Pub Landlord Nick Hogan Jailed over Smoking Ban

A collection has been set up by Old Holborn to help Hogan who is jail for non-payment of a huge fine. To donate click here.
Pub landlord Nick Hogan has been jailed  for 6 months over the smoking ban. Basically he was lumped with costs and fines totalling more than 10k after several breaches – including [...]

Meanwhile, the government mandates and demands sexual discrimination

The proposed equality bill has generated much debate – in particular the question of whether churches should be banned from discriminating on grounds of sexual orientation. Yet what strikes me is the sheer hypocrisy of these measures, from a government which has actively institutionalised such discrimination.
Under laws that went into force last year, the new [...]

Tab Houses: A Case of Unintended Consequence

OK I will admit it. The study I cited a few days ago – investigating the social costs of “passive non-smoking” – was not entirely factual. In fact you could go as far as to say that it did not exist and there is in fact no Professor Wyfman. What has however been recently released [...]

A Sledgehammer to Crack a Nutt

This government is not fond of people who disagree with them. Witness the Serious Organised Crime Act (Socpa), the swingeing restrictions on protesting within audible distance of parliament. The government do not like to hear voices of dissent, and especially when those voices join together in a chorus. So with the growing consensus of outrage [...]

Too Ready To Follow Orders?

If you have ever wondered why it is that the British people – unlike many others - have not managed to have a revolution in the past three centuries, then some  pictures I took yesterday might go some way to explaining.
It was a Sunday afternoon and I was outside Waterloo station. The word outside is emphasised for a [...]

Skinny celebrities, ‘real women’ and misogynist vitriol

Well apparently September is fashion season in London. This is probably not common knowledge in the left blogosphere. In fact, as somebody who invariably dresses in bad leather jackets and beanies, catwalk events barely registered on my radar until the shitstorm kicked up a few years ago about so-called ’size zero’ models. It was a strange moment [...]

Birth, pain, and why we still need feminist obstetrics

Today the Observer published an extremely alarming report that Dr Denis Walsh, “one of the countries most influential midwives,” has argued that women should be receiving less pain relief in child-birth, in favour of “yoga, hypnosis, massage, support from their partners, hydrotherapy and birthing pools as natural ways of alleviating their pain.” Walsh mixes up [...]

It’s time to reclaim the streets – from the paranoid and hypersensitive

A few days ago I was sitting on a bench in Marylebone reading a book. A middle aged man came up holding a can of beer and sat down on the other side. He then turned to and asked ‘Do you mind if I a open it?.’
Needless to say I agreed. But I was somewhat [...]

NUS: You are here to represent our interests, not police our lifestyles.

It would appear from this week’s NUS conference that many of the delegates consider themselves not as representatives of our concerns and interests, but instead as elders of the student community charged with sanitising our wretched lifestyles.
The Telegraph reports that the NUS have decided to lobby for an end to cheap beer in student bars.  Yes [...]

Labour are quite right to stand up to Liam Donaldson on Booze. Lib Dems prove rather illiberal.

Liam Donaldson – the UK’s Chief Medical Officer for the past decade – is something the crusader. The smoking ban , which he describes as his ‘greatest achievement’, does not appear to have satiated his appetite for reshaping our lifestyles. Thus he is unveiling plans to set a minimum price for alcohol of 50 [...]