, how do you explain that you didn't notice it? Say it wasn't in your luggage but you came over by car and it was found under the spare tyre in the boot. Then you have to explain how the intended recipient was going to recover it from you. If you have no connection to the importation chain this might prove a little impractical.

And then there is the defence run by Mr Lewis and his chum: "My friend gave it to me to bring over for him because he feared his luggage would be overweight." In this case each said it of the other. Now you know the real reason we are asked that seemingly daft question at airports: "has anyone given you anything to carry?" It isn't so that we will say "yes", it's so we will say "no"; then when we are caught and say we were just carrying the pineapple chunks for a heavily laden friend we find we shot ourselves in the foot at the start of the journey. Of course when travelling with a friend you might find that one of you is over the baggage weight allowance and the other is under so spreading the load makes sense, but only a moron takes a container of anything, sensible people relieve their friend of clothes or stolen hotel towels.

A necessary part of the defence is that you didn't know the stuff was cocaine. This aspect of it tends to stand or fall alongside the inanity of your excuse for carrying the package in the first place. Once a jury dismisses your story about how the stuff came into your possession it follows almost as night follows day that they won't believe anything else you tell them.

Following that theme, I now arrive at the "cut-throat" defence - where the two defendants blame each other. Amateur criminals rather like the cut-throat defence. They talk about it while awaiting trial and conclude that by blaming each other they will both get off because the jury won't be able to decide which is guilty. Or they fall out before the trial and blame each other out of spite. Either way it is an almost guaranteed route to conviction because it appears cowardly and unrealistic. Professional criminals rarely use the cut-throat. Where the evidence is very strong against one and a bit weaker against the other they prefer to sacrifice the one who is going to be potted anyway (in the general run of things his guilty plea earns a reduced sentence). He then gives evidence against the other and enhances his friend's chance of acquittal by making mistakes in his evidence thereby creating a hole in the prosecution case that was not previously present.

Mr Lewis and his friend played it all wrong and will have seven or so years to think of a better defence if ever they are tempted again. They didn't keep their eye on the ball.