Thursday 27 October 2011

When You Flash The Cash, Out Come The Grifters

Well, if you will decide that the rest of the world's problems are your own, Australia.

Last month the Gillard government voluntarily offered their citizens' cash to the World Health Organisation. Because, you see, they're so damn perfect that everyone in the world should be as dictatorial over smoking as Canberra is.

NOT content with simply battling big tobacco in Australia, the Gillard government has pledged $700,000 to the World Health Organisation to help other countries reduce smoking rates.

The money will fund an inter-governmental working group to draw up guidelines on how increased taxes and prices can reduce the harm caused by cigarettes.

It will also help poorer countries introduce graphic health warnings.
Aww, ain't that nice? They care so much that they're funding coercion in countries where it's none of their damn business!

But what's this?

AUSTRALIA is set to reject a global push for a new tobacco levy on wealthy countries to fund health programs in the Third World.

That is despite support from high-profile philanthropists such as Bill Gates and the government's own hardline stance on smoking.
What's the problem? Surely the Aussie government should be champing at the bit to further show how they are the best in the world at bullying smokers.

A discussion paper circulated by the WHO says the proposal could raise as much as $US5.5 billion ($5.3bn) from a list of 43 wealthy nations every year.

It estimates Australia could contribute $US54.7m annually to the fund from a levy of US5c on each cigarette sold locally.
Wow! That's a skipload of bearer bonds, and no mistake. But hey, you're the world leaders, Australia. Remember? Choking on having to charge your people for the privilege of sending their hard-earned elsewhere won't help you well hard 'rep' here, you know. Buggering your voters is surely a small price to pay for being able to strut around with a badge saying "more dictatorial than you", isn't it?

Or could it be that if anyone is going to get $54.7m, Gillard and her moronic cronies want to make damn sure it will be them?

Because, let's face it, even the hideous obsessives in Canberra would have trouble selling this kind of lunatic reasoning to the Australian public.

"Voluntary contributions from the STC are not meant to replace tobacco tax policies that are intended to curb tobacco use or to artificially limit the tax increases required nationally," the paper states.

"The STC would therefore not replace broader government taxes on tobacco products intended to curb tobacco use but would be in addition to them."
I can imagine that budget speech would go down a storm.

"We are raising tobacco duty by $1 per pack because smoking is bad, m'kay. And we are also going to raise it by 5c per cigarette so we can ship your lolly out to countries you have barely heard of cos the WHO says it's a dandy idea. I hereby commend this motion to the House".
The problem for Australia - and each of the other 42 wealthy nations - is that once they have earnestly furrowed their brows and declared that they are 'serious about tackling smoking', and that the WHO are the body to do it through the FCTC which they have all stupidly signed up to, they become a cash cow.

It's the international equivalent of being approached by a charity collector thus.

"Hi, do you want to see the end of babies dying in Africa?"
"Yes, but I've already given"
"How much?"
"A fiver"
"Nice one. Now put a ton in this tin I'm rattling then, and be quick about it"
"But ..."
"Come on tight arse, cough up"
Or does the Australian government only care deeply about the poor smokers of wherethefuckisthatland when it is convenient? Not much of an altruistic stance is it, you upside-down clowns?

After all, the WHO is democratically elected by millions of ... oh, hold on!

H/T Cherie, my Aussie Informer


6 comments:

Anonymous said...

'Hung by their own petard' comes to mind.
If the intellectual prowess of Australians is reflected by their soaps Home and Away and Neighbours, expect it to take an awful long time before any of them ask why their tax monies are being used to persecute themselves.
The idiots do not seem to understand that continuous hikes in taxes will eventually have the desired effect - that is, that no one will pay the taxes any more because they will transfer their tobacco consumption to some other substance, and the same sort of effect will occur as has happened with drugs - a proliferation of various 'highs' of one sort or another.
If the tobacco companies had any courage, they would take the bull by the horns and announce publicly that they have had enough and that the were withdrawing all 'official' tobacco sales from Australia - end of tobacco taxes.
Would Australian smokers therefore cease smoking? NO! They would smoke something other than tobacco. NICOTINE IS NOT ADDICTIVE! It is not beyond the wit of man to find a way to create a pleasant smoke from some other plant.

Anonymous said...

This whole thing reeks on an international level the way tobacco companies and thus smokers, have been forced to pay additional monies in the US to pay for the Master Settlement, which was a violation of interstate collusion laws and they are still forced to pay it. Now, on an international level, it's WHO trying to force a similar regime of punitive taxation and the national politicians are so dumb, blind and stupid, they thought they'd be doing it to save the children and all that good stuff, but in reality it's just outright extortion. Time to definance WHO altogether along with UN and send the whole bunch packing. Blow up the UN building in NYC and let the corrupt anti-tobacco thieves conspire somewhere else, using their own money to do so, not ours.

Anonymous said...

Best thing for Oz would
be, handed over to China to be used as a super sheep shed or
open air brothel These descendents
of perverts,paedophiles,thieves,
murderers and pimps really want to look a bit closer at where some of their wealth is derived
Namely as the largest per capita
producer of lung blackening high sulphur COAL
As for the silly little OZTART
Gillard she is not fit for Bullshit,more like Platypus droppings.
OZ can be summed up with the Queens reception in Perth
Some stone age clown with a dead Wallaby wrapped round his neck doing some sort of hop skip and jump routine.

Europa Nostra

Dr Evil said...

Why don't they just ban tobacco and have done with it? Tax you say? Ah, that explains it.

Dr Evil said...

"Some stone age clown with a dead Wallaby wrapped round his neck doing some sort of hop skip and jump routine."

bloody brilliant! :-)

Angry Exile said...

Ah, c'mon, DP. You can't expect consistency from Gingery Dullard.

@ Junican. I've suggested something similar to your baccy embargo but to go one step further. Sell the whole lot, every last cig and flake of tobacco that would have been shipped to Australia, in Indonesia and PNG instead. The baccy companies could sell it much cheaper for the same margins there and a lot of it will then end up coming to Australia anyway, and if the current prices of chop-chop tobacco are any guide it'll sell for less per packet than the $16 plus people have to pay in the shops now. Everybody wins except the federal and state governments who'll lose about ten billion dollars a year between them. But since it's their policies behind it all, fuck 'em.