Medal for Stephen WHO?
Wednesday, June 5, 2013 at 10:27 Now here's an unlikely hero.
Our old friend Stephen Williams MP is to receive a medal later today for his part in the war on tobacco.
It will be presented by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in honour of Stephen's efforts on tobacco control.
These include chairing the All Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health.
Helping to launch Plain Packs Protect, the piss poor taxpayer-funded campaign that failed to persuade the UK Government to adopt plain packaging.
And, er, that's it.
(If there's anything else I'll happily update this post. Perhaps someone could send me the citation, if there is one.)
I don't know but I assume the 'presentation' will take place at a meeting of the APPG (run by fake charity ASH) at the House of Commons.
For the record, APPGs are "informal cross-party groups that have no official status within Parliament".
Meetings could be held in the Dog & Duck and it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference.
Anyway I look forward to Stephen tweeting or posting a photo of his medal later today.
Apparently he was on the radio this morning "gushing" about it so it would be churlish not to congratulate him on his achievement.
Whatever that is.
PS. Two years ago ASH was also awarded a medal by WHO, to mark the group's 40th birthday.
I published a photo on this blog and commented, "Doesn't look the most exciting occasion, does it?"
Come on, ASH. A glass of champagne and a few canapés wouldn't go amiss. A stage, perhaps, lights, live music ...
Anything!
Update: "Delighted to be awarded world health org award for anti smoking work" (via Twitter)
Update: Williams has now tweeted a picture of himself with public health minister Anna Soubry and the words, "With public health minister @annasoubry, she backs my campaign for #plainpacks"
Reader Comments (10)
And there was me thinking that all this recent furore about lobbying and the setting up of fake All Parliamentary groups that (according the the BBC) "often use funding and services provided by the lobbyists!" (sound familiar?) would see an end to this insidious ASH tentacle.
Ah well - we can live in hope. After all, didn't the EU get a prize for the maintenance of peace in Europe while at the very same time Athens was burning? These big organisations often don't have much of a clue about the real world, do they?
Yes, I've not heard mention of ASH in the discussions about parliamentary passes and administrative support for APPGs. Are they going to appear on this proposed list of people with passes?
Meetings at the Dog and Duck would remove the need for authorised access to the Palace of Westminster or for a Parliamentary pass.
Can you really imagine those four sat in the Dog and Duck? Fun abounds! They'd turn the beer off.
Not the sort of crowd that you would invite to a dinner party for riveting After Eights discussions about life's pressing issues...yuck!
Great sense of occasion - is the woman on the right actually SMILING or is it just wind? Caused by ingesting all that hot air no doubt!
July 1, 2007: when the passing bell tolled for the Dog and Duck.
They've ruined Britains hospitality industry and peoples social lives with their smoking ban; encouraging governments to squander millions of pounds of public money on nrt which boasts a 98% failure rate.
A one percent reduction of smoking rates in Wales, says it all really.
Tobacco control are now failing, miserably.
Another set of p...ks trying to make names for their selves at everybody else's expense
Ah, well, bankers were rewarded for failure, why not Stephen - it might be the only gong he ever gets!
Speaks volumes about the man that, instead of crawling away in embarrassment, he flaunts his faux success.