There has been a certain amount of chat on the airwaves this last week to acknowledge the tenth anniversary of the Irish smoking ban which came into force 29th March 2004. Smoking was banned because of the epidemiological investigations of Richard Doll. rather than the polemics of James VI/I, The now leader of the opposition Micheál Martin was then the Minister of Health in the Fianna Fail government. A previous incumbent Brian Cowen had referred to the Health portfolio as Angola because of the prevalence of land-mines. You have to take your hat off to Martin and some of the senior civil servants in his department for carrying through legislation, against considerable political flow, that changed society in quite notable ways. Pints became separated from smokes and you can now go to a pub with a few friends or a visitor from out of town and not come out feeling in need of an immediate hair-wash. As my gaffer in Boston used to say "Your rights end where my nose begins" and your smoke was definitely not stopping at the end of my nose but travelling through that orifice to my no longer pink lungs. I've put my conflicted cards on the table about the right to cultivate your own small-cell carcinoma of the lung.
Many countries now ban smoking in certain places, but Ireland was the first to impose a ban on smoking indoors in places open to the public. That included pubs, hotels and restaurants. The poor smokers were driven outdoors to loiter in the doorways of pubs leaving their pints inside. People with vested interests (British-American Tobacco, The Vintner's Association, lung-transplant surgeons) stoutly maintained that it would never work, that the ban would be enforceable, that pubs would close and jobs would be lost. Jobs were/are hemorrhaging from the pub sector of the economy, so it's not clear what additional effect the smoking ban may have had. But it was clear from the start that there wasn't going to be a riot over the Right to Smoke - it was a first indication that the Irish are compliant: while the Greeks were setting fire to banks a few years later, the Irish were taking austerity on the chin and merely moaning about it.
The current Minister of Health, James Reilly, a doctor, is quite as anti-smoking as his predecessor and if he had his 'druthers, tobacco will go the way of cannabis in Ireland within a handful of years. There will then be a thriving market in illicit tobacco imports and some hoodlums will become very rich. The government would, contrariwise, lose the €1+ billion a year which it gets from the excise duty on tobacco. That amount just about pays for An Garda Síochána.
Now here's an interesting thing, you have the right to cultivate your own tobacco Nicotiana tabacum in Ireland, and it is quite easily done. The process of converting the leaves to something that you can smoke rather than something that will enrich your compost heap is all about tilting the process in favour of some microbes and discouraging others. But there is a huge literature on these matters because there was/is huge money to be made from the industry. Up until 2010, the EU shelled out €250m a year to subsidize tobacco farmers in Spain, Greece and Poland, and there is some political ferment to re-introduce this support. One of my neighbours used to grow his own and then process it for his own use. He doesn't smoke anymore, so I think he's stopped doing that. Then again, nicotine is an effective bio-degradable insecticide, so he may still be using it for that purpose - must ask.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query James tobacco. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query James tobacco. Sort by date Show all posts
Saturday, 29 March 2014
Thursday, 18 July 2013
Just Say Noe
In my rant yesterday about a certain History of the World, I noted in passing that tea came to be a key consumer-item in these islands about 200 years ago. Its popularity was enhanced by a gross reduction in the Customs and Excise duty payable to King George in 1785 - too late to save most of the North American colonies. Tea was also given a fillip by the temperance movement: mostly middle-class know-betters who didn't want to see the urban proletariat sozzled on gin and pushed tea as the "cup that cheers but does not inebriate". Very worthy, but we need a contrarian view, or we'll drown in smugness.
There is a long history of polemics against tobacco, starting with King James VI/I about a generation after Nicotiana tabacum leaves were brought to England (and indeed Ireland) by Walter Raleigh. The King's A Covnterblaste to Tobacco (1604) is worth reading in its entirety - it's only 3 pages (this is the feller who commissioned the KJV of the Bible and he wrote well himself) but most editors (trained to a tweention-span [1] long before Twitter) clip it down to the last sentence: "A custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomlesse."
But it took 400 years before it was banned. 2004 is now fadó, fadó, fadó a bhí ann and not many people remember that Ireland was then the first country to ban smoking in the workplace, including pubs; and props to the Fianna Fail govt of the day for protecting the lungs of bar-staff from the evils of passive smoking. At the time, I was wholeheartedly in favour. In the course of a post respecting the right to eat a Twinkie, I also expressed a mild contrarian regret for too much legislation that protects us from ourselves: "But when they drove smokers out of pubs and you'd see them flirting and chatting with each other in the drizzle outside the doors of pubs, my indignation sagged and then took up cudgels a bit for the other side. Jakers, I thought, if you're an adult you should be able to make an informed choice about how and when you're likely to die."
William Cobbett (1763-1835) is one of my favorite writers. He lived in interesting times, wrote a lot, was capable of changing his mind and was able to see right on both sides of an argument. For a self-sufficiency wannabe like me, his minority interest booklet A Cottage Economy is the Old Testament to John Seymour's Self-sufficiency as the New Testament (buy here cheaper than Amazon). In A Cottage Economy (1822) Cobbett sought to restore an ideal England with a prosperous and contented population of yeoman farmers. He was particularly agin tea Camillia sinensis which he felt was supplanting jolly good ale and old as the beverage of choice in rural England.
"23. It is notorious that tea has no useful strength in it; that it contains nothing nutritious; that it, besides being good for nothing, has badness in it, because it is well known to produce want of sleep in many cases, and in all cases, to shake and weaken the nerves. It is, in fact, a weaker kind of laudanum, which enlivens for the moment and deadens afterwards. At any rate it communicates no strength to the body; it does not, in any degree, assist in affording what labour demands. It is, then, of no use.
<deletia>
29. But, I look upon the thing in a still more serious light. I view the tea drinking as a destroyer of health, an enfeebler of the frame, an engenderer of effeminacy and laziness, a debaucher of youth, and a maker of misery for old age."
D'ye think he read A Covnterblaste to Tobacco? In these democratic times the voice of a citizen is equal to the voice of a king, so I calculate that the Irish Government will over-ride the all powerful lobby of Barry, Bewley and Lyons and drive tea-drinking underground or at least out into the rain in the year 2222. And the rest of the world will follow over the next decade.
[1] you first saw it here
"Your search - tweention-span - did not match any documents."
There is a long history of polemics against tobacco, starting with King James VI/I about a generation after Nicotiana tabacum leaves were brought to England (and indeed Ireland) by Walter Raleigh. The King's A Covnterblaste to Tobacco (1604) is worth reading in its entirety - it's only 3 pages (this is the feller who commissioned the KJV of the Bible and he wrote well himself) but most editors (trained to a tweention-span [1] long before Twitter) clip it down to the last sentence: "A custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomlesse."
But it took 400 years before it was banned. 2004 is now fadó, fadó, fadó a bhí ann and not many people remember that Ireland was then the first country to ban smoking in the workplace, including pubs; and props to the Fianna Fail govt of the day for protecting the lungs of bar-staff from the evils of passive smoking. At the time, I was wholeheartedly in favour. In the course of a post respecting the right to eat a Twinkie, I also expressed a mild contrarian regret for too much legislation that protects us from ourselves: "But when they drove smokers out of pubs and you'd see them flirting and chatting with each other in the drizzle outside the doors of pubs, my indignation sagged and then took up cudgels a bit for the other side. Jakers, I thought, if you're an adult you should be able to make an informed choice about how and when you're likely to die."
William Cobbett (1763-1835) is one of my favorite writers. He lived in interesting times, wrote a lot, was capable of changing his mind and was able to see right on both sides of an argument. For a self-sufficiency wannabe like me, his minority interest booklet A Cottage Economy is the Old Testament to John Seymour's Self-sufficiency as the New Testament (buy here cheaper than Amazon). In A Cottage Economy (1822) Cobbett sought to restore an ideal England with a prosperous and contented population of yeoman farmers. He was particularly agin tea Camillia sinensis which he felt was supplanting jolly good ale and old as the beverage of choice in rural England.
"23. It is notorious that tea has no useful strength in it; that it contains nothing nutritious; that it, besides being good for nothing, has badness in it, because it is well known to produce want of sleep in many cases, and in all cases, to shake and weaken the nerves. It is, in fact, a weaker kind of laudanum, which enlivens for the moment and deadens afterwards. At any rate it communicates no strength to the body; it does not, in any degree, assist in affording what labour demands. It is, then, of no use.
<deletia>
29. But, I look upon the thing in a still more serious light. I view the tea drinking as a destroyer of health, an enfeebler of the frame, an engenderer of effeminacy and laziness, a debaucher of youth, and a maker of misery for old age."
D'ye think he read A Covnterblaste to Tobacco? In these democratic times the voice of a citizen is equal to the voice of a king, so I calculate that the Irish Government will over-ride the all powerful lobby of Barry, Bewley and Lyons and drive tea-drinking underground or at least out into the rain in the year 2222. And the rest of the world will follow over the next decade.
[1] you first saw it here
"Your search - tweention-span - did not match any documents."
Thursday, 26 July 2018
The food wars
Thirty years ago, I used to quip that if you drilled down everything was owned by either General Foods or General Motors those obese soldiers of the capitalist dream. Back then it was a gross exaggeration, but 3 decades of mergers, acquisitions and hostile take-overs have reduced the number of players a lot. General Foods is gone: gobbled up by tobacco giant Philip Morris in 1985, which ate Kraft three years later. The conglom erased General Food to make a snappier letterhead in 1995. On the fertile common ground front, note that GF was started by CW Post in Battle Creek MI, after he'd had a session in the Kellogg health-farm just down the road. On the TMI front note that John Harvey Kellogg JHK was an advocate of both male MGM and female genital mutilation FGM in his War against Wanking WAW: reflect on that when you tuck into your Kellogg's Corn Flakes KCF. Does it disturb you that big tobacco should own the food chain?
Mondelēz is a damn-fool name (Mond = mundus = world + delēz sounds like delicious but looks vaguēly intērñatiönal) invented by a couple of Kraft employees and adopted by senior management experiencing a rush of blood to the head. The brand will Go Down well in Mother Russia because there it sounds like oral sex. Marketing experts are still shaking their heads but acknowledge that to the consumer it makes no difference because they never read the small print. Not like me.
It's in the nature of globalisation that you won't have heard of all the brands on the Mondelēz umbrella. Here's a sample:
- Cookies / crackers: Belvita, Chips Ahoy!, Nabisco, Oreo, Ritz, TUC, Triscuit, LU, Club Social, Barni, Peek Freans
- Choc: Milka, Terry's, Côte d'Or, Toblerone, Cadbury, Freia, Marabou, Fry's, Lacta
- Gum: Trident, Dentyne, Chiclets, Halls, Stride
Globalisation is rush to the bottom on price, with loads of unintended consequences. This essay by James Meek at the LRB From Somerdale to Skarbimierz tells the sorry tale of how accountant-led business practice working hand-in-glove with EU policy closed down the Cadbury's factory at Keynsham just outside Bristol in England and shifted the whole operation to a green-field site in the middle of Poland. Somerdale was also a greenfield site when it was acquired in 1923. The difference between The Fry family in 1923 and Mondelēz 100 years later is that the Frys were quakers and they built a raft of social facilities and sports grounds to keep their workers happy. Mondelēz got a huge subsidy from the EU and the local government put in all the roads and utilities. The irony was that the UK government, through the EU, paid good tax-payers money to deprive 5,000 UK voters of a job in the local chocolate factory. Willy Wonka indeed; you can see where the Brexiteers are coming from.
The Keynesham site has been renamed The Chocolate Quarter and acquired for housing mainly aimed at old people. The sport's facilities will be built over in due course. None of the bathrooms in the old factory flats have windows. That's progress I suppose: you have to park us wrinklies and crumblies somewhere.
And Stop Press!: The EU has just ruled that Kvikk Lunsj [prev] owned by Cadbury owned by Mondelēz is not infringing on the trademark [shape division] of Kit-Kat owned by Rowntree owned by Nestlé. The case seems to have hinged on whether Kit-Kat was distinctively recognised in ALL EU countries. It failed to jump this rather high bar in Ireland, Portugal, Greece and Belgium where folks can't distinguish a Kit-Kat from Mars Bar at 30 paces.
Wednesday, 16 July 2014
Cost benefit beer.
Calculation time! It's a while since I waved my arms at some order of magnitude numbers. Recently I was remembering the multiply-fatal Lac Mégantic derailment and left a question hanging about how dangerous is beer. In a famous incident in October 1814, 500 tons of beer Niagraed out of a vat in London and drowned 7 poor people in the local cellars.
The per capita annual beer consumption in Ireland is close to 100 lt. We're way behind the Czechs and about on par with ethnic Germans, Poles and Balts. The total quantity consumed is about 475 million litres, for a population (Republic only) of 4.6 million. Which shows how goofy some of these out-trotted statistics are: for per capita beer consumption we're talking per every head in the country including those that have just emerged from the womb. ANNyway, every day 1.3 million litres of beer goes down Irish throats.
There were in 2011, a record low number N = 162 of road fatalities. Which is the result of an extraordinary collective effort to reduce this toll of unnecessary death - as recently as 2005 there were 396 deaths on Irish roads. In any year about a quarter of the dead are pedestrians and maybe 3% cyclists. I'd guess that half of them have drink taken so there is a drink-related death on the Irish roads one day in every five. I've suggested before that, as the Irish government has a commendable policy of reducing road deaths and as RTE, the state broadcaster has a less commendable policy of reporting every road fatality on the national news, it would be a useful standard operating procedure SOP to report the blood alcohol level of every dead car driver. But I'm not particularly interested in beer-induced road deaths, I trying to get an estimate of beer-induced any deaths. Irish Water Safety are getting a lot of airtime this weather and they say 1/3 of 150 annual deaths by drowning involve The Drink. Because of their ear for ghoulish quirkiness, the RTE news-editors told us a couple of weeks ago about a young woman, a wedding guest, seriously injured because she had fallen from a hotel's first floor balcony head-first onto the roof of car parked below. Would you agree that the odds are Lombard Street to a china orange that alcohol was involved? I'd hazard a guess that every two days there is an alcohol related accidental death in Ireland: half of them (0.5 x ~162/365) from cars, 1/6th from drowning, the rest from other situations where machinery and alcohol don't mix: PTOs on farms, chain-saws, lawn-mowers, gas-ovens, ladders and I'd guess a lot of plain young man silliness like the neknomination craze that swept one of our students to death earlier this year. Let's note that 50% of the alcohol consumption is beer, down from 70% 20 years ago - we are. like continental sophisticates, delicately sipping a lot more wine nowadays.
Thus every day in Ireland somebody gets killed because somebody has drunk too much beer (those somebodies are often the same person). Over the same period, 2.6 million litres of good ale, refreshing lager and nutritious stout have been drunk, giving hundreds of thousands of people a chance to cool down a hot curry, restore fluids after some strenuous Summer work outdoors, lubricate an awkward conversation or, indeed, achieve a temporary oblivion from their private hell.
Me, I don't think we should follow out-gone Health Minister James Reilly in banning cigarettes. I guess the tobacco lobby have won that battle now that Reilly has been reshuffled to a different government position. Kevin Byrne has opened the debate about imaginative proposals to balance the the cost of beer-driven death vs the clear-and-present benefit of beer in rural Ireland. Neither of us have really considered the general life-shortening aspects (cirrhosis, heart-disease, cancer, dementia) of excessive alcohol consumption: I'll clearly have to come back here wearing a different hat. There is something repellent when government mounts the white horse of moral crusade and legislates to prevent something of which it disapproves. Romeo and Juliet laws spring to mind. In framing legislation you research relevant data and extrapolate imagined scenarios and write the law in best legalese. The Irish Council for Bioethics thought long and debated hard about end-of-life issues but there will be a particular and peculiar set of circumstances that aren't covered by their wording for advanced healthcare directives. A helluva a lot of road-miles are driven with alcohol on board for each fatality but no sane person believes that we can eliminate road deaths entirely even if we make drink-driving a capital offense.
The per capita annual beer consumption in Ireland is close to 100 lt. We're way behind the Czechs and about on par with ethnic Germans, Poles and Balts. The total quantity consumed is about 475 million litres, for a population (Republic only) of 4.6 million. Which shows how goofy some of these out-trotted statistics are: for per capita beer consumption we're talking per every head in the country including those that have just emerged from the womb. ANNyway, every day 1.3 million litres of beer goes down Irish throats.
There were in 2011, a record low number N = 162 of road fatalities. Which is the result of an extraordinary collective effort to reduce this toll of unnecessary death - as recently as 2005 there were 396 deaths on Irish roads. In any year about a quarter of the dead are pedestrians and maybe 3% cyclists. I'd guess that half of them have drink taken so there is a drink-related death on the Irish roads one day in every five. I've suggested before that, as the Irish government has a commendable policy of reducing road deaths and as RTE, the state broadcaster has a less commendable policy of reporting every road fatality on the national news, it would be a useful standard operating procedure SOP to report the blood alcohol level of every dead car driver. But I'm not particularly interested in beer-induced road deaths, I trying to get an estimate of beer-induced any deaths. Irish Water Safety are getting a lot of airtime this weather and they say 1/3 of 150 annual deaths by drowning involve The Drink. Because of their ear for ghoulish quirkiness, the RTE news-editors told us a couple of weeks ago about a young woman, a wedding guest, seriously injured because she had fallen from a hotel's first floor balcony head-first onto the roof of car parked below. Would you agree that the odds are Lombard Street to a china orange that alcohol was involved? I'd hazard a guess that every two days there is an alcohol related accidental death in Ireland: half of them (0.5 x ~162/365) from cars, 1/6th from drowning, the rest from other situations where machinery and alcohol don't mix: PTOs on farms, chain-saws, lawn-mowers, gas-ovens, ladders and I'd guess a lot of plain young man silliness like the neknomination craze that swept one of our students to death earlier this year. Let's note that 50% of the alcohol consumption is beer, down from 70% 20 years ago - we are. like continental sophisticates, delicately sipping a lot more wine nowadays.
Thus every day in Ireland somebody gets killed because somebody has drunk too much beer (those somebodies are often the same person). Over the same period, 2.6 million litres of good ale, refreshing lager and nutritious stout have been drunk, giving hundreds of thousands of people a chance to cool down a hot curry, restore fluids after some strenuous Summer work outdoors, lubricate an awkward conversation or, indeed, achieve a temporary oblivion from their private hell.
Me, I don't think we should follow out-gone Health Minister James Reilly in banning cigarettes. I guess the tobacco lobby have won that battle now that Reilly has been reshuffled to a different government position. Kevin Byrne has opened the debate about imaginative proposals to balance the the cost of beer-driven death vs the clear-and-present benefit of beer in rural Ireland. Neither of us have really considered the general life-shortening aspects (cirrhosis, heart-disease, cancer, dementia) of excessive alcohol consumption: I'll clearly have to come back here wearing a different hat. There is something repellent when government mounts the white horse of moral crusade and legislates to prevent something of which it disapproves. Romeo and Juliet laws spring to mind. In framing legislation you research relevant data and extrapolate imagined scenarios and write the law in best legalese. The Irish Council for Bioethics thought long and debated hard about end-of-life issues but there will be a particular and peculiar set of circumstances that aren't covered by their wording for advanced healthcare directives. A helluva a lot of road-miles are driven with alcohol on board for each fatality but no sane person believes that we can eliminate road deaths entirely even if we make drink-driving a capital offense.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)