jonathan.rawle.org

When I go into any shop, I rarely buy anything on impulse. I go in to buy what I wanted. However, I can’t be typical. Shops spend a lot of time and effort making attractive displays to entice customers into buying things they didn’t know they needed, and they wouldn’t bother if it had no effect. It therefore follows that displaying tobacco products encourages more people to smoke, or occasional smokers to smoke more. Seeing the brightly-coloured boxes of this grown-up product on the shelf right behind the counter, where one can’t help but see it when paying, is bound to be extra encouragement for children to take up smoking.

I have wondered about certain practical aspects of a ban on tobacco displays. What will shops be allowed to display to indicate that they actually do sell cigarettes? They will need a sign of some sort. Presumably they will produce a price list or “menu” of products that customers can see if they ask for it. Perhaps I should read the Bill to see if this is explained.

I certainly believe displays of tobacco products in shops encourage young people to take up smoking. I don’t believe the tobacco industry when they claim the only purpose is to inform people who already smoke what is available. Time and time again they have used this argument to oppose restrictions on advertising, yet the fact is millions of their customers die through the use of their products every year, so if they didn’t find ways to attract new ones, they’d be out of business! The shop displays are just another form of advertising, and therefore represent a loophole in the present legislation banning tobacco advertising.

The Health Bill currently going through parliament contains legislation that would ban shops from having tobacco products on display. This post was originally written as a comment on Lord Norton of Louth’s post on the issue on Lords of the Blog.

The verdict in which a Swedish court jailed the founders The Pirate Bay site is just the latest attempt by the phonographic industries, film studios and record companies to cling on to the greedy monopoly they have over distribution of audio and visual media.

The trouble is, even leaving the price of downloads aside, no “legal” music or video service can ever match a file-sharing network. The reason for this is that the content available is too limited and controlled. Certain types of music and film are promoted heavily, while more obscure titles are unavailable. Also, the industries tend to divide the world up into regions, and assume no-one from one region is interested in the culture of another. Often there is no legal way to buy copies of certain foreign films in another country. There is no way to watch most foreign TV shows in another country, no matter how much money you are willing to pay. And there’s no way to browse a huge inventory of the most obscure composers’ or bands’ music from around the world. All of these things are, however, possible with file-sharing systems, such as the ones that are currently branded “illegal”. With file-sharing, you can access any media that someone else has. It’s possible to discover new things, find obscure recordings, watch TV shows from any country, find that special cut of a film that’s never been released in your country… The list goes on.

My suggestion to resolve the issue of “illegal” file-sharing is that there should be an annual fee for which is it possible to obtain a file-sharing licence. This could be collected in a similar way to the TV Licence in the UK. Once someone has a licence, they could use file-sharing networks as much as they like, as long as it was for their own personal use, using any file-sharing system they choose (not one with limited content controlled by a particular company or organisation). The money raised would go to the performers, composers, etc. as royalty payments. I would personally happily pay £200 or even £300 a year to legitimise any file-sharing I might want to do. This would be very many times the amount I currently give to the film and music industries each year, but would be money well spent, unlike the poor offerings available at present.

A fallacy often repeated by those who don’t understand file-sharing is that every track or film downloaded represents a lost sale. My contention is that in the vast majority of cases, the alternative would be that the film or music would simply not have been obtained at all, so no revenue was lost through file-sharing. And as for the concept of people obtaining an excessive amount of content for free once they have a licence, it should be remembered that there are only so many films or music tracks one can watch or listen to in a year. Simply building up a big collection on your hard disc for other licence-holders to download isn’t an issue – again, the content wouldn’t have been paid for otherwise, so no revenue is lost.

The difficulty with the above is that very little of the revenue would go to record companies. Now, record companies, when pursuing people for copyright infringement, always use the argument that they are doing so to stick up for the rights of the poor, impoverished song-writers and performers. The truth, I suspect, is that very little of the money currently goes to the artists, certainly not to the less well-known ones. A good deal of the money goes to the record companies. It’s hardly surprising, therefore, that they should oppose any form of file-sharing. The phonographic industry and big film distribution companies are desperate to retain the stranglehold over the distribution of music and video content, even though there is no longer a need for any physical media to be distributed. This is the issue that is preventing modernisation of copyright laws to enable the public to access recorded works in a way that’s fitting for the 21st century. While the big companies wield the influence they currently have over governments and courts, such as that Swedish court, no progress can be made.

One of the protesters taking part in the G20 protests in London claimed yesterday, “The only violence I witnessed that day was police violence.” Clearly he didn’t see the pictures on TV of people smashing the windows of a bank, while crowds of other rioters looked on and cheered. I don’t think the people breaking those windows were police officers.

Most protesters will retort that the people who were involved in violence and vandalism were a small minority, and that most of the protesters were peaceful and well-behaved. This isn’t an unreasonable line to take. However, the same people will use examples of police brutality, such as the assault of Ian Tomlinson (who died of a heart attack shortly afterwards) as evidence that all the police were violent and that the policing of the event was out of order. This is hypocrisy. Protesters, and the media who jump on their bandwagon, are happy to explain violent protesters as a minority, but then tar an entire police force with the same brush after the unacceptable behaviour of one officer is in the spotlight.

There have been some reports that Mr Tomlinson wasn’t simply an innocent newspaper seller on his way home, but had actually been hanging around for some time, and had previous confrontations with the police, including blocking a police van, possibly under the influence of alcohol. Maybe in the heat of the moment, an officer later recognised him and out of frustration attacked him. That’s certainly no excuse for what the officer did, and he should face criminal proceedings in due course. However, it is no reason to criticise the entire police force. Officers that day must have been under a huge amount of stress, yet the majority of them will not have lashed out or have attacked any members of the public, but will have behaved with professionalism and restraint – and that can’t have been easy given the circumstances.

If the entire Metropolitan Police Force are going to be found guilty by media trial, then it’s only fair to hold every single protester partly responsible for Mr Tomlinson’s death. After all, if there were no protests, he would have had no encounters with the police in the first place, and the violent disorder committed by some of the protesters will have fired up the police officers and caused some to retaliate. Collective blame can’t be heaped on one side and not the other.

The BBC today reports on the diets of centenarians, with the implication that following a similar diet might help other people to live past 100. To be fair on the BBC, they do give the article some balance by giving the opinions of a nutritionist. Yet there is no mention of statistics or probability.

When people live to be 110, it is a statistical anomaly irrespective of whether they had a healthy lifestyle or not. It’s quite possible for someone to smoke and eat lots of saturated fat, and live to an extremely old age. However, there will be many other people who met an early death by following the same unhealthy lifestyle. Extreme cases can’t be used to identify a trend. And we mustn’t only consider life expectancy, but also the quality of life. It can’t be much fun to live to 100 if the last 30 or 40 years of your life are largely confined to a chair or bed because of a chronic, diet-related illness.

If it means living to be 100 or even 110, I’m sure many people wouldn’t agree with the BBC that “Everyone wants to live to a ripe old age”. However, for those that do, there is one ingredient that is even more essential than a healthy diet: luck!

At 20:30 GMT today, people have been urged to switch off their lights for 60 minutes for Earth Hour. Now I realise this gesture is supposed to be symbolic rather than make a significant impact on the world’s annual energy consumption. I just hope it doesn’t send out the message that by switching lights off for an hour each year, it’s OK to do what you want for the rest of the time.

Sudden changes in electricity demand can cause problems for national power grids. Electricity has to be generated as it’s needed. If it isn’t planned for correctly, a sudden change in demand could in theory cause the national grid to “crash”, and lead to a blackout. Energy companies use complex models to forecast demand, and will also take into account occasions such as big sporting events, where television viewers will all put the kettle on at half time. So no doubt they are prepared for a drop in demand today. I suspect a trough is as much of a problem as a peak: how to deal with it? It might be necessary to take certain power stations offline, and restarting them can’t be that efficient. I’d be interested to know how much electricity, if any, Earth Hour actually saves when this is taken into account.

What would be far better for the Earth would be if people would think about switching lights off every day. I often despair at the number of lights left on at my workplace: in meeting rooms, kitchenettes, toilets, etc. despite those rooms not being in use. Every day I switch off several sets of lights as I walk past, often several times. I also can’t help but notice my neighbours, who seem to leave all the lights in their home on all the time, not just those in the room they are using.

So my suggestion would be to forget Earth Hour. If you want to register your views, take the time to write to elected representatives about it. Then make sure you always switch off lights in any rooms that are not in use – that will help not only the Earth, but also the electricity distributors!