Monday 5 January 2015

Time Confirms Yet Another Tobacco Control Lie

As anyone who has observed their shameless shenanigans over a period of time will have noticed, the tobacco control industry works by creating a melee of inaccurate and mendacious information to place in front of politicians, in the hope that when the truth eventually materialises no-one will notice.

They have done this with smoking ban 'evidence', heart attack 'miracles', and are currently following the same methodology in trying to bully Westminster into adopting pointless plain packaging.

Back in 2009 they were doing exactly that with the tobacco display ban, when the London Evening Standard published this.
The vote is due next Wednesday, and retailers are extremely upset. They say the move will damage their businesses — especially as it could cost £1500 to install a special gantry to store the products. 
The Ministry of Health asked anti-smoking organisation ASH (which is hardly a disinterested party) to check on the cost, and it claimed the figure for the gantries was just £120. This figure was sent by health minister Lord Darzi to every member of the House of Lords. 
When the supplier, 4 Solutions of Canada, heard about this, it pointed out the individual cost would be approximately £450 — and this did not include any of the installation costs, which would be around £1000. They also pointed out that the costs of the gantries for all the outlets in Britain could be over £30 million. 
Neither ASH nor the Ministry of Health has corrected the information they have given to the members of the House of Lords in advance of the vote.
I wrote about it at the time here, and Snowdon wrote up the whole farce in detail. It was also questioned in the House of Lords but the lie was allowed to stand.

Time has moved on and in April all corner shops will have to cover up their displays. A perfect time, then, to look at what small retailers are now - in real life and not ASH's fairy story - getting ready to shell out.
There are a number of solutions available, which will enable you to comply with the legal requirements relatively inexpensively. These include self-installed plastic ‘curtains’ which, for a small gantry, can cost as little as £50 plus delivery, or retrofitted sliding doors costing about £350 plus delivery – however, these require professional installation, which will add another £200 approximately to the cost. 
Both of these options will enable you to fully comply with the law and you may decide that is all you want to do. However, the gantry area is probably the most valuable selling space in your shop and simply covering it up will kill it stone dead as a selling space.
So, unless you're talking about a very basic self-installed plastic sheet, which will adversely affect the business in the long run, the cost is already nearly five times what ASH claimed.

However, Lord Darzi - delivering the happy news to Westminster on behalf of ASH and the tobacco control industry - cannot possibly have been talking about those.
"Removing displays need not be costly—in Canada, even professional covers cost as little as £120 for an area measuring 1 metre by 1.3 metres"
And professional is the operative word. Because professional covers will, indeed, cost the £1,500 which retailers - quite truthfully - said they would when politicians ignored them in favour of state-funded lobbyists.


Fancy that!



8 comments:

Ivan D said...

Unfortunately, thanks to increasing behavioural inequality between mere plebs and wealthy high flying medics with influential mates in the Labour party, it has become perfectly possible for the latter to lie through their teeth and be rewarded for it.


If we are not careful, this could go to their heads and they might start wanting to ban behaviours on purely ideological grounds.

Dragonmum said...

Wish I could stop laughing at the lamentable acronym - did no-one think to check?? It's playing hell with my asthma and I think they're just boasting! Bet they can't remember the last time - though they adphuked us over before Christmas as I recall.

jude said...

My partner, a smoker at the time, now vaper who has the odd smoke, (its very expensive to smoke in Australia), came down with a flu a couple of years ago, turns out it was the dreaded swine flu, confirmed by blood tests after he recovered.


We didn't know it was swine flu because he really wasn't all that ill, and completely recovered in 4 days, but at the time he got tested because we worked in the hospitality industry, and he was worried about infecting others. Anyhoo, long story short, I nursed him through this illness, but didn't get so much as a sniffle, (I was also a smoker at the time), this when non-smokers were getting very ill, and some dying.


This is an anecdote only, but it was a wake up call for me about avoiding flu vaccinations, (I support vaccinations for children for diseases such as whooping cough etc), as neither of us have ever had a flu vaccination, and apart from that one time, neither of us get anything more serious than a head cold very occasionally.


Maybe like those that avoid cancer, we are just lucky, rather than unlucky.

nisakiman said...

The fact that the politicos actually believe that these gantries can be installed for £120 speaks volumes about their grip on reality. How long do they think it would take a tradesman to install one of these things? 20 seconds? How much do they pay their plumbers to come and unblock the sink? A fiver?

I think not.

I expect they would believe it if 'experts' told them that the weekly supermarket shop for the family could be done for £20, too. They really don't have a clue - the lot of them seem to be locked into the "Let them eat cake..." mode.

jude said...

The lies and misinformation continue, this piece of propaganda and general whinging and trying to claim victim status from Chapman appeared on "The Conversation" website.

https://theconversation.com/with-a-little-help-from-his-friends-joe-cockers-early-death-35852

There were some very good comments on this article, but any that challenged Chapman's propaganda, or view of himself as a poor little victim, (although we are all aware of his bullying tactics over the years ), have been deleted. Poor little Simon cannot answer his critics, so he uses his privileged position to simply delete the questions and comments that disagree with his self view, or the propaganda he spews.

What a pathetic little narcissist this man is, fortunately those comments were seen by many, and copied by quite a few. Here is one from Lorien Jollye, calling him out, it too was deleted. Little Simon is a coward extraordinaire.



Lorien Jollye commented:



"Thank you for posting this. I note that Mr Chapman has studiously
ignored your message, in much the same way that after attacking me in
the Lancet, he has ignored the letter contained in that Blog which I
emailed to him myself.

As for this article, yes, Mr Chapman was in receipt of many angry tweets
as his comment was callous and thoughtless and a lot of us considered
it as point scoring, despite his obvious affection for Joe Cocker. What
is more interesting, however, is that Mr Chapman has blocked virtually
every single vaper that has tweeted him. and many who have not. Which
begs the question, how did he see the tweets?

It is about time you engaged with us Mr Chapman rather than baiting ppl
who cannot respond and then writing articles about us.

Happy new year."




To add your say go to http://theconversation.com/with-a-little-help-from-his-friends-joe-cockers-early-death-35852

truckerlyn said...

Truth? The government aren't interested in truths, they are only interested in anything that will perpetuate their own ideologies!


We are the little people and therefore we don't count nor do we deserve the truth from these 'gods'. The only time they pander, a little, to the likes of us is when an election is coming up! Then they only spout more lies to try and convince us that we do count and they will and do listen to us! If anyone believes that, they are as barmy as the politicians!

What the.... said...

As is usually the case when there are too many dissenters to the antismoking diatribe, commenting on the article was closed down.

Dick_Puddlecote said...

Yes, Jude, I saw that last night and wrote a draft at the time. I didn't see the comments as they didn't last long enough!