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Text of the page (random words):
ional poll was conducted several weeks ago and the beach issue was barely commented upon so i m not sure why it was raised in east yorkshire last week it was the lead story on look north on thursday and before interviewing me on zoom they ran a report that featured vox pops with several people one was a smoker who seemed fairly relaxed about a ban suggesting that smokers would adapt in the same way most did following the workplace smoking ban what he didn t mention is that smokers adapted because they were threatened with prosecution and fines if they didn t the reporter also spoke to a vaper who had no problem with a ban on smoking as long as it didn t include vaping as well the short sightedness of such people never ceases to amaze the bbc news website then asked the question should smoking be banned on beaches and included this quote from me simon clark director of pro smoking group forest thinks the ban is absolutely ridiculous he says of course smokers should be considerate to people in their immediate vicinity but there is absolutely no justification for a ban on smoking on beaches because there is no health risk to anybody apart from the smoker themselves forest it added encourages smokers to use pocket ashtrays and for local authorities to provide more cigarette bins in public spaces the joke is that for most of the year beaches in britain are hardly crowded with families sunbathing or picnicking on the sand most smokers know that it s probably inconsiderate to light up in close proximity to other people children especially and for that reason they don t do it for much of the year though beaches are largely empty bar the occasional dog walker and just like dog poop smokers should take their detritus away with them but banning smoking on beaches on environmental or public health grounds seems a ludicrous over reaction to a problem that could easily be addressed with a few friendly signs that ask smokers to be considerate to other people and the environment the issue here is that the anti smoking industry doesn t want people to smoke full stop so the idea that this issue can be resolved with an agreeable compromise is never going to satisfy their craving for prohibition meanwhile it s worth pointing out to the 61 who support a ban on smoking on beaches be careful what you wish for as i said to peter levy presenter of look north before you know it the environmental public health lobby will be wanting to ban adults from taking a bottle of beer on to the beach personally i added i hate having to listen to other people s portable radios on the beach but i m not campaigning to have them banned live and let live and all that simon clark 2 comments share article friday jun 20 2025 freedom under fire friday june 20 2025 at 16 35 further to my previous post the taxpayers alliance has posted its latest podcast online hosted by broadcaster duncan barkes it also features the tpa s benjamin elkes and me no guesses for what we talked about the war on smokers freedom under fire is available on youtube audio only and spotify simon clark post a comment share article wednesday jun 18 2025 nation of taxpayers shall speak unto nation wednesday june 18 2025 at 14 53 great to speak to duncan barkes and benjamin elkes of the taxpayers alliance for the tpa podcast a nation of taxpayers yesterday duncan s wikipedia entry describes him as a journalist political commentator and radio presenter and his cv includes lbc talksport bbc radio five live and bbc radio london he s interviewed me several times over the years but until yesterday we had never met the last guest he interviewed as host of a nation of taxpayers was the former conservative minister steve baker other recent guests have included toby young aka baron young of acton founder and director of the free speech union and our old friend henry hill deputy editor of conservative home the podcast will drop tomorrow although i m not sure anyone still says that either way i ll post a link here simon clark post a comment share article monday jun 16 2025 no laughing matter for minister monday june 16 2025 at 14 00 i ve witnessed some car crash interviews in my time but rarely one as bad as this interviewed by nick ferrari on lbc this morning emma reynolds economic secretary to the treasury and city minister was asked about the new lower thames crossing that has just been granted 590 million by chancellor rachel reeves and will eventually cost an estimated 10 billion clearly unprepared she couldn t say where the crossing is going to be or what it is going to cost embarrassed and no doubt wishing she was anywhere else she shuffled her notes and read some bland press release until an exasperated ferrari said i don t wish to be rude to you personally but is there much point in continuing this conversation because you don t know where a bridge starts you don t know where it ends and you don t know how much it costs so is there any point in continuing i ve done hundreds if not thousands of interviews and i ve very rarely come away thinking i absolutely nailed that however i can t think of any that have come close to being as bad as this the good news is that compared to an interview that goes well you learn far more from a debacle like this for example many years ago i was invited to talk about e cigarettes on the bbc world service while i could talk about the subject in general terms i lacked detailed knowledge so when i was asked to explain how an e cigarette actually worked and how much they cost i didn t have an answer thankfully i was rescued by a fellow guest the former director of ash clive bates now i haven t always seen eye to eye with the patron saint of vaping but he must have heard the hesitation in my voice because he stepped in and seamlessly answered the question himself i was and still am extremely grateful since then i have done my best to be better prepared and foresee awkward questions but it s impossible to predict every one sometimes you just have to admit your ignorance what you can t escape today are those social media clips that compound every misstep or slip of the tongue my biggest faux pas on air was to refer to a minister in the blair government by the wrong name instead of calling him stephen ladyman i said stephen ladyboy it was a genuine mistake and i got away with it because it was broadcast on 18 doughty street an internet tv station that very few people watched because it was years ahead of its time the irony is i wish more people had seen it because what happened next still makes me laugh almost two decades later in fact if i say so myself the subsequent corpsing was up there with the famous leg over incident with jonathan agnew and brian johnston on test match special presenter iain dale was the first to crack then i joined in setting him off again and so it went on for what felt like several minutes sadly the clip no longer exists because i would love to have it played at my funeral it may not be my finest moment but it s definitely the funniest below watch treasury minister emma reynolds on lbc the fun starts from 40 seconds in simon clark post a comment share article saturday jun 14 2025 talking pictures saturday june 14 2025 at 11 53 when was the last time you watched a film at a cinema i still go but only occasionally i do think most films have more of an impact on a big screen but i m not a huge fan of modern multiplexes also the idea of a big screen is relative these days unless you go to an imax cinema which we very rarely do the first imax feature film i saw was fantasia 2000 which isn t surprising because it was the first ever feature film presented in imax the most recent was christopher nolan s dunkirk in 2017 i don t think there were many in between i vaguely remember seeing one of the batman films at an imax in glasgow but that s about it today though even imax screens aren t the giant size i remember unless it s somewhere like the bfi cinema at the elephant and castle in london which is said to be taller than four stacked london buses when i was a small child the nearest cinema of any size was in maidenhead where we lived for six years from 1963 to 1969 as was normal then the cinema was huge in comparison to most cinemas today there was a single genuinely large screen and the auditorium was like a theatre with stalls and a dress circle or balcony many of those old cinemas were subsequently demolished or converted into something else a bingo hall perhaps or decades later a wetherspoons pub some kept their cinema status but were redeveloped with the single large auditorium replaced with a number of smaller auditoriums with screens of diminishing size each one able to show a different film and so the concept of the multiplex was born back in the day some older cinemas were referred to as flea pits although the only genuine flea pit i ever experienced was in derby in the early eighties thinking about it still gives me the urge to scratch the last cinema i went to that had an old style auditorium with theatre style stalls and balcony was the coronet in notting hill according to wikipedia it opened as a theatre in 1898 in 1916 it screened its first films becoming a full time cinema in 1923 the original capacity was 1 143 which dropped to 1 010 when it became a cinema thereafter the number of seats gradually fell for a variety of reasons initially only the theatre boxes were removed but in 1950 the upper tier above the dress circle was closed which reduced the capacity to 515 196 in the dress circle 319 in the stalls ownership changed hands at least twice before a proposal to demolish the building in the early seventies was challenged on architectural grounds and it survived thwarted rank sold it in 1977 to an independent cinema operator who replaced the seating in the stalls to provide more legroom reducing the total cinema capacity to 399 seats in 1996 a second screen with seating for 151 was opened in the stage area in 2004 the coronet was purchased by a local pentecostal church but continued to offer mainstream independent cinema programming ten years later however it was bought by a theatre company and reverted to its original purpose and name the coronet theatre i mention the coronet because when i started working for forest in january 1999 we had yet to sell our house in scotland so for the first five months i travelled to and from london each week whilst renting a single room in a town house in notting hill the coronet was a five or ten minute walk from the house and my brief acquaintance with the area coincided with the release of you ve guessed notting hill starring julia roberts and hugh grant naturally i watched it at the coronet seated in the old dress circle and even if the film is a bit cheesy it was great fun to see the local neighbourhood on the big screen back in the sixties when i was a small child the films that made the biggest impression on me were doctor who and the daleks with peter cushing mary poppins the sound of music and the jungle book my parents rarely went to the cinema on their own although i remember them going to see the latest bond movie probably thunderball in 1965 leaving my sister and me with babysitters after we moved to scotland at the end of the sixties i don t remember ever going to the cinema as a family or even with friends i remember seeing mary queen of scots featuring glen jackson as elizabeth i but that was with my history class at school the cinema the new picture house was a short walk from the school in the centre of st andrews opened in 1933 it was purchased a year ago by a consortium including tiger woods and is due to reopen later this year as a sports bar in the late seventies after my parents moved to cumbria i remember seeing 2001 space odyssey several years after its original release at a tiny cinema in windermere have i ever been tempted to watch it again no around that time 1979 i also saw monty python s life of brian at the capitol cinema another old theatre in aberdeen it s hard to describe just what a wonderful and funny occasion it was a full house rocking with laughter arguably it s the best experience i ve ever had at a cinema matched only by back to the future at the odeon leicester square in 1986 the sequels let it down but the original seen for the first time was incredibly entertaining i remember too seeing for your eyes only in the week of its release in 1981 it s a distinctly average bond film but the odeon in leicester square was sold out and there was a fantastic dare i say patriotic atmosphere the original art deco auditorium had 2 116 seats today although it s the largest single screen cinema in the uk there are only 800 this year i ve seen three films on the big screen each one at the new everyman cinema in cambridge the first i can t remember literally my mind s a blank the second black bag with cate blanchett and michael fassbender was brilliant one of the best most stylish films i ve seen in years with a great ensemble cast and a sizzling pulsating soundtrack the third the salt path with gillian anderson and jeremy isaacs had a short run in cinemas last month filmed in cornwall it s based on a book a true story about a couple made homeless after losing their life savings following an investment that went disastrously wrong with nowhere to live they decide to walk the south west coastal path a distance of 600 miles oh and the husband played by jeremy isaacs had been diagnosed with a debilitating disease that impaired his mobility like the walk itself i found it a bit hard going but it was well reviewed and is predicted to drive even more tourists to cornwall i m not so sure the south west coastal trail can be beautiful but it s often steep and rugged and the weather as the film demonstrated can leave a lot to be desired as i know from first hand experience cornwall out of season is often windswept and bleak as for the picturesque fishing villages they are lovely but over crowded for much of the year finally while we re on the subject i do love an everyman cinema they don t offer the big screen experience of my youth but now i m in my sixties i appreciate the significantly greater comfort and legroom as it happens the best cinema experience i ve had in recent years was at the tivoli in bath which has since been purchased by the everyman chain we found ourselves in the smallest of three auditoriums it was called the director s lounge and it was like attending a luxurious private screening i loved it ps you can probably tell that my taste in films is strictly mainstream that said i have zero interest in seeing any marvel avenger type film and don t get me started on films that are three hours or longer in general no film should be more than two hours for example i ve watched from russia with love so many times i couldn t even guess the number the running time is one hour 55 minutes skyfall and no time to die two of the three most recent bond movies are two hours 23 min...