There has been no smoke without ire in the UK for decades… smokers have been treated like lepers and forced to pay billions for the dubious pleasure of having a fag on a street corner.
Last year the tax rate on a packet of cigs was £244.78 per 1,000 plus 16.5% of the retail price.
That means, that on a £8 packet of fags, smokers pay approximately £6.40 in tobacco tax.
Tobacco tax is expected to raise £8.7 billion this year despite fewer people smoking.
Yep, that’s how much it costs to give yourself lung cancer, to have bad breath, a hacking cough, wrinkly skin, rotting gums and be forced to stand in the rain while you inhale your very expensive drugs indeed.
Do you know, almost every illicit drug is actually cheaper in the UK than fags!
Except for alcohol which is another stand – or rather fall down – and deliver method of ripping us off by ‘highwayman’ government after government in this mean and septic isle.
Smoking is bad for you, no doubt!
But it is a big earner for ‘fat cats in top hats’ and it is the ‘skinny tw*ts in flat caps’ who mainly foot the bill!
But – no matter how bad it is for us – we have a right to smoke a legal drug if we want to! We are already paying for any NHS treatment we need in advance. Smoking is like a massive insurance policy for those who do it!
Now Oxfordshire is aiming to become the first county in England to ban smoking outdoors … and they are doing it as the Government’s lockdown roadmap comes to an end.
The county, which wants to be smoke-free by 2025, will crack down on outdoor dining areas and workplace break spots.
So, in the last few months we’ve lost our freedom to go to work in our offices, our freedom to go on holiday, our freedom to go down the pub, our freedom to kiss and cuddle, shake hands, visit family, go to weddings and funerals, to travel and to face the world unadorned by a stinky piece of fabric .. the list of loss is endless!
We were conned over diesel cars and after we’d bought them we were told we’d have to swap them for electric cars with about as much charm as a dildo going off in a locked suitcase and about as much distance-chomping ability as a Zimmer frame!
And now they are trying to make you smoke behind closed doors – smokers are to become members of a secret society of cigs.
We are watching as another of our freedoms – no matter how unhealthy and unsavoury – disappears in a puff.
Oh, Britain what are you doing to us?
#smokers #fags #tax #cigarettes #cigars #rollingtobacco #drugs #cannabis #government #oxfordshire
SC Bryson
It was a delightfully depressing read. You hit the bullseye with every sentence. We have been handcuffed to rules and laws that are not based on common sense.
Adults are being treated like children. Society is choking on its own putrid stench.
JP Brady
Don’t know how they’re going to get away with it?!but then I didn’t imagine Glasgow would be kept in level 3 lockdown when it’s only the south side where cases have risen, what about the west end? shouldn’t we be allowed the same treatment as everyone else?and now they’re telling us that people who smoke outside can be fined!! When did we lose the right to free speech and now freedom of choice?