Tobacco Display Ban

A tobacco display ban has come into force in my local Co-op. Was 1 March the date it was supposed to start? The shelves behind the counter had been covered over by a couple of black sliding doors with “Ask The Assistant” written on them in white. I’d thought they were supposed to go under the counter, but what do I know?

Anyway, it caught me out. I’d forgotten what brand of mulu I was currently smoking. But I remembered the name of another one I often smoke, and so asked for that instead. And the girl assistant slid back one of the doors. And there they all were, all the lovely bright packets, like a line of chorus girls when the curtain goes up. If I’d been a bit quicker off the mark, I’d have said, “Hang on. I’ve changed my mind. I’d like one of those Amber Leaf on the third shelf up instead. The blonde one with the nice legs.”

It seemed to rather defeat the point of a display ban, that as soon as the doors were slid back, everything was back on display again. It was like pornography, and momentarily glimpsing forbidden undies and nipples. And it really is pornography now.

But I suppose that when plain packaging is brought in, when the doors are slid back there’ll just be rows of identical boxes festooned with black lungs. And that might be even more pornographic.

In time, I imagine that it will extend to pretty much everything else in the supermarket. Next the alcohol will be screened off by black sliding doors. And then the confectionery. And then the fresh and processed meat. And then the peanuts and crisps. And the tea and coffee. And sugar. And salt. In the end there’s just be a display of lettuce and cabbage. And there’ll be an army of assistants, to stand in front of each sliding door. It would be like shopping in a grocer’s shop in the 1950s. You’d go in with a list of things to buy, and the man behind the counter would vanish into a back room, and come back with a tin of Spam or whatever you’d asked for. And it would defeat the point of self-service supermarkets, where the customer is in effect given the run of the back room, and the shopkeeper catches them on their way out. The supermarkets allowed shops to cut down on staff, and increase the number of customers they served. They were more efficient. And we can’t have that, can we?

Because back-to-the-1950s is probably the whole point of it. Maybe more like back-to-the-1930s. Or maybe even back-to-the-1830s. The whole idea is to make things less efficient. Like having windmills instead of power stations: people will go back to using candles. And the result will be that everything will take longer, and more work will have to be done. Instead of shopping taking 10 minutes, it’ll take an hour. And so will everything else. They’ll probably outlaw cars and washing machines too. Those were great labour-saving devices. Once they’ve been banned, people will have to go back to walking everywhere and scrubbing their clothes by hand. Which will be hard work, and good exercise, and keep them ‘fit’. And that’s the whole point of life, isn’t it? Keeping fit.

It occurred to me later that, when everything is hidden out of sight, and plain-packaged, and advertising banned, it’ll be impossible to market any new products. Because nobody will know that they exist. And, in the case of tobacco, that will mean that only the existing range of brands, with names people can still remember, will continue selling. And this grants a virtual monopoly to the owners of the existing brand names. Because competition has effectively been forbidden.

Applied across the whole economy, this will be the end of innovation. But then, who wants innovation, if your goal is to go back to the 1930s or the 1740s or the 1480s?

What they want to do is to Smash Capitalism, of course. That’s the whole point of the EU, with its rules and regulations, as far as I can see. The rules were intended to stifle the economy. Same with the smoking ban, and all its associated rules and regulations. It was always intended to drive pubs and cafes out of business. It was always intended to reduce choice, rather than increase it. And make people work harder, and become leaner and fitter, and die of the sort of things people died from in 1190. Like the Plague, or the Black Death. Proper epidemics that wiped out half the population, with cartloads of bodies and crosses daubed on every other door.

And they do want to wipe out half the population. In fact, more like 90% of it.

Back then there were only about 5 million people living in Britain. There was no tobacco, or coffee, or tea, or chocolate. Or cars or planes or washing machines or TVs or radios or computers. Or democracy. There wasn’t much choice in anything at all. But that didn’t matter.  Because they were living sustainable lifestyles. They were living The Good Life. And, much more importantly, they were fit and healthy. Apart from the plague, and the black death, of course.  And the smallpox, and the cholera, and the malaria, and the leprosy, and the arthritis, and the dying at age 30.

But then, y’see, when society has reverted to the subsistence economy of 1040, there won’t be any of these diseases. Because they were all diseases of modernity. They were all caused by smoking. Typhoid, dysentery, cholera, the lot. If you live a natural life, and eat natural foods like cabbages and onions, and drink natural drinks like well water, and you wear natural clothes like sackcloth, and natural shoes like wooden clogs, you’re all but immortal, because you’re living in harmony with nature. And you do want to live healthily and sustainably in harmony with nature, don’t you? Yes, I thought so. It’s only when you get out of harmony with nature’s rhythms, its seasons and cycles, that the trouble starts, and your chakras start playing up something rotten. And what is more rhythmic and cyclical than the motion of the planets as they go dancing round the earth? We will restore the Earth, our mother Gaia, to its rightful central place in the cosmos. And people will learn once again not to plant carrots when the Moon is in Libra, for it is forbidden. And all the books will be written in Latin, and there’ll be only one Book anyway, which nobody will be able to read, thank goodness, because it too will be kept under lock and key behind closed doors, and only copied once every 500 years.

You say your blood pressure is rising, and your heart pounds like a drum? Verily, ’tis the apoplexy, I fear. Here, let me bring leeches and hot cuppes, for we must bleede you at once of your sanguinary surfeit, and applie moustard poultices to your teary eyes.