I’m in recovery from that cold now. In the absence of any nearby sympathetic females, I didn’t bother with all that ‘real men die from colds and need to be kept warm and supplied with chips and beer if they are to survive’ stuff. I did say ‘uuuuuUUUUHhhhh’ once or twice to keep in practice.
The cold virus itself is only supposed to be in residence for about three days, but it trashes its hotel room when it leaves. If this one had been here any longer I’d have a nose like that posh bird who snorted so much drugs that the middle bit dissolved. As it is, there is some regeneration of membranes to deal with.
So while my immune system surveys my breathing apparatus and says ‘tsk’ and my brain re-seats itself in its mountings after some very nasty sneezing, here’s an easy one for me.
Easy because others have already written about it.
It seems there is a little sand on the slippery slope where plain packaging is concerned. The government are getting a very comprehensive ‘Oh, go and find something to actually do‘ from the people they pretend to work for. Still, they have one more day, and everyone knows that the vast, vast majority of both antismoking sockpuppets only work Fridays. Therefore they will, Giant Haystacks-style, turn a resounding hammering into glorious victory in the final round.
None of the drones will notice anything amiss. They will not see the hand brushing away that sand, and pouring on fresh grease.
So, what if they do actually lose? Well, yes, so what? Remember Clegg’s ‘great freedom website’? What do you want discussed in Parliament? What laws do you want overturned or amended? They had a huge response on one issue in particular and what did it achieve?
Instead of relaxing the smoking ban, we have seen it extended into cars, open spaces, we have seen the introduction of ‘what’s in the mystery box’ doors and now the things hidden behind those doors will be in plain packaging.
No matter what.
Because if they don’t get their plain packaging on the Secret Packs Behind the Doors, how will they be able to keep going for plain booze packaging? That’s already well advanced. Taxpayer’s money has been keeping some bottom-dwellers alive on the strength of it. Now the lunatic fringe is shouting about plain packaging for fast foods. What’s that? Nobody listens to the lunatic fringe? Um… the loonies are in control here.
The loonies laugh at talk of the ‘slippery slope’ and deride the examples given without realising that another part of their halfwit collective has already called for the things they say will not happen!
There’s some sand on the slope today, but one of Dreadful’s Drones will be along shortly to sweep it off.
Maybe the criminals will do it for her. They must be rubbing their hands at how easy it will be to sell boxes of fakes to retail outlets without the retailer even knowing! They’ve already done it with vodka and that’s even before plain packaging brings fake tobacco right down into Del-Boy territory. Even if you do buy from a shop at full price, it might still be fake and the shopkeeper might not even know.
The Government are far too dim to have realised this.
ASH have realised it, I’m sure. I wonder why they’re keeping it so quiet?
I followed the link.
CRUK’s website prominently quotes a man saying, “how horrific lung cancer is and how it’s almost always preventable by not smoking in the first place.”
So, that must be true? They know about “research”, I suppose?
Lung cancer can “almost always” be prevented by not smoking? I suppose the odd case in non-smokers is caused by osmosis from the neighbours?
Zaphod.
Of course it is Z. We all know the dangers of 2nd and 3rd hand smoke now, don’t we?
Anon is right – everything is caused by smoking now. There is no other cause of anything. If the Government stuck patches on everyone for a month and banned the sale of cigarettes, there would be no more smoking and therefore no more disease.
Then the NHS, ASH and all the pharmaceutical companies could shut down and go home.
I can’t see this plain packaging nonsense discouraging kids from smoking. Anything that is discouraged becomes interesting to kids.
I remember when we were told that it was dangerous to throw aerosol cans on the fire. We couldn’t wait to find out why and raided our mum’s room for hairspray cans etc. We happily stood at a not safe distance and threw them into the fire..brilliant ! Then we hit them with our pellet guns ( warned it was dangerous so had to find out why). Lined them up on the wall and hit them until they’d all imploded.
The scariest thing was putting plastic bags over our heads as this seemed to be the biggest taboo. A big no no. They started putting holes in the bags to prevent suffocation so it was a nightmare trying to tape over any holes……
The kids at school used to buy ‘fag-and-a-match’ from the local shop. For those over 16, it was legal. It was exactly what it sounds like – one cigarette and one match. No packaging at all.
Plain packs behind super-secret doors. Every kid on the planet will want to know what that’s all about.