Won't Somebody Please Punish The Children

A vile elitist snob, pictured in 2015

Still plenty up in the air in Puddlecoteville for a number of reasons, hence the radio silence recently, but Puddlecote Inc closing for the holiday gives me a breather.

Of course, while most of us are breaking up for a relaxing Christmas period of enjoyment and pleasure, it is about this time of year that rancid 'public health' nags are at their most frustrated. They simply can't bear to imagine people enjoying themselves, so every festive period sees some vile prodnose come out with a miserable or spiteful pronouncement, and this year is no exception.

Via the BBC:

England's top doctor has accused the food industry of "failing the public" and is calling for taxes on unhealthy food high in sugar and salt. 

Dame Sally [Davies] said "industry had not delivered" on voluntary targets set by Public Health England to make their products healthier and called for them to do more. 

"Those sectors that damage health must pay for their harm or subsidise healthier choices," her report says. 

She hinted she would like to see a tax on chocolate and junk food, with the proceeds going to subsidise fruit and vegetables, which should be on offer in obvious places in shops. 

But she recognised this was "a dream".

As I remarked on Twitter yesterday, we all have aspirations in life but it takes a special kind of arsehole to "dream" about taxing chocolate.

So here we have an extremely highly-paid individual eager to slap a tax on products enjoyed harmlessly by millions of people, a tax which the least well off will find most difficult to withstand. Sally, of course, will not be overly affected by this tax considering she is paid a salary of over £210,000 per year.

She is quite happy, though, to take pocket money from kids, which this policy would effectively do. The taxes won't be paid by industry, it will be paid by the consumer just like every other tax.

Elitist snob Davies, angered at the very idea of the public enjoying products she doesn't favour, has chosen Christmas time to declare to the world how repulsive she is.

This miserable harridan once told us all to think of cancer before you have a glass of wine and now sees the joy and excitement of Christmas as an opportunity to guilt trip us ghastly plebs just as we prepare for "the most wonderful time of the year".

It beggars belief that people in 'public health' consider this kind of nagging acceptable. It is nothing less than industralised anti-social behaviour and harassment. And what bollocks is this?

Based on the success of the tax on sugary drinks introduced in April, Dame Sally wants the government to do more to force the food industry to cut sugar and salt in our everyday food.

Success? What success? There has been no effect on obesity whatsoever from the sugar tax, all that has happened is the nation's food and drink supply has been altered by industry at threat of state bullying. Overall well-being of the nation has deteriorated thanks to pompous, insane and vulgar cretins like Davies. Products we freely chose to consume have disappeared following a barrage of snobbish propaganda about a non-existent obesity epidemic being caused by sugar, the consumption of which has been in freefall since the 1960s.

There are no words for the contempt I have for silly Sally Davies. She has condemned vapers who she said should "grow a backbone" and quit or die instead of using the country's most successful smoking cessation device, she wants us to fear cancer when enjoying a glass of wine, and now wants to tax children's pocket money.

There may be a problem with a small section of the public over-indulging in unhealthy products, but it it is vastly outweighed by the disease of rich bastards using their power and influence to interfere in the lives of the less well off and use coercive tactics to change their choices against their will.

Disgusting. 

More Plain Packaging Failure

No matter how many times tobacco controllers claim that plain packaging has been an overwhelming success, the facts stubbornly refuse to adhere to their fantasies. I've often amused myself with articles on this subject and it's great to see that the failure continues into its sixth year, according to Australian Channel 9.

Shocking statistics have shown more men are becoming smokers despite all the health warnings. #9Today pic.twitter.com/Qa1td0j9rr

— The Today Show (@TheTodayShow) November 30, 2018

Remember that Australia was not only the first to introduce this daft idea, but has also punished smokers with a number huge 25% increases to tobacco duty and outdoor smoking bans but with little effect. Once celebrated as offering "a vaccine against lung cancer" by an over-excitable Sydney pensioner, reality keeps butting in and pointing out that plain packaging was a laughable policy and a scandalous waste of public money.

Of course, despite treating even the tiniest positive sign as proof of plain packs success, when things go badly like this the tobacco control scam just circles its wagons ... and blames something else. On this occasion, it's apparently because there are not enough TV ads telling everyone that smoking is bad, as if the public didn't already know this. It's not like the pack doesn't tell them, now is it?

It started with more Aussie kids smoking in the wake of plain packs, but since then smoking rates have flat-lined before the Channel 9 news that more men are smoking now - or "blokes are back on the smokes" as one Aussie newspaper put it. The Daily Mail reported it succinctly too.

Recent data has shown that the campaign to reduce smoking habits of Australians over the last half a dozen years has failed as smoking rates among men actually increased in that time.  

The Daily Telegraph reported on the figures released by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare which showed smoking among young men, 25-29, had seen an increase. 

Rates among young men had risen from 17.3 per cent to 19.3 per cent between 2013 and 2016 alone.   

Smoking among older men, 40-49, also saw an increase. 

It's not working in France either, as we found out in March where it was branded a failure by one of those who championed it.

Yet despite all this we see barking mad 'studies' in health journals triumphantly speaking of not just a possible beneficial effect of plain packaging, but ...

A Global Public Health Victory for Tobacco Plain-Packaging Laws in Australia

I don't think co-author of that particular 'study' - Melanie Wakefield who campaigned for plain packaging and evaluated its effectiveness herself - found that absurd headline hard to write, if I'm honest.

It's hard to imagine any other industry which receives massive tax-funded subsidies getting away with trumpeting abject failure as a huge success, but then tobacco control is a completely unregulated Wild West of a profession, and when you have that scenario, liars are always going to float around the top of the cesspit.

So, we have a flat-lining of smoking rates in Australia - and now a rise in some demographics - where they are wielding the big stick mercilessly and where nicotine alternatives like e-cigs are banned; but a dramatic decline in the UK where smoker punishment is less draconian, and e-cigs are legal, regulated and the use of which is advertised in government stop smoking campaigns. 

Hmm, where's the Australian Sherlock Holmes to solve this impenetrable conundrum as to what is going wrong down under?