A thoroughly decent post

Working for Forest means you can never switch off completely.

Yesterday afternoon I was reading a book and enjoying a large cup of coffee in a comfortable cafe in Chiswick when I received an email from a Sunday newspaper:

We’ve just heard that Sainsbury’s is to extend its ban on the sale of cigarettes to six further Scottish stores from Monday. Could you provide a quote on this please?

Putting down my book (Danny Baker's very funny autobiography Going To Sea In A Sieve) I thought for a moment before replying:

"As a private company Sainsbury's is entitled to decide what goods they wish to stock. Smokers will simply buy their cigarettes elsewhere. Sainsbury's loss will be someone else's gain.

"Politicians should be more worried than smokers because if other stores follow suit it might encourage more consumers to buy their cigarettes on the black market.

"If that happens the winners will be the criminal gangs who sell illicit cigarettes. The biggest losers will be the Government which will lose revenue and the taxpayer who will have to make up the deficit."

I don't know if any part of the quote has been used but you can read more about the story via the BBC – Six Scottish Sainsbury's supermarkets end cigarette sales.

PS. The newspaper in question sells itself with the following understated slogan: 'A thoroughly decent read'.

I prefer that to 'The Sunday Times is the Sunday papers' or 'When The Times speaks, the World listens'.

But the prize for the most troubling newspaper slogan has to be the Detroit News' 'We Know Where You Live'.