Humanitarian Intervention

Aside from the usual suspects - saboteurs, citizens of nowhere, wog-marrying race traitors and the like - nobody could accuse Her Majesty's Government of an unbalanced approach to legislation. No new attack on the poor takes place without a corresponding kick at the crippled; every cut to public services or environmental protection has its compensatory subsidy for polluters and tax-dodgers. It should come as no surprise, then, that the Government has taken equal care with its new vaping regulations, which make it harder for smokers to switch and thereby ensure that the cigarette industry will not be unduly inconvenienced by the plain-packaging law. The vaping industry is less than ten years old, but has already begun intruding upon the markets of its elders and betters in the carcinogenic profitability club; self-evidently, like the solar industry at a similar stage of development, the young bounder needs taking down a peg or two. Equally self-evidently, it would be imprudent to rely on the free market to administer the rebuke; no strong or stable government can afford to stand by and allow some Stalinist purge of the business community to take place in the name of mere public health.