Posted on 04/13/2012 4:19:28 AM PDT by EnglishCon
The government is considering plans to strip all branding from cigarette packs sold in England in a bid to make smoking appear less attractive.
Health Secretary Andrew Lansley told The Times the government did not work with tobacco companies as it wanted them to have "no business" in the UK.
snip .....
Mr Lansley said the tobacco companies used certain colours to trigger memories and their brands constituted a type of advertising.
"We don't want to work in partnership with the tobacco companies because we are trying to arrive at a point where they have no business in this country," he added.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
As always, feel free to add keywords as appropriate.
While traveling in up state New York several years ago, I met an older lady from the U.K. She marveled at how cheap cigarettes were here (in New York). I gave her one of my Winstons to try, she had never heard of that brand, she liked it so I gave her what she referred to as a “packet” of them and since she had told me that she was traveling to Virginia and on to the Carolinas, I told her to stock up there, where they were much cheaper than New York.
Doesn’t the U.K. tax cigarettes to death as bad as or worse than the U.S.? Why would they want the tobacco companies to quit doing business in the U.K.?
Some UK tobacco stats here:
http://www.the-tma.org.uk/tma-publications-research/facts-figures/uk-tobacco-market-summary/
Tax-wise:
Tax revenue from tobacco in 2010/11 amounted to an estimated £11.1 billion – £9.1 billion in excise duty plus £2 billion in VAT.
(today’s L/US$ conversion around $17.5 Billion dollars
Apparently they don’t want any business in those taxes either...
The tax on cigs here is ridiculous, because the government’s anti smoking campaign worked. Smokers went from 60% of the population to a fairly steady 20%, leading to a massive fall in revenue.
Mostly I get mine duty free - have a non smoking friend who does a lot of travelling - but the cheapest pack of cigs you can get here is £5.71, about $9.00.
Most of that is, of course tax. I think the current tax on cigs is something like 70% of the total cost per pack.
-—The tax on cigs here is ridiculous, because the government’s anti smoking campaign worked. Smokers went from 60% of the population to a fairly steady 20%, ——
We could do this with illegal drugs if the tax revenue was poured into a PR campaign.
Eesh! I roll my own for about $1.50 a pack.
Can you even buy loose tobacco there?
You can - at nearly $10 for 50 grams - I get about 150 cigs from a pack that size, roll them very thin indeed! Papers are 400 for a quid (about $1.50).
The local pot dealer is cheaper than that!
You'd never know the Prime Minister is a Tory, would you !
Cameron's government is promoting gay marriage, also.
I guess the UK has their share of TINOs just like we have our share of RINOs.
Leni
It's a sad state of affairs when smoking an illegal substance is less expensive that the legal one.
Maybe its a plot by the socialists to get everybody so stoned we won't notice what they're up to! LOL!
American smokers pay less duty because they don’t have an NHS to fund which treats the hundreds of thousands of people suffering smoking related illnesses each year. If the UK stopped the NHS treating smoking related ilnesses and insisted smokers had to buy private healthcare, the duty could be reduced.
It won’t happen of course, but that’s the theory!
Ha, believe me you need to be stoned, or at least mellowed out, to handle what our so called conservatives throw at us daily!
True. Or it would be if cigarette taxes were earmarked to go to the NHS. They are not. They go into the general slush fund to pay for whatever boondoggle currently has the Government’s panties in a wad.
Everyone working here pay 9% of their GROSS income purely to support the NHS and unemployment. Then we are taxed on top of that at between 23 and 40% on our NET earnings, a sales tax on everything but food and books of 20%, our local taxes based on the value of your home (if you rent, the landlord pays), a 70% tax on the cost of fuel .....
Worked it out once that in an average year, everything I earn after the 15th of August is mine, and that is only because I have a very good (and expensive) accountant.
Sorry for the minor rant - the Infernal Revenue really reamed me last quarter and am still annoyed!
The poor sheep, formerly known as Brits, don’t have much of anything left to enjoy by now, and no freedoms left to enjoy any of it anyway. I’d feel sorry for them, if they hadn’t done it to themselves, and are still doing it.
I'd draw the line at legalizing pot, not all illegal drugs, but otherwise am in 100% agreement with this plan.
Took us 70 years to get here.
Looks like you are going to do it in 8 ....
We may yet avoid it, but I’m afraid you’re right. Was there any one thing that you think was to blame? Any moment of no return? Any advice you might have for us to stop the seemingly-inevitable downhill slide?
The entitlement culture and the deliberate degradation of education killed us.
We raised a generation where the way to get housed, fed and money for a few beers for people who had no worthwhile skills was to breed like rats. Any pregnant girl got her own, subsidised flat, child benefit payments once the kid was born, and income support to bring her up to a basic standard of living. The more kids she’d have, the more money she’d have.
The kids watched and learned to game the system almost from birth. Most of them knew education was useless, since it didn’t get you a job that would pay more than breeding. Heck, if you search for “Bread” on youtube, you’ll find an entire series about it - and it is a freaking comedy!
At the same time, education became a huge political football and was dumbed down in the name of inclusiveness. I caught the first wave of this - my first year at university was basically a recap of what I had learned (in school) when I was 15 years old! The powers that be do not want educated, well informed citizens, so they made sure that being one was almost impossible without significant effort.
And why try? You have the safety net, right?
That is the hell of it - it was good intentions that destroyed us.
I do hold that any member of society has the duty to help the ones who slip through the gaps (probably still slightly brainwashed there, but it is also a tenet of the Church) but people turned what was meant to be a temporary help into a lifestyle.
Our moment of no return was in (I think) 1997. The Conservative party were in power and were planning a huge overhaul of the benefits system. The unions had been firmly put in their place - and I am not anti union, but the excesses had gone too far until Thatcher trimmed them back. That created a lot of resentment among the left.
The takers looked, saw that they would be uncomfortable, maybe having to get off their backsides and find a job while having no qualifications or skills, and Labour got elected in a landslide. They voted for bread and circuses, and the producers were simply outnumbered.
Sort of where you are now, but it took us much longer to get to the same point. One of the things that I think delayed our fall slightly is a silly one on the surface - we pay to watch TV. If TV watching was free, we’d have fallen completely 2 decades ago.
EnglishCon, thanks for the thoughtful and insightful reply.
I think Marxists everywhere are extremely clever and persistent at undermining the fabric of societies by playing on the goodness and compassion of the people by manipulate them into approving programs that then ruin the entire nation. What they cannot do through such manipulation, they do through strong-arm tactics through the unions and contrived riots and such.
I was in England a number of times a few years back with a bunch of American friends for a yearly two-week “Summer Festival” put on internationally by the Buddhist tradition I belong to. The group had many members worldwide, especially in America, but the yearly gathering was always held in England because the main teacher and headquarters reside in England.
We had noticed, even in America, that almost all of the many monks and nuns were British, which surprised us a bit since the organization had been active in the US for years as well. We also noticed that the British clergy seemed to have little ability to help us balance our Buddhist practices with our jobs and obligations. They didn’t seem to have the first clue about our lives.
We were puzzled by this until we sat down and chatted informally over coffee with a few monks and nuns in England one summer. Pleased with themselves and their good fortune, they explained freely how it worked for them. They had decided on this Buddhist gig as the path of least resistance: They had found out through friends that they could “study Buddhism” as an “educational program” for which they received large amounts of government support of various sorts for many years, and, for a wee bit of chores and such, they got free food, clothing and shelter at their Buddhist center of residence.
We had gently asked a few kindly worded questions about who was actually paying for this “good fortune” of theirs, and got the expected, clueless, entitled answers: it was - as the welfare folks called it in the States - “Obama’s money”. They were living the good life, and the government was their benefactor.
They talked about how “cool” it was to be a Buddhist and have an exotic Tibetan name and some wild clothes to wear, and maybe a mantra tattoo: they really liked “the Buddhist scene.” And they made it quite clear that, besides it being a groovy way to live, they thought their hard-earned karma had led them to this good fortune of being born in Britain, because - unlike us Yanks - their wise and compassionate government had given them this wonderful opportunity to become enlightened! We were speechless. Buddhism, which we held dear, seen essentially as just another form of welfare by the dissipated members of a socialist country. We returned home that summer a bit sobered.
Anyway, thanks for your answers. I wish you well.
Hypothecated or not, tobacco tax still pays for the NHS in the UK but not in the US.
Everyone does not pay 9% either, for example class 2 NIC’s paid by self-employed people are £2.50 a week, but I do agree taxation is far too high in the UK, but when I lived in California I was barely any better off.
Now I’m back in the UK I pay myself a salary equivalent to the annual tax free allowance and the rest in dividends at a much lower tax rate than PAYE income tax, but I realise not everyone can do that.
If you have need of an accountant, perhaps you should consider becoming a company? :)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.