'£10 licence to smoke' proposed

'£10 licence to smoke' proposed

news.bbc.co.uk

Smokers could be forced to pay £10 for a permit to buy tobacco if a government health advisory body gets its way.
No one would be able to buy cigarettes without the permit, under the idea proposed by Health England.

(visit the link for the full news article)

I am totally on the fence regarding this.

I don't think smokers can complain about the money issue - they consistenly fork out £5 for a pack of 20 anyhoo.

It would help some people to give up smoking but then again, surely it would cost millions to manage.

A licence for fags. How bizarre!







news.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

What next? Alcohol is bad for you so license it. Junk food is bad too after your licensed beer purchase so be sure to carry your junk food license for that after-the-pub Kebab

Seriously, do they have a panel of experts and advisers whose only job is to think of ways of extracting more cash from the public? Ok, we all know the answer is yes, silly of me to have to ask

Great I can see the future.
license forswearing -1
License for drinking - 5
smoking tobacco - 10
canabis - 50
heavier drugs - 200
stealing - 500
raping - xxx
murdering - yyy
All this income!! And no police, no justice system. I'm sure that finance department will be extatic over it. How much will license for ATS posting cost?

Well is nice to know that US is not the only nation that have morons making laws, our friends in the UK also have some of those.

I wonder if our leaders will spend the same amount of time working for the people as they do working for moronic laws our nations will be a lot better.

So are they going to remove the bloated tobacco taxes first? Or are they going to go on with their routine of punishing people twice for engaging in legal activity?

Yes pretty crazy sounding,I met someone from England,he said you had to pay for an operators license for a television set,so taxing smokes doesn't seem to far out of the realm

reply to post by Oldtimer2


We have a license fee for the TV - this pays for the BBC. Thats 4 digital channels, plus loads of radio channels. This is why the BBC is supposed to be impartial.

The baccy license will never happen - just some scheme by a load of lefty trendies who don't get out enough and so feel the need to make everyone else as miserable as they are.

reply to post by Oldtimer2


(yes, we do have to pay to watch the tv here, it's the license fee which

funds the bbc, no get out, even if you don't wanna watch it. if you've got a

tv you've got to pay, it's about 130 pounds a year $260)

that being said, a license to buy tobacco would be un-enforce-able

the uk already loses quite a lot due to the high taxes...


"Smuggled or counterfeit cigarettes sold in pubs, clubs and on the street are costing taxpayers billions of pounds, British American Tobacco said today.

The illicit tobacco trade has lost the UK Government over £19 billion in tax revenue over five years to 2005 – enough to build 800 new secondary schools, said Chairman Jan du Plessis at the company’s Annual General Meeting"

www.bat.com...

also if you can buy drugs, guns, pirate dvds down the pub easy enough

how can they stop an illegal tobacco trade..??

i also don't think it's about saving peoples health it's about generating

revenue and slowly eroding our freedoms.

Yeah. We have a tv licence.

As pointed out already the tv licence pays for other BBC services. Some of these services require a digi box so it is a very unfair tax.

Ah ha. Licence = Tax. I must be getting slow in my old age.

Having read some of the responses on here I am slowly coming off of the fence.

Ciggies are legal. They are taxed already. Why the extra tax/license?

I don't believe for a minute that the government has our best interest at heart!

Originally posted by apc
So are they going to remove the bloated tobacco taxes first? Or are they going to go on with their routine of punishing people twice for engaging in legal activity?

That 'bloated tax' pays for the fancy wallpaper in Gordon Brown's office.

It must stay!

Oh my if its just a matter of taxing those things that are bad for you do they want a list?!! The benefits or otherwise to a person are always going to be open to intrepretation. So I may think that a license to allow people with bad artistic taste to buy crappy 'chocolate box watercolors' is a great thing...but no doubt others wouldn't. I could fund a study to say that it proves that buying bad art effects your eyesight and cost th NHS billions every year... does thatmake it a fact? no.... just a loaded question.

Its a tax simple as that. As cigarettes are already subjct to tax, surely that negates the need for a second one. Are are we opening a door to double tax on everything? I never thought in a million years that some of the things brought in under the current goverment here in the UK would be law in a million years. The worst bit is the blatent lies when they manage to screw things up.

They ban smoing in public places including pubs and nightclubs etc... as a result pubs are closing all over england and scotland (who had the smoking ban 1st). But ask if there are less pubs as a result of the non smoking law and they will say no...in spite of the facts before their eyes. The rather embaressing fact is that those people who made the big uproar about not smoking in public in places such as pubs and clubs, are often the people who go out only on special occasions and are not 'regular drinkers'.

Its the regulars that keep these places going (and arguably the alchoholics as well..) So the fact that some one who only goes to their local at xmas and new year is a bit put out and has effectly helped bring in a smoking ban is costing people jobs and money.

So what do the do? Add a another tax! Unbeliable, who ever comes up with this stuff deserves a nobel prize for complete idiocy in the face of logic.

I do not need a 'nanny', or to be pushed in a direction the goverment feels is best 'for me'. As a wise man once said 'I am not a number I am a free man.' You cannot legislate away peoples freedom of choice easily without also countermanding their freedom as well. So they need to make up their mind, do they want us to be a free people with freedom of speach or a slave nation to whoever holds the political purse strings?

I for one would like an answer , although I feel they'll never give us one.

Wayne...