Duplicity

The dictionary definition of duplicity: deceitfulness in speech or conduct, as by speaking or acting in two different ways to different people concerning the same matter; double-dealing.

Having ridden roughshod over the wishes of the majority of UK voters by introducing homosexual marriage, that same government has now dropped their plans for minimum pricing for alcohol, and also plain packaging for cigarettes.

There was a major consultation on homosexual marriage, and the results were fudged to give the answer the politicians wanted. Many thousands of responses were discounted because they were sponsored by churches. The Bill should never had made it into the statute books, but it was pushed through the Commons and the Lords, and back to the Commons to be made law. I will accept the law, even though I don’t agree with it, because we live in a democracy. However I still wonder how the law made it through, when the majority didn’t want it and made their mind known, or didn’t care?

Then there are the policies of minimum pricing of alcohol, and plain packaging for cigarettes. Both were flagship health improvements which would help the welfare of the nation in years to come. It was almost given as self evident and supported by health professionals and law enforcement officers equally . Less alcohol sold equals fewer deaths, domestic fights, and visits to A&E, plus safer homes for children. Making cigarettes look less desirable means fewer cases of lung cancer in life for many youngsters who might never start to smoke.

Why did the same sex marriage bill make it into law, and the alcohol and tobacco programs get dropped, not to even be debated? I suggest it’s down to voices which shout louder than any ordinary citizen who participates in a consultation. Those loud voices who shout that there is no evidence that tobacco or alcohol causes disease and death. They shout loudest, who can whisper in the itching ears of our law making politicians. This is undeniably the common factor in all three examples. If I was disillusioned with those in power in our nation before, I am disgusted now. I think these recent events give the best example of duplicity I could find, but the Bible was already there speaking words of truth in these verses: For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather round them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. 2 Timothy 4:3,4 NIV