Gout and about

Bad news: I am currently suffering from one of my occasional bouts of gout.

It got progressively worse during the week and yesterday the impressive swelling around the joint in my big toe got so bad I could barely walk because of the pain, and I also got very little sleep last night.

I've been trying to get some anti-inflammatory tablets but on Tuesday the NHS app wouldn't let me order them because they're not on my repeat prescription list, even though I've been prescribed these particular pills several times before.

Yesterday therefore I drove the half mile to my local surgery, hobbled the final 20 yards from the car park to the dispensary, and filled in a repeat prescription form in person but, while the member of staff was sympathetic, she said it had to be signed off by the duty doctor.

This morning, having heard nothing more and being in considerable pain, I rang the surgery at 8.30 and requested a phone appointment with a GP. I was put in a queue (#15) but I didn't have to wait on line because the automated system said someone would ring me back if I pressed ‘1’, which they duly did 30 minutes later.

A phone appointment was made for 11.00am but a GP rang before ten and was extremely helpful, not least because he understood the urgency of my request.

I should add that the situation is complicated by the fact that I have to drive to and from Chester to collect my mother to take her to her brother's funeral in Colchester on Monday, and I really don't want to spend the weekend unable to walk more than a few yards, as is the case at the moment.

Another complication is that the GP offered me two strengths of tablet – 250mg and 500mg. The latter will work faster and may be more effective, but I've been warned that it can also cause stomach problems such as ulcers so it's issued with a further tablet for 'tummy protection'.

Yikes.

The good news is that the GP is going to add the 250mg version to my repeat prescription list on the app, so although requests still have to be approved, it should make the process much easier, and quicker, in future.

Meanwhile I have discovered that another capsule that was already on my repeat prescription list - whose purpose I had forgotten - can also be used 'to treat mild to moderate acute pain and relieve symptoms of arthritis or gout'.

I don’t think it’s as strong as the other tablet I’ve been prescribed but it's good to know I have a choice!

See also: Gout im himmel and Around and about with gout

‘It’s not f*****g over!’

For those who missed it, Chelsea Women yesterday beat Bristol City 8-0 in the Women’s Super League.

The previous week Chelsea had lost 2-0 to Barcelona (2-1 on aggregate) in the semi-final of the Women’s Champions League in front of 39,398 people at Stamford Bridge, an experience I described here (Bridge of sighs).

Yesterday's match was also played in front of a near capacity crowd - albeit a more modest 4,800 - at Kingsmeadow in Kingston-upon-Thames, and had I not been given tickets (as a birthday present) to watch Tim Rice in Norwich I would have gone.

The background to the game was complicated by several factors but, if you’re interested, read this - Women’s Super League title race: Chelsea or Man City - who’s got the edge?.

Then watch the highlights (above) followed by the clip below which features a post match address to the crowd by Chelsea manager Emma Hayes.

All you have to know is that Hayes is leaving at the end of the season, after twelve years, to become head coach of the USA women’s national team.

A few days earlier - following a chaotic 4-3 midweek defeat at Liverpool - Hayes had uncharacteristically declared that the league was “done”, effectively conceding defeat to Manchester City.

Yesterday her post match address (from 11:50) followed a rather sentimental ‘letter’ to Chelsea fans that was pre-recorded and played on the screens at Kingsmeadow to mark her imminent departure.

Given the circumstances, her subsequent live address - if not exactly Churchillian - was nonetheless magnificent:

“Let me be clear. It’s not f*****g over. There is no time for sentimentality. All work drinks are cancelled. There’s a title to be won.”

Now do you understand why I am increasingly invested in the women’s game?!

Words and music - an evening with Tim Rice

I’ll get to the point of this post, eventually. But first, podcasts.

The handful I have listened to have generally been overlong and in desperate need of a skilful editor to cut the unwanted verbiage.

In my view very few podcasts should be more than 30 minutes unless the subject demands it, like the 45-minute episodes of Radio 4’s In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg.

In Our Time features experts who are knowledgeable and succinct - or edited to appear so, and the programme benefits enormously.

Unfortunately far too many podcasters seem to equate quantity (minutes) with quality. Either that or they love the sound of their own voice or have been seduced by sad sack listeners tweeting to tell them how wonderful they are, and they start to believe their own fan mail.

Either way, podcasts that last one or, God forbid, two hours are generally unlistenable to my ears and, although I’m a fairly sedentary person, even I haven’t got that many hours to waste.

The only two-hour podcast I made an exception for featured the comedians Elis James and John Robins that was also broadcast weekly on Five Live on Friday afternoons from 2.00-4.00pm.

To be fair, it took me a while to ‘get’ it. At first I thought it was mindlessly idiotic - albeit no more so than the BBC’s banter driven sports coverage on Five Live, but I persisted until, eventually, I bought into the world of Elis and Robins and found it calming, as well as amusing.

My wife disagrees and thinks it’s juvenile and self-indulgent, but she’s only heard one or two episodes when we’ve been in the car together, so I can empathise with her view because I shared it, initially.

Anyway, a couple of months ago, the BBC announced that a second episode of the Elis and Robins podcast would be streamed on BBC Sounds every week with the Five Live version inexplicably reduced to just one hour, broadcast at lunchtime on Friday.

Much as I enjoyed the podcast, two episodes a week seemed to be stretching things. But the version broadcast on Five Live feels too short because the world of Robins and James is an unhurried one that ebbs and flows and needs time to breathe.

The same can’t be said of most podcasts that are in excess of 30 minutes, which brings me (at last!) to the Tim Rice podcast, Get Onto My Cloud, that generally clocks in at 20 minutes.

Launched in April 2020 during the first Covid lockdown, there are currently 72 episodes online (the last ‘dropped’ in June 2023). Each one covers a small part of Rice’s long career from the mid Sixties, when he hoped to become a pop star, to his continuing success as a lyricist well into his seventies.

I must confess that I’ve always had a soft spot for Tim Rice that has less to do with his career in musical theatre (I’m not a huge fan of musicals, as I wrote here), and more to do with his urbane air, self-deprecating wit, and the appearance, at least, of a laidback and somewhat leisurely attitude to life, although I’m not sure how true that is in reality.

Anyway, the podcast appears to have inspired a show, Tim Rice: My Life In Musicals - I Know Him So Well, that is currently touring regional theatres throughout the UK.

Last night it arrived at the Norwich Theatre in, er, Norwich, and I was there.

Performed by a four-piece band and four singers, the two-and-a-half show featured a dozen or so songs that Rice wrote with the likes of Andrew Lloyd-Webber, Mike Batt, Elton John, and others.

Two songs I hadn’t heard before were among the ones I liked best. One, written with Stuart Brayson (no, me neither), was composed for the musical From Here To Eternity.

Another, written with Gary Barlow, was commissioned for a famous Taiwanese singer. (Famous, that is, in Taiwan and the Far East.)

The glue that held the show together was, of course, Rice himself who introduced each song and told many of the stories that appeared in his autobiography and podcast.

Although most were therefore familiar to me, he nevertheless told them with his trademark wit, so the evening was an easy-listening canter through his greatest hits (and a few deep cuts), culminating in a genuinely spine tingling version of ‘Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina’ from Evita, a show I saw in the West End shortly after I graduated and moved to London.

Modest he may be, but a running gag was the appearance on stage of some of the many awards Rice has won - notably an Emmy, a Grammy, a Tony, and an Oscar. (Three Oscars, to be precise.)

He insisted, however, that his proudest achievement was the award he won for winning an edition of Pointless, his favourite TV programme, with fellow lyricist Don Black.

And yes, the Pointless trophy made an appearance too.

Norwich is a 90-minute drive from where we live and with a large multi-storey car park directly opposite the theatre it was very easy to get to.

My wife now wants to book tickets to see Ian McKellen at the same venue but the last I heard he was playing Falstaff in an abbreviated but still four-hour version of Shakespeare’s Henry IV (parts one and two).

Four hours, you say? No way. I’d rather listen to a two-hour podcast.

Below: The Norwich Theatre stage shortly before the start of last night’s show

French connection

At the Conservative Party conference in Manchester last year I met a French journalist, Laure Van Ruymbeke.

Laure writes for Le Point, a weekly political news magazine published in Paris.

We spoke again a few weeks ago when I gave her some quotes for an article about the generational smoking ban.

It’s in French but according to Google Translate the headline reads, ‘Tobacco-free generation: the bold bet of British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’.

Further use of the app revealed that:

In the United Kingdom, a bill plans to ban smoking for life to everyone who turns 15 this year. A minority opposes it in the name of individual freedoms.

Representatives of smokers – who have little influence in the debate compared to health organizations – are protesting against the interference of a “nanny state” in the private sphere.

Director of Forest, an organization which defends the freedom to smoke, Simon Clark believes that Rishi Sunak, far [behind] in the polls for the next legislative elections, “is seeking to leave a legacy in the little time he has left. Smokers are a very easy target because they are in the minority.”

A few days after the article appeared Laure told me she was working on a similar story for Arte, a French/German public service channel that broadcasts European news stories.

She wanted to speak to a politician opposed to the generational smoking ban so I suggested a few names including Baroness Fox, or ‘Lord Baroness Claire Fox’ as she is dubbed in the report.

Fair play to Le Point and Arte. Their balanced reporting puts many British media outlets to shame. Oh, and the Arte report (below) is in English.

I’m out - why I’m done with books about Brexit

I hugely enjoyed Tim Shipman’s first two books about Brexit.

All Out War: The Full Story of How Brexit Sank Britain’s Political Class, published in November 2016, was followed in 2017 by Fall Out: A Year of Political Mayhem.

Now, seven years on, Shipman has published a third volume (No Way Out: Brexit: From the Backstop to Boris), with a fourth and final book (Out: How Brexit Got Done & Four Prime Ministers Were Undone) scheduled for July.

The first two titles were incredibly well researched, and written with a lightness of touch that belied the complexity of the events the author was describing.

Naturally, therefore, I bought the latest instalment but when I sat down this week to read it something strange happened.

I began with the introduction, followed by the acknowledgments, but when I was glancing through the ‘timeline’ - a long list of Brexit-related events from June 23, 2016, the date of the referendum, to July 24, 2019, when Boris became prime minister - I realised I couldn’t go on.

Truth is, I am no longer interested in every last detail of how Britain finally escaped the clutches of the European Union, if indeed we have.

I’m glad the country voted as it did and although things have not gone as smoothly as one might have wished, I don’t regret for one second voting to leave.

Nevertheless I no longer want to read about it. It’s time to move on and make the very best of the situation we find ourselves in. (Whether our current political class is able to do so is another matter.)

Like the first two books, I’m certain that volumes three and four of Tim Shipman’s Brexit quartet will be immensely useful for students and historians in the future.

But me (to paraphrase Lou Reed), I just don’t care at all.

The Musing Individualist goes to Oxford

Remember Charles Amos?

I wrote about him in January after the former IEA intern and local councillor popped up outside the Houses of Parliament with a banner and leaflets opposing the generational smoking ban.

Charles's campaign, 'Defend Freedom, Stop the Tobacco Ban', was launched in the New Year and his first act was to spend a day in East Grinstead, his home town, collecting signatures from shoppers opposed to the ban.

He described the day, and the mixed response he received, in an amusing post on his blog, The Musing Individualist.

He then took his campaign to Westminster.

His most recent action day was in Oxford (above) where he collected more signatures with a handful of friends and associates.

I admire anyone who takes the time and trouble to stand up for their principles, and what I like about Charles is that, as well as enjoying the cut and thrust of political debate, he seems to have a sense of humour.

Chris Snowdon likes him too, interviewing him in February for the Swift Half podcast.

Silk road to Michael Bloomberg Gardens

Great to see Audrey Silk featured in the New York Post yesterday.

Audrey is a retired New York City police officer who, dismayed by the city’s crackdown on smoking, and smokers, founded the smokers’ rights group NYC Clash (Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment) in 2000.

For many years thereafter she protested against smoking bans, testified at government hearings, challenged the authorities in court, and appeared in the media.

Today, however, her campaigning days seem to be behind her. “I am no longer actively fighting it,” she told the NY Post, “Like I said, I can’t reason with the irrational.”

Instead her rebellious streak is focussed on growing and smoking her own tobacco, denying the authorities the exorbitant taxes she would otherwise have to pay. (It’s legal as long as she doesn’t sell it.)

Amusingly, in a nod to the former NYC mayor and billionaire who funds numerous anti-smoking initiatives:

She now calls her backyard ‘Screw You, Michael Bloomberg Gardens’. It’s where she grows her tobacco in 100 five-gallon buckets filled with soil.

What the Post doesn’t mention is that on December 30, 2013, two days before Bloomberg left office, Audrey addressed him directly at an indoor public event.

She then lit a cigarette and declared, “Good people disobey bad laws”, before a security guard rushed to intervene, almost throwing himself at her. (You can watch it here.)

Eight years before that, in July 2005, I attempted to meet Audrey during a trip to New York, but fate - in the shape of a clueless taxi driver - had other ideas.

Audrey had invited me to lunch at her home in Brooklyn and I was looking forward to seeing her and the crop of tobacco that she was growing even then.

Unfortunately, as I wrote here:

I gave the driver Audrey's address but overestimated his ability. Thirty minutes after we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge it dawned on me he had no idea where we were, or where we were going, and I had no idea either.

He was from Armenia, I think. He spoke very little English. He rang someone – his brother, perhaps – to help with directions. Meanwhile he kept on driving, looking for landmarks.

In desperation I tried calling Audrey (this was pre-smart phones) but my battered old Nokia wouldn't connect to her number. Eventually, with the meter ticking and any hope of finding her house long gone, I instructed my hapless driver to return to Manhattan.

We eventually met twelve years later, in 2017, when I invited her to speak at a session I was asked to organise at the Global Tobacco and Nicotine Forum (GTNF) in New York.

Forthright as ever, she described public health campaigners as “lunatics" which is the sort of plain speaking you rarely hear these days, more’s the pity.

Some delegates were a bit shocked, I think. Then again, this was the conference that began with the announcement of the launch of the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World.

If Audrey has stepped back from active campaigning she will be greatly missed but she will be remembered as a tireless and hugely courageous advocate of smokers’ rights.

One day, perhaps (with the assistance of a half competent taxi driver) I may even get to sit in her backyard where I shall raise a glass to the 20+ years she dedicated to the cause.

Politics and appeasement – be careful what you wish for

According to a newspaper report in Ireland yesterday, the Irish Government is to consider raising the legal age of sale of tobacco ‘within weeks’:

Health Minister Stephen Donnelly flagged his intention earlier this month to seek government approval to ban the sale of tobacco products to anyone under the age of 21 as part of a wider strategy to create a tobacco-free generation.

Full story here.

For the record, Forest is firmly against raising the age of sale of cigarettes and other tobacco products.

Our view is that once you’re legally an adult at 18 you should be treated like one, and if you can legally drive a car, join the army, purchase alcohol, and vote, at 18 you should be allowed to buy tobacco too.

That said, we acknowledge that, in the UK, raising the age of sale to 20 or 21 would be better than Rishi Sunak’s generational ban so although we could never support it, it wouldn’t be the worst option.

In Ireland however an incremental ban is not currently on the table so it’s not yet an issue, hence our strongly worded opposition to increasing the age of sale to 21.

To its credit, the Examiner was quick to report our reaction (Pro-smoking (sic) campaigners challenge plan to raise age limit for buying cigarettes) which led to a comment on X by Tom Gleeson, co-founder of the New Nicotine Alliance Ireland, who tweeted:

TBF This is a good policy idea, raising the age gate is a supportable policy as long as non combustible alternatives remain available. If both are included then all we do move the illegal market up an age bracket.

‘Good policy idea’? Be careful what you wish for, Tom. It might benefit ‘non combustible alternatives’ in the short-term, but how long before even reduced risk nicotine products are subject to similar age restrictions in the future?

The tobacco playbook is coming for vaping too. In fact, the process has already started - public vaping bans, increased restrictions on marketing and packaging, excise duty on e-liquids etc - and it will only get worse.

Meanwhile, in a statement issued yesterday by the UK Vaping Industry Association - who are understandably indignant that neither they nor any vaping groups have been called to give evidence to the Tobacco and Vapes Bill Committee - it was noted that:

The UKVIA is broadly supportive of the aims of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill.

Of course they are! The UKVIA wants to eradicate smoking and replace it with vaping. But after that? Don’t they realise there is no appeasing government or the ‘public health’ industry?

If government achieves its 2030 smoke free objective in England (which the UKVIA seems to support), does the vaping industry seriously believe that making vaping history won’t be the next logical step?

It can't have gone unnoticed that the Tobacco and Vapes Bill includes a ban on disposable vapes plus potential restrictions on flavours and packaging.

And this from a 'Conservative' government that was thought to be relatively liberal in its attitude to vaping and only a year ago put vaping (and its Swap to Stop scheme) at the heart of its tobacco control policy.

Does the UKVIA seriously believe things will end there, especially under a Labour government whose shadow health secretary Wes Streeting has promised to ‘come down like a ton of bricks’ on the vaping industry?

Appeasement never works and saying you’re ‘broadly supportive of the aims of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill’ will not only encourage government to be even more repressive, it is yet another example of smoking being thrown under the bus by vaping advocates who refuse to acknowledge that freedom of choice should apply equally to future generations of adults who want to smoke, vape, or do both.

Instead, by supporting the Government’s goal of a smoke free society by an arbitrary date, the vaping industry is effectively sealing its own long-term fate.

Then again, why would most vaping entrepreneurs care? They’ll have made their money and sold their businesses long before vaping, like smoking, is marginalised, stigmatised, and eradicated.

Update: After the Examiner posted its report on X yesterday, Green Party TD Neasa Hourigan had a little dig at Forest.

Here’s her tweet, highlighting our UK origins, with our response (below). The link, btw, takes you to this post, John Mallon RIP. I hope she reads it.