Crappy Gilmore

Like a spoilt little brat in Asda, Europe's most prolific anti-smoking junk scientist and regular feature on these pages - Anna Gilmore - is still banging her fists on the floor and screaming about how unfair it is that governments are made to consider the consequences of their actions.

Via the Observer:

Revealed: how ‘big tobacco’ used EU rules to win health delay  

Analysis carried out by the University of Bath’s Tobacco Control Research Group (TCRG) ...

So perfectly objective and not biased at all, of course.

... has found that the companies played a key role in pushing the European commission’s Better Regulation agenda, which places business interests at the heart of policy drafting. They then used the new laws to block and delay a series of major health reforms, including UK introduction of plain packs.

A key role eh? Sounds terrible.

Under the terms of the Better Regulation agenda, which internal tobacco industry documents reveal was enthusiastically supported by British American Tobacco, European governments, including the UK, must conduct public consultations and impact assessments when introducing laws that affect business. 

Erm, I think you'll find that just about every company in Europe, large or small, would have "enthusiastically supported" a rule which says they should be consulted on laws which will affect business and that the impacts should be properly studied. Businesses, and I mean every one, have to conduct cost/benefit analyses or they die from making bad decisions, who except a gurning muppet would believe that governments should not do the same?

So what are Bath saying here? That businesses should just shut the fuck up and take whatever nonsense some vacant politician thinks up on a whim? Yes. Yes, I do believe so, fascists that they are.

And for why?

Leaked documents show that Philip Morris identified the Better Regulation laws as a key weapon in its battle to derail the 2014 EU tobacco products directive which introduced large-scale health warnings on cigarette packets and a ban on flavoured cigarettes and packs of 10 - both popular marketing initiatives with young smokers (only tobacco control fruitcakes say this - DP). The tobacco giant employed more than 160 lobbyists and spent £1.25bn opposing the directive’s introduction. The European commission department responsible for drawing up the directive was swamped with 85,000 submissions.

This is called democracy by anyone else, and is the same process used by developed nations all over the world. Only banana republics and dictatorships believe it is acceptable that laws can be passed by government without scrutiny, but that is exactly what Bath Uni are suggesting the EU should do. Maybe they'd be happy if the EU passed an enabling act or something like that, I dunno.

It really is desperate stuff.

Many of the claims that they made were based on dubious evidence. According to the TCRG analysis of the submissions, “the research was of significantly lower quality than research supporting the measure. For example, the tobacco companies’ arguments were not supported by any peer-reviewed journal articles about standardised packaging.”

Politicians didn't think so. Tobacco control has so perverted the term "peer review" that proper scientists must despise them for weakening any case a scientist has these days. It's a sham and has been admitted as such by the British Medical Journal, no less. Mostly because the tobacco industry has been excluded from "peer-reviewed journals" but I think Gilmore knew that when she wrote this deliberately mendacious bilge.

"The tobacco companies played a key role in implementing Better Regulation, anticipating that it would help them delay, block or weaken public health legislation,” Gilmore said.

No they didn't, this is right up there with the most hilarious of conspiracy theories. I've heard more believable guff from anti-vaxers and people who believe airplane wind shear is the New World Order doping us all. Tobacco companies were just a tiny proportion of the entire cohort of European business which supported better regulation in order to make sure corruption in government is accountable and bad laws are open to challenge. Only a moron would believe otherwise, and only an idiot would read this Observer rubbish and accept it as serious analysis.

“They have now gone on to exploit it to prevent life-saving regulations. They are flooding consultations with massive numbers of responses to give a totally misleading impression of opposition to public health policies."

Yes, because apparently tobacco companies - which we all know are part of the most trustworthy and revered of all industries in the eyes of the public Europe-wide - were able to play on their enviable popularity to mobilise tens of thousands of people to oppose something they actually believed was fantastic.

This is weapons grade woo. The product of either a depraved and incoherent mind or that of someone who gets paid shitloads of money to produce disingenuous and misleading tobacco control industry propaganda to order. You decide which.

The EU is, and always has been, primarily designed to assist cross border trade amongst member states. It's why it used to be called the common market. What the tobacco control industry's prime tax-sponging starlet seems to be saying here is that the EU has applied regulations to protect trade - which every business in the EU would support - but these particular businesses have used the regulations as they were intended, so are therefore evil.

And do you know why? Because they supported the regulations which protect every single business in the EU against corruption, government over-reach and dictatorship.

In other words, only people who agree with whatever tobacco control liars are proposing at any particular time should be allowed to talk to politicians. And they wonder why some people call them health nazis? Go figure.