Govt proposals written on a back of a fag packet..

Andy Burnham today announced his plan to cut the number of smokers from 21% of the population to 10% in the next decade. This seems to be at the cost of intellectual property rights and freedom of trade of tobacco companies; will result in a huge increase in counterfeiting, causing pain for legitimate companies and consumers; put money into the pockets of organised crime, whilst reducing government tax revenue; and will impinge on our rights as European citizens to move goods and trade freely around the EU. How many lawsuits will follow? Plenty I reckon.

 To be specific. Todays illiberal plans announced by Oberführer Burnham include…

*A review of the law to consider if areas like entrances to buildings should be included in the smoking ban as part of further measures to protect children which would include the promotion of smoke-free homes and cars.

Yes folks they really are thinking of banning people from using a perfectly legal product within their own homes. If Government had its own way we would have neighbour spying on and reporting neightbour. Remind you of anything? Mr Burnham has said that he thinks that banning smoking in ones own home may be a step to far against freedom of choice - ha! - but you can tell he would do it if he could. More likely this will involve a ban on smoking within say 10 (20?) yards or so of any entrance to a public building. Assuming that is in anyway enforcable, non-smokers entering a pub may not have to walk past a dozen cold and wet individuals puffing on their smokes - but where does anyone expect smokers to go. You may say glibly “into the side alley”. But if you are really proposing that young women are forced to stand in dimly lit side alleys to indulge in a perfectly legal activity - then be prepared to see a increase in assaults, rapes and goodness knows what else as a result. Expect a further reduction in smokers visiting pubs - and therefore another swathe of pub closures - as people choose to stay at home.

* Stopping the sale of tobacco from vending machines, considered a significant source of tobacco for young people.

The argument is that this is to stop easy access of cigarettes to children. Never mind that solutions such as machines requiring a token to be handed from the owner of the vending machine for the machine to work would solve this problem. And if kids want to smoke - trust me they will find a way - they always do.

* Immediate investment in extra overseas officers to stop 200 million illicit cigarettes entering the UK every year.

I dont have a problem with this - except I can think of ooh about a hundred ways to spend the money on things that actually matter. And by the way has no one told Mr Burnham we know , even if he doesnt,  that we dont have the money for this sort of frivolity. And if this becomes an excuse to stop the ordinary consumer from purchasing large quantitities of cigarettes for their own consumption from countries within the EU then I do have a problem - you cant pick and choose which bits of free trade within the EU you are going to allow and which bits you are not.

* NHS support for every smoker who wants to give up, at times and in places that suit them.

Did no one tell this Govt that we are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy - yet here we have a government spending money like a man with no arms. This is because, we are told, that the NHS bill of smokers is £2.7 billion a year. Whats the Government income from excise and VAT from tobacco companies? About £10 billion? What is the government doing with the other £7billion that’s what I want to know?

* Government consideration of the case for plain packaging for cigarettes.

The most obvious result of such a move will be mass counterfeiting - mainly from organised crime I imagine, and it will impinge on intellectual property rights and freedom of trade of the legitimate tax-paying companies.  This will surely be vigorously challenged in courts of law -and rightly. I wonder how much tax revenue the Government will actually lose as  result? Consumers will no longer know if they are buying authentic or phoney products. Lawsuits aplenty will follow. I also fail to see what real EVIDENCE there is that branding on cigarette packets is causing people to take up smoking. Sure, without branding people may SWITCH from an expensive brand to a cheaper one - but that is about market share, not the size of the market. Cigarettes are sexy to kids because they are not allowed them - not because Marlboro or Silk Cut have marketing skills on a par with Derren Brown.

CONFUSED?

I am . The Health Bill 2009 was introduced to Parliament on 15 January 2010. It already includes proposals to tackle smoking. Specifically it proposes to remove tobacco displays in shops and to restrict the sale of cigarettes from vending machines. So why are the government proposing a DOUBLE ban on the sale of cigarettes from vending machines or is Andy Burnham and this decaying Government up to their old tricks - cobbling together new iniatives that are not throught-through and rehash old initiatives ( just not THAT old on this occassion)to make it look more impressive than it is. Why introduce a HEALTH BILL dealing with tobacco on January 15th, then introduce FURTHER regulation on smoking a couple of weeks later.? I will tell you why. Because this sad and sorry Government has announced yet another set of “initiatives” cobbled together on the back of a FAG packet to grab a few cheap headlines.

So muggers, rapists, crime lords, counterfeiters and lawyers rejoice.This charter is for you. Liberals, law-abiding citizens, young women, pub-goers, parents, taxpayers, publicans and newsagents, be afraid because its you they are out to make your life a whole lot harder if not down-right dangerous.

Tags: Andy Burnham, Cigarettes, tobacco

Swine flu:the government making a pig’s ear of it

I read in the Sunday papers that our dearly beloved government is to issue urgent swine flu advice to pregnant women .

Expectant mothers will be urged to avoid unnecessary journeys and crowds…do not travel on trains and the London Underground at peak times…keep babies away from crowds…limit the movements of their other children, so they do not bring the virus home.

Good grief….Anyone would think that the Martians had landed and are feasting on babies and unborn foetuses.

All this week I ’ve been bombarded with talk of a growing death count, inevitable further casualties, vulnerable groups (the old, the young and now pregnant women) and a much promised “flu vaccine”.

And call me an old cynic but I cant help thinking that this government is quite glad to have something they can terrify us all with. Whilst we are all facing our own mortality and monitoring those around us for the slightest hint of infection, we will forget about rising unemployment figures, dead soldiers killed in Afganistan, MPs expenses and a zero rise in economic growth and turn to our government and be thankful they are there to care for us in our hour of need. Give us the Tamiflu and we will vote you in next time we promise !

Think I am joking?  In case you missed i back in early July Andy Burnham reported to Parliament that “Scientists now expect to see rapid rises in the number of cases. Cases are doubling every week, and on this trend we could see more than 100,000 cases per day by the end of August—although I stress that that is only a projection“ 

PANIC PANIC PANIC

(Hmmm … As the Effect Measure website points out (under the wonderful title “UK Health Minister: Expotentially Dumb“) …if cases double every week, then by the end of September, one month after Burnham’s estimate, they will have increased by a factor of 16 or 1.6 million cases per day. A month later, at the height of flu season we’d be seeing 25 million cases a day. I dont think so Mr Burnham… no I really dont.)

Oh and the Chief Medical Officer put the worst case scenario figure at 65,000  deaths in total a few days ago so who the hell knows! Not them clearly.

In our saner moments we all know this is rot ! We remember the  SARS pandemic that was going to kill us all and CJD that was going to devastate us (well it did the cattle farming industry I suppose).  Lets not be hoodwinked by these people (the government and the Chief Medical officer) again.

Yes there is a new virus and yes some people will be very ill and some will die (29 so far to be clear!). But is it too much to ask that we keep this in proportion and have a proportionate reaction from the government to it? Less alarmist talk and more clear-thinking, better planning and consistent communication to the healthcare professionals on the front line.

It is telling that  many GPs (whom I have considerably more faith in that the Chief Medical Officer) are actively critical of the government action thus far.

The Royal College of GP’s has criticised the government for conflicting and changing advice from government agencies to both doctors and patients, confusion over prescribing Tamiflu, (when it will be available, whether it works, who gets it), how long patients should stay at home if they have the virus, what hospital priorities should be etc

Professor Sheila Bird, senior scientist at the Medical Research Council’s Biostatistics Unit,  has said that not enough information is being collected about people ill in hospital or about those who die –  to verify the Government’s (extraordinarily alarming) estimates about infection rates.

Dr Sam Everington, (formerly deputy chair of the BMA) has said that scaremongering by the Dept of Health had seen the nation gripped with fear, leading to ‘utter chaos’ for practices in areas with the most number of cases.. ‘All this is being ratcheted up by the CMO and the Government. They are actively scaremongering everybody”.

British Medical Association GP leader Dr Laurence Buckman said people were “scared stiff” when they did not need to be ….swine flu for most was a nasty but relatively mild illness, however he said people were panicking and swamping doctors with calls.

So here we have it really. The Goverment making a bad situation a whole lot worse, causing wide spread panic and chaos. But how did they manage to make a pigs ear of this one ? I dont know if this is incompetence or deliberate intent to terrify, or both. Either way I suppose we should not be surprised. But angry. We should be angry. Surely?

Tags: Andy Burnham, swine flu