Message to our elected representatives – stop taking away our freedoms
Wednesday, September 11, 2013 at 9:29 
As I reported last week, the vote by MEPs on the Tobacco Products Directive has been postponed by a month. The vote will now take place in Strasbourg on October 8.
Consequently the battle to convince MEPs to reject the more extreme proposals – bans on menthol cigarettes and smaller pouches of roll-your-own tobacco, even larger health warnings etc – continues.
Last week Forest placed an advertisement (right), with a link to the No Thank EU campaign website, on the Guido Fawkes blog.
We also placed an animated banner ad on a number of other political blogs including The Spectator and Conservative Home which read 'PROHIBITION? NO THANK EU!'
In addition we placed a four-page cover wrap (below) on The House magazine which is sent to every MP, peer and MEP.
If I say so myself, it looks brilliant!
If you support the No Thank EU campaign but have not yet signed up please do it now.
The site allows you to send a letter direct to your elected representatives in Westminster and Brussels.
It's quick and easy and should take no more than a minute of your time. Click here.
Reader Comments (3)
No point with Bill Newton Dunn Lib Dem MEP. We've debated for a couple of days now by email. At first he dismissed me because he had "lots" of messages en masse from a campaign group which he planned to ignore and secondly, he will not stand by his smoker constituents because he does not want his kids to smoke (dunno quite how one causes the other but hey ho)
Secondly, any concern I put to him are simply dismissed as "crying wolf." He thinks smokers are too stupid to think for themselves and can only repeat what the tobacco companies feed to them.
In short, writing to him is a waste of time. There is only one way to show him that he is wrong in his belief that most people agree with him - vote him out in 2014. As the LDs are now Britain's 4th party, clearly public opinion is not on the side of Newton Dunn.
Incidentally, he also had the cheek, after telling me he will not represent my views on this matter, to send me his propaganda newsletter which claims we are better off in the EU - one reason he gives is because of the way the EU is attacking the tobacco industry and consumers. I asked to be removed from that mailing list.
I haven't heard from the Labour MEP and I don't expect to. Labour doesn't speak to either common people or people they don't like and they don't like tobacco consumers.
In Westminster, Karl McCartney is my MP and he is great on this issue. Shame about his party but I will be voting for him in 2015 because I fear what will happen to my city if that little girl parachuted in for Labour gets in. She looks about 12 and has the maturity to match :(
UKIP is our best bet and will get my EU vote but sadly, I can't risk voting UKIP in the parliamentary in such a marginal seat and Karl, because of his Party, is going to need all the votes he can get.
To give him credit, however, he has debated this issue with me for 2 days solid. He is on the side of the anti-smoker industry because he thinks we ordinary consumers are Big T stooges and he ultimately admitted it was about getting at, and bringing down, the tobacco industry which, he claims, the majority of his constituents want.
I think he's deluded and blinded by smokerphobia - an irrational fear of smoking and smokers - and I wonder what he'd make of the rise in UKIP - especially in MEP elections - which has come alongside the attack on ordinary tobacco consumers and lovers of free choice.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/428624/Ukip-will-become-first-force-in-British-politics-EC-President-tells-Conservatives
I had a similar reply from a Lib Dem MEP, except that is very brief. It amazes me how shallow these people are - he said that smoking kills 700,000 per an in Europe (or something similar). What started as a tentative conclusion of an epidemiological study is now as definite as the fact that the globe is warming, and warming faster and faster, and that it is all our fault.