Friday 13 July 2012

Modern Democracy, Eh? Grubby And Deceitful To The Core

When is a supporters page not a supporters page? When it carries a disclaimer, of course.
"These comments have been taken from the public domain and do not necessarily represent an endorsement of the Plain Packs Protect campaign."
How odd to have a page showing supporters of a campaign ... when those pictured can't be said to be actually endorsing it!

Oh yeah, and Andrew Lansley has disappeared too according to Jay in the comments.

What isn't clear is how long this deceit has been going on at the Plain Packs Protect website, because that's exactly what it was. It's quite fitting that a campaign to back a proposal based on shoddy evidence and manipulation of the truth has been itself exposed to have been deliberately disingenuous.

A government with scruples would take such underhand and dishonest behaviour into account when assessing consultation responses, but you can be sure that certain mandarins within the Department of Health will do their damnedest to sweep the campaign's devious methods under the carpet.

Be sure to read Tom Paine's conclusions as to what this whole farce says about how our modern "democracy" works.


5 comments:

PatNurse said...

Perhaps HOOPs should respond by putting both Nanny Milton and Bully Lansley on their supporters page which would be fine as long as the small print at the bottom says they don't "necessarily represent an endorsement of the Hands Off Our Packs campaign." Good for the goose and gander and all that :) 

Jay said...

Sadly, we have no way of knowing who made the decision to remove Lansley. It could have been him or his department, or perhaps SmokeFree South West did it on their own initiative after being embarrassed by you, Chris, HOOPs, and Forest.  In any case, the removal makes them look even more stupid.  The disclaimer is laughable, too. 

Mark..S said...

Has anyone brought this to the attention of the media, that Steve fellow in the indy should be all over this, "evil tabacco control use govt minister as stooge in taxpayer funded scam" !

Norman Brand said...

Look out. I don't know the time scale for all this but the silly season is nearly upon us: people - voters - away on holiday, MPs likewise, and councillors; it's a time for the fait accompli, when bureaucracies can slip things through unnoticed. Our mascot, Philip Davies MP, deserves his break too.  I wouldn't presume upon this but I think he would still spot anything that goes on. As for the media, what's news is what they regard as news, and I fear they don't or won't see this as news.

moonrakin said...

Peculate, duck, dive, swerve, fib, mislead, lie, cheat and dissemble not necessarily in that order.
Words that I find are increasingly associated with our public servants. This isn't even about health it's about exploiting the process and the trust ignorance of the public

The Augean stable roof is in danger of being forced off