Monday 8 August 2011

Your Vote Just Became Even More Irrelevant

Here's a small announcement which will certainly not have piqued the interest of any newspaper you might read. It probably wouldn't even have passed your MP's desk.

ASH will be very aware of it, though, and would probably have sent Dickrell down to Waitrose with petty cash money for some celebratory cream cakes on hearing the news.

The UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) granted special consultative status to FCA at its recent session.

This status will give FCA access to nearly all intergovernmental processes at the UN dealing with issues of interest to ECOSOC, including economic and social development, gender issues and sustainable development.

FCA will also be eligible for annual and short-term passes to the UN in New York, Geneva and Vienna.
To translate, this means that the FCA - an unelected supranational quango formed to press for draconian treatment of tobacco - has now been given carte blanche at ECOSOC which is, err, also an unelected supranational quango.

I suppose you could write to your, cough, democratic representative about it. But then, he's not likely to be anywhere near New York next month, is he?

This might permit increased FCA representation at the UN Summit on NCDs in New York, 19-20 September, although we still expect space there to be extremely limited.
Yep, they've already worked out what they're going to do with the massively increased influence which the electorate voted overwhelmingly for they lobbied a few unelected talking heads for.

Specifically, "rapid and effective implementation of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control". You know, crippling taxes; plain packaging; smoking bans everywhere; hideous unrealistic pictures; and stopping you buying cheaper abroad.

Of course, if you don't smoke this won't bother you at all, will it?

Oh, hold on!

NCD Summit Action Alert

We now have three weeks and three days to tell member states loud and clear that we expect them to respect the right to health of the people they represent. They need to hear that we are angry at these delays and expect them to get serious and reach consensus on time-bound commitments to action.

[...]

National tobacco tax strategies developed by 2013: There are a number of references to using fiscal policies to prevent NCDs, not just for tobacco but also for alcohol and unhealthy food and drink products.
Smelling the coffee yet?


7 comments:

Anonymous said...

ECOSOC -- eerily reminiscent of INGSOC (1984).

Word verification: inglact

Anonymous said...

Well spotted, Churchmouse. Spooky! Forget Nostradamus – I’m starting to think Orwell was the one with the crystal ball!

More seriously, though, I can’t quite understand why all these organisations are still being invited to play a part in tobacco control. After all, they’ll only be preaching to anti-smoking-converted politicians and governments, who are already totally cosy with ASH, Smoke-Free North-South-East-West, the Campaign for Smoke-Free Kids, the Foundation for Smoke-Free America etc etc. So why the need for these extra – no doubt very expensive – consultants when they’ve already got “consultants” coming out of their ears? It isn’t as if they need an over-arching “authority” to pass draconian legislation and encourage smoker persecution – they’re all doing that already without any encouragement! What are these new “consultants” going to do? Pat them on the head and give them a sweetie?

Now, if one of the tobacco companies had invited them to act as “consultants,” then I’d be worried!

Ian B said...

Why do so few people see the inherent injustice of power being wielded by unelected committees of this type? Why aren't people angrier? I don't understand it.

auntieban said...

O/T - e-petition now up: Amend the smoking ban

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/6071

More at Taking Liberties.

x

Anonymous said...

Apropos of everything I assume many will have noticed the irony implied in the vicious treatment of a pub landlady who had the wrong kind of 'No Smoking' signs http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2020969/Pub-landlady-hit-300-fine-displaying-homemade-smoking-signs.html, compared with the impunity with which rioters are wreaking havoc around the country at the moment.

Ian R Thorpe said...

Churchmouse,
Congratulations, you beat me to it !

The fact is Dick, we need all these thousands of unelected bureaucrats because there just aren't enough MPs to man all the committees needed to supervise every deatail of everybody's private life.

Anonymous said...

Well spotted, Churchmouse. I've just looked up the Appendix to 'Nineteen Eighty Four'. It includes the comment: 'The word "free" still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as 'The dog is free from lice' or 'This field is free from weeds'. It could not be used in its old sense of 'politically free' or 'intellectually free', since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts...'

Smoke 'free' ?