Farking hell!Nanny is still going on about farking fags!
She really ought to get some therapy over this unhealthy obsession with smoking and fag related issues.
Anyhoo, this time Nanny has decided that taxation, banning adverts, banning smoking in public places etc is still not enough to demonise the evil weed. Nanny now wants fags to be sold "under the counter", shops will be banned from displaying tobacco products. Vending machines in pubs and restaurants will also be banned.
Why?
Nanny seems to think that this will reduce the number of children who start smoking.
I didn't know kids regularly wandered into pubs, unchallenged, and bought fags.
Nanny's best chum Dawn Primarolo (once known as "Red Dawn" for extremist left views), the Minister for Public Health, says that this new measure if implemented will save lives:
"It's vital we get across the message to children that smoking is bad. If that means stripping out vending machines or removing cigarettes from behind the counter, I'm willing to do that."
How very "noble" of her!
The consultation process will begin in late May, once complete Nanny will then ignore the results and push ahead anyway.
OK, so here's why this idea is bollocks:
- This will drive fag selling to the underworld, thus boosting the revenues of criminals and low life scum (just as drugs, gambling and booze bans have all done in the past).
- Children are instinctively drawn to anything deemed to be naughty or illegal, this makes fags even more tempting to them.
- Small/corner shops do not have the space to have an "under the counter" operation. This will effectively destroy the corner shops, and leave the supermarkets in control of what we buy.
- Aside from fags, shops sell a whole myriad of products that Nanny hates (sweets, chocolates, booze, porn, pies, pasties, patties etc); will these be banned too? Another nail in the coffin of the corner shops, which only survive because they sell these products.
- We live in a free market economy, shops have the right to display whatever products they wish in any manner that they wish. Consumers have the right to buy whatever they wish.
- Fag packets have to be least inspiring piece of marketing design on the planet, there is nothing intrinsically attractive about them; ie they are not at all tempting.
- Nanny makes a nice little earner from the tax on fags, what is she going to do without that revenue stream?
- Once Nanny has banned fags, she will ban; booze, meat, fat, milk, eggs, cheese, sweets, chocolate etc. The fanatics who push for these bans "get off" from the power kick it gives them, they like to control the lives of others.
- The argument put forward by Nanny and the butchers' profession that lives and money will be saved, misses a rather essential point. Fags generate tax revenue, which in part goes to pay for the health care of those who become ill from fag related issues. Remove the fags, and you remove the revenue stream and allegedly "grant" people a longer life.
However, those that live to a "ripe old age" are invariably condemned to years of senility, dementia, frailty, pain and misery in one of Nanny's horrific geriatric wards; ie they are condemned to a living death. These wards cost money to maintain, but the costs are not offset by taxes on fags; therefore the costs to society of an ageing population in terms of money and suffering terms are higher. - Nanny and the butchers' profession ignores the fact that it's not the length of life that counts, but the quality.
We as a society are ignoring the fundamental problem that extending people's life spans, without taking into account the quality of those extended lifespans, is storing up trouble for the future and wrong.
The butchers' profession and Nanny do not have the moral right to force us to live longer than we were physically/mentally designed to do.
Background on Red Dawn:
Dawn Primarolo spent ten years at the Treasury as a minister under Gordon Brown, a sentence longer than many serious criminals have to serve. In that job, it is fair to say that she was not universally commended for her competence, more often than not being wheeled out to take a Commons beating for some Treasury blunder or other.
Despite campaigning against the first Gulf War in 1991, she voted in favour of invading Iraq in 2003, and against any investigation into the invasion after it had taken place. She has voted in favour of ID cards and increased university tuition fees.
As Paymaster General, Dawn Primarolo was responsible for the administration of the Tax Credits system, intended to provide working families with financial support. This system is of course a complete shambles (see www.hmrcisshite.com).
In 2003, a Treasury select committee member accused her of "losing control of her department" after it became known that Inland Revenue buildings under Primarolo's control had been sold to tax-haven companies. This came shortly after she had "insisted ... the Child tax credit scheme was a "success"", despite Inland Revenue staff walking out in protest against the pressure they were being placed under.
In 2005, PM Tony Blair was forced to apologise after a report by the Parliamentary Ombudsman that Primarolo had failed to give Parliament accurate information. Primarolo admitted at the same time that she had been fully aware "about the extent of the problems".
She was responsible for introducing the controversial IR35 tax rules.
In July 2007 she was appointed minister of state at the Department of Health.
How many hospitals has she ever visited, during her tenure in orifice?
ZERO!
She doesn't like fat people either.
Here is her email address primarolod@parliament.uk, why not drop her a line?
