Tuesday
Dec042012
Forest's Christmas message to MPs – hands off our presents!!
Tuesday, December 4, 2012 at 9:00 
I am pleased to unveil the 2012 Forest Christmas card which is being sent to MPs, journalists and broadcasters.
Inside the salutation reads 'Happy Christmas from Forest' and on the back there's an illustration of a drab green cracker (geddit?) with the message 'Plain packaging? They must be crackers'.
There's also a landscape version (below) that that has a different salutation: 'Happy Christmas – Say No To Plain Packaging'.
If you would like to send this version to your MP and other opinion formers please email your full name and address to contact@forestonline.org and we will send you cards and envelopes. Maximum six cards per person.
Reader Comments (10)
I hope you don't send one to The Guardian - they'll probably think you're trying to poison them via fifth hand smoke.
I can imagine them running for a face mask just because a man who supports dirty, filthy, smokers has touched it.
Yes, I'd like to send one to my MP. He has represented me well so far and is shocked at how his Govt has been bought off by the tobacco control industry.
Shame we'll lose him next time due to his Govt's stupidity in backing bigots over fair play and common sense.
Pat, we will not only be sending a card to the Guardian, we will be sending cards to ASH, Smokefree South West, Tobacco Free Futures, Fresh and many more tobacco control groups. Christmas is a time for peace and goodwill ....
Will they show any peace and goodwill to us I wonder? Maybe we'll get a respite at least until the New Year.
"Christmas is a time for peace and goodwill ...."
Somebody should tell that to the Guardian, ASH etc. How about requesting a temporary lifting of the ban so we can ALL celebrate? Only until Jan 2nd.? Nah, didn't think so. They'd sooner cut their own jugular.
Happy Christmas, indeed.
Actually in the Bible, the Angels say: "Peace to men of good will". I should hesitate to describe ASH as men of good will.
Do the agencies (did Debs say 190 in an interview?) which form TC send you a Christmas card, Simon?
Yes, Joyce - she said something like that. The reasonable question is why are taxpayers supporting 190 such organisations? Why is there not only one? The same applied to Climate Change organisations, but everything is quiet on that front at the moment. Have they been abolished? I doubt it. The construction of windmills in their thousands proceeds apace.
The reality is that no one gives a shit in Politics. By 'in politics' I mean from the PM down. The Government does not include these politicians. The Government is way, way above any consideration of politicians. But that is only because politicians in the last few decades have been publicity driven wimps.
I really thought that Cameron might be different. I really did. But it has turned out to be that he is just as impotent as all the recent PMs.
I suspect that successive Governments have failed to understand that micro-management is not something that Government can do. There are just too many individuals.
As regards the Smoking Ban, a much more sensible way would have been to offer to pubs etc an incentive to be non-smoking, such as VAT relief. If things had been handled in that way, then property and freedom rights would have been conserved.
The battle against the ubiquitous Smoking Ban will be relentless. Standardised Packaging is of no importance in comparison.
The future, as I see it, is likely to be that Hotels will stay 'tobacco smokeless' and so, probably, will pubcos. But, given a chance, small bars and pubs will appear which are 'smoking allowed'.
The Total Ban cannot survive. It is built upon sand (danger for bar staff). If it does, it can only be because it is true that we are living in a dictatorship. There is no other explanation.
No other explanation? How about we're living in a democracy and most people want a total ban?
Why didn't you do a picture of an elderly lady having a stroke and a small child running from a shop screaming at the sight of the ghastly images that everyone will be exposed to?
Sorry to say, but this is a war where tobacco control have brought out the heavy tanks, and Forest seems to be responding with tickling feathers. How exactly will these cards affect such completely fixed mindsets? I don't see it.
"How about we're living in a democracy and most people want a total ban?"
Do they? Who says? We've never been asked! No consultation about that one. I wonder why? notwithstanding it was only supposed to be a 'partial' ban (food led pubs, remember that fairy tale?) and out of the blue comes a total ban.
Yes, very democratic.