Friday 6 December 2013

P.J. O'Rourke on plain packs

There's a great article by P. J. O'Rourke on the subject of plain packs...


Let me withdraw any imputation of base motives to the Australian government and stipulate that its legislators mean well. Legislators always mean well. They say so themselves. But​—​as certain well-meaning legislators in another country have discovered with certain well-meaning legislation about another health issue​—​meaning well is not synonymous with doing good.

... My Joyitas arrived encased in cardboard that was flimsy as well as drab dark brown and bearing a photograph, in this case, of rotted gums. Being that a cigar box is the size of a cigar box, those gums are in heroic scale. The attractive and understated Montecristo cigar band​—​in a rich walnut brown​—​has also disappeared. It’s been covered with a paper collar of requisite plainness. This is nearly an inch wide, deprives me of a third of my smoke, and any attempt to remove it tears the wrapper leaf and destroys the cigar.

Each of these strips of paper has been fastened by hand with scotch tape. Mindless, useless, idiotic work is typical of many government jobs, but this seems to exceed even the typical work done in the Australian parliament.

And the Australian parliament is, no doubt, working very hard indeed. There’s no end to the work to be done once moral philosophy has become so perverted that something like “plain packaging” is considered a public benefit.

Go read the whole thing...

1 comment:

Vova said...

Any child seeing this would rush to buy a box of them
http://habanosnews.habanos.com/en/montecristo-and-its-new-band