Monday 22 July 2013

22nd July 2013

I guess that if you went to Eton you might not relate too easily to the idea of fags in plain wrappers.

Dismissed by some of their own party as 'Posh' it is all too easy to misunderstand the current Tory leadership.

If, after a privileged education you went on to a privileged University life how are you meant to understand either the lives that other people live or indeed to care overmuch about them.

So confronted by the howls of outrage from your folk its much easier to say to yourself, let's keep cutting the welfare budget until we've said farewell to the poor.

At what point will we start to see economic migrants queueing up to leave the UK for the prospect of a better life elsewhere?

It would of course just be a case of history repeating itself.

All those folk who took a ten pound passage to the land of opportunity following hard on the heels of those who were sent there for stealing a sheep seem, to have done OK.

And now we're seeing the revenge of the economic migrant returning as a Lobbyist to win an election and help an old friend or two.

Smoking is both popular and addictive.

I grew up in a smoking household and possibly for that reason decided that I wasn't particularly attracted to the habit, so I am a non-smoker and therefore a disinterested party.

That I suppose is why tobacco, screened behind counters, sold in plain packaging or left around in free trial packs, leaves me quite unmoved.

I can't say the same for Gin or Whisky or a pint of real ale.

Then again smoking carries all the risks, as stated on the plain or decorated packaging, and some of those risks lead people directly to the doors of A&E.

The impact of smoking on health, and of course of alcohol as well, is one of the reasons why the NHS is under such pressure.

So it is interesting that as the pressure mounts to expose the extent of conflicted interest, that the links between winning an election, selling tobacco and opening up the health service to private competition seem to trace back to one and the same lobbyist.

There is no conflict of interest we are told, which is probably true because the parties in this drama all share the same interest.

What I imagine would be the preferred outcome of all of this is that in future all lobbying is done in plain packaging and any links with the lobbyist and the politician would be perceived as purely accidental.

Meanwhile it is in the interests of the privileged elite to keep the focus of the debate on the unions and, heaven forbid, the proponents of welfare.

Maybe the Labour leadership needs to lay down a new challenge, 'Repent for the kingdom of Bevan is nigh'

Now there's an election slogan that's clear, like our packaging.


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