Licence my arse
I see the French are considering another little money spinner.
France: €20 ‘licence to smoke’ proposed.
I have seen this idea mooted before, proposed of course by the professional smoker haters. I swear they all sit around a table, tossing around ideas that would annoy smokers, while they idly stick pins in kittens.
Can anyone tell me what this “licence” has to do with health? They actually don’t want smokers to quit as this would instantly cut off the new money stream. This is purely and simply a method of extracting yet more cash from the pocket of the smoker.
The allocation of the permit would […] follow a mandatory medical examination, which would be paid for by the smokers and non-refundable.
So now we have a mandatory medical examination? You go to an anti-smoker doctor who on a whim may declare you unfit for a licence because you have dandruff, and you then have to pay him for the privilege? In effect this is a case of forcing “health” onto the population. If I have a cough or some other chest complaint and I wish to continue smoking then that is entirely my affair. It’s my body, my life and my business but under this proposal my autonomy is removed and I have to abide by the control of the Anti-Smoker Industry.
This licence also dictates how much I can smoke. I get a licence for 20 a day, but then run into a stressful period, do I then have to “upgrade” my licence for those few extra fags? And when normality resumes can I now “downgrade” again? Presumably not – they have my money and there is no way they are going to give it back. Similarly if I buy my licence and a month later I decide to quit, do I get a refund? No. So I might as well carry on smoking if only to get my licence worth..
What’s the betting that the next step would be to make it compulsory to display the licence card at all times? Wear it on a lanyard or sew it into your coat?
Just sayin’
I still encounter smoking Brexϟϟhiteurs who think I am joking when I tell them that Smoking licences (and far more than 20 Euros annually) will come in here before the ink is dry on the final Act. The first one, the first Turkey-What-Voted-For-Xmas, who grizzles about having to pay , say, £150 a year for a licence (with the £50 doctor’s compulsory examination and the mandatory ‘advisory and education’ sessions) to be allowed pay £45 for a pouch of tobacco will get a smack in the gob.
It’s happening in France and France is still in the EU. 😛
Yes in France….a sovereign nation and member of the EU with a sovereign parliament who will be the ones who bring it in, if it does, and make it law in France, the other sovereign nations in the EU may or may not. At least French smokers might, just might, have some redress/protection thanks to the ECHR, Brexit-Brits will have none (May has already said/made clear she will emasculate the HoL and The Supreme Court) .
Your point was?
Also bear in mind French smokers will, probably, simply be able to cross the border into Belgium etc and bring back as many cigs as they like for their own use (One assumes the licence will infact be a licence to purchase and to be presented at every sale). Post Brexshite Brit smokers will be allowed to bring back Duty Free a maximum of 250g/1 carton…and that’s already likely to be reduced to NZ/OZ levels. Thank you Brexshiteurs for nothing.
ridiculous
Might as well make smoking illegal. It would be just as successful as stopping other illegal drugs. TC wouldn’t get any money, Govt wouldn’t get taxes and I think we would be better off with the dealers competing for custom and far more honest than the TC and Govt crooks.
TC wouldn’t get any money, Govt wouldn’t get taxes…
And that’s exactly why they won’t make it illegal, Carol. And all the TC lackeys know that. They spend their time thinking up new ways to abuse us, but never call for making it illegal. They’re like a cat with a mouse it has caught – playing with it, damaging it, tormenting it. But not killing it, because that would spoil the fun.
Is it my imagination or are they getting more bold and shameless by the second?
“Licence My Arse” – Don’t give ’em ideas GD or that will be next on their list!
Fair point. Maybe I’ll just sit on that caption for a while?
Almost before the ink was dry on that one
MoronMacron has come up with another idea for a new law though this is not as a good a money-earner. Wait for it…. drum roll….Making it illegal for a man to follow a lady to ask her for her phone number. ‘E zinks zis constitutes harrasment.
Doesn’t mention anything about an homme chasing another homme for the same purpose…that should outrage the SJWs, Equal Opportunists etc 😀
or women teachers taking advantage of their male pupils…..not that that has ever happened in France….
Don’t think this one will fly either no more than their past brilliant ideas that never came to fruition. But, if on the small chance it actually does become law, my home is always open to you and Herself. We may have anti-smoking campaigns (against cigarettes mostly)going on but that’s the end of it.
This one’s been floated in Australia as well as NZ and has been shelved for now.
Of course the idea is £20 is a starting point, with no upper limit – and the license will eventually be restricted to those born after a certain date.
To my mind it’s red herring. They expect it to be rejected, especially as France has a huge border and those living within a couple of miles of one will inevitably be able to get their smokes from the other side. As they do already – to huge profit – if they live close to the border with Andorra.
On the other hand the Finnish model is probably more appealing with licences for selling tobacco resulting in far fewer outlets selling the stuff.
Trouble with the personal licence approach is the cost of running the scheme will be far greater than the income it will generate – and the people in Australia wanted any surplus for themselves. That’s always a mistake as politicians are wary of handing money over to what are royal pains in the backside in real life.
That said, Glatz managed it in California though his take is something like 20% of the monies raised from a 2 buck a pack tax.
There are of course several flaws with the proposed license; those who can get one will always go for the highest daily allowance and make money selling their surplus. Furthermore the practicality of having a doctor conduct a full medical on about 25% of the population every year will place a great strain on the system, even if in the case of France it’s supposedly to be paid for by the smoker (so private).
A consultation for the uninsured at a leading private clinic in Edinburgh is about £175. That’s just the consultation. A full blown medical checkup is in the region of £600 and it’s likely to be very much higher in London. So there you begin to see that the cry will be that it’s the preserve of the very rich.
It already is – if you buy UK Duty Paid, but here you can see the payoff for the healthists – more money into the medical profession.
Of course a market will quickly spring up for fraudulent medical certificates. And that plays right into the hands of those on the other side of the law.
But that’s been the case for decades. They simply chose to ignore the real consequences of their kack initiatives.
<i>if you buy UK Duty Paid,</i>
Wash your filthy mouth out! Does anyone , excepting the elderly, infirm and masochistic, pay UK Duly Splayed prices these days? FFS! For as long as we are still European Citizens we have the right to fill our boots in the EU.
Hand on my heart, I was in a Tesco satellite store last week and the chap in front of me at the checkout (I refuse to use those scan yourself things because one gobbled one of those new £5 notes – and it was a real palaver for them to get it out of the gubbins) and he asked for a pack of Silk Cut Purple.
That’ll be £11.25 the lass says – and he didn’t bat an eyelid!
However in fairness, things are not quite so easy in Edinburgh and unless you are prepared to dig way down through social and economic strata’s then you won’t get access to smuggled fags.
And last time I looked there were no direct flights to Belgium, though Easyjet does have a daily to Amsterdam (KLM does as well but that’s plain usury). That’s fine if you want ciggies, but their choice of tobacco is pretty limited.
There’s no direct ferry to the continent from Scotland, so you’re stuck with a bastard long trip into England – about 8 to 10 hours – then get over, then back (so at least one night’s accommodation to add to the bill and two days outa your life)
No BD I personally don’t buy a fragment of tobacco in the UK. However even an old buddy of mine who’s wired into that sort of thing still buys ready made fags that he smokes in public. He does get polly bags of cut tobacco – about 250g for £10 – that he uses in rollies when at home. And it’s not bad stuff.
I believe Glasgow’s lots better for all things smuggled, probably because it’s about twice the population of Edinburgh. There it pays smugglers to risk transporting the stuff by road. But that’s all anecdotal.
Yup, I did as told and washed my mouth out. Howdya know it was filthy?
(Would have replied lots earlier but this site came up as gibberish and even had a background audio earlier today. Maybe some antiquated fart’s been pissing around in the engine room, armed with an out of date service manual).
Ah here, hold on now…
“this site came up as gibberish” Isn’t that what this site is renowned for? It it were sensible would people keep returning?
“even had a background audio” Now that’s weird. Either you were in the wrong site altogether or else I would suggest a meeting some very nice people in white coats.
Do you seriously believe I have time to mess around with this site these days? I’m in the middle of a nervous breakdown and have worse things on my mind other than farting around with web sites.
On my tablet doda your site came up for most of yesterday as some type of code. What I saw were mostly symbols, like those on a deck of cards, with very few letters.
And there was some forms of audio, broken and very weak, but just machine like.
It was only when I went on to the laptop at night that I could see the site properly. Writing my comment was fine, but when I checked back to see if it was out of moderation it went to code when I clicked the number doda at top of the post.
I’m on a form of wifi that uses the mobile networks and that’s bug free. All my devices are bug free as well.
I accessed your place through DP’s roll.
Today it comes up just fine.
That is what we in the technical world call “Fucking Weird”.
By the sound of it, what you were seeing was the encrypted form of the site [from the https part]. Most decent sites now use encryption and it should pose no problem whatsoever. The traffic is encoded at the server and decoded by the browser, but for some strange reason your browser seems to be failing [occasionally] to decode properly.
As for the sound – that is baffling. Maybe it was just the browser misidentifying the code stream as a sound file? I honestly don’t know.
As with Grandad marooned over in the Fantasy Kingdom Fun Park & Activity Wonderland Of Eire (Children go 1/2 price when accompanied by an adult Mon-Fri), smokers in Scotland certainly face some challenges due to the distance. Which puts me to shame when I grizzle about having to sit in steel cigar tube full of norfolkers for 12 hours at a stretch to get my baccy. As far as I can recall from my active N2D days, Scots would fly to Spain to buy their baccy, but that might now have changed, it was a whiles back.
“There’s no direct ferry to the continent from Scotland”
Of course, there is! Does a (admittedly anglophile) German really have to tell you? 😉
https://www.dfds.com/ (Newcastle – Amsterdam)
I know Newcastle is inhabited by that orc like race of whingers known as ‘Geordies’ but they are , at least on paper, English and live in England not Scotland.
Asche auf mein Haupt, dear BD. But it’s definitely closer than Dover, innit?
This idea has promise!
Liquor Licence (renewable monthly), allowing the holder to imbibe up to whatever is the current govt. mandated limit. Licence has to be presented when purchasing alcohol, to be stamped/punched by bartender/cashier. Special one-off licences available for authorised multi-person events, to be applied for 60 days in advance.
Pizza Permits. Same concept, similar conditions/exemptions.
The applications of this idea are truly endless….
Bring it on. Would create an even bigger black market than exists today. Whitey van man must be rubbing his hands.
I just wish I knew an appropriate white van man! I must move in the wrong circles!
A few discreet enquiries among your smoking friends would probably result in contact being established, Jax. Failing that, make a few trips to the local boozer, and while you’re standing outside on the naughty step with the other reprobates you could probably find out. It can’t be too difficult, I’m sure.