The Honest Campaign

I read something in Westminster records today which very much reminded me of this chutzpah from ASH.

The tobacco industry has run a well-resourced and mendacious campaign against standardised packs. If it does not proceed with the proposal, the UK Government risks being seen as bowing to this pressure.

Mendacious campaign? Are they serious?

The past couple of weeks have seen politicians (mostly Labour) queueing up to lie outrageously to their respective houses.

Here's the latest from Baroness Morgan in the Lords.

Nine months after the consultation ended, we are still awaiting a response from the Government.

Yes. So are we, dear. We'd like to see if half a million ordinary people are to be respected for their views or ignored. We demand an answer too.

In the time we have been waiting, Cancer Research UK estimates that more than 150,000 children have started smoking.

They may well have done, but not one of them because of a colour scheme.

Let us take a moment to reflect on the support for standard packs, which is extremely broad. I mentioned the support of the health community. I cannot overstate the extent to which health organisations agree with this measure.

You can definitely overstate it. Health organisations will always agree with just about any pile of cockwaffle that they themselves have concocted ... because they are paid to produce it.

This issue also resonates with the public.

No it doesn't. There was not a single member of the public involved in the plain packs folly. No-one asked for it; no-one campaigned for it before the tobacco industry thought it up; no-one is that daft as to think it urgent. It is solely a policy construct of people paid to devise ever more bizarre attacks on smoking.

In the Government’s consultation more than 200,000 members of the public supported standard packs.

And half a million rejected it! Is this woman incorrigibly ignorant or is she ... mendacious?

These are the supporters of standardised packaging: a majority of the public and more than 190 health and welfare organisations.

Err, should that not read "a minority of the public" and "the financially motivated"? If the Baroness were to be honest, she would say yes. But she isn't.

Yet their collective voice has at times struggled to be heard over the well organised campaign by the tobacco industry.

You have got to be shitting me! Who had huge billboards stuck up all over the South West paid for by £468,462.06 of taxpayer receipts? And who was castigated for being invited for a short meeting to fulfil the DoH's democratic obligations?

Baroness Morgan has proven conclusively that ASH are hilariously hypocritical to accuse the other side of being "mendacious". She has presented half-truths, never-were-truths, paid-for study results, unrelated propaganda, and lies to the House of Lords, no less. While also being a prominent agent in the denial of "the collective voice" of the public being heard over the "well-organised campaign by the tobacco [control] industry".

The campaign against plain packs, in contrast, did not attempt to rig the consultation; did not produce literature containing bald-faced lies to MPs; did not enthusiastically encourage corrupt multiple signatures; and did not attempt to influence government to exclude any consultation responses they disagreed with.

There was only one honest campaign in the plain packs debate. And it ain't the filthy, disgusting, lying one which the Baroness endorses. Her deeply mendacious - yes, mendacious - contribution to the Lords' debate proves that conclusively.