Tuesday
Sep182012
Working for the Government? An easy mistake to make
Tuesday, September 18, 2012 at 10:12 
This photo was taken in Bristol in June.
It features a person wearing a Plain Packs Protect jacket who was collecting signatures for the pro plain pack campaign.
It's alright, apparently, for taxpayer-funded anti-tobacco organisations to pay people to canvass opinion and collect responses for a government consultation, but when Forest does it the Department of Health demands answers to all manner of questions about our campaign methods.
Curiously, one PPP canvasser told the photographer she was "working for the Government".
An easy mistake to make.
PS. Read Dick Puddlecote on the subject of plain pack chuggers. Dick's post includes an interesting response to a Freedom of Information request about the cost of such activity.
Reader Comments (4)
She is right, of course. Her wages ultimately come from the government, via the DoH, through the PCTs, into the SmokeFree groups and into Plain Packs Protect.
I'm more concerned that she thinks saying "I'm working for the government" is an effective way of getting strangers to talk to her in the street.
I have said all along the Govt's mind is made up on this and now they are working very hard to denigrate your excellent efforts in reaching real members of the public. All they need to do now is claim Big Bad Tobacco paid for all our signatures and then they get to ignore real public opinion in favour of astroturf social engineering. I think denigrating your work was always part of the plan. Maybe they even had a tax payer funded seminar on how to rig this consultation because it has been very dirty and underhand all the way through.
No sampling bias involved then. Doh!
Did you ever think you'd see the day back in 2007 that a poor wee brainwashed jobsworth dressed as a plain packet of fags in a bland beige coat and probably with a Masters Degree, would be walking the streets handing out leaflets denouncing smokers, while proud to admit that she's working for the government.
No neither did I.