The Daily Mail’s gossip column and Old Etonians are two things that go together rather well, but the diary is not normally where one turns for considered health advice. And why should one? A gossip column is a place of... Continue Reading →
Constance Watson in the Spectator posted a rather sombre piece last week as she all but conceded defeat to the creeping invasion of the nanny state into our personal lives. Watson, by her own admission, is (or certainly was) an... Continue Reading →
When my daughter was born, 27 years ago, smoking was already severely restricted inside hospitals. Each floor had a nicotine-stained room – smelling like an ashtray and never cleaned– where patients and visitors could indulge the habit in minimum comfort.... Continue Reading →
It may be unfashionable, but when I see Justin Trudeau oiling round the world stage, I have an uncontrollable urge to throw rotten fruit. The liberal Canadian prime minister, son of a previous liberal prime minister, embodies everything that we... Continue Reading →
If so many people weren’t riding the taxpayers’ back, we often wonder if the opposition to the tidal wave of common sense surging through politics would be quite so shrill. As it is, this weather-event is putting the jobs of... Continue Reading →
There has been a spate of stories over the last few months about police raids and seizure of counterfeit cigarettes and illegally smuggled tobacco, noted for their increasing regularity, albeit low profile, as well as the increasing scale of the... Continue Reading →
They say the world has shifted on its axis and gone awry. There have been omens and portents. And when the Guardian and Observer question a key policy of the healthist state – namely, the elimination of smoking through the... Continue Reading →
As an eleven-stone, 58 year-old smoker, with an appetite constantly suppressed by skinny roll-ups, I gain some cruel pleasure from seeing my fat friends waddling around. By ignoring the basic rule that intake in energy must not exceed expenditure thereof,... Continue Reading →
You can recruit him at 17, and send him up against terrorists without the right body armour. You can brutalise him and turn him into a cold-blooded killer. You can expose him to living hell in a war launched on... Continue Reading →