Designed for maximum offense.

I love it 💞.

Why is Labour doing this to themselves?

It's not clear how they will police this. Will you need to provide ID at point of sale?

You have to right now if you're lucky (unlucky) enough to still look like a child otherwise the seller is fined quite substantially and they do spot checks to enforce this. Same with alcohol. The difference is that the lowest age will increase each year.

What metric? Metric? The metric would be: Deaths. Perhaps you mean sources of this claim?

NHS Statistics on Public Health 2023 shows that smoking was attributed to 74,600 deaths. The same statistics show 408,700 attributable admissions to hospital due to smoking.

The Office For National Statistics showed that, in comparison, there were 10,473 deaths from alcohol-specific causes. Whereas the Government figures from another study showed there were 339,916 alcohol-specific hospital admissions, 280,747 alcohol-related hospital admissions under the narrow definition, and 1,018,986 alcohol-related hospital admissions under the broad definition in England (you can read up on the definitions yourself).

So in terms of deaths smoking is by far the greatest of the two evils. Whilst it is right to point out alcohol still causes harm if the government were to focus on one then smoking and vaping is the right one to focus on.

If it "reeks" of anything it reeks of making a compromise of what is more damaging to society and what could reasonably be done given the current circumstances.

Smoking / vaping hands down trumps drink. That's not to say drink isn't damaging but of the two what is more damaging.

It's actually one of the more sensible things this government has achieved.

Oh interesting I didn't realise that.

What track was on the Matrix soundtrack from this?

This has been written for US consumption. From the people that brought you Guantanamo Bay. A literal black site on an island they are starving to death because they got pissed off that their puppet regime was kicked out in the 1950s. A site where they regularly torture and deny basic human rights.

It's so written like a 1980s action movie that you can hear the "hoorah!" marine chants. When the citizens themselves don't have respect for international rules based order is it any wonder their government doesn't?

A lesson the Democrats will learn.

No. Not policy. Memes. Yes. It all makes sense now.

😜

Maybe I'm just too jaded. But they've not shown any backbone so far. Why would they start? If they had a track record of voting for sensible policies then they would have defied the Labour machine and voted down enacting Brexit for a start. They might have voted against needless wars in the Middle East. They might have voted against making criminals of grannies that are against genocide. But they don't. They only know how to grasp at power long enough to enrich themselves.

But like I said. I'm a jaded bitch.

I hear what you're saying. I just don't think it will happen even in that situation. Labour MPs will be whipped into scuppering it. A minority of Labour MPs can't overturn the Labour machine that rather loves FPTP to entrench their status.

It's sadly never going to change. You'd need Green or Lib Dem in power with a majority of Green Lib Dem SNP in the house to push this through. Labour and Tories will simply vote it down. Or fiddle it such that the option is FPTP or an option nobody wants like they did in the last referendum.