Monday
Dec032012
Oops – or should I say Hoops!
Monday, December 3, 2012 at 15:30 Postscript to my earlier posts.
While I was on BBC Breakfast in Manchester on Saturday and my colleague Angela Harbutt was on the BBC News channel in London, another critic of plain packaging was on Sky News.
Amusingly, Mark Littlewood, director-general of the Institute of Economic Affairs, was introduced – incorrectly – as a spokesman for the Hands Off Our Packs campaign.
The look on Mark's face is priceless – fleetingly quizzical, then majestically indifferent.
Click here or on the image below.
Reader Comments (5)
I'm so frightened by that image in the background
Nice to see us getting some airtime ...good performance by Mark Littlewood too.
But I'm shocked by the image you've put up Simon. That zombie in the background - now if that's what smoking does - I'm giving up right now!
Just watched the Mark Littlewood interview.
Arnott did not try to justify standardised packaging - she just spouted the well-worn propaganda, including the usual dig at the vile, evil tobacco companies.
I really think that someone should take up the question of the promotion of fear in youngsters purely as a weapon in ASH's war against tobacco companies.
Mary Whitehouse syndrome.
Nasty.
Arnott once again raises the myth that smokers die prematurely; this is easily refuted.Allow me to give you an example of why these studies show misleading results
Suppose that you were to compare the mortality of people who did their main grocery shop at a discount store, to the mortality of people who shopped at an expensive/high-end grocery store, You would most likely find that the people who shopped at the discount store died younger than those who shopped at the up-market store. You might (erroneously) conclude that it was the products being consumed that affected mortality, when in reality the two groups are not directly comparable, as people who shop at up-market stores tend to be wealthier and live longer anyway .
This scenario explains why for example, cigar smokers appear to live longer than non-smokers. The reason being that cigar smokers are over represented in the most affluent echelons of society.
Professor Peter Finch , when analysing Australian smoking mortality, found a difference in life expectancy of only a few days. this might be explained by the fact that Australia is a society that has a less noticeable differential between rich and poor.
Who is brave enough to ask Arnott for a date ? i,m not.