Sunak's anti smoking strategy

i was waiting for some jerk to say that

And there you are

It must have been thirty years ago. Norwich Union were still called Norwich Union, not ‘Aviva’ as they are now and there was NO anti smoking legislation

I was driving home from a client and it was the Radio 4 Thursday night documentary slot. And the topic of the day was the NHS and how it is paid for and the things it treats.

Norwich Union’s actuaries had taken a hard look at life choices and life expectancy

They had three things to say

The first was on obesity. They worked out the cost to the NHS of supersized people whose obesity did NOT prevent them walking a mile. People like me. They gave actuarial evidence that people like that, like me in fact, would die perhaps two or three years earlier than they otherwise would, their main needs would be related to diabetes and knee and hip replacements, and the cost to the NHS would be more than paid for by their life choices returning unused pension, particularly unused private pension annuity plus 40% tax, to the state

The second was the real drain on society. Brain Dead Fit Bastards. The joggers, the cyclists, the gym nutters. While a few would overdo it and become the best muscled corpse in the graveyard, most would live well into their hundred’s but with brains addled and in near vegetative states. Bereft of any ability to do anything, the vast majority would waste away for twenty years or more, demented or brain dead muscular hunks in need of round the clock nursing care at a cost to the country in the billions

The third were the people to whom we all should go down on bended knee and worship. The SMOKERS. The average person who chose to smoke was voluntarily curtailing their life by about fifteen years. Many would succumb to diseases ensuring they never got to pension age, and i mean personal, never mind state. In the world before anti smoking legislation, HMRC rules collected 40% of their private pension pot and all of the state one. But more than that, tax on tobacco was punitive, utterly punitive. So punitive in fact that the Revenue Scum received, in total, an amount sufficient to fund the treatment for every smoker for any and every disease for which smoking was recognised as an exacerbating condition, but also cover the treatment for those conditions of ANYONE smoker or not in the country

And despite these clear facts, Blair and Brown set out demonising smoking and destroying the source of that huge, huge revenue stream.

Fucking Idiots