Epic fail
Thursday, May 9, 2013 at 10:49 I wasn't planning to write about plain packaging today. (Give it a rest, I hear you cry!)
It's impossible however not to comment on the hysterical but manufactured reaction to the Government's decision not to include it in the Queen's Speech.
All the usual suspects are screaming blue murder, pointing the finger at Lynton Crosby, "the Tories' new campaign strategist ... whose PR and lobbying firm Crosby Textor has long-standing links with the alcohol and tobacco industries" (New Statesman).
This conveniently ignores both the lack of evidence in favour of standardised packaging and the fact that 500,000 people opposed the measure in a public consultation.
Amid all the name-calling and temper tantrums ("I'll thcream and thcream until I'm thick"), I detect shock and embarrassment.
Substantial sums of public money have been squandered by tobacco control on a campaign that failed to convince the PM and his Cabinet that plain packaging would work or had the support of the general public.
Publicly-funded websites were commandeered to persuade people to sign petitions in favour of plain packaging.
Former health secretary Andrew Lansley was at one point listed as a supporter of plain packaging on the Plain Packs Protect website.
Public health minister Anna Soubry has been actively (and sometimes furtively) lobbying for plain packs for months.
Despite this – and whatever may happen in future – they couldn't get the policy over the line. Advocates have failed in their quest.
Like a football manager whose team has been beaten by a goal in the last minute after a long unbeaten run, tobacco control lobbyists are lashing out.
We wuz robbed! The goal was offside! We should have had a penalty! The referee was nobbled! Disgusting tackle, their centre back should have been sent off! The opposition didn't play fair, we were supposed to win!
By any standards, this has been an epic fail.
See: Not fair! wail tobacco control industry (It's All Bollocks) and The final throw of the dice for plain packs is so predictable (Dick Puddlecote)
Also: Independent fires blanks as it misses the real story (Hands Off Our Packs)
Reader Comments (7)
Might as well sack them all now then?
They no longer serve any purpose except a drain on the taxpayer, that's all they were in the first place anyhow.
If they want to carry on their spiteful little crusade they can pay for it themselves, or get Pfizer to stump up the dosh.
Simon,
In our local paper yesterday, this article appeared,
http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/10404241.Tobacco_and_alcohol_control_agencies_given_a_new_lease_of_life/
Fresh has been awarded an annual budget of £713,000.
Later in the article it states, the main priority for Fresh is to secure plain packaging for tobacco products.
What an absolute shocking waste of taxpayers money.
Cheers for the link!
Sheila - don't forget that according to "Colin Shevells, director of Balance, said: "The funding we have secured from the 12 North-East local authorities is the same as before but for the first time we have got a two year contract.""
Their £680,000 per annum together with the Fresh funding means that patients in the North East will lose out on about 2.7 million pounds worth of treatment.
Or in other words - I'm all right Jack -Bu**er the sick
Let us not forget the BBC's effort to support its friends in the prohibition movement(s) up to and beyond the last minute.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22449838
I have pointed out to the BBC that it denies a voice to the hundreds of thousands of ordinary people who opposed these measures, that it effectively distorts the truth by telling the story exclusively from the perspective of public health activists together with the companies they attack and that its completely uncritical approach to these issues denies knowledge to those who still rely on it as a useful source of information.
Triggle's PR Exercise on behalf of total nonentities from the public health world is evidence that the BBC neither cares nor listens. No doubt he still believes that the only opponents of plain packaging are tobacco company stooges and that there is such a thing as a public health expert. Triggle is very fond of the word expert.
The Association of Directors of Public Health sounds like an entirely non-expert waste of taxpayers' money to me but the BBC goes out of its way to promote its irrelevant views nonetheless. The BBC is very fond of fancily titled organizations without mandates.
The Institute of Public Health is a glorified refuge for otherwise unemployable lefties so right up the BBC's street as a "worthy" cause.
The fact that it employs Triggle is symbolic of its decline as a credible source of news.
I could understand this piece if the BBC had previously presented alternative views that critically addressed plain packaging or minimum pricing but it never has.
I have complained but do not expect a response. The BBC does not even respond when its stories are factually inaccurate these days. Perhaps it was something I said?
The Indipendent fires blanks link doesn't work.
Corrected, thanks.