Which one said this?
But Mark wants freedom for unhealthy things!
According to Samizdata one of the candidates said this. Which one was it?
Of course, I’d agree with Mark, how can it be called freedom if you are not free to choose unhealthy things? I despair if the thinking in this party is now that freedom means restricting access to things deemed unhealthy by the powers that be. That is disgusting nannying and the party should have nothing to do with it. The fact that it was uttered by one of the two leadership contenders just gives fire to those who accuse us of being illiberal, nanny state, interfering busybodies who want to control people’s lives just as much as the other two parties.
If freedom is to mean anything then it must include the freedom to make bad choices, otherwise we are engaging in doublespeak.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 18th, 2007 at 8:52 pm
Mark’s was (definetely) /is (maybe) in the Peel Group – which advocates appealing to the Tories if we are to gain power – he is there along with Mark Oaten who also was opposed to the smoking ban…
I really don’t get how this one works – how does getting lung cancer from breathing in someone else’s smoke give freedom to me? It’s nasty liberalism…
November 18th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
Here’s the relevant part of the transcript from today’s Politics Show. Chris Huhne appears to have been arguing that smoking in public places harms others and on that basis it is reasonable to ban it using John Stuart Mill’s liberal principle that my right to swing my fists ends where your nose begins. He did not base his argument on the effects on a smoker’s own health. The quote on Samizdata does not appear to be quite accurate (according to this BBC transcript from the show’s website) and is not representative of the point being made:
“JON SOPEL: We saw, we saw Mark Littlewood in that film there saying, look, you’ve got to set out a radical alternative…
NICK CLEGG: (interjection) Mark is a smoker and a gambler, so his challenge to us was I think a bit of special pleading for his, on his part.
CHRIS HUHNE: Unhealthy Mark wants freedom to be even unhealthier but no, I mean…
JON SOPEL: What, you don’t, do you not think he has a point there in those things?
CHRIS HUHNE: On the smoking ban I don’t because I think the liberal principle is that people should be free to do whatever they like so long as they’re not inflicting harm on other and there was very good evidence that public smoking for example, does inflict harm on others, not least on the employees in the bars and clubs that are there.
And the experience of both Ireland and Scotland, before the experience of England, was that actually if you had er a smoking ban, you found that many smokers themselves took the opportunity to give up. They didn’t want to go on smoking.”
November 18th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
I saw the show and this part frustrated me too. I think it was Huhne who said it, although my memory is not good enough to be 100% sure.
Jo – I do not think the issue here is whether one wants to appeal to a particular ’side’. With regards to voters, we certainly need to attract both Tory and Labour voters (and I believe this is possible with one coherent message – but this risks a lengthy tangent…).
Mark referred not only to smoking but also to drinking and the freedom to purchase alcohol at times which suit the individual.
Whilst certain people may be opposed to the smoking ban per se, Tristan here is objecting to the general suggestion (made I think by Huhne) that giving people freedom to do (allegedly) unhealthy things is laughably unacceptable. If the candidates had only referred to the externalities of smoking in indoor places then this thread perhaps wouldn’t even exist.
November 18th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
I have no idea why we made such a meal out of the smoking ban. It can be dealt with pretty simply and entirely consistently with simple, core liberal principles.
Obviously passive smoking violates the “harm principle” – your right to do stupid things to yourself can violate the freedom of others, if they are forced to breathe your smoke in a public place. On the other hand, a blanket smoking ban such as we now have can quite conceivably end up restricting people’s free choice, even when they’re doing no harm to others at all, such as in a shisha bar (whose primary purpose is for people to smoke), or, hypothetically, in a taxi where both the driver and the passengers want to be allowed to smoke.
The answer would have been for some more nuanced legislation to protect non-smokers from breathing other people’s noxious output, whilst not putting a blanket infringement on the rights of smokers. For example, it should be illegal to smoke at the bar in a pub, because it puts the staff at risk – but if a pub wants to designate a separate, enclosed room as a smoking area (none of this rubbish where one side of the room is smoking and the other side isn’t), then there should be no objection. And there’s no justification on earth for banning shisha bars.
November 18th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
Bill, thanks for the clarification. My alcohol-trashed memory did indeed work for once. This was the line I recalled:
Huhne: “Unhealthy Mark wants freedom to be even unhealthier”
The rest of his argument I am (largely) happy with, but this line does come over as illiberal. Of course Mark should have the freedom to be unhealthier.
It should be noted, however, that both candidates (especially Nick) were making light-hearted jokes at this stage so their comments shouldn’t be taken too seriously.
November 18th, 2007 at 9:41 pm
Jonny – absolutely spot on.
November 19th, 2007 at 9:28 am
Jo A:
Firstly, the smoking ban as a blanket ban is a clear violation of private property rights – something that liberalism is meant to guarantee.
Also, why does the state need to prevent me from going to a smoky pub if I wish to? That is a clear breach of my right to live my life as I please.
Liberalism means guaranteeing freedom, that includes the freedom to do harm to yourself if you want (perhaps the pleasure of smoking outweighs the risks for me?)
The only part which could be considered liberal is the ban on smoking in the workplace, but in the case of pubs, surely it was known that smoking would take place there so people are going into that job with knowledge of what it entails.
You could make an argument for the bar area to be no smoking, or perhaps allowing a separate smoking room with ventilation and staff not entering often (CCTV to monitor it).
There are many many liberal solutions. The current blanket ban is illiberal and is aimed at stopping people doing things which are ‘bad for them’ rather than protecting people.
Secondly – the anti-smoking activists have consistently over stated the risks of passive smoking (just as tobacco companies tend to understate them). This isn’t really evidence based policy making either.
Its just a bad law all around.
(and I speak as someone who loathes cigarette smoke and rather likes smoke free pubs, but I think they’d now continue to exist along side smoking pubs if the law was repealed).