Desperate Plain Packs Agitprop In The Guardian

I haven't fisked an article for a while, but this desperate guff from Tanya Gold in the Guardian is just so inept that it begs for it.

She seems to have no clue about the year long public consultation on plain packaging, or even the shabby evidence that prompted it. Here's a perfect example.

(Established smokers rarely change brands.)

Really, love? Because, you see, the campaign for plain packaging disagrees with you. They even cite it as a case study in their literature in favour.

"Our share grew by over 0.4% during this period – that might not sound a lot – but it was worth over £60 million in additional turnover and a significant profit improvement.”

£60 million is one hell of a lot of smokers changing to just a single brand, and there are around 200 of them in all. This is precisely why the tobacco industry would like to keep branding which distinguishes them from their competitors. It also neatly skewers the simpletons who are so lacking in the scantest knowledge of how business works that they believe industry objection can only mean that the policy will be brilliant. Like Simon Chapman, for example.

Anyway, back to sixth form throwback Tanya.

Or does the government feel pressure from Ukip, some of whose members seem to think that smoking, along with misogyny, homophobia and racism, is patriotic?

Yep, that's right. It's there in most of their material, "bash up a Paki", it says, "stab a gay", and if you get time while it's still light why not sexually abuse a woman, eh?

It beggars belief that the Graun allows idiots like this to make such tendentious sweeping statements, but then these are desperate times for those whose only concern is telling all us plebs how to live our lives.

Of course Ukip backs smoking. It thrives on the rhetoric of the pub

Because, it would seem, anyone who uses a pub and talks politics is obviously insane and should be ignored. Only those with a town house in Islington and a healthy addiction to ground coffee and qinoa seeds should be allowed to comment in this democracy of ours. They're really not learning, are they?

The freedom to smoke is a freedom of sorts – and Nigel Farage smokes. This is like David Cameron legislating for morning coats

No, it's nothing like that .. even remotely. That would be a law to force someone to do something. Government is legislating increasingly to force the public to not do something. It's a subtle difference too complicated for Tanya to comprehend, obviously. Or perhaps she is just playing deliberately dumb. I don't know which flatters her less, to be frank.

Who else smokes these days? Children mostly, and poorer children more than anyone, and the numbers are rising.

You're shitting me, surely! You mean that after advertising bans, bans on vending machines, graphic warnings on packs and hiding cigarettes behind screens, that youngsters are smoking more than ever? Jeez, put those tobacco control incompetents in jail, then! Not just because they are incompetent and dangerous, but also because they have been wildly extolling such policies as being overwhelmingly successful.

They are quite obviously fraudulent liars and any of their subsequent policies should be roundly ignored ... err, like plain packaging, perhaps?

When representatives of Imperial Tobacco, British American Tobacco (BAT), Philip Morris International and Japan Tobacco International met the government this year. Imperial Tobacco threatened to pull its packaging manufacture from the UK.

No mention whatsoever that the DoH was compelled to invite these companies to make their views known as part of legislation on impact assessments designed specifically to stop governments from abusing democratic process. And there I was believing that the Guardian was in favour of civil liberties and against fascism, eh?

They insisted plain packaging would assist counterfeiters and smugglers. If this fascinates you, I suggest you watch British American Tobacco's amusing and ostensibly racist promotional video Who's In Control?, in which cartoon eastern European gangsters drool over the financial possibilities of regulation

Ah, racist. The ultimate refuge of a lefty scoundrel bereft of coherent arguments. Course it is. It features people from other countries in a bad light because they are criminals, so is obviously racist. The BBC were also racist when their Panorama programme highlighted criminal Chinese gangs driving illicit fags in Scotland. I remember Tanya's ground-breaking exclusive on the Beeb and its fucking racist right-wing bastards, I'm sure I do.

Are these theoretical gangsters Bulgarian, or Romanian, is the obvious question.

Well, err, no. But it helps Tanya's contorted anti-UKIP agenda to suggest it, doesn't it?

We could muse further on these apocalyptic fantasies

{cough} Is she seriously supporting plain packs and accusing others of that?

But the independent studies undertaken all agree – young people and women don't like plain packets, and tobacco knows it.

{cough} Independent?

Plus, whether they say weak pliable women (shame on you, Tanya) or youths like it or not (a bit of a no-brainer that they wouldn't), tobacco control's 'evidence' says nothing about whether they will subsequently quit. In fact, their own studies admit that kids are blithely unaware of the packaging and have no interest even if they were. Hey, this isn't big evil tobacco saying this, it's those most enthusiastic about plain packs!

[T]he British government, theoretically dedicated to the health of its citizens, has a duty not to sink to lobbyists

Which is exactly what they might have done by rejecting emotional, evidence-free shroud-waving rubbish by people paid to do nothing else but lobby government and campaign for legislation which precious few others actually want.

As ever with this government, hollow rhetoric will do.

As ever with the Guardian, hollow baseless ideological, spectacularly ill-researched rhetoric will do. How on Earth this collection of intellectual savants lose £44m per year is anyone's guess.

Good grief.