Why you should care
I have just added a new little badge to the side.
So why should you care about plain packs? You're a non-smoker so it doesn't affect you? Or you are just not bothered what your smokes come in?
This plain packs move affects everyone. If you smoke, drink or eat any food whatsoever, it affects you.
How?
Plain packs are the wet dream of the health fascists. They have come up with the idea that packaging cigarettes in identical drab boxes covered in lurid images of diseased bodies is somehow going to "nudge" people into a "healthier lifestyle". So far, Australia is the only country to try this experiment and it has failed abysmally. The only effect they can report on is a marginal increase in calls to a quit-line. The real story is that smoking rates are virtually unchanged, but there has been a massive increase in counterfeit cigarettes leading to a huge drop in tax revenue. So there is a good reason for non-smokers to worry – Revenue are going to have to try to make up that tax shortfall and that will hit everyone.
Probably the biggest reason why everyone should be concerned is the Slippery Slope.
If the Tobacco Lobby get their way on this one then all the various other lobby groups will wade in on the coattails. Already there have been calls for all drinks [including your favourite wine] to be plastered with images of diseased livers and for large "health warnings" to be placed on food. Do you really want to live in that drab humourless colourless world where you are constantly nagged from every shelf in the supermarket? If plain packaging for cigarettes comes in, then so will the rest. That is a cast-iron guarantee.
But what about the chiiiildren?
What about them? There is no proof whatsoever that any child starts smoking because he or she is attracted to the packaging. Kids start smoking because they are offered one by a pal, or they sneak a few out of their parents' packs. It has absolutely nothing to do with packaging. And anyway this move has nothing to do with children and everything to do with stigmatising a large minority of people for no reason other than to satisfy a few health fascists and to bolster the ego of an obsessed Minister for Health.
Don't say I didn't warn you.
I'm not so sure… about pretty much everything these days. Trying to apply a logical argument to insanity like this seems pointless.
It's more a case of problem, reaction, solution being rolled out again probably because it has proven to be the most effective way of keeping the eyeballs looking 'the other way'. There are no 'epidemics' beyond the epidemic of insanity within the political class. Scratch that there are two.
The other epidemic is the compliant masses who either work in government, work for government or benefit directly from government. In my mind these people now outnumber those who are not in any of the above groups. This is where the sham of democracy gets you. Turkeys voting for Christmas.
So perhaps there is only the one epidemic insanity. As I said these days I am not sure about anything.
So sum up the madness at the local Aldi (great shop which is literally killing Tesco in this little town) there is a car park. An NHS 'Quit Smoking' minibus appears once or twice a week and the moron inside it who is paid to lie to anyone fool enough to 'get on board' sits there for two or three hours with the fucking diesel engine running.
I often feel like jumping onboard and pointing out to him he is insane but then I remember sound advice and I just walk on by shaking my head.
"Never argue with an idiot.
They drag you down to their level then beat you with experience."
Perhaps that is the wrong thing to do and I should actually jump on board?
Finally in this ramble (it is head rambles I am commenting on isn't it?) Carlin George said
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
Do have a watch of this shortish video and then look again at how democracy allows Fatso and his ilk their place at the trough.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VSCyiVl7cA
"An NHS 'Quit Smoking' minibus appears once or twice a week and the moron inside it who is paid to lie to anyone fool enough to 'get on board' sits there for two or three hours with the fucking diesel engine running." Lock his door, attach a hose-pipe to the exhaust and stick it in his window. Simple.
The average Joe in the street can't give a flying fuck about all these nannying and bullying tactics. If it doesn't affect him, then why should he care. What he doesn't appreciate is the principle of precedence, as once they get an inch they demand a mile. Next thing he finds he is directly affected by some new law and wonders how the hell it happened. When his favourite bottle of Pinot Noir suddenly starts appearing with lurid pictures of drunks in the gutter he'll think differently but by then it is all far too late.
plain packs and ugly picture packs are here in Canada too and kept behind counters behind white locked doors on shelves, hasn't done a damn thing except probably piss off the poor clerks trying to locate something behind blank wall cubby doors and the which key goes where.
We have the ugly pictures here too [I collect them to see if I can get a full set] AND we have the display ban with ugly big wooden boxes behind newsagents' counters. The only time you ever get to see a cigarette packet in this country is when someone briefly takes a pack out to remove a cigarette.
Do we have enough wire and lamposts to sort out these idiots?
Wire and lampposts or balls and the word NO?
Or is it more a case of simple ignorance and doing what we decide is best for us and trusting others to do the same?
Too many people now rely on the state directly or indirectly for an income. If you work for the state, if you earn an income from the state by contracting or by benefit you should not be able to vote.
Leave the states tit and you can vote if you are so moved.
This would work for a while but eventually the state people would figure out a way to move enough people out of the state crowd and into the voting crowd to make sure the state kept on growing and a future generation would be in the same situation ours is.
Thanks Bill
Depressing future – hence my suggestion to eliminate the nutters who run our lives.
I posted a comment on Frank Davis' blog a little earlier about the effect that the 'doors of shame' (as Leg Iron calls them), gross medico-porn covering half the packets, and draconian smoking bans over the past 8+ years have had on smoking prevalence here in Thailand. Here is part of my comment:
Interestingly, male smoking prevalence in Thailand (hardly any Thai women smoke – about 3.5% I think – it’s a cultural thing) which was measured at 40% in 2006 was measured at 45.12% in 2009.
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/thailand/smoking-prevalence-males-percent-of-adults-wb-data.html
Which doesn’t say a lot for the success rate of their anti-smoking purge. But of course as everywhere there are calls for more and stronger of the same from the antis.
There are calls for 'plain' packaging here, too.
I agree entirely, but moreover plain packs will make it easier to counterfeit cigarettes and packets. Therefore all smokers will be unknowingly smoking dangerously strong or adulterated cigarettes. It seems the anti-smoking nazis are trying to kill off as many smokers as quickly as possible. Plain packets? Hitler said 'the bigger the lie the more the masses will swallow it'.