I recall that before NuLabour's discriminatory social exclusion of smokers in 2007 no one on the street or in a pub, a cafe or a restaurant, ever really moaned or talked about a blanket smoking ban except for TV, biased agenda driven newspapers, Quangos and Govt.
Most people were happy that there was choice for both sides and few complained when Taxi-For-Hire minister Pat Hewitt initially announced a partial ban would come in. We didn't know then that she was lying to ensure there was no dissent and to pull the wool over the public's eyes to push custom towards her corporate masters and secure a very nice personal wealth package for herself.
She said there would be exemptions for "wet" pubs when the ban came in which would only affect those places where families go to eat and get pissed in front of their kids. Then she shafted everyone at the last, forced all smoker pubs out of business, dragged the economy down with it, and legislated for hate and intolerance for the first time in Europe since the 1930s.
We didn't know then that she was a bought and paid for corporate minister, like the other two creeps skillfully caricatured above by Mark Wadsworth and that she would impose any economically, as well as socially, damaging policy upon the unsuspecting British people as long as she was paid enough to do it. I mean, what did she care about Britain as long as she got rich?
Boots was just one corporate company that paid her £3,000 per day to look after its interests as health minister. I always thought that was a bit perverse bearing in the mind the spiteful smoking ban was allegedly imposed to "help" people quit, "protect" (now unemployed) pub workers, and of course to get everyone running to Boots to get their ever so expensive NRT patches, gum et al to become one of the chosen and not the despised.
I think this is so scandalous that I'd like to see Pat Hewitt criminally investigated for corruption like the other troughing MPs who got caught after they stole cash from the public purse with their imaginary expenses claims to pay for mortgages and other stuff they didn't have.
And when Hewitt was health minister, she also ripped off the NHS and ensured the
Am I surprised that Pat Hewitt is now a consultant at said firm? Not at all. It seems entirely in keeping with her Machiavellian self interest nature. Will she be prosecuted for criminal behaviour which I believe it was? Probably not but she should be if the current Govt wants us to believe that it is honest, well meaning, respectable and responsible and it is turning its back on corruption.
Govt must not turn a blind eye to any minister who touts UK policy for personal cash and it must carry out further investigations on those who did in the past. They, as much as the bankers, brought this country to its knees.