The Evil Eye
I can’t make out what they are doing with the cigarette packs here in Ireland.
They keep changing the design, and even for a while produced tins instead of packs. Mostly they are sold in 20s, but for a while they were sold in 23 packs. And the design seems to constantly change.
Lately though I have seen more and more of the medi-porn splashed over the front and back. Is this our new “plain pack” or are they just gently easing us into the full blown model?
The above is a pack that has been lying around for a day or two and every time I see it I wonder what the fuck it’s supposed to be. Are they seriously threatening that smokers will develop a knot-hole in their necks, which would be an ideal nest for a woodpecker or an owl?
One time I approached it from a different angle, and instantly saw what it actually is.
It’s the Evil Eye of Tobacco Control.
Or maybe it’s Donald Trump?
Nah! It’s Tobacco Control. You can tell by the soulless malice – that look that could sink a thousand ships.
It’s watching us….
I find it amazing that they are described as ‘plain pack’s’ when all they are is a whiteboard that is only allowed to be decorated by obsessive anti-smokers.
I hear that now there is a move to prevent people smoking in their own homes – as they are not allowed to smoke in their own vehicles if they use those vehicles for work – taxi-drivers for instance.
Once you are allowed to dictate to people whether or not they smoke in their own home, it is only a short step to dictating what you are allowed to eat or drink in your own home….
Then, an Englishman’s home – or an Irishman’s for that matter, will no longer be their castle…….
I saw that about smoking in homes. The proposal applies only to council owned property, but it would only be a matter of time before they targeted the rest. Theoretically I break the law here if there is a tradesman working in the house. I presume that even would apply to my grocery delivery man. Needless to say I point out to all visitors [paid or not] that his is firmly a Smoking Zone and that the No Smoking Zone is in the garden [unless I’m outside of course].
God be with the days when it was just the downstairs in buses that was non-smoking!
stupid arses, plain pack my hole
I must say that hadn’t occurred to me [being of pure mind], but it does somewhat resemble a certain orifice?
What I find interesting about that pack which demonstrates so clearly that smoking can, terrifyingly, even cause labial agglutination in older women (not just in pre-teeange smoking girls), is the Gaelic (I assume-please don’t shout at me if it’s actually Manx) on the pack. I assume as Eire has 2 official languages all such VITAL public health warnings have to be bi-lingual.
And the thought occurs to me; What about all the Kids in northest most LLanSheepfuck? Or those gullible gaelic speaking teens of whichever bit of rock is off the coast of Scotland? DO they NOT deserve protecting? Surely something must be done! And where are the ‘Community Leaders’ demanding packets also be saying such vital messages as ‘SMOKING CAUSES ALL DISEASES EVERYWHERE. FACT!’ in Bangla, urdu , hindi, arabic and braille?
Obviously there is government malfeasance afoot here! Like those black men the US government let die of untreated syphilis !
*lines his pink bobble hat with tinfoil*
Irish is the official language here though I doubt there are many who speak Irish only. Walk down any street and you will hear many languages but rarely a drop of Garlic. And the gubment spends millions every year translating every official document into a language that very few speak. Madness!
And the gubment spends millions every year translating every official document into a language that very few speak. Madness!
Sorry but to my mind the madness is that the Irish Government don’t demand that the Brits foot the bill for all the Irish Language ‘affairs’ annually in perpetuity. The British should pay for every teacher, every signpost and, hell, even every bloody bi-lingual fag pack warning.
But keep in mind I’m neither Irish nor do I have the Gaelic and that most of what little I know about the place comes from the sort of ‘RA supporters and soldiers who think it a shame that Irish military campaigns are no longer drawn up in Ogham and that Behan would have been so much more ‘authentic’ had he written solely in Irish.
Apparently there was a joke that the only IRA soldiers who had the Gaelic were Sassmen.
I have something of a bee in my dwarvish helmet about the persecution of minority langauge speakers in Europe after I lived in East Friesia.
Lots of Israeli Defence Forces intelligence people have learned Gaelic so they can translate radio message intercepts from Irish soldiers on UN peacekeeping duty in South Lebanon and the Golan Heights.
Herself and I used to speak it in France if we were out somewhere and wanted a private conversation. Brilliant, until one evening the couple at the next table burst out laughing – they were from Dublin.
You would not believe the number of times I have said something derogatory about the shop or *other place of interest* ,we happen to be in, in German to The Bestes Frau In The World and the people behind us in the queue turn out to have come from deepest darkest Bavaria or even from a German speaking colony in Peru.
Worst still are those ‘secret agents’, those brits who actually speak fluent German but don’t let on until they hear us discussing something that interests them. Like my neighbour across the yard; it was only when she interjected into a conversation we were having in the supermarket queue -when The Bestes Frau In The World and I were poking fun at the ‘Norfolk’ ways of the till staff- that we discovered we had been living next door to a former German teacher with a degree in German Literature .
My grandfather was brought up in Wales and he spoke fluent Welsh as well as English. Came war he joined up. Post war he was in darkest Wales in a pub and ordered in English. So two local smart arses started saying all the wrong things in Welsh. Now Grandpa had fought for his regiment in the boxing ring too. So in fluent Welsh he asked the two idiots to join him outside. Needless to say he decked both of them. You should always be careful around strangers when you lapse in to the vernacular.