Date published: 2008/07/12
The BBC says:
Six retailers and tobacco firms have agreed to pay a maximum of £173.3m in combined fines after admitting unlawful tobacco pricing practices.
The news comes after the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) in April accused a number of retailers and tobacco companies of anti-competitive retail pricing.
Asda, Somerfield, First Quench, TM Retail, One Stop Stores and tobacco firm Gallaher have agreed to the fines.
The OFT is continuing its investigation into a further six firms.
They are Imperial Tobacco, Tesco, Shell, the Co-operative Group, Morrisons and Safeway.
Let's see. It's ok for the government to extort over 4 pounds tax per packet of 20 cigarettes from smokers (and this comprises over three quarters of the cost of cigarettes). But if companies collude to extort perhaps 10 p per packet from smokers the OFT decides to get involved and fine them an extortionate amount. Well that makes sense. And here the money doesn't go to the people who suffered, i.e. the smokers, but to the biggest extorter of them all, i.e. the government.
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