Government confirms time travel has been cracked!
In a written statement issued issued yesterday the Secretary of State for Health, Andrew Lansley, announced that he will “publish a consultation on tobacco products in Spring 2012”. He also says that the Government has commissioned an “independent academic review of the existing evidence relevant to the effects of tobacco packaging” that will be made available at the same time.
We can’t help but scratch our heads over here and wonder if the government has not only discovered time travel – but has a Time Lord doing this evidence review. FANTASTIC!
After all, the UK review of the evidence will be completed by Spring 2012…. and the first country in the world to experiment nationally with plain packaging, Australia, is not set to see plain packaged tobacco products reach the shelves until ….December 2012. What “evidence” can there be right now to review? If they have not mastered time travel it must mean…….oh….. they are looking at lots of focus groups and lab tests, modelling and hypothecations that various organisations have made up. Yes we can hear one huge collective groan out there at the very thought.
How very odd really, given that genuine evidence will start coming on stream from Australia just six months or so after this Government review on plain packs is done – why do a trawl of all the made up stuff now? What a monumental waste of money and – given the wider problems facing the NHS right now, what a waste of time and effort.We thought they were trying to save money ????
Still, it is nearly Christmas – and with the Dr Who Christmas special just round the corner- we’re hanging on to the hope that it’s the time travel explanation after all.
December 16th, 2011 at 12:49 pm
I can see this being another ASH, Department of Health and All Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health stitch up. ASH run the tobacco section of the Dept of Health and ditto the APPG.
I am gathering my own evidence which includes a paper from 2010 New York University study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (46,1) found that the “anxiety evoked from the graphic images on cigarette packages could actually cause an increase in smoking…”
“Results suggest that to the degree that smoking is a source of self-esteem, later attitudes towards smoking become more positive if the warning message is mortality-salient. On the contrary, if the warning is terrifying but not mortality-salient and relates to the source of self-esteem, smoking attitudes become more negative with higher smoking-based self-esteem.”
The original paper is referenced in my blog.
http://daveatherton.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/the-battle-for-plain-packaging-begins/
December 16th, 2011 at 6:19 pm
By “evidence” the government (really the establishment as a whole) mean the propaganda of groups like ASH – rubber stamped by officials.
December 16th, 2011 at 7:10 pm
Giving ASH free rein to legislate and harass smokers is like giving the BNP the power to make immigration policy.