The wailing has started…

The squawking has begun…

The ‘banshees’ at ASH are on full throttle…

The reason…? MONEY/FUNDING… or should I say, the sudden lack of it!

New Department of Health figures are the first to reveal the impact of the Coalition’s decision to freeze ad spend; ie money allotted to advertising.

Between January and March last year, the Government spent £861,000 on its anti-smoking campaign and 124,792 people successfully quit the habit with the help of the NHS. (pardon?)

We must remember that this figure of 124,792 is only covering a month from day of registering for each person and given that the number of quitters after a YEAR is only 4%-5% of original figure that means that the government may have achieved a total of 6,239 complete quitters-which in turn, means that each successful quit has cost the British taxpayer approximately £138Does that seem like value to you?

I am not at all happy that £138 of my ‘hard earned’ is going toward subjecting someone, because of stigma and denormalisation processes, to do something they obviously haven’t got the willpower to do themselves! And before anyone says I’m talking tripe have a read of Louis Gregory

(Soldier turned 100 Valentine’s Day Article Link no Longer Available)

who has just celebrated his centenary and gave up smoking when he was 86! Err…that was 14 years ago…before any of this useless NRT crap was introduced into our lives. Louis simply decided that he’d had enough of smoking, so stopped. He didn’t need patches, gums, plastic twiddly things, champix or any other form of cigarette denial-so why the bloody hell do we need to waste £138.00 per person for them to quit smoking? if you want to you will, simple as that!

ASH’s screams are about the fact that when the budget was slashed for Apr/May/June, quit rates plummeted by a third and a further drop in the following 3 months as well. Oh dear, dummy coming out of pram I fear!

Martin Dockrell said: It has been a false economy. Mass-media campaigns are very cost- effective in terms of life years gained. They quickly reduce the pressure on the NHS.”…. What? (writer’s exclamation of disbelief)

Martin, a word of advice from a humble peasant-£861,000 is NOT cost effective at all. In fact, it is very expensive indeed compared to Louis’s decision to quit! And where do you get ‘years gained’ from? Is there suddenly a wall chart that tells us all when our clogs expect to be popped? Are smoking quitters suddenly exceeding that allotted date? And as for relieving pressure on the NHS, well, I find that a most ludicrous statement, for the longer we live the more of a burden we become on the NHS! I would have thought that even a child would realise that Martin!

Of course, the other small matter that ASH need to take onboard is our new age. We’ve had the iron age– (where everyone wore smartly pressed clothes), the bronze age-(where Labour kept printing more money for us all to spend), but now we are in the ‘austerity‘ (stone) age where poverty is fast approaching thanks to the previous bronze age of financial lunacy.

So, Martin, that basically means that even the mighty ASH have got to take a hit and stop spending wasting our hard earned taxes on telling us what to do. It’s a very neat trick really. Con the ConLibs out of a small fortune in the guise of a charitable cause and then bludgeon the very people who’ve provided said wedge, over the head with it under the supposed benefits of health!

Point to take onboard Martin: people are not interested in longevity anymore, all they do want is quality of life not quantity. Who the hell wants to end up in a nursing home until they die for it will cost them their life savings, their house and any other property they may have until they are penniless. It happened to my Uncle John in Scunthorpe. Two weeks after he had spent every last penny he had worked & slaved for all his life he died. The reading of the will was one of the saddest things I’ve ever witnessed for everything that the will apportioned had already been sold-to pay for his upkeep!

So, Martin (and the rest of the overpaid so called life enhancers) I say this to you, “be grateful you even exist, be grateful you can earn fat wages from government handouts, be grateful you still have jobs because thanks to your meddling 100,000 hospitality sector workers no longer have jobs!”

I wonder if they would appreciate a handout from all your ASH funding Martin?

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