Running the asylum
This has gone way beyond a joke.
That insane fool Fatso Reilly is now demanding that the gubmint sell all shares in Big Tobacco!
Listen, you overweight fuck!
1. It is none of your fucking business. You are Minister for Children and have fuck all to do with finance. You were demoted from Health because you made a right bollix of the job. Live with it.
2. The pension fund managers are morally, if not legally compelled to get the best return on investment. It's tough shit I know, but Big Tobacco happens to be a damn good investment and the only people you would be harming are those that rely on the pension fund.
3. Big Tobacco doesn't give a flying shite if the gubmint sells every single share. There are more than enough buyers out there who would be only too happy to purchase them. You seem to think in that megalomaniac pea-brain of yours that you can single handedly bring down Big Tobacco by selling a few shares? You really need a few basic lessons in company finance.
Will someone please commit this insane gobshite to some nice secure comfy padded spot preferably for life?
To be prepared to destroy peoples’ retirement fund for one man’s morals, shows this man is in politics for self gratification and should be removed at next election.
Welcome Broony! Much as I would love to see it happen, I can't see him being removed at the next election. He seems to have a fairly solid support in his local area, though maybe they'll realise just how barking mad he is and give him the boot.
This Plain Packs lark seems to have gone to his head altogether. He has made international headlines and now thinks he's invincible. He doesn't realise that the only people cheering him on are his cronies in the Anti-Smoker lunatic fringe.
If the money from tobacco companies is so tainted, I wonder if Fatso Reilly will also urge the Government to forgo the €1,300 million a year it receives in Excise & VAT from the sale of tobacco products?
Fair point. What is the difference between tax and profit? Nothing, apart from the customer having to pay for both.
Incidentally Grandad, at the Dail Public Committee hearings on Health last year, the representative from the HSE was asked directly how much tobacco related illness cost the State each year. In answer, he told the Committee that the figure was estimated at €600 million or less than half what smokers contribute in taxes.
Given that the HSE are going to class anything and everything as "smoking related" and given that they don't actually keep statistics on whether patients are smokers, that can only be a wild guesstimate, so I would imagine that the actual cost of patients presenting solely because they are smokers is considerably less.