Council Investments: Profit vs Morals

Once again, the latest and the greatest in scandal-mongering hot gossip from Anarchy Central’s 24/7 Truth & Rumour Mill – with dispatches hand forged and crafted into bespoke satire to tempt the palates of all budding nihilists and career revolutionaries who carry the immortal bloodline of the rebel sons of Belial.

In what the UK’s anti-smoking lobby GASH (Group Action on Smoking and Health) are slamming as a case of profit versus hypocrisy, local authority councils across the length and breadth of Broken Britain that pledged to perform a leading role in the National Ill-Health Service’s anti-smoking campaigns, are investing more than £167 million quid from their pension funds in tobacco company shares.

Ron Barker, director of research and policy at GASH, informed one press hack from the Emphysema Gazette that "Local councils have responsibility for leading efforts to reduce the burden of death and disease from smoking, yet every single one of the sneaky bastards are the largest tobacco corporation shareholders on the FTSE 100 stock market index.”

“So isn’t it nice to know our council tax surplus is being invested in the social conscience-deficient likes of British American Tobacco, the world's second largest cigarette maker – and not one penny’s going into the alternatives bourse, such as those manufacturing smoking placebos like Nicorette gum or nicotine patches or the nicotine-loaded false fingernails that you stick on then chew, but in actual stinking cigarette and cigar tobacco products.”

Conversely, responding to GASH’s moral reprehensibility theme, Alderman Frank McScumm of the Smegmadale-on-Sea Council Authority informed one reporter from the Penny Wise Review that “Ron Barker wants ter keep his effin’ gob shut on this social conscience issue crap as no other investment can match the value an’ share price stability an’ dividend returns we’re getting’ of the tobacco investments.”

“Okay, wot if we invest in summat like BAE Systems or some other kiddie-cripplin’ outfit wot makes land mines an’ white phosphorous an’ sells them on ter some bunch of Third World despotic dictatorships ter use against their own people – like wot’s happenin’ in Bahrain an’ Saudi Arabia an' Israel. Would his gang be happy then?”

“Fer fuck’s sake, it’s all down ter free will. I just wish we had the opportunity ter invest in the tobacco industry of fifty years ago when it were really boomin’ and every sod and their dog smoked, and yer woz considered an effin’ sissy if yer didn’t. Then the pension funds would have blossomed.”

“As yer probably aware, they’ve slapped a ban on tobacco products advertisin’ now but people are still smokin’ their soddin’ heads off regardless. Really, if they stuck a picture of some dead twat’s cancerous lungs on the front of the packet an’ called them king-sized 'Tumours’, folks would still be queuin’ up ter buy the things.”

“So, do we stick the pension fund in Iceland’s Ripoff Invest Bank an’ watch the lot go tits up again? How about Monsanto’s Frankenfood GMO crops an’ toxic pesticides an’ fertilisers – or the adult sex toys industry? Finance a bunch of Yardies an’ split the profits on their next big drugs deal, perhaps? No matter wot we invest in some twat’s gonna whinge an’ throw a wobbler. Some of these Bolshie do-gooder scrotes need a good smack round the back of the effin’ head wiv a stockin’ full of common sense.”

Allergy warning: This article was written in a known propaganda-infested area and may contain traces of slight exaggeration, modest porkies, misaligned references and lashings of bush telegraph innuendo.

Rusty’s Skewed News Views (Purveyors of Bespoke Satire) - enhanced with a modest touch of Yeast Logic and a piquant dash of Political Incorrectness: a newsheet and media source not owned by Rupert Murdoch and the Masonic Zionist kikester lobby – and immune from litigation under the statutes of the ‘Fair Comment in the Public Interest’ defence.