Stub out the shoddiness
Will the UK’s cigarette ban extinguish ‘back of fag packet’ thinking?
One of the Prime Minister’s numerous plans to change the UK for the better includes a proposal to ban cigarettes. This is good for several reasons, only two of which relate to improving public health and reducing pressure on a struggling NHS.
One unspoken benefit of a cigarette ban is surely the simultaneous disappearance of the ‘back of the fag packet’, the UK’s traditional medium for incorrect calculations, hasty plans and insufficiently thought-through ideas.
The back of a cigarette packet has been relied on by generations of Britons to express muddled thoughts, enforce weak points of view and justify unworkable plans. Consider this: if cigarettes are banned, the UK might shed the shoddy amateurism that lies at the heart of both public life and private endeavour, and embrace professionalism, accuracy and productivity instead!
For at least a century, the back of a fag packet has captured everything from building “estimates” to architectural plans and political policies. The blankest of all canvases, it’s a medium — a crutch — we have all relied on at some point. Indeed, so ubiquitous is the back of the fag packet in the UK that the concept knows no boundaries of class, wealth or education. The lazy thinking it promulgates is as likely to involve plans for B&Q decking as a full-blown Orangerie. The back of the fag packet is a friend both to civil engineers sketching bridge spans and punks planning the track listing of their first EP. That Brexit bus with words down one side that couldn’t withstand close scrutiny? Just the back of a fag packet writ large.
As there isn’t much space on the back of a cigarette packet, any calculations it hosts must be simple. Plans have to be straightforward and policies easy to understand. As a result, those ‘sums’ rarely add up, the plans are typically unrealistic, and the policies always half-baked. This isn’t necessarily a problem for Britons, as no one puts any faith in the figures on the back of a fag packet, anyway, and 10% will be mentally added to the cost to be realistic. We know to view plans scrawled on a pack of Benson and Hedges with suspicion, even if we nod enthusiastically as they are explained over a pint. We fell for the words on that bus, mind, but that’s another story.
Yes, the back of the fag packet is as central to the UK psyche as the slide rule and Vorsprung durch Technik is to Germany. The Japanese have genkouyoushi paper to order their thoughts and the kaizen system of continuous improvement. The British rely on the back of a fag packet and a management philosophy centred around the phrase “That’ll do.”
On that basis, will the impending cigarette ban and removal of the fag packet from public life call an end to the shoddy, ‘make do’ amateurism that passes for professionalism in the UK? Even with the demise of the fag packet, builders may still rely on a stubby bookmaker’s ballpoint pen to make mental leaps in the margins of the Racing Post, of course. A right-wing firebrand will continue to borrow (then pocket) a Mont Blanc fountain pen to capture their thoughts on a Cinnamon Club napkin. I suppose we could still put our wildest thoughts on the back of an envelope — if we could only find one, and remember which side is the front and which is the back. Unless your local is a hipster pub in Hackney, the last time you no doubt saw a beer mat to jot something down on was 1983, but they surely still exist and they might suffice.
No matter. Given Siri can do the most complex of calculations in a flash, and political policy can be shared on social media to instant acclaim in a supportive echo chamber, do we even need to write anything down any more when making plans? ChatGPT can pass a medical exam. It can certainly put together a quote for a garage extension or a sales conference agenda.
In which case, could the cigarette ban be the crucial step the country needs to take for economic revival? Stubbing out the last cigarette might prompt a new golden age of productivity powered by automation. Proper planning and realistic figures could replace ‘winging it’ and plucking figures from thin air. A newly professional approach would supersede the UK’s love of flying by the seat of its pants.
Maybe, but I wouldn’t get too excited. At the same time as announcing the cigarette ban as part of his recipe for national improvement, Sunak called a halt to the HS2 project.
Planning the high-speed rail line from London to Manchester — Europe’s largest civil infrastructure project — involved thousands of engineers, accountants and consultants creating terabytes of CAD plans, computer models and financial reports. I doubt there was a single fag packet in sight — yet the cost still ballooned from £37bn to £88bn in the space of a few years.
On this basis they may have been better off sticking their fingers in the air, jotting down the basics on the back of 20 Silk Cut, and offering to knock off the VAT for cash. We might have still had a railway that ran between England’s three largest cities, and the country would be £18bn better off.
Ghastly pictures of tumorous throats and blackened lungs may leave little room for writing anything on today’s cigarette packets, but we mess with this humble servant to British creativity at our peril.
Yes, smoking is a filthy habit, and if you smoke it stands a chance of killing you. But the UK relies on it.
Be a sport, and spark up, will you?
