Wednesday 1 October 2014

The Faculty Of Public Health: Political Lobbyists

Bucking the trend of stifling bureaucracy and snail-like processes endemic in organisations which rely on or support the state, the Faculty of Public Health has moved with admirable speed to solve the problem of their President going batshit crazy on Twitter (see here, here, here and here).

Instead of following the due process of an independent enquiry by their board members, they've decided to tell him to delete dozens of tweets, then simply wait till the fuss died down before announcing that he's back in the game.
We look forward to Professor Ashton’s continuation in the role of President, so that both he and FPH can focus on championing FPH’s vision of delivering “better health for all”.
So why the urgent need to get far left activist Ashton back into his job with indecent haste, do you reckon? Could it be that the Faculty of Public Health need someone adequately qualified to promote their upcoming 'public health' manifesto of left wing ideology?

Click to enlarge and be amazed what counts as public health nowadays
You can view the original screen at their survey of FPH members (for God's sake don't complete it, that would be wrong!) just in case your belief is beggared too much.

Quite what the bedroom tax, speed limits, the living wage, zero hours contracts, UK transport policy, the national curriculum, green taxes and investment in renewable energy have to do with public health is anyone's guess. It looks more to me like a Socialist Workers Party letter to Santa rather than something the Faculty of Public Health should be involved in, but what do I know?

Well, actually, I do know that the FPH is a charity and that charities are barred from overt and unrelated political lobbying, so none of that should have anything to do with them. But then, demanding minimum alcohol pricing of 50p per unit, a 20% fizzy drinks tax, "rapid" implementation of plain packaging, and banning of food advertising after 9pm are all political goals too. Do the FPH do anything else BUT political campaigning?

It would seem that the Faculty of Public Health is less about public health than it is about promoting far left ideology to politicians and using the respected guise of a 'public health' institution to do so.

Of course they wanted their ranting far left business-hating President back sharpish, how could all the above be done otherwise? Especially if he was the one who proposed the survey responses in the first place.

The good thing about this is that whenever we see media quotes from Ashton, or hear him on the radio pronouncing on tobacco, e-cigs, fizzy drinks or anything else, we now know exactly what has prompted it. It has less to do with health but everything to do with his own far left political preferences and those of the FPH.

The man is busted, and by his exposing himself, so has the Faculty of Public Health revealed itself to be a political organisation which should have its charitable status reviewed.

The Charity Commission have a guide about complaints here.


10 comments:

SteveW said...

Conducting background checks on complainants doesn't, prima facie, seem particularly charitable...

Jurie Botha said...

Yup @entropy72 / Neil outdid himself with this one. :)

JonathanBagley said...

Very surprised to find the FPH is a charity.

Fergus Mason said...

It isn't a charity. It's just registered as one.

nisakiman said...

One of the many that rely for their existence on the largesse of the British taxpayer. Not that the British taxpayer has any say in the matter.

It really is about time that the government stopped funding all of these so-called 'charities'. We'd soon see which ones were valued by the public if they had to rely on donations. I rather think that FPH would be one of the first to disappear. I'm not sure if they get any funding from elsewhere - pharmaceutical companies, perhaps?

As already observed, it would seem that their sole raison d'être is to be heavily involved in political lobbying. Do they do anything else?

Entropy said...

Well, not to sound too poncy about it, but I thought it was time we took back the social media space from the academics. They may have the power of their journals and their paywalled study's, the edifices of their ivory towers, but we have the power of the people. Viral marketing, especially if done humourously, can be an incredibly effective way of spreading a message in a way that they just do not have an answer for.

And if they thought #jizzweasel was trolling, this will blow their tiny minds :)

Dick_Puddlecote said...

They've never owned the social media space because they've never been wanted. The UK government had to pay for the formation of ASH because there was no-one who wanted (the govt's own words) an anti-smoking organisation in 1972; when Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep was in the charts they didn't exist. Their first 'employees' were Department of Health staff paid for from taxation and they've continued to abuse taxpayer funds to attacks taxpayers ever since.


Likewise Alcohol Concern, set up in 1985 by taxpayer funds to nag taxpayers not to drink alcohol. When we were in discos, having fun & listening to Billy Ocean's Caribbean Queen, Alcohol Concern didn't exist.


They now hold workshops on how to exploit social media but are incapable of getting it right, which is why they splutter and curse on Twitter when they have to talk to real people and find that they're not popular except amongst the inadequate, anti-social and oleaginous. And why they use the block button because they haven't got a mandate with the public.


Great vid, hope it gets shared lots. :)

Ivan D said...

No doubt the FPH are awaiting the election of a Labour government, which might award some more gongs to political activists of the far left hiding behind faux altruismj, The last Labour government honoured Ashton, McKee and Gerard Hastings. Of the three, I would say that Ashton was the most deserving but there is no escaping the link between far left extremism the public health industry and the latter years of Blair's government in which the Labour party completely lost the plot. My fear is that if re-elected, Labour might favour the arrogant out of touch statism represented by organisations such as as the FPH over the will of the people that it is supposed to represent.

Jax said...

" ... and by his exposing himself ... "
Oo-er, missus! I didn't realise he did that, too!

truckerlyn said...

Of course not. The probable idea is to see if the individual has complained before, they fan then brush them off as serial complainers.