The Power Of Ignorance

We are well into the new year and the 'public health' racket has leapt back into tax-sponging action, most notably in the pages of the Guardian.

Last week the tax-avoiding lefty rag was bemoaning the fact that Coca-Cola is resisting Public Health England's pointless plan to tax fizzy drinks which make up around 2% of a child's diet.

Coca-Cola is to use smaller bottles and sell at higher prices rather than alter its famous sugar-laden secret recipe, while Irn-Bru faces a growing consumer backlash over fears a new lower sugar version will ruin Scotland’s national soft drink. 

The changes are part of the preparations underway in the fizzy drinks business for the sugar tax. The cost of some “price marked packs” of Coca-Cola sold in newsagents and convenience stores will increase by more than 10% in March, just before the new tax comes into effect the following month. 

The plans will see a 1.75 litre bottle of Coke shrink to 1.5 litres and at the same time increase in price by 20p to £1.99. The price of a 500ml bottle is also increasing, from £1.09 to £1.25. The new price means the cost of a half-litre bottle will have soared 25% in a matter of months, as they were just £1 until last autumn.

Boo to the nasty big corporation! But considering the article mentions that Coke's bottling plant covers all of western Europe, it's pretty predictable that this is what was going to happen, as Timmy at the ASI points out.

If the public directs its anger at these price hikes towards those responsible - that being the government and its hugely overpaid quangoes - then that will be well and good. However, even now I expect the congenital liars in 'public health' are gearing up to persuade consumers that it is Coca-Cola being greedy and killing kids with their "toxic" "poison" (yes, that is the kind of batshit crazy hysteria anti-social health lobby maniacs have fostered in some on social media). The 'public heath' lobby know there will be some anger at rising prices, and that many won't have any idea that it is solely down to the government instead of corporate greed. It's the kind of ignorance that the overwhelmingly left-leaning - some even blatantly radical socialist - 'public health' scamsters will be eager to encourage.

Meanwhile, this week saw the anti-alcohol arm of the 'public health' tax drain also use public ignorance to their advantage.

Only one in 10 people know that alcohol causes cancer, according to findings that also show strong public backing for cans and bottles of drink carrying warnings about the link. 

Cancer Research UK (CRUK) said widespread ignorance of alcohol’s role as a carcinogen was “very worrying”, while Alcohol Concern said the lack of knowledge was costing lives. 

“Alcohol is a major cause of cancer but this survey clearly shows that the vast majority of people don’t know this, which is very worrying,” said Prof Linda Bauld, CRUK’s cancer prevention expert.

It's not a "major" cause of cancer, as Snowdon highlights in his Speccie article today, in fact it's decidedly minor.

The cancers associated with drinking are mostly quite rare. The lifetime risk of dying from these diseases is mercifully small and, for people who drink moderately and do not smoke, the increased risk from alcohol consumption is trivial to non-existent. 

The exception is breast cancer, which appears to be linked to drinking even at low levels – hence the Chief Medical Officer’s claim that there is no safe level of drinking – but the evidence for this has only appeared in recent years and there are reasons to be sceptical of it. Even if the statistical associations between moderate drinking and breast cancer are real and causal, the magnitude of risk is so small that it is unlikely to persuade many women to go teetotal.

By only talking about cancer and speaking to the public's deepest fears - while not acknowledging that moderate drinking is beneficial to overall mortality - it is 'public health, once again, lying by omission to bring in whatever pet policy they are badgering politicians about at any give time. In this case, it is warning labels on alcohol.

Bauld said CRUK agreed. “We urgently need to raise awareness. Requiring warning labels on alcohol products making clear the cancer link would be one way to do this, and this survey shows that the public support this measure.”

What a surprise! And can you imagine the poll that came to this conclusion that the public is in favour? It will have hugely exaggerated or skipped past the pitiful level of absolute risk and you can bet your mortgage it wouldn't have mentioned the fact that teetotallers die, on average, earlier than those who like a drink every now and then.

Just like the utterly pathetic sugar tax folly, warning labels on alcohol will have no effect whatsoever either. Those who are worried about the risk will already know that alcohol can be risky, and those who are less risk-averse won't care and won't even read the warnings. But at least it will keep the 'public health' state-funding bandwagon going for that little bit longer on their journey towards full prohibition of everything.

This is what is so very rotten about 'public health; that they destroy people's choices and pull society apart by harnessing ignorance and encouraging it. They are jubilant when the public swallows their daily vomiting of lies, and they trade on it, with campaigns relying on and nurturing exactly that ignorance. And to top it all off, after spreading falsehoods and whistling innocently as the public is educated wrongly, they then rely on the general fallacy that 'public health' is actually interested in the public's health, rather than chasing the "next logical step" in useless - and often counterproductive - policy recommendations just to keep their taxpayer funds rolling in.

Another article in the Guardian this week seems to believe that this government is surreptitiously squeezing the 'public health' cartel by starving it of funding. If so, this is a very good thing for the country. The more 'public health' groups are defunded, the more chance of the public being better informed and less ignorant of what is being done to them against their will by state-funded shysters.