Another brick in the wall!!

[tippexx]

But assuming that the politicians and bureaucrats only care about money and power (which go hand in hand: exercising power costs money, i.e. tax revenue), then plain packaging makes no sense. It would encourage counterfeiting which would mean less tax revenue. Since the black market is unregulated, it would also mean less government control over the tobacco industry. This is why I think that the politicians and bureaucrats don't really understand the implications of plain packaging and haven't really thought the plan through beyond their hunch that it might be a vote winner. A greedy and power-hungry but basically rational person who knew what he was doing would not go for the plain packaging idea. I don't think that this idea is so much a product of power crazed rulers as a result of utter incompetence.

What I said. In the pursuit of power common sense is the first casualty.

[Agricola]

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

CS Lewis

We are ruled by moral busybodies who will not stop until tobacco has been banned from this country. Once this is done they will attack fat people in force, the pastie tax being an example of what these moral busybodies have in store for the future.

Alcohol will never be removed since everyone of those corrupt bastards in parliment knows that as long as the beer flows the working man will tolerate almost anything.

Agricola.

[jonW]

I do wonder what they'll attack once they've banned everything remotely bad for your health.

Movement perhaps? Since that damages your joints and puts you at risk of injury. Have everyone whizz about on hoverboards.

Herfia sounds like a great idea.

[Simon Bolivar]

Nice quote Agricola.

[nev coss]

parliament has never listened to the people who has elected them, just look at foreign aid and the EU, just reading today about the abolition of hanging, at the time a survey found 80% of the people were opposed to the abolition but they did it anyway