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(not satire – it’s the UK today!)
Lord Saatchi thinks he’s found something to blame for the sad death of his wife from cancer three years ago.
He’s attempting to introduce a bill in the House of Lords to allow doctors to avoid litigation if they use experimental drugs.
But perhaps Lord Saatchi should target some of the real villains responsible for the rise of preventable diseases.
How about a bill to stamp out companies which make their fortunes from pushing harmful things on the public such as cigarettes?
Companies very much like Lord Saatchi’s PR firm M&C Saatchi which made its fortune from the infamous Silk Cut campaign in the 1990s:
Silk Cut campaign by M&C Saatchi
The British establishment is nothing if not hypocritical.
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Pride's Purge 
Or how about he and his brother using some of their massive personal wealth to help fund cancer research instead of synagogues.
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With all his money it hasnt helped him one bit still searching for whot he cant find but then helping others to could open ones eyes jeff3
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Miliband’s suggestion at the Labour conference to tax tobacco companies more and spend the money on cancer treatment was a good one. It all falls down because none of us believe that either a Labour or Tory government will actually spend money in the way they promised, and of course all the evidence proves we’re right to think that way.
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@ root we as a culture are addicted to being told what is best for us, so that we buy what others offer, so as to relieve our suffering…much of what we buy makes our suffering worse, and rarely gets to the root cause of it….
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Reblogged this on sdbast.
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Anyone accustomed to smoking 20 SILK CUT a day would find their lungs not silky and smooth, but more rather leathery and sclerotic. The answer to lowering the daily death rates is for people to call smoking for the abomination which it is and not to smoke nor accept cigarettes from other smokers, period.
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tune
the trouble is that these destructive and addictive behaviors/habits always have their root in repressed child trauma, to shift these root causes requires truth trust and consent (bags of empathy compassion and love)…@ 1st they provide escape and control, then they control one…even sigmund freud acknowledged this, but continued to smoke cigars…1st give people truth that there is change available that does not involve chastisement or punishment in anyway, ie does not start with making people feel ashamed of themselves…
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OBD – Shouldn’t the people who make money from selling harm to others feel ashamed of themselves, and should try to make amends in some way… or be forced to do so by society? Tobacco is unique amongst legal products in that it is wholly harmful.
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…and speaking of giving to good causes – “Alex Salmond to donate first minister’s pension to charity”.
Can anyone remember any Tory, Labour or Liberal ex-minister doing that? I can’t.
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Reblogged this on Beastrabban’s Weblog and commented:
The Silk Cut adverts were clever, and, if I recall correctly, won a series of industry awards. They also became increasingly bizarre and tangential to cigarette brand itself. I know a few people, who certainly weren’t thick, who wondered what it was that was being advertised. Never mind: Saatchi and Saatchi made their money from pushing the cancer sticks, along with a number of other Tories, who went off to join Philip Morris at Marlboro or British American Tobacco. It’s a pity they weren’t associated with the Death cigarette brand that appeared in the 1990s. Then we could all have had fun with advertising slogans like ‘The Tories: Employed by Death’.
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The government has made a huge amount of money from the sin taxes
on alcohol and tobacco,
which mostly bear down on the poorest people
on the 20 per cent lowest income,
that adds to the poorest’s weight of stealth indirect taxes and VAT
that is 75 per cent of all taxes from people to government,
for all people in or out work and however long we live,
giving the poor a 90 per cent tax rate
even they pay not one penny in income tax.
97 per cent of the benefits bill is the working poor and poor pensioners, who can be the same person. Yet together their income is still far, far below the basic tax allowance.
The poor are told off for smoking and drinking when in receipt of benefit, yet by doing so contribute a round robin of funding for benefit by the billion.
Food banks get little or no state aid, with the government even refusing to allow the EU to donate to the food banks. Themselves insufficient, as unlike in Europe, food banks only permit 3 vouchers in a year.
In European nations, councils/charities provide free daily cafes, giving a cooked hot meal and hot drink to the working poor, poor pensioners and unemployed.
So there is more than enough tax money and surplus food still edible being burnt or going to landfill, to end starvation for all tomorrow.
But for the old, starvation looms forever in old age with the flat rate pension to gives women born from 1953 and men born from 1951 NIL STATE PENSION FOR LIFE
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/state-pension-at-60-now
For the bulk of the rest of these new claimants, will get even less state pension than that already the lowest of all rich nations bar poor Mexico.
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what ever the rich do in life is always the correct thing to do – it’s only everybody else who’s fucking useless!!
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what ever the rich do in life is always the correct thing to do – it’s only everybody else who’s fucking useless!! – look at Bod Getoff!! he’s rich has dubious claims to pay tax and yet is a national hero because he gets other people to donate money to his cause – to which he gives nothing
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@FinkFurst
“Tobacco is unique amongst legal products in that it is wholly harmful.”
Exactly. On the other hand, a small daily amount of alcohol has been found to be beneficial to the heart, especially red wine, cider and beer all of which contain beneficial phytochemicals. The NHS recommends the maximum daily intake to be limited to 3 units for the ladies and 4 units for we guys.
I drink a pint of stout or cider (2 units) with my evening meal. It’s now crazy that a 2 litre bottle of cider is now cheaper than similar bottle of CocaCola!
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we don’t have reasonable government so it is highly unlikely that we will see reasonable behaviours/actions from them, unless it is by accident..people who push harmful substances should be charged with a type of GBH…if they feel ashamed of that, that is up to them to express….let them as both victim’s and perpetrator’s express themselves by consent…taxing the victims of these harmful substances only further harms the victims of them…alternatives should be unconditionally available ie nicotine patches etc…the interact between pusher and user is now very complex…
no strings free money has been shown time and time again not to be abused and to help those who are down on their luck, immensely…similarly when the NHS was 1st set up there were claims from some it would be abused, it wasn’t…people were grateful for the support and genuine help…people always gratefully recognize genuine help and support…the supply chain can only be shrunk by consent…the supply chain of products like tobacco need to be shrunken…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz5dl9fhj7o prof allyson pollock on the NHS…
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OBD – “taxing the victims of these harmful substances only further harms the victims of them”
Is that an argument to remove all tax on tobacco, or do you mean transfer all the tax to the companies which supply it and so make smoking as cheap as possible for the addicts?
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