Parliament is voting on this next week, I believe. No debate necessary. Breitbart:
The IRA are set to make a staggering £22 million a year more in counterfeit cigarettes when plain packaging legislation goes through because the packs are so much easier to fake. Police in Ireland have said that pain packaging is “not the solution”, and blamed politicians for creating a “nightmare scenario”.
Various IRA factions already smuggle and sell counterfeit cigarettes manufactured in the Far East, making more than £65 million a year between the groups through the trade. But evidence from police and customs shows that the groups are planning a wholesale switch into manufacturing their own cigarettes when plain packaging rules are introduced in 2016, the Sun has reported.
Via a well-connected MP and an intermediary I’ve heard that David Cameron was told by an anti-smoking group that if he didn’t introduce plain packaging before the election he’d be followed throughout the campaign by a man dressed as a cigarette.
Needless to say, instead of telling the public health bullies to f-off, our PR PM rolled over. Again.
I can believe that. Cameron goes whichever way the wind blows.
He’s also avoiding TV debate…
Nigel Farage has challenged TV broadcasters to press ahead with election debates with the prime minister. Ukip leader Farage told LBC radio he fears David Cameron will succeed in scuppering the set-piece events.
Revealing his belief there will be no election TV debates, Farage said: “I hope the broadcasters actually have the guts to come back and say we are going ahead as planned.”
Cameron has been accused of torpedoing the debates, which have proved popular with the public. Political rivals have claimed the prime minister is “running scared” by dodging the events.
…with the quick-witted Nigel Farage:
Nigel Farage this morning rejected claims he has been ‘sent by God’ to save Britain from the European Union – insisting: ‘I’m not the Messiah, I’m a very naughty boy.’
The Ukip leader’s remarks, echoing one of the most famous lines from Monty Python’s Life of Brian, came after he was played a clip of a documentary aired this week featuring one of his more obsessive fans.
Former nurse Jill said Mr Farage ‘probably didn’t realise it’ but had been ‘sent to protect us against the EU’.
Frank Davis 
If Cameron is so easily fazed, why not threaten to send TWO anti-plain packaging representatives in cigarette costumes to follow his every move.
If both sides kept upping the ante, it could end up with hundreds of giant cigarettes following Cameron everywhere he goes.
In fact, a cigilike could even run against Cameron in his constituency.
This could be the best idea that the anti-smoking lobby has ever had.
That’s inspired!
Cameron is a fool; surely the smoking cigarette character would be banned from the places he’ll be campaigning in.
Like hospitals for instance. He likes campaigning in hospitals.
If I was as popular as Cameron, I’d try to make sure that I was in close proximity to medical facilities at all times.
and pubs:
and places of work:
or places with food:
I can see how they would let a smoking cigarette anywhere near these places ;)
Who knows, some sympathy may be elicited for the smoking cigarette character … for the banning of his freedom of expression ;)
That should be ‘can’t see’. Apols
Farage should stage his OWN debates — simply offering a “stand-in” for Cameron et al that would offer canned and selected, but honest-as-he’s-said-on-occasions answers to questions. The Camerbot would have a chance to read the answers allowed, with Farage then having an opportunity to respond.
The back-and-forth element of the debate would be a bit tough, but aren’t there underlings in the big parties who might jump at the chance of raising their profile in the public eye by representing their parties’ main positions in a debate with Farage? Even if they were afraid they’d get their butts whipped, they’d STILL have a chance at getting their faces known through a widely viewed podium. If I was in Cameron’s party, was fifth or sixth down the list in the totem poll, and was power-hungry… I’d bite. Remember the old saying “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.”
– MJM
Mike these media approved politicians don’t tend to like open forum debates that haven’t been lets say washed and rinsed before the event happens………….Gore debating global warming,he wouldn’t touch it unless it was TOTALLY SCRIPTED………..He cancelled any event he found wasn’t scripted.
Harley, agreed… but that’s why Nigel Farage would benefit from a “pseudo debate.” If it’s done well, the media will be almost forced to pick it up and run with it.
Mike any of us in a pseudo-debate would wrap rings around the Nazis………..Especially you! lol
LOL! Thanks for the vote of confidence Harley! :>
Tobacco Control really are the lowest of the low. I’m saddened but not surprised that they should debase the democratic process; they debase everything they touch, after all.
They have literally destroyed the foundations of todays civil society…………..almost completely. Take a pick it doesn’t matter the subject or object they’ve had their socialist hands in it………..from politics to the home kitchen. Nothing has been left unscathed especially science.
Let’s ban smoking in public
A RECENT report by former health minister Lord Darzi suggested that smoking should be banned in public spaces and parks. Cities such as New York, Toronto and Hong Kong have already banned smoking in key public locations. Earlier this month, Bristol became the first British city to take up the challenge, when two city squares, Millennium Square and Anchor Square on the harbourside, became smoke-free, albeit with a voluntary request.
It is more than seven years since smoking was banned in pubs, restaurants and other public buildings. New legislation banning it in cars has been passed. A spokesman for Forest, the smokers’ lobby group, predictably called Lord Darzi’s proposals “illiberal and unwarranted. Smoking in the open air harms no one apart, perhaps, from the consumer.”
I disagree with that. Ever since July 2007, when the indoor ban came in, every bar or restaurant has had groups of smokers on the pavement outside, surrounded by a noxious fug of carcinogenic air-pollution. In many cases, the ash-receptacles that were then provided have now been broken, vandalised or removed, so that pavements are littered with dog-ends, often thrown down still burning.
I object to having to breathe second hand cigarette smoke every time I walk up the street. Forcing all the smokers out of buildings into the open air has only relocated the problem. I come home from every shopping trip with the stench of cigarette smoke in my nose. And second hand cigarette smoke is said to be even more harmful to health than the smoker’s own lungful.
Smoking is a revolting habit which should have been left behind in the twentieth century. I am wholly in favour of banning it in all public areas, whether indoors or outdoors. Brighton and Hove should follow Bristol’s lead.
. .
Graham Chainey
http://www.theargus.co.uk/opinion/soapbox/11840304.Let___s_ban_smoking_in_public/
“Well-connected MP and an intermediary I’ve heard that David Cameron was told by an anti-smoking group that if he didn’t introduce plain packaging before the election he’d be followed throughout the campaign by a man dressed as a cigarette.”
At face value it sounds like something those juveniles might attempt, however it’d never happen for two reasons:
– It’s too close to stalking and that’s an offence.
– Cameron’s security people would not take kindly to anyone in a costume being anywhere close to their charge. Far too easy to slip in a Jihadist and far too easy to conceal a weapon.
However it sort of passes as a weak and watery excuse and I don’t doubt the anti’s are quite happy for this to do the rounds because it serves as a warning to other politicians who may consider stepping out of line.
There’s no such thing as a tame virus. They created it, they feed it, so they’ve got no right get all pouty when it turns on them.
Well, maybe they were bluffing. But maybe Cameron didn’t call their bluff. These people are, by their own admission, confidence tricksters. That’s how they got a smoking ban through Parliament. Click on the Deborah Arnott image in the right margin to read her telling it in her own words.
Id call their bluff and light up then blow smoke in their Nazi faces………..
Sick again damn stomach bug wife had it all week and poof today at noon here it come after eating a pop tart of all things………no bingo tonite as this crap lasts about 4 days. with her 6 days. Now wheres my puke bucket…..BLAAAAHHHH!
Scot, I think you’re mistaken about the “too close to stalking thing.” I’m pretty sure that EXACTLY that trick (the human cigarette following a politician around acting like it was his friend, Big Tobacco, trying to sell cigarettes to children) was played over here in the US on at least one, and maybe more occasions.
They also have some nice billboards aimed at a Free Choicer named Fred Upton, showing a poor cute little 6 year oldish girl staring bleakly out from behind the oxygen mask she needs to wear because he won’t support the local “Clean Air Act” or somesuch.
They’ll play every dirty card in the deck and justify it all as being aimed against Big T.
– MJM
They played the same game with Herman when he was going to run for president with a black uncle tom following him around remember…….
herman cain
America’s new smoking scam: How tobacco is making a comeback among millennials
Reversing a decades-long trend, young people are smoking more than anyone else in America. Here’s why
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/07/americas_new_smoking_scam_how_tobacco_is_making_a_comeback_among_millennials/
More honor on the battlefield than in the ballot box
I couldn’t care less about the debates, I hated the last lot and see no point in them. Don’t much like the American ones either but at least they have a Presidential system. All seven might be amusing but that’s all.