Stop taking Twitter death threats seriously
New rules designed to turn hospitals into completely smoke-free places are being openly flouted across Tayside and Fife, The Courier can reveal.Good. People can spot a stupid rule when they see one, and banning smoking outdoors in windswept Scotland is certainly that.
NHS Fife recently launched its A Place to Be Smoke-free campaign encouraging smokers to refrain from lighting up on hospital grounds.
Signs were set up across all hospital sites to remind smokers they are not permitted to light up on hospital premises across the region.They are permitted, because the Health Act 2006 was installed on indoor premises to protect bystanders - like those poor bar workers who everyone has now forgotten about - from a cleverly-created myth. Not outdoor ones where there is no threat whatsoever to anyone except those that have freely chosen to risk it.
But with some people choosing just to ignore the messages, Edward Coyle, NHS Fife’s director of public health, conceded that bringing about the culture change needed to ensure fully smoke-free hospitals is a challenge.Hospitals are smoke-free already Ed, only the grounds and car parks - yes, car parks, for crying out loud - aren't. Because it's a ridiculous demand. That's why people are ignoring the messages, d'you see?
“Our smoking policy states that smoking is not permitted at any time for staff, patients, visitors, contractors or the general public within NHS Fife premises or on our grounds."Erm, whose grounds, Ed? I think you'll find they are owned by the taxpayer, of which smokers are an inordinately generous group when it comes to paying their way. They also employ your sorry arse.
“Our A Place to be Smoke-free campaign, which launched on No Smoking Day, saw eye-catching new signage installed at all hospital sites across Fife, as well as on our vehicles and in bus shelters across the kingdom. The campaign was also promoted widely in the local press and on our social media channels."Must have cost a pretty penny, matey. Didn't someone say the NHS is teetering on the brink and starved of cash?
"Furthermore, we employ a member of staff at the main entrance of our largest hospital, the Victoria Hospital, Kirkcaldy, specifically to further promote our no-smoking message."Eh? You actually took on a member of staff on full time pay - from the vanishing cash the NHS keeps complaining about - to nag smokers for no valid reason, on premises they co-own? Good grief.
[Andrew Radley, consultant in public health pharmacy with NHS Tayside, said] “In NHS Tayside there are several measures in place to ensure our existing policy is followed which includes the use of clear signage around all sites informing patients, visitors and staff that NHS Tayside grounds are smoke-free areas and a pre-recorded loud speaker message is played at Ninewells Hospital to reinforce this,”
“As a health promoting organisation, NHS Tayside takes breach of the policy very seriously and regularly communicates reminders of the smoking policy to patients, staff and visitors through both internal and external communications."Jeez, they love spending rivers of cash on pointless causes in the NHS, don't they? Perhaps why they keep finding PCTs are in debt, just saying.
“NHS Tayside Smoke Free Services provides smoking cessation services and support to NHS staff, patients and members of the public, including the availability of Nicotine Replacement Therapy, stop smoking classes and drop-in sessions.”All of it, of course, free to those who take it up but at vast cost to the NHS who have to pay pharma companies for it. No mention whatsoever of e-cigs which people buy voluntarily and cost the NHS the princely sum of bugger all.
All hospital grounds in Scotland were supposed to be smoke-free from April 1A perfect choice of date for such a daft policy.
Every NHS board was asked to sign up to the edict at the request of the Scottish Government, which is consulting on whether or not to make it a statutory offence to smoke in hospital grounds.
If the measure is included in the forthcoming Public Health Bill, ministers are said to be largely in favour of voting it through.It was never about peer-reviewed (pfft) studies on the harms from secondhand smoke, was it? Bar staff? What are they?
Guidance was issued to NHS Scotland and local authorities in 2005 encouraging them to “demonstrate leadership” by implementing smoking policies and promoting smoke-free lifestyles.Ah, of course. "Demonstrating leadership", this is the public sector term for doing something that no-one asked for, no-one really wants, and precious few even give a stuff about.
The five-year plan said smoke-free status should be achieved by the end of March this year, and would mean the removal of any designated smoking areas in NHS board buildings or grounds.You mean the designated smoking areas which used to be the best way of making sure the precious flowers who are upset by wisps of smoke in a car park knew where to avoid? Cracking idea.
A number of readers have complained to The Courier that their visits to hospital, either as patients or as relatives of those being treated inside, are regularly being spoiled by having to enter through a plume of smoke.Perhaps they should ask for the designated smoking areas back then, or is that too complicated? It would certainly go some way to stop their joyous day out at the hospital being 'spoiled', wouldn't it?
[Bob Smart, from Arbroath] said: “At all entrances, particularly the main one, hardened smokers totally ignore the warnings. The sight of patients on drips and oxygen puffing away is disgusting."I'd say it is revolting and inhumane that they should not be afforded a place inside the hospital somewhere rather than being deliberately paraded by public health fascists, but each to their own Bob.
“If the powers that be were as ruthless as the parking attendants, the grounds really would be a no smoking area.”Fine the bastards! Then clamp their ankles in chains until they cough up! And if they still don't pay, put them in the crusher! That what you mean, Bob?
The study says the proportion of teenagers and young adults drinking on five or more days a week has more than halved since 2005. Binge drinking – which is defined as more than eight units for men and six units for women - has gone down by nearly a third to 18% among this age group over the same period.Perhaps this might, erm, educate the drones at the National Union of Students into not unfairly painting their peers as a collection of violent, shit-faced, destructive savages by calling for urgent measures to whack up the price of drinks and even ban alcohol in student bars.
[The Smoke Free Alternatives Trade Association] is actively trying to undermine the CDC's Tips for Former Smokers campaign by posting this ad, which looks exactly like the Tips ads, except that it endorses e-cigarettes as a cessation device.
These kind of look-alike campaigns (as they are also running against California with this campaign) may seem funny, but, as explained in the film Merchants of Doubt, are used to confuse the public and public policy makers.Confuse the public and policy makers? OK, let's have a look at one of these 'CDC Tips' ads which are being 'undermined', shall we?
"I tried e-cigarettes, but I just ended up using both the electronic kind and my regular brand," she said. Eventually, Kristy quit e-cigarettes and went back to just smoking cigarettes.So the inclusion of e-cigs in that ad is entirely irrelevant. It is the very definition of a "campaign to confuse the public and public policy makers" which Stan condemns.
What’s more, he feared that there was a “significant likelihood that a proportion of those who are using e-cigarettes will go on to use combustible cigarettes.”
“That this is happening,” Frieden added, “is alarming.”Except that study after study - in every jurisdiction in the world - is proving that this isn't happening at all. Most recently in Wales, but also in the whole of the UK, France and, yes, in Frieden's own USA.
Will Self on his conversion to vapingE-cigarettes could normalise smoking among a generation which has grown up in a largely smoke-free society, according to the Welsh government's chief medical officer.
Dr Ruth Hussey was responding to a Cardiff University study which found 6% of pupils aged under 11 said they had used e-cigarettes, compared to 2% who had tried tobacco.
"This research demonstrates that e-cigarettes are being used by young people who have never smoked," she said.
"We should be doing everything we can to prevent a new generation becoming addicted to nicotine," Dr Hussey added.Really, Ruth? This is the information you are happy to spew out to our national broadcaster? Because I've read the study - it's here for anyone else interested - and it 'demonstrates' that Hussey is being economic with the truth.
"This research demonstrates that e-cigarettes are being used by 0.3% of young people who have never smoked"At which point, we would all breathe a big sigh of relief and think, you know what, if they weren't using e-cigs they'd probably be experimenting with tobacco or cannabis anyway, so nothing to see here. It's hardly of epidemic proportion, is it?
However, it is important to note the low prevalence of regular e-cigarette use, which suggests that e-cigarettes are unlikely to make a major direct contribution to adolescent nicotine addiction at present.So wind your neck in, Hussey, you disingenuous troll. You're creating a scare story for purposes we can only guess at. Been talking to your pharma chums recently, have you?
"There are some concerns at the moment that the growth of e-cigarettes may be helping to get a new generation of young people addicted to nicotine. At the moment, that doesn't seem to be the case. There doesn't seem to be too much reason to worry that that's actually happening."Tell it to the Welsh CMO who thinks there is reason to be filmed by the BBC promoting exactly that non-existent worry.
Respondents were allowed to select up to three among the following response options: ‘your friends smoked’; ‘your parents smoked’; ‘you liked the packaging of the cigarettes (or other tobacco products)’; ‘you liked the taste or smell of tobacco’; ‘you liked menthol cigarettes’; ‘you liked cigarettes with a specific sweet, fruity or spicy flavour’; and ‘cigarettes were affordable’. Respondents who indicated that they started smoking because their friends smoked were classified as having initiated smoking under the domain of ‘peer influence’ and those who mentioned that they started smoking because their parents smoked were classified as under the domain of ‘parental influence’. All other responses were grouped together as ‘tobacco product features’, as the numbers of respondents who indicated each one as an influence were small.You'll note that of the seven options from which to choose, the five which referred to "design and marketing features" of tobacco had to be lumped together because so very few smokers said they were a factor in why they began smoking. The option "you saw someone smoking in a park and instantly wanted to go out and buy 20 Marlboro" didn't even make their drawing board during study design, it seems.
No significant association between design and marketing features of tobacco products and an early initiation of regular smoking was observed (OR = 1.04; 95%CI 0.83–1.31).By "early initiation", they mean starting smoking before the age of 18. Yet in recent years we have seen tobacco display bans, for the children; a proposed ban on menthol in the EU TPD for the children; bans on flavourings in the US for the children; and plain packaging in the UK, erm, for the children. Despite children not being seduced by any of these features.
Unnecessary obstacles to trade can result when (i) a regulation is more restrictive than necessary to achieve a given policy objective, or (ii) when it does not fulfil a legitimate objective. A regulation is more restrictive than necessary when the objective pursued can be achieved through alternative measures which have less trade-restricting effects, taking account of the risks non-fulfilment of the objective would create.Well, considering the entire point of plain packaging is to stop "early initiation" of smoking amongst children, I'd say a study - conducted by Imperial College, Harvard, the CDC and EPHA - concluding that packaging, even bundled up with other options, had no measurable effect in initiating smoking amongst 4,000+ young people from 27 EU member states, will be welcomed by countries who claim, quite rightly, that it is an unnecessary obstacle to trade and that there are "alternative measures which have less trade-restricting effects".
PUBLIC HEALTH FAILURE No.1. Look at fall in #NHS Stop Smoking Service performance under Tory/LibDem Gov. #lungcancer pic.twitter.com/GZ1tRxEtUh
— Gabriel Scally (@GabrielScally) April 11, 2015
Public Health's mirror image delusion - that everyone is as guilty as themEXTRA support staff will be deployed to advise smokers against lighting up in hospital grounds after staff and patients were spotted puffing away just days after new rules were introduced.Alert! Smokers have been spotted in the vicinity, release the hounds!
Professor Alison McCallum, director of public health and health policy at NHS Lothian, said: “We are grateful to the Evening News for highlighting this, enabling us to bring in additional support such as increasing the number of smoking cessation advisers and deploying in these areas over the coming days and weeks."Oh I see. So they were totally skint until the Evening News told them that smokers were in the car park, at which point the magic money tree began pumping out £20 notes. Or, as is more likely, are funds being diverted from healthcare for the purposes of a pointless witch hunt?
Alison Johnstone, Lothian Green MSP, said: “The ban on smoking at NHS hospitals hardly needs explain[ing], it’s there for a reason ...No, Alison, it does need explaining because it is not illegal (yet) to smoke outdoors, simply for the reason that there is no conceivable health threat. You do remember, don't you, that smoking was banned indoors because of the danger of mythical passive smoking from a series of {cough}thorough peer-reviewed studies? You're a politician, you surely must remember when bar staff were all of a sudden the most precious people in the nation ... for at least a few months until they were completely forgotten again.
“Anyone visiting a hospital, be it staff, patient or visitor, shouldn’t have to pass through a haze of cigarette smoke on their way inside.”Simple. Place smoking shelters away from entrances and smokers will use them. Problem solved. You're a clever girl, you can work that out for yourself, can't you?
The move – which has been introduced as part of plan to create a tobacco-free generation by 2034 – also bans patients and staff from smoking in their cars on hospital property.For the education of any bemused alien life forms who might be scanning our internet, these are cars which are allowed on NHS property.
[Sheila Duffy, chief executive of health charity ASH Scotland] said: “We want people to understand why the policy is there in the first place. At the moment, seeing smokers is a part of life but that is changing."Got that smokers? The policy is to make sure no-one ever has to see you. So go home, place a bell outside your door, and let's hope society can forget your sorry existence.
Clearly a polite request approach isn't working and if the health board isn't prepared to enforce it then they may as well say that all smokers are welcome.Heaven forbid that smokers - who have paid taxes to pay for the NHS just like everyone else, plus £12bn per year in duty over and above that - should ever be welcome at a hospital, eh?
French MPs on Friday passed a government-backed proposal to force cigarette-manufacturers to use plain packets without logos, identical in all respects apart from a small mention of their name.They also voted to impose a ban on smoking in cars, for an obligation for shops to check ID, transparency on lobbying by the industry and restrictions on where Tabacs can be situated. And then there is this.
An extra tax on cigarette manufacturers if their turnover either rises or fails to fall less that three per cent, the government's target for the reduction in salesIt's almost like they have admitted defeat before they have started. Plain packaging is the only measure amongst these which they can vaguely claim to be about driving down smoking prevalence, so they are insuring their stupidity with a tax, just in case.
"If a tobacco levy is introduced, the tobacco industry will have to decide whether to pass on to consumers some, or all, of the cost in higher prices. That would of course have some public health benefits, as price increases are known to be the single most effective policy lever in reducing smoking prevalence"We have to ask ourselves, then, why it is that governments are faffing around with a policy such as plain packaging - where the efficacy is hotly disputed - when they could just go for something that they know will work. Well, that's if they actually do want there to be less smoking, of course - the fact that state treasuries profit like a motherfucker from smokers tends to cast doubt on their motives somewhat, I find.
Unnecessary obstacles to trade can result when (i) a regulation is more restrictive than necessary to achieve a given policy objective, or (ii) when it does not fulfil a legitimate objective. A regulation is more restrictive than necessary when the objective pursued can be achieved through alternative measures which have less trade-restricting effects, taking account of the risks non-fulfilment of the objective would create.What Burstow has told the UK parliament is that there is - indeed - something far more effective than plain packaging, and that it's name is taxation. What France is admitting, too, is that if - as we can expect from the evidence from Australia - plain packaging doesn't work to reduce prevalence by an arbitrary 3%, they will resort to something that they know will work, taxation.
The Taxpayers’ Union has announced its intention to pursue taxpayer-funding to support its advocacy of value for money from every tax dollar. Taxpayers’ Union Executive Director, Jordan Williams, says:
“Since its inception in October 2013, the Taxpayers’ Union has relied solely on donations and membership subscriptions to allow us to expose government waste and ensure taxpayers receive value for money for every tax dollar spent.”
“Over the past eighteen months we have come up against sophisticated taxpayer-funded lobby groups such as ASH, Fish & Game, the Health Promotion Agency, anti-sugar group FIZZ, Generation Zero and even the Council of Trade Unions and Business NZ. Combating their calls for a high-tax future for New Zealanders has in itself been taxing on our own finances.”
“It has become clear that what is needed is another taxpayer-funded lobby group to save taxpayers from the groups they are forced to fund.”And the glorious denouement ...
“Today we have lodged an application to receive funding from Treasury to become a taxpayer-funded lobby group to oppose the other taxpayer-funded lobby groups, who in turn lobby taxpayer-funded bureaucrats, politicians and themselves.”Congrats to the NZ TPU for using an annual occasion in April to ridicule a system which takes the piss out of us all 365 days of the year.
Careers are often built on lifetime commitment to particular phases of evidence. But if the evidence changes, it is absolutely critical for public trust in the integrity of public health that we acknowledge the facts have changed and, accordingly, that we have changed our minds too.
[...]
Two illustrations of the advance of junk and low-quality science are the resilience and influence of climate change denialism, and the current efforts by e-cigarette interest groups to claim that e-cigarettes have revolutionary potential to make smoking history.
The interest groups behind these two major issues are succeeding in building momentum that may spread to challenge decades of public health and safety legislation.So, erm, 'experts' must change if the evidence changes, but e-cigarettes threaten salaries and decades of lazy, policy-driven dogma, so they must be fought. Got it.
Ordinary people can make amazing advocates, and we should work with them far more. They bring a compelling authenticity to an issue.While Lesson 8 stresses the importance of social media and engaging with people.
The internet has utterly revolutionised our lives. And utterly transformed advocacy. There are simply massive global participation rates in social media. Anyone in public health who is not part of this is the equivalent of a scholar in the Gutenberg era who declined to show interest in the potential of books.All of which is very strange. You see, he is preaching this sage advice to up and coming public health advocates, but does the very opposite himself, as he boasted in January.
Blocking is a bit like putting a sticker on your mailbox saying “no junk mail accepted”, except that unlike with junk mail, it works!
The concept of an internet troll is unavoidably subjective: what one person regards as hostile or inflammatory can be genuinely intended by the sender as an attempt to engage in debate. But having a Twitter account is not an obligation to engage with anyone seeking to do thisSo what Chappers is saying is that social media is brilliant for engaging with the public, and ordinary people should be listened to. Except if the ordinary people disagree with his beliefs, in which case shut down social media avenues of engagement and avoid contact at all costs.
Copyright Dick Puddlecote 2010.
Wordpress Theme by the-cloisters .
Converted To Blogger Template by Anshul .
