Introduction
Each month this blog will choose one person or an organisation to be our Super Twat of the Month. Our STOTM will normally be a public figure who is an anti-smoker activist and/or someone who is trashing (or attempting to trash) our civil liberties in support of a Nanny or Surveillance State. If this blog had to have only one motto, it would be "Educate, Don't Legislate." STOTMs want to legislate your lifestyles away. The people we choose to be STOTMs often claim to be in support of civil liberties, but in reality they only want liberties to be applied to the causes or groups of people they identify with. Here we call them out for their hypocrisy. We are not so naive that we believe this blog will have any impact on their decisions, but we can hope.Super Twat of the Month - June 2012
June's Super Twat is none other than Andrew David Lansley, CBE, MP, representing South Cambridgeshire. |
| Health Secretary Andrew Lansley - STOTM for June 2012 |
Houston, We Have A Problem
When we choose to write about our STOTM, we have rule that, in the interest of fairness, we should always include some good things about that person. No one is all bad;' no one is all good. For the last few weeks we have scoured the Internet looking for any good things Mr Lansley has done. And you know what? We couldn't find anything. Google was not much help to us either:
Nevertheless, we must be fair. We pored over his voting record only to find that he abstained from all of the contentious votes. We read interviews. We asked on Twitter. Nothing. We had to find at least one good thing, else we would be tempted to invent something along the lines of: "Did not conspire with hostile extraterrestrial beings to take over the world." To be honest, we could not be certain he has not done so. Perhaps the whole of Parliament is in on that particular conspiracy. We don't know. Fortunately, after weeks of tireless searching, we found something good.
The Good
- Mr Lansley is "always pleased to arrange for constituents who are visiting London to have a tour of the Houses of Parliament or to climb the Clock Tower, Big Ben."
The Bad
- Mr Lansley was caught up in the UK parliamentary expenses scandal for re-designating or "flipping" his second home and claiming for lavish furnishings.
- His views on the recession are pathetic and wholly typical of the technocratic privileged class: "Interestingly on many counts, recession can be good for us. People tend to smoke less, drink less alcohol, eat less rich food and spend time at home with their families."
- Seeks to implement plain packs for cigarettes and tobacco products despite that this will lead to the loss of over 80,000 jobs. Indeed, he has said that "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."
- Mr Lansley is responsible for producing a rigged and evidence-lacking plain packs public consultation written by tobacco control advocates.
- Under his watch, the NHS has begun "lifestyle rationing" in refusing to treat smokers or the obese.
- Lansley's proposals for reforming the NHS are misguided and will likely lead to further lifestyle rationing and quite possibly the destruction of the NHS.
- He is a hypocrite, saying that government should not lecture its citizens about lifestyle choices as it would be counter-productive, but then decides to completely abandon the Conservatives' "responsibility deal."
- The health secretary lacks integrity on his own beliefs by first speaking out against minimum pricing for alcohol then changing his mind and supporting it after he was forced to do so by his party.
(Undoubtedly, we have left off a great many things due to space constraints, and we encourage you to include your own in the comments, while you still can.)
Please Stop Electing This Man
If our Vote Them All Out campaign needed a mascot or figurehead, we would choose Andrew Lansley in a heartbeat. He is a career politician and civil servant who depends on taxpayer money to support himself and the causes he believes in. He has spent his entire life ingratiating himself into politics without ever having achieved anything worthwhile. As the Health Secretary, he has become the worst kind of technocratic nannying tyrant, insisting that smokers have no place in Britain. He has had numerous conflicts of interest with big businesses and lobbying groups. So why does he keep getting re-elected? It wouldn't have anything to do with spending millions of taxpayer money in his own constituency, would it? |
| Please Vote This Big-Headed Man Out of Office Artwork courtesy of Mark Wadsworth |
Mi Casa, Mi Casa
Much has been said already about Lansley's involvement in the parliamentary expenses scandal. He admits that he worked the system to his benefit, but at the same time places the blame on the system itself. But let us get this straight. He spent thousands of taxpayer money renovating Tudor-era cottage and just as he's selling that cottage he flipped his expenses to his London flat where he claimed thousands of pounds for expensive furniture. HisPlain Packs
There is no doubt in our minds that Andrew Lansley believes that you and your children are complete fucking imbeciles. You are so stupid that you will be tempted to start smoking by just looking at a shiny cigarette pack. Never mind the huge health warnings, the pictures of rotting teeth and cancerous tumours that grace all tobacco products sold in the United Kingdom. Never mind that there is not a single shred of evidence that supports the premise that anyone began smoking because of the design on a packet. Never mind that plain packs will make it much easier for counterfeiters to flood the illicit market with even more brands of dodgy fags that could seriously harm children, women and men. Never mind any of that. No, instead, Andrew Lansley and his puppet masters of tobacco control will stop at nothing to ensure that you and your stupid, gullible children are protected from dangerous trade marks on a box.And they will stop at nothing. The whole public consultation on plain packs is rigged. There are questions which you can only answer affirmatively in support of plain packs. The evidence is also rigged. The impact assessment is rigged. It's all fucking rigged to provide the result that the tobacco control industry wants to receive.
If Andrew Lansley had even the tiniest mote of integrity, he would abandon the consultation now. But he will not do so. He wants to ensure tobacco companies have no business here in the UK, perhaps because that supports his interests in Big Pharma. He doesn't care that retailers will struggle and lose business; he doesn't care that 80,000+ jobs depend on the tobacco industry; he doesn't care for the rule of law and trade agreements. Smokers and tobacco companies are an easy target for politicians seeking to look as if they are doing something good. By supporting plain packs and deliberately or tacitly rigging the whole process, Lansley has proven that he has no integrity whatsoever, which is sadly true for far too many career politicians.
Plain packs will not sound the death knell of tobacco use in the United Kingdom. It will not decrease the number of new smokers. It will not decrease the number of current smokers. It will not protect one child or any adult. It will, however, rush in a prohibition-era style of criminality in the illicit market that the UK is ill-prepared to deal with. This will lead to even more laws, such as limiting the non-EU duty free allowances to a few packets like Australia has done, and it will further enhance the unofficial mandate for UKBA to confiscate even more legally-purchased tobacco products in other EU countries. We foresee the likely possibility that anyone caught in possession of colourful, branded cigarette pack bought outside of the UK will be fined and treated as a criminal for displaying a tobacco advertisement. We foresee greater numbers of people harmed from counterfeit tobacco products. We foresee plain packaging being extended to other "harmful" products until nearly everything is plain and ugly-looking to protect you from yourself. And Andrew Lansley, along with every sheep minion MP who votes for that legislation will be to blame for it.
Reforming the NHS
We were going to write a lengthy treatment on Lansley's NHS proposals, but then we stumbled upon this rap video by MC Nxt Gen (aka Sean Donnelly):This blog is no fan of the NHS's decision to waste its money on denormalising human beings who smoke. While we do not wish to see the demise of the NHS and we agree that some reformation is necessary, it is incredibly hard for us to feel any sympathy for the NHS with doctors going on strike over pensions, and let us not forget lifestyle rationing against smokers and chubby folk. Lansley's NHS reform proposals may be misguided indeed, as is everything he has done lately, but until the NHS changes course and starts treating everyone equally, we will not stand up for the NHS. That said, to borrow from the rap video above, Lansley really is a grey-haired tosser.
In Closing
This blog calls on Prime Minister Cameron to sack Andrew Lansley from the cabinet immediately. We humble citizens and residents of the United Kingdom would like to arrive at a place where we are no longer tortured by hypocritical nannying tyrants like Lansley. So much for that Big Society, eh Cameron?As for you, Mr Lansley, we would like to welcome you into the dubious ranks of Super Twattery. Congratulations, sir, you are our Super Twat of the Month.
