Plain fag packets plan up in smoke
David Cameron has scrapped plans to force all cigarettes to be sold in plain packs, The Sun can reveal. Health ministers had been weighing up the move for a year.
Campaigners had insisted making packets bland would put smokers off — and stop kids from starting the habit.
The PM initially backed the plan, but has been persuaded it would damage the packaging industry. There were also concerns it could cost £3billion in lost tax revenue and tie up the Commons in bitter arguments.
Mr Cameron has now ordered the proposed law to be pulled from next week’s Queen’s Speech.
A Whitehall source said: “Plain packaging may or may not be a good idea, but it’s nothing to do with the Government’s key purpose. The PM is determined to strip down everything we do so we can concentrate all our efforts on voters’ essentials. That means growth, immigration and welfare reform.”
If you listen very carefully, you can hear the weeping in Australia.
Well done Dave. That's more like it.
8 comments:
Well if that is true, we probably have Anna Soubry to thank for it; a result her ill-considered comments to the press.
Hopefully the next thing Dave will do is sack her and appoint a non-militant in her place. Ah yes, there will be much gnashing of teeth in the Chapman camp. I wonder what the content of his tweets will be when he gets the news, given that he's been crowing about how UK is going to follow in Australia's footsteps...
Of course, plain packs are in the future European tobacco products directive, right?
Good. And if Call me Dave had not allowed himself to be led down this particular garden path in the first place (and the claret drinkers' charter that was minimum alcohol pricing) he might be doing slightly better in the polls now.
Add to this the beer duty cut and it's three major setbacks for the neo-Prohibitionists.
Plain packs are in the scope of the EU Commission but will not enter into force as preferred by Linda McAvan. ;)
See the DRAFT OPINION of the Committee on Legal Affairs to the TD:
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-%2f%2fEP%2f%2fNONSGML%2bCOMPARL%2bPE-510.591%2b01%2bDOC%2bPDF%2bV0%2f%2fEN
Well, well! Who'd 'ave thunk it?
So, combining the Sun report with the document linked to by Rursus above, I think it might be time to resurrect an old song for our celebrations.
I nominate "Ding Dong; The Witch is Dead" - it seems to be a better fit for this than in it's previous outing.
All CMD needs to do now is ditch the wretched public space smoking ban and he might start to get some voters back from UKIP.
I won't hold my breath for this one, though.
Call me a pessimist but we all know the only reason this is being scuttled is because Soubry showed Dave the cost of buying the intellectual property rights and the project outcome that the industry would drop completely off the radar into the gray/black markets.
If not for the fact that the cost were so high in terms of lost and misdirected revenue they would have steamrolled this through in the name of good stewardship of their plebs.
Misanthropic outburst over.
Stalingrad II ?
:)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stalingrad
Does this mean that specialist tobacconists will be able to carry on in business?
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