Banning Cigarette Machines

October 13, 2009 at 4:58 am

In yet another marvellous example of the nanny state in action, our Beloved Leader and his Party have almost succeeded in banning cigarette machines.

From the BBC website and fisked as we go:

A removal of cigarettes from public display is a step closer after MPs said vending machines should be banned and shops should keep stocks out of sight.
You illiberal authoritarian thugs. Now you want to make it more annoying for people trying to buy cigarettes even to smoke in their own homes? Enough already.

MPs supported a backbench amendment to outlaw cigarette vending machines in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scotland has its own separate bill.

Who did? Name names! Probably the Usual Suspects who supported ID cards and that scheme to vet you if you want to enter Toys’R’Us. 

The vending machine amendment to the government’s Health Bill was passed by the Commons without going to a vote.

Ah, so the guilty remain unidentified. Where is the democracy in that? We should be told who is at the other end of that boot stamping on our face…forever.

The bill passed its third reading and will now go before the House of Lords.

Do we sniff the chance of it being overturned by the last bastion of freedom and sanity in the country? Now the Lords is packed with Liebour lackeys then that’s unlikely ever again.

The vending machine ban was proposed by the former Labour minister Ian McCartney, who said it would “change history”.

You can’t “change history” you retard. It happened. In. The. Past. The clue is in the bloody word. Sheesh. Get a time machine or shut the hell up.

Mr McCartney said vending machines gave young children access to cigarettes and condemned them as an “outrageous loophole in our country’s safeguards” against tobacco. He said tobacco was still “the only product in Britain that can be sold legally, which routinely kills and injures its customers”.

What about alcohol? Nail-guns? Tickets to a Millwall match?

The Conservatives had questioned the wisdom of banning shops from putting cigarettes on public display during a recession, when many smaller retailers were suffering from a lack of business. Newsagents say the proposal could cost them £250m in lost sales.

Stuff the recession, how about growing a pair and opposing a ban on civil liberties grounds? That is what the Conservatives are supposed to be all about? Magically picking a number out of your collective backsides to demonstrate the costs doesn’t help your cause, though, sunshire. It just looks stupid.

Tory backbencher Philip Davies said: “This is the nanny state gone mad. On every conceivable level this particular ban is wrong. “It goes against the principle of individual responsibility, free choice and people making their own decisions.”

At least one backbencher has the right idea. So, a single cheer for the blue team on this one.

The chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health (Ash), Deborah Arnott, said the vending machine ban had “made a strong Bill even stronger”.

Why don’t you take your bansturbatory fascist fantasies and stuff them somewhere painful, Deborah, darling. And the BBC too, for writing such a biased one-sided article which relegated the pro-smoking view to four sentences half-way through the piece. 

Where was a quote from FOREST? Or anyone else to balance the article? For pity sake, if you couldn’t be bothered to pick up the phone, BBC, then why not just ask one of the newsroom interns to get a quote from the local paper shop on the corner when she was out buying a packet?

Common sense and smoking have rarely been comfortable bedfellows. TheEye, when at the Royal Naval Hospital, recalls his Surgeon Captain issuing instructions that anyone wishing to indulge on the Department during the day should do so discreetly and near a window. He approved of smoking on the Department as it took the smell of alcohol off of our breath after lunch. Happy days.