On 13th December last year I wrote about the 'smoking' question in a post entitled 'Scare or Scam?' In that post I mentioned about supposed 'charities' which in fact obtained the bulk, if not all, their income from the government and who had taken part in the 'consultation' on, for instance, whether tobacco products should be placed out of sight and how that consultation was 'rigged' to obtain the result required.

It has now come to light that the views expressed by the Tobacco Retailers Association (TRA) were not included in the report that was published by the Department of Health (DOH).

Now, via Taking Liberties, comes the news that the TRA were not the only organisation that was omitted from the consultation paper respondees. The DOH have now produced a new version of the report and the list of respondees has increased from 7 pages to 10 pages with 80 new respondents miraculously appearing out of thin air (smoke free no doubt!).

Bearing in mind 3 additional pages of respondents has been added and that we know the TRA response included 25,000 who were definitely not in favour of 'invisible' displays; why is it that in the response to question 8 the number of responses remains the same in both versions of the report, namely 95,488 and in both versions it states "Around 84 per cent of respondents to this question favour stricter controls, with the vast majority of these preferring option three: requiring retailers to remove tobacco products from display." Neither has one word in the main text of either version of the report been altered, not one (at least as far as I am able to discern). Whether the 95,488 responses detailed in both versions of the reports contained those of the 'omitted' respondents or not, one point is clear. The 25,000 no votes from the TRA make a finding of 84% favouring stricter controls a mockery of basic mathematics. To add to this point, also included in the additional 3 pages of respondents is Gallagher Tobacco and The Free Society. Wm. Hill or Ladbrokes would not even offer you odds on which way those last two organisations would have voted, something which makes the 84% figure look even more ludicrous.

The DOH ask the most weird of people for their views - not Joe Public - of course not - Joe Public only lives in this country. The reason I say that is because what the blazes in all that is holy do Brobot Petroleum or the US Chamber of Commerce have to say about this question I do not know; but they were asked, their names appear on the list of respondents!

For a report that is trying to clear tobacco smoke from the atmosphere it sure has created one hell of a smoke screen, resulting in their findings having to be 'filtered' prior to inhalation of the data. 

Before anyone feels the need to comment on my use of the word 'inhalation' - I use the word as this report and the data contained therein 'stinks'