On smoking, the Conservatives are now the ‘Party of NO Choice’
Remember when the Tories labelled themselves as the ‘Party of Choice’? On smoking, the Conservatives are now the ‘Party of NO Choice’.
This Writer remembers the ‘choice’ nonsense very clearly – particularly as a way of justifying a private health company running alongside the NHS; it gave us choice. Privatising the national utilities was said to give us choice too, even though they were all using the same systems that the nationalised utilities had run before. The service was no different – only the prices they chose to extort from us.
With drugs that cause serious diseases, like tobacco (lung cancer) and alcohol (heart disease), the tactic was always tax – but the rhetoric was still “choice”. We could choose to pollute our bodies in those ways, but we would have to pay for it.
Now, with smoking, we’re being deprived of even that choice.
The rhetoric has changed to “there is no liberty in addiction”, as Health Secretary Victoria Atkins stated in the House of Commons. And it’s a good point. Tobacco is addictive (as is alcohol) so the choice it previously represented is a fake one.
Some Tories opposed it – but they are lunatics and criminals: Liz Truss and Boris Johnson have both spoken against the smoking ban as an attack on our freedoms. They were ignored.
But for the Tories, it is crossing the Rubicon. The Conservatives are now the ‘Party of NO Choice’ – they tell you what to do and pass laws to make you do it.
And this is not the first such law. Look at the bans on peaceful assembly and protest.
What will they take away from us next?
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No choice on whether you want to smoke and damage your health.
But water companies are allowed to choose between creaming off the profits instead of returning them into improving infrastructure that’d prevent them from filling our waterways full of sh*te that poisons everything in it and anyone immersing themselves in it.