Tesco Discovers That Appeasement Doesn't Work

I hope some of you caught this hilarious faux outrage on Twitter. It carried on for two days but seems to have abated for the weekend, at least..

What does @rcplondon think about @uktesco displays concealing the health warnings on cigarette packs? twitter.com/COPDdoc/status… #TescoTweets
— Nick Hopkinson (@COPDdoc) February 14, 2013

His earth-shattering revelation has been flagged apparently, though we know not what for. Offside?

It didn't take long before another doctor (natch) couldn't help himself and seamlessly switched the subject to alcohol ... which was then followed by my tweet of the week.

@drkenbmoody It's a good job everybody is born with free will huh?
— Tesco Customer Care (@UKTesco) February 14, 2013

Bravo! Tesco, you just earned my custom for this weekend's grocery shopping.

Unfortunately public health don't even recognise, let alone understand, the concept of free will. And considering the health community these days is a festering mass of ideological business-hating lefties, it was akin to hitting a hornet's nest like you would a piñata.

Don't Tesco know that these mostly tax-funded, shroud-waving, hyperbole-spouting con artists and fantasists are running the country now? All day they went at Tesco, tweeting their fellow tax-funded mates about the big evil supermarket which earns its own money by being popular instead of sponging off the state like 'decent' people.

Then, former professional tobacco controller and borderline communist Daniel Clayton - who really doesn't like being followed on Twitter, so don't do that - further displayed his arrested maturity by running to tell teacher. Or Alcohol Concern in this case.

@savemethecolour it's one approach to customer relations!
— Alcohol Concern (@AlcoholConcern) February 15, 2013

So, we now have a complaint about tobacco display warnings - unreadable from the other side of a counter, hidden or not - turned into a case for Alcohol Concern's attention by a former employee of ASH Wales because it's all the same thing. Innit?

You know what I'm going to say here, I expect, seeing as I've had loads of fun with it before. Let's revisit Smokefree Action's Myth 7 about plain packaging, shall we?

Myth #7: It may be tobacco today but other consumer products will follow

FACT: Tobacco is not like any other product, it is the only legal consumer product on the market which is lethal when used as intended. [...] Plain packs for tobacco will not therefore set a precedent for other consumer products.

What fools we all are for believing that the public health industry would even dream about treating other products in the same condemnatory way as tobacco, eh? Well, apart from alcohol if sold by capitalist pig-dogs, perhaps.

But wait, what's this? Another doctor in response to Tesco complying with the law; displaying packs - in only some of their stores, not in large ones due to absurd regulation - so they don't fall off the shelves; with prices shown as per consumer info legislation; and bedecked with warnings placed where they are by government design which have bugger all effect on smoking rates anyway.

He spouts the same "people are all fucking stupid, except us" message the pompous parasites have underwritten their mortgage payments with for years.

environments influence decision making: @uktesco discount + feature cigarette, alcohol, + obesogenic foods prominently...
— Carl Reynolds (@drcjar) February 14, 2013

Food now? That's a nice little slippery slope he has there, I wonder if he needs more vaseline to grease it up with.

Boy! I bet those guys at Tesco are overjoyed at having got in bed with these screwballs over minimum alcohol pricing, huh? They're feeling the lurve for such fawning appeasement now, and no mistake.