Pics on fag packets -
Isle of Thanet Gazette 7th September 07
So fag packets are to carry pictures of tumours and diseased bodies. What a splendid idea. I am quite sure there must still be lots of smokers out there who do not realise that the evil weed causes cancer and once they find out, they will give it up pronto. When I was at school, there was a poster on the wall that showed a test tube full of nasty brown sticky stuff - allegedly the tar collected from the lungs of your average puffer. We all looked at it long and hard before we beetled off to the back of the bike sheds. Health secretary Alan Johnston has fourteen different images in mind with which to adorn the cigarette box and has made it clear there will be written warnings too. Oh good. But I can't help thinking the government could spread the net further. No longer might the label on a wine bottle show a tasteful bunch of grapes or a little map of the region, but a full-colour pickled liver. Every pork pie could come with a photograph of a nicely furred-up artery and butchers' shops would be made to display large illustrations of someone in the latter stages of both Foot & Mouth and Mad Cow Disease. Every packet of biscuits and crisps sold could be decorated with an image of a large, wobbling backside and anything with more than 2% sugar, a set of rotting teeth. Legalise Marijuana by all means but only allow it to be supplied along with a video of someone in a state of psychosis or sitting around twanging a guitar and being very boring about the fathomless nature of the universe. Under this scheme a new car should be accompanied by a dvd showing a pile up on the M25 and a selection of mangled limbs and every hotel booking to an establishment with more than five floors would bring you a complimentary copy of Towering Inferno. Coffee jars should be printed with diagrams of blotchy faces (or is it just me that the stuff does that to?) and brightly-coloured sweets with pictures of kids hanging off the ceiling. Thinking of starting a family in the first place? Ovulation-testing kits must contain a leaflet depicting frazzled, exhausted parents with no money and a trashed house and if you want to get married beforehand then let no self-respecting jeweller offer you wedding rings that do not include an audio tape of a bloke snoring and a picture of the bride's mother. As for sex shops - best close them down altogether. There's no end of terrible risks to be contemplated there (see above.) Finally, it is a principle of fine leadership that good example comes from the top. May I suggest that Gordon Brown plays his own special part in the new campaign and undertakes to wear a huge billboard around his neck at all times, showing how the country will look when the whole of the South-East has been concreted over. Then nobody could ever say we haven't been warned...