Stop me smoking: Government U-turn on Plain Packs

Earlier this week, I visited the Doctor. After going through my questions related to my ailing body (yes, I am falling to bits at the ripe old age of 22), she asked me if I was still a smoker. I answered truthfully, which is quite difficult for me as even now after 4 years of on-off smoking, I’d still not recognise myself as a ‘smelly’ smoker.  Perhaps just a casual, ‘clean’ one?

I explained that I go through prolonged periods of abstention, followed by even longer periods of non-abstention. The doctor explained that I might need some support to kick the habit (because 2 months at a time is not really being a non-smoker, though could perhaps be considered semi-smoking?). “No”, I thought to myself, “What I really need is the packets of cigarettes that I love carrying around to be covered in dead people and black lungs and under-developed babies.”

And so then to today’s news from the government, that they will be waiting for at least another year to ban branding on packets, because the Australian introduction of this law is now acting as a trial for the British government.

What a useless excuse. We are not a reactionary country, based on statistics. We are a country based on morals. As a (semi-) smoker, I’d love nothing more than to have cigarettes branded in black. I would immediately quit. Whilst we still have red stripes on packets, I will continue to pretend I am the Marlboro man.

It seems, then, that the government has given in to the lobbying and soft-power marketing being dropped into packets of cigarettes. The companies that pushed so hard to ban black branding in Australia clearly have much more power in the UK. So whilst the tax goes up on cigarettes in the UK to the 2^nd highest prices in Europe, people are still attracted to smoking.

The government is at risk of creating a taxed fashion accessory. There is a theory in luxury, that the more exclusive or expensive an item is, the more attractive it is and thus the more people consume it. And they consume it openly, in order to attract attention. This theory is known as conspicuous consumption, and with cigarettes verging on £10 a packet; this surely will become a factor. There are only so many people who will quit smoking; the others will continue. And as a luxury image develops around these cigarettes, they will smoke more openly and attract more attention and smoking will quickly become what it was in the 60s: a luxury hobby (albeit deadly).

The only way to stop this from happening, to remove the fashionable image of cigarettes, is to remove the branding itself. Until the government gets out of bed with the Tobacco companies who unethically tempt us (me included) into inhaling their products that will - essentially, kill us - prices may rise but the sexual allure of cigarettes attracting young children to smoke will remain. Today’s youth are image conscious: make something look bad and they will abandon it.

I’ll stop when branding goes black. Until then, as the British Heart Foundation put it: thousands of people are at risk. 

Thought of the Day

If Saudi Arabia funded the Taliban, who used jihadists from Al Qaeda, who consisted at least partially of Saudi citizens (nb. 9/11 suicide bombers), surely the real problem was never Afghanistan?

7 Questions on Egypt

The events in Egypt are a concern worldwide, and they are not something that I am going to pretend to know a lot about. However, with the toppling of Morsi and Blair's declaration that what is now being seen as a coup d'état being justified and necessary, I do think it's important to ask some vital questions:

1. Why was the flawed electoral system that allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to gain power on 10% of the vote, allowed in the first place? Even the contentious First Past the Post system in the UK has a higher success rate that is more proportionate of the electorate's views. 

2. Accepting that this form of democracy was agreed upon, why were the Muslim Brotherhood not supported by the International Community in leading a complex and turbulent nation? Surely a multilateral coalition would be able to advise and guide the Muslim Brotherhood, who apparently have lots of nice ideas but very little knowledge in implementation (except economical ones).

3. How can Blair possibly support a coup d'état? Well, Blair does support Saudi Arabia and Israel and wars with no grounding whatsoever. And he makes a killing from it. So Tony Blair can do what he likes, really. 

4. How can a coup d'état possibly bring peace when the Muslim Brotherhood are the officially elected party? Surely the only new option is further elections. Though perhaps a different voting system may be able to swing the election in the direction the Army want. 

5. What's going to happen to Morsi, who is now in Prison for doing, essentially nothing? Being in Prison for doing nothing sounds like a nice Thatcherite policy. 

6. What direction does Egypt really want to go in? There are large divisions between the MB and their opposition. But there are risks that islamic extremists can seize this opportunity to exploit the electorate to try and demonstrate that the premise of their revolution- democracy, is not going to work. 

7. What happens next? The International Community will care about this, even if they're going to have to leave it up to the Army to sort it out. 

I've changed my mind on the EU : I like healthcare reimbursements

I rarely state that I am wrong. But in the last 8 weeks, since returning from France, I have realised that I have been. Once.

In France, whilst  studying at the prestigious ESSEC (which means nothing to people outside of France and Singapore, where there is a campus) I took classes on the European Union. A boring module about parliaments, treaties and agreements named after otherwise insignificant places, the teacher, a typically arrogant Frenchman, argued dirtily when I took issue at his opinion of the British and prodded his ego like a caged monkey when I told him that the French had a secular system that was based on flawed and partisan Christian values. France did not, I explained, take time off for Eid despite taking time off for Easter : Not very secular.

But despite this teacher's inability to engage with the British psyche, the ignorance he displayed when he didn't understand why we'd want out of the EU and the lack of comprehension of the way of life on our islands, I feel compelled to make a single statement: I was wrong.

Now you may think that I could have changed my mind about the EU when they started providing me with a free education in France and throwing copious amounts of money to support this treacherous experience. But no. I did honestly understand the reason we may want out of the World's largest trading bloc and economy. Like bendy bananas and human rights, for instance.

You may also think that the time I managed to get around the entire of Europe without a passport might have convinced me. But I always do enjoy reading the pretentious proclamation on the front page, reminding me that the Queen will always look after me.

When I got hit with £35 of import duty for a pair of swimming shorts from Australia, I was almost convinced. But then clearly that diabetics are hypothetically banned from driving is much more important than a free trade agreement.

Today, however, I received a phone call from the Department for Work and Pensions: my medical expenses that I'd forked out for over a year ago in Paris were being refunded to me. I suddenly realised that, more than being a European citizen, being a British citizen of the EU lets you export the best parts of British culture and take it with you in a flask of NHS elixir. Fish and chips are of course excluded from this list, but in reality the EU does let the British maintain our identity whilst being part of a real global, free-thinking and innovative wider society. Great, I thought. Apart from one thing - I'm going to have to accept that I was wrong.

Fry's missed the mark with Eye Spy.

Every time I return to my family home in Devon, I am shocked at how insecure and threatened the residents of my leafy and dreary village feel. Isolated from society, they feed on tabloids of hyperbole as if it the most nourishing and representative portrayal of modern society. I spend a good proportion of time talking to friends and family, explaining that despite to their beliefs, people do not walk openly around cities armed with machetes instead of handbags (well, why carry a purse when you can just decapitate the shopkeeper?)

Stephen Fry's Eye Spy is an attempt to reassure the public that contrary to what the tabloids would have us believe, society is not drowning slowly from the selfishness that - depending on your political persuasion - is a direct result of either capitalism, immigration or communism. The Daily Mail's seemingly sole purpose to bolster the hardliners and tempt us blindly into a sense of hatred and bitterness that has become as much of a British stereotype as fish and chips and tea and biscuits. The Mirror exists purely to blame Margaret Thatcher. For everything. Ever.

But Stephen Fry has missed the mark. For, as much as this programme is a blessing to me as educational material on society that I can recommend to my Mail-reading grandmother in a desperate attempt to satisfy her that Britain is not the hornets' nest of crime that she has been convinced to sincerely believe, it is no less farcical than the X Factor and Britain's Got Talent.
Just as a 4 year old Jazz dancer is not possibly as talented as a 22 year old world champion in Samba, a 6 year old being challenged not to eat a marshmallow does not prove that society is moral any more than someone's ability to look after a goldfish without killing it. My sister at the age of 6 would not be able to restrain herself against the sugary allure of a marshmallow for more than 8 seconds yet she is someone I always look to for moral guidance. And even now, she cannot be trusted with a goldfish.

It is the constant stream of headlines about Britain's emerging moral black hole that scares people into believing that we are 'going to the dogs'. My grandmother, who is the epitome of the grey voter, has begun locking the back door whilst she's in the kitchen in case the village's sole Nigerian resident decides to pop round and savagely end her life whilst simultaneously assuming her identity and stealing her credit cards. Midsomer Murders, in my grandmother's mind, is more a portrayal of ITV News than an ITV Mystery Drama.

I was already having doubts about Eye Spy: it's nice to have a comforting night in with a hot chocolate watching people affirming your faith in humanity, but is this a real representation of Britain today? Would people actually react in the way Channel 4 would have us believe? Then my friend told me that in one of the restaurant scenes, two of the people who reacted badly to the contentious waiter-character that no-one would ever take seriously, spouting out ironic and lazy racist insults at a mixed race couple, were from his drama school. They had been asked to come and eat at a restaurant. They knew they were being filmed. They responded accordingly.

It seems to me that, although providing me with some nice light entertainment that feels like it's been dreamt up by some communist dictator to make people be nicer to each other, Eye Spy is about as real as the ingredients of the marshmallow placed in front of the naturally disobedient children. Britain is not that bad, and racism is generally frowned upon. But actors don't need to convince us with that: Britain is a multicultural and diverse society. We have our problems but we have exceptional strengths also.

What Britain needs to hold it together is community, not Channel 4's soft power exertion that looks like a new format of Supernanny's special selection of material for Cbeebies. Stephen Fry would do better to educate us, than patronise us into being nice.