But while I can't judge whether his claim in the post above is accurate or not (it's a complicated argument in which we're invited to never believe the bona fides of the Treasury, but to trust the analysis of a member of a think tank that has done the policy PR of big tobacco for years) even if he's right, he then goes on to obvious wrong over-reach in his next barely read tobacco post. Here:
The fact is we now know the plain packaging policy is based on fabricated evidence.This links back to his own post, the one I linked to first, in which he disputes that tobacco clearances went down in the first 12 months after the introduction of the policy.
Given that he was talking about trying to judge the effectiveness of the policy by evidence collated after it's introduction, how can he claim that the policy is "based on fabricated evidence"? (His entire post is also about looking at one 12 month period - the one with confounding factors involved - and ignores the tobacco clearance rates for subsequent periods. It's a desperate, nitpicky argument that refuses to look at the big picture, just like he did with the "climategate" emails and statistic significance of the global temperature record.)
The policy was and is based on it's anticipated long term effect on helping continue the downward trend of tobacco consumption. It certainly was not introduced based on "fabricated evidence" that didn't exist at the time. And tobacco clearances are not the only evidence, in any case.
As with stagflation, and climate change, he's on a long term losing argument here, and the longer we go the sillier he'll look. Neat.
2 comments:
Poor old sinkers didn't understand the difference between expenditure and consumption which is why the Kouk took him to the cleaners.
Steve you have to ask yourself if tobacco consumption volumes have fallen like a rock what would occur to tobacco clearances?
His article and reputation, if he ever had one, has simply gone up in smoke!
just another example of Stagflation which is another subject he didn't understand and cocked up.
He would never write rubbish like this if there was actual debate on the site but he gets away this because he ensures it is an echo chamber.
Dissenting voices are banned.
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