Britain like the US has conservatives who shill for corporations
Conservatives have this problem that I don’t think I will ever figure out. They hate the electric car so much as to lie about how much the government subsidizes it in the US. They deny climate change is happening. And now in the UK it would seem that the Tories hate anti-smoking laws.
They hate it so much that one of their ilk in Earl Howe has been secretly colluding with Phillip Morris International.
A whistleblower who previously worked at Philip Morris International’s headquarters in Switzerland has posted scores of internal company emails and documents on the SmokinGate website. The communications lay bare the company’s determination to resist anti-smoking legislation in Britain.
Among them are exchanges between Howe and the company’s lobbyists, Gardant Communications, that have alarmed health campaigners.
The emails, exchanged in 2009 when Howe was a shadow health minister, show that the peer approached lobbyists requesting the company’s views on calls for cigarettes to be sold in plain packaging. Subsequent emails show that the lobbyists gave several briefings to Howe, who led Tory opposition to the Labour government’s plans to introduce a ban on behind-the-counter cigarette displays in shops.
How pathetic. They’d rather smoking remain profitable even though there is nothing good that comes from it. They seek to make money from the misery and addiction of others. Now the UK doesn’t have the same campaign finance structure as the United States I’m told, so I don’t think corporations contribute directly to political parties. However, there must be some quid pro quo going on here.
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