An Object Lesson In Snobbery

A couple of repulsive snobs have been whining in The Times about the government's obesity strategy. It is probably the most draconian in the world, but that's still not enough for these two interfering weasels.

Theresa May dropped crucial features of the childhood obesity strategy because she does not have children, a leading female restaurateur has suggested. 

Thomasina Miers, 41, claimed that if the prime minister had had children she would not have allowed measures such as banning junk food advertising and preventing supermarkets pushing sugary foods at children to be dropped.

Rudely bringing May's childless status into the debate has led to condemnation from some quarters, but this is far more offensive in your host's humble opinion.

“Part of me felt that if you had had children you would not have done that, because it is so important that our children eat [healthy food],” she told an audience at the Hay Festival.

Erm, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from feeding your children healthy food, Thomasina. Oh, but you don't mean your children, do you? You mean other people's children, isn't that right you meddling fuck?

Here's a plan, Thomasina, why don't you look after your children, and we will look after ours. OK?

She's not alone in being a tedious, pinch-lipped prodnose though, there's this rancid curtain-twitcher as well.

Rosie Boycott, who works with various food organisations and advised Boris Johnson on food strategy when he was mayor of London, said that the prime minister appeared to have “kicked out the bits about children”. 

Ms Boycott added: “She [Mrs May] would say that she doesn’t want to be part of the Nanny State but I think that if you can’t be a nanny to your children . . . It should be the same as saying ‘do not run across the road.’ ”

Rosie, Rosie, Rosie. You can be a nanny to your children as much as you like, there is no law against it. But when you say "our children" you're being an intrusive snooper just like Thomasina, aren't you?

Rosie, you nanny your children, and leave the decision whether we want to nanny ours up to us, eh? When you start providing for my kids' food and paying for their upbringing you can decide how they live. Until then, have a Coke and a smile and go fuck yourself.

The double act ended on a flourish as the piece came back to Thomasina adding some stunning ignorance to her obnoxious prying into the lives of others.

Ms Miers said that while she did not believe in “big government” she thought it “has got to have more balls” adding: “I feel that this stranglehold that the big supermarkets have on our food system is not helping. People have to have access to fresh fruit and vegetables; it is mad that they don’t.

Have you ever seen a supermarket which isn't packed to the gunwales with fresh fruit and veg? Where does this preposterous woman shop? Venezuela?

It is astonishing that these vacuous pecksniffs believe they have the right to dictate how others live their lives, but it beggars belief that governments tend to indulge their vile snobbery. The only problem this Times article highlights is the one of legions of people like Thomasina and Rosie poking their unwanted noses into everyone else's business.

Far from being condemned, Theresa may should be congratulated for not caving in to shrill, pompous, loathsome shitehawks such as these two. 

In A Nutshell

Busy times here in Puddlecoteville but here's a quick gem from an article I read in the office this afternoon over a corned beef and pickle sarnie.

Ben Popken of NBC News has written a fairly balanced piece about differing policies towards e-cig use in American offices. In essence, it seems that small businesses are mostly embracing their use while larger ones opt for counter-productive and lazy blanket bans. However, the comments underneath also tell a story of their own about the new phenomenon of vaping.

As you read down you will see one pompous anti-smoker after another desperately drawing extreme scenarios, expressing faux outrage, or coming up with far-fetched excuses to fear e-cigs and show disgust towards anyone who uses them. Without any 'evidence' of harm - you know, like the olden days when smoking bans were supposed to be about that - to hang their irrational prejudices on, each scrape of the barrel is effortlessly countered by other more tolerant and rational folk.

It's a joy, it really is, but the whole situation is gloriously and succinctly encapsulated in this excellent put-down by some non-smoking geezer called "Mike from Gary". Watch and learn.

Admit it, people like you are simply enjoying lording it over people who use a still-legal product, and are just pushing as hard as you can, simply because you can. You pushed them into "smoking areas," then complained the areas were too smoky. You pushed them outside, then complained because you could smell them when the wind was right. Now they've found a compromise solution, but you're not interested in solutions, are you? You just enjoy imposing your will on others.

Nailed it. It's never been about health

Y'see, this is why I love e-cigs so very much. They almost appear sent by a heavenly being to expose anti-smokers - and the junk scientists who cater to them - as the absurd, self-centred, intolerant, anti-social control freaks they have always been.

And do you know what? I think more and more people are beginning to notice.

The Stunning Success Of Foodbanks

"More and more are starving!", screamed the usual panic-mongers yesterday.

The number of people relying on food banks to survive has tripled over the last year, according to new figures. 

The Trussell Trust, which runs 400 food banks across the UK, said it handed out supplies to more than 350,000 people between April and September this year. 

The Trust is calling for a public enquiry into why so many people are having difficulty feeding themselves. 

A cross-party group of MPs has been set up to investigate the surge in demand.

The Trussell Trust themselves point out one quite important factor.

It admits that one reason for the rise in the numbers is that there are twice as many food banks in existence as last year. 

But the Trust says the number of people using them has still tripled, and that even the well-established food banks are reporting significant rises in their use.

But they forget to highlight another. Their website proudly boasts how many articles have featured them since December 2010. Put it in a graph and it looks a bit like this.

So an increase in supply coupled with significantly increased awareness resulted in a rise in demand? What else did anyone expect would happen?

The only way you could argue that the increases are directly attributable to more food poverty being caused exclusively by government 'cuts' (as has been the general thrust of most media outrage) is if levels of awareness have been constant. This is quite clearly not the case - access to the banks has been made easier, and millions more people have been informed of the existence of food banks in the past couple of years, as have referrers such as doctors, health visitors, social workers, citizens advice volunteers and the police.

Contrary to the opportunistic political rhetoric of recent days, increased uptake is proof of how very successful the scheme has been. More people than ever before are benefiting from an imaginative partnership between businesses, citizen donors and a philanthropic charity initiative. It is society and community at its best.

It's odd that the same people who forever cite availability and publicity as forcing people to buy stuff are now ignoring availability and publicity as factors in more people using a service that is free.

Jersey Politicians Are 'Crazy', Says @TomHarrisMP

Back in 2008, genial Labour MP Tom Harris wrote one of the most popular political blogs around. Some may remember that he was fair-minded but did tend to get attacked for the stupidity of many of his then government's policies.

One such time was October 2008 when Tom gave his opinion of rumours that the government was planning to ban smoking in "private dwellings". In an article entitled "The smoking ban, what a drag"*, he bravely made this rather naive claim.

But the Department of Health recently held a consultation on whether the smoking ban should be extended into people’s private vehicles and homes. Now, I know this caused a great deal of perfectly understandable outrage among a lot of people. So let me make this clear: the government will not, under any circumstances, legislate to stop people smoking in private. It would be a crazy move and, believe it or not, ministers are not crazy people - they’re politicians and they recognise political realities.

And if they did attempt to legislate in this direction, I would risk the wrath of those who don’t believe Scottish MPs should vote on English matters by voting against it. 

But as I say, I won't need to, because it's not going to happen.

I remember it because - as we know very well - politicians are mostly idiots and will eventually do something that crassly stupid. I also remember it because I suggested in his comments section that we have a bet on his prediction, payable on him being proven wrong ... which he most certainly will be at some point. Probably sooner rather than later. He politely declined.

So, by Tom Harris's assessment, we can now safely say that the idiots currently in charge of Jersey are officially 'crazy'.

Smoking in homes and cars could be banned under proposals being discussed by Jersey's health department.

Well, fancy that!

Senator Sarah Ferguson was among those to voice concern about a move to "dictate what you do in your own home".

As if that is ever going to be a persuasive argument against the kind of knuckle-dragging, self-aggrandising berk who infests parliaments across the (supposedly developed) world in the 21st century.

Yes, I know that - unlike credulous Tom - we very wise jewel robbers saw this coming a long time ago and are not remotely surprised at the increasing insanity of anti-smoking hysteria, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

* Tom's blog was closed down after pressure from the control freaks at Labour HQ, but the link - for the record - used to be here.

Meat-Only Monday

If you think scare tactics using 'the chiiildren' and health junk science are bad enough, pity the agricultural industry who are being accused of destroying the world, no less.

Much like alcohol, tobacco and fast food controllers just happen to share the same wish for destruction of big business as the traditional left, a similar stunning coincidence is occurring with climate change dovetailing in nicely with the fantasies of vegetarian evangelists.

In ageing hippie-infested California, Meatless Monday is a movement which has aggressively promoted vegetarianism for all on one day of the week. Nothing to worry about, is it? After all, the tobacco control industry only ever wanted non-smoking areas in restaurants and they have been scrupulously true to their word.

However, the US Department of Agriculture have been caught up in this ideological nonsense, after briefly advocating its employees follow this advice last week. For some reason, they forgot that meat producers are part of the agriculture they are supposed to be promoting and protecting!

The anti 'Big Agriculture' lobby were, naturally, enraged that the USDA drew back from such a stupid position, and the language used might seem rather familiar to readers here.

It's quite telling that the Ag industry is so worried about Meatless Mondays. In all actuality, vegetarians and vegans, while growing, still make up such a small segment of our society. These organizations obviously know the harm they are causing to our planet and to the health of consumers... and they must realize that one day, the atrocities that take place on farms around the country will no longer be tolerated.

Perhaps meat-eating will one day, I dunno, be 'denormalised' perhaps?

The people behind Meatless Monday are a who's who of interlocking highly-funded righteous vested interests, amongst which you won't be surprised to find a certain Mayor Bloomberg. Just another strand of the wider religion-like effort to control and restrict the things that you enjoy.

And we have our own version over here too, complete with Sir Paul McCartney welcoming visitors to the website by describing how they are going into schools and getting in the heads of children ...

"One of the teachers was having a bacon butty and the kid said "err, excuse me Sir", he said "yeah, why, what's wrong?", and he said "you're eating bacon!". And he said "oh yeah" (looking guilty)."

... before weighing in with the emotional blackmail that it's not actually your choice to eat meat because - denormalisation always needs a threat - the planet will die if you do. Ta-dah!

Now, call me cynical, but I reckon they're being a bit melodramatic, as well as hanging their personal crusade on whatever they think they can get away with in order to make others live how they dictate.

So, in the same gentle vein (initially), how about you consider eating only meat on Mondays?

Sauces optional

Why? Well, err, you'll be much happier not having to be led through a supermarket by some spotty kid to find mung beans and pine nuts, and you'll have enough energy not to look emaciated and spaced like McCartney in the aforementioned video.

Of course, it's only voluntary but, if you don't participate, children of livestock farmers all over the world will most likely die of starvation (see what I did there?).

The meat only cookbook (and donation begging website) will be available very soon but, until then, how about some diet suggestions? Cold processed meats for breakfast if you're feeling continental, a bowl of Colman's meatballs for lunch as they are easily microwaved in the office, and a rare sirloin steak for evening meal.

I realise it will be difficult to go straight for the full meat only diet, so you might want to incorporate bread or chips etc as you get into it. However, you will one day notice that you really enjoy testing your molars on some of the finest animal flesh our brave agricultural industry strive to produce for you, and will soon learn to love the lifestyle.

Your breakfast bacon sarnie doesn't need the bread, just make more bacon to make up for it. Pre-cooked chicken is only a couple minutes warm in a 750w for lunch, as is a big bowl of chilli (leave out the kidney beans). And, for dinner, well, it's only traditional as a Brit to support your local kebab shop, tell them to hold the salad, and toss the pitta and chips in the bin on the way home.

It's only a grassroots initiative at the moment, so your own suggestions are welcome, but this is a campaign whose time has come. I don't want to scare you or anything, but there are poor starvation-threatened kids in Dorset who are relying on YOU to protect them.

Eat a cow today! You know it makes sense.

Voices We Should Safely Ignore

I've counted to ten so many times with this guy recently. Lord knows I've tried but, Jamie Oliver, please stop with this stuff already.

Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has criticised sports stars David Beckham and Gary Lineker for promoting junk food.

The television presenter, who forced the Government to introduce nutrition rules in schools after highlighting the unhealthy meals served to pupils, has added his name to a letter which condemns the use of athletes in commercials.

Look, guys and gals, "television presenter" are the operative words here. Say it was "London Black Cab driver", what would be your reaction? Shut your trap? Couldn't agree with you more.

Especially since the country won't even listen to them on the subject of transport in London, yes. Perish the thought, eh?

So why is anyone listening to someone who has such a loose link with his subject matter, and seriously believes that the young will die before their parents because of a few cans of coke or a Big Mac here and there. The man is quite insane, or at the very least a bit of an easily-conned dick.

The letter, published in the Times, reads: 'On the eve of the London Olympics we, a group with a vested interest in improving the health and wellbeing of young people, express our grave concern about this trend.'

Well, we know what Jamie's vested interest is, don't we? It's shifted thousands of books via a TV series, and got him over to the US for another version ... where they told him to poke his mockney nose where the sun don't shine.

And why not? Because as others have mentioned, Jamie's brand of holier-than-thou is nothing more than self-aggrandising snobbery.

I mean, let's talk about Oliver's pristine credentials, shall we? This is the guy who is absolutely certain that he doesn't want things banned. Oh no, billy-oh.

A spokesman for Jamie Oliver, who has championed improved nutrition in schools, said: 'He is completely against a ban on butter. He uses butter in his recipes, for example for roasting potatoes in his Christmas programme.

'He doesn't like the whole kind of food police, we must ban everything, point of view.'

Course not, except when ... err, hold on, did that say "a spokesman for Jamie Oliver"? Good grief with bells on, that our sad bovine world has come to this.

I digress.

Course not, except when he is advocating a ban on butter ... for others who don't earn millions for their point of view, like he does.

School cooks are being told to stop using butter in sandwiches to help tackle childhood obesity.

They are being urged to use a reduced-fat spread or none at all as part of a tough nutrition regime coming into force today.

However, the directive – part of the school meals revolution demanded by Jamie Oliver – was greeted with shock and bemusement last night.

Nothing from the 'spokesman', but then it doesn't hurt Jamie's income, that one.

Other signatories to the letter are [...] and London cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra.

Dr Malhotra, who has called for a ban on junk food sponsorship of the Olympics, said: 'It is totally perverse that some of the main sponsors of the greatest sporting spectacle in the world are McDonald’s and Coca-Cola.

It's also quite perverse that anyone takes an agenda-driven crank like Malhotra with any degree of seriousness.

This is the company Oliver keeps these days. The guy appears to be so malleable and credulous that I truly think he would believe that Screw Fix Direct is a dating agency if someone pranked him.

'The very lucrative financial gain for these athletes is sadly at the expense of our children’s health and we should not allow this to continue.'

Much of the very lucrative financial gain for Jamie Oliver is also sadly at the expense of everyone else except Jamie bastard Oliver!

'With celebrity status comes responsibility. So rather than helping to fuel this nation’s growing obesity crisis, these stars can play a key role in helping stem it.'

Hey, Jamie! With celebrity status also comes the responsibility to not be an over-bearing bore who forces one's opinions on the public who are very happy with Pepsi, McDonald's and other consumer products, thank you very much. It might not be the view in Hoxton where they name their kids after fairies, flowers and teddy bears, but in the real world your cash-trousering should have no effect on anyone else whatsoever. How arrogant that you think it should.

Yet one more example of how the public is sucked into a position where they feel it perfectly acceptable to interfere in the lives and choices of others. The producers being promoted are rich simply through the massive support they receive from the public. The celebrities advertising their products are entirely in keeping with the proper order of the world.

A letter from a collection of state-funded career prohibitionists, self-described vested interests, utter lunatics, and profit-chasing hypocrites like Jamie Oliver should be discarded as irrelevant, but you just know some airhead in Westminster will think it the most important thing he's ever seen.

Sadly, Oliver is one of the 1% of irritating dickheads that incessantly use their ill-gained influence to negatively affect the lives of the other 99% of us.

Hmmm. 1% controlling 99% for self-interest? I reckon there's a publicity angle there.

The World Watches, But Might Not Be Impressed

Considering we're talking about Bruce Springsteen and Sir Paul McCartney here, this story has flown around the world.

[E-Street Band guitarist Steven Van Zandt] said: "One of the great gigs ever in my opinion. But seriously, when did England become a police state? Is there just too much fun in the world? We would have been off by 11 if we'd done one more. On a Saturday night! Who were we disturbing?"

Maybe the Olympics could leave a very useful legacy, after all. The pathetic state of risk and offence-terrified, jobsworth, authoritarian, and utterly joyless Britain is beginning to be noticed.

Personally, I hope there are many more examples like this in the coming weeks. If our own bovine public can't be bothered to get these people off our backs, we'll just have to hope that international embarrassment and ridicule might do the job instead.

Well, you never know.

"Remove Stag And Hen Parties"

You will have noticed that people who spend their lives wishing to ban or restrict the choices of others are often described here as 'miserable'.

Why? Well, here's an example. While you were at work today, Balance NE (state-funded finger-waggers who have featured here before) have been spending the day - and the taxes you've been working to pay - at a seminar in Durham.

The Twitter tag #MakeItLessAvailable has been covering the event, and reveals many similarities with other campaigns I could mention. Although they are bite size snippets, the hyperbole, manipulated stats, and general gross exaggeration shine brightly throughout.

This tweet, though, jumped out of the page as a perfect exhibit of why these people are so very dangerous and, yes, miserable.


The CH refers to one of the speakers, Charles Holland, who is a legal expert on licensing. Presumably, the reference to "removing" stag and hen parties is something which might materialise under new powers granted by our coalition government. You know, the one which swept into office promising to hand us back all those freedoms Labour kept taking away.

Despite there already being laws available to punish those who cause trouble - due to alcohol or totally sober - it's not enough to build a campaign, and career, on so stag and hen parties will have to go. Because you just know organisations like Balance NE are just the type to have lobbied for such new powers.

It matters not that the vast majority of stag and hens go off without incident, and that they have been part of our culture for decades if not centuries. When the state-funded monkey needs feeding, nothing is safe.

Misery for you. Paid for by your taxes.

Don't You Dare Disagree!

Another day, another moral panic.

Having unusually - these days anyway - found myself in a van between 9 and 10 this morning (half term and all that), I managed to catch part of a phone-in on Radio 5 Live. Now, these things are generally quite off-the-wall affairs and, yes, I know you shouldn't take much of it seriously.

The subject was today's brow-furrowing over 'child sexualisation'. Yes, you can imagine.

While it may be true that there are some extremes, I really can't subscribe to this view that societal collapse is imminent because Rihanna prances around in hot pants or that there are a few (and yes, only a very few) dodgy fashion items being marketed for kids.

But that's not the point I'm intending to argue here. What was deeply weep-inducing was the attitude of those calling in. After hearing one after another screeching about "kids wearing short skirts in the High Street" and "buying high heels", I was already sighing while wondering what on Earth it had to do with them what other kids (or, indeed, parents) did.

It was then that a quite extraordinary exchange occurred between the Mail's Sonia Poulton and Sean Gabb of the Libertarian Alliance. I do urge you to listen to it here from 41 minutes in. Or just click below for those reading beyond seven days.



Poulton came to the table already either whacked up on caffeine or just naturally aggressive. Within the first minute she had dismissed as 'deluded' anyone who disagreed with her stance and set out a stall as some kind of unassailable expert. Gabb came over calm by contrast.

However, while Poulton was waxing hysterical about how we needed controls for "our children", Gabb challenged her. Exactly as he should. "Our children?", he said, "you look after your children, I'll look after mine". The result was as predictable as it was shrill.

From then on, Poulton issued insults; demanded people who held that view "be quiet"; refused to debate; and became madder the more it was insisted that others might not share her opinion. She embarrassed herself by asserting that she knew - knew no less - that Gabb wasn't a parent simply because he believed other people's kids were not hers to control, and when the host revealed that Gabb was indeed a parent, simply called him names and became even more insulting.

This, sadly - in fact, soul-destroyingly - is modern Britain. A place packed full of arrogant people who feel it perfectly acceptable to interfere in every aspect of the lives of others. If you disagree, or resist, they will shout and scream; make a call to their own delusional authority; and denounce you as a heretic or anti-social abuser.

I'm a parent too, and am terrified that someone like Poulton claims to have any kind of input into how my kids are brought up. I'm trying my hardest to make sure they are independent, the best they can be, and respectful of those around them. If they ended up as nosy, self-aggrandising, bad-mannered, and intolerant to others as Poulton, I'd be horrified.

Unfortunately, while we have this rather tired debate raging about child sexualisation - which hasn't changed much in tone since Victorians were appalled by ankles, those in the 50s were disgusted by Elvis's hips, and the easily-scandalised were shocked by Frankie Goes To Hollywood - no-one seems to be caring much about hideous mares like Poulton.

We used to have a few of these prodnoses dotted around, but they're everywhere now. Self-aggrandising, aloof, condescending of others, and entirely dismissive of choices different from their own.

Put this latest over-wrought moral panic to one side for a minute. Let's instead try to investigate why we have an army of shrieking curtain-twitchers who insist on getting involved in everyone else's life as well as their own.

Now that's something that government should be doing if it cared for society, instead of encouraging the most objectionable to forcibly dictate their own personal gripes on the rest of us ... as they seem to do at every turn nowadays.

It's none of their piggin' business.

Miserablist School Produces Results

In February last year, I reported on a summit organised by ASH Scotland to teach anti-alcohol campaigners how to be as successful as the tobacco control industry. The original link has now been removed, but it was announced with much fanfare at the time.

Alcohol Focus Scotland, ASH Scotland and Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems are pleased to announce a joint conference which will consider what progress has been made in alcohol control and tobacco control and explore what each sector might learn from the other.

Of course, there isn't much anti-smokers need to be taught about creating mythical hazards backed by statistical chicanery, so the flow of information was almost certainly one way. As a result, the temperance movement appear to have learned quite a lot if Alcohol Focus Scotland's latest newsletter [pdf] is anything to go by.

Do tactics like this seem recognisable to you?

A new report from Alcohol Concern, Making an Impression, shows that children as young as 10 are more familiar with some leading alcohol brands and adverts than those for popular foods and snacks.

The number of children able to identify alcohol branding and advertising was comparable to, and in some cases, greater than those who recognised brands and advertising for products known to appeal to children, such as ice cream and cake.

Hmmm. Do you think this might be a heavy hint towards advertising bans, restrictions on display and even one day in the future - because those brands, you see, they're so very dangerous - plain packaging of alcohol?

Well, there wouldn't be much point to their 'research' if not, would there?

Alcohol Concern’s Mark Leyshon said: “The drinks industry asserts very strongly that it doesn’t aim its advertising at children. However, this new study provides more evidence that alcohol marketing messages are getting through to young people well before they are legally able to buy alcohol. Research shows that children who are exposed to alcohol advertising and promotion are more likely to start to use alcohol, have positive expectations about alcohol, and to drink more if they are already using alcohol.

Ah, the old 'industry is knowingly corrupting children' angle. We know a current campaign exploiting the same mendacious ploy, don't we, lads and lasses?

Perhaps alcohol puritans are salivating at the prospect of being bunged their own £2.5m from the taxpayer to hoist billboards all over the country lobbying for something which only a negligible minority of intolerant, anti-social prodnoses would consider remotely worthwhile.

The drinks industry will have valid reasons for resisting such pathetic self-enriching, duplicitous nonsense from these tax spongers but, you guessed it, the tobacco control template is there before them.

[Dr Evelyn Gillan, Chief Executive Alcohol Focus Scotland said], ... despite minimum pricing being the will of the governments both north and south of the border and enjoying the support of doctors, nurses, the police, children’s charities and others, sections of the alcohol industry continue to threaten legal action. The lobbying power of global corporations is well documented and unfortunately all too often results in decisions being taken which favour business interests over the public interest. If the global alcohol producers and retailers persist in seeking to thwart laws which are likely to confer significant health benefits on the people of Scotland and the rest of the UK, they risk going down the same path as the tobacco industry.

The language is so uncannily familiar, it's almost déjà vu, eh? .

"All your business is belong to us" is about the gist of it. If the alcohol industry rightly claims that their detractors are absurd - and that it is long past time someone in government put them firmly back in their box - these rancid people-hating whingers will re-categorise respected businessmen as child-killers. No bag of jelly babies for spotting where this method has been employed before, I'm afraid.

Naturally, politicians will see straight past such hideous and miserable sophistry, yes?

During the Stage 1 debate in Parliament, Willie Rennie made a direct plea to the alcohol industry to stop lobbying against the measure: “I would appeal to the industry - do not go down the route of the tobacco industry and fight this tooth and nail, because there is a will in this parliament to deliver it. I appeal to them: Let’s get on with it.”

Well, no. Of course not. Because politicians are idiots.

It's clear that there's only one way this is all going. There will be a minimum price for alcohol; there will be a ban on advertising all alcohol products at some point; there will be a display ban for alcohol too; and there will be gruesome warnings on bottles of wine because alcohol prohibitionists have a precedent to help push for all of them. Swiftly followed by plain packaging unless politicians stop being dickheads long enough to realise it's a pointless and wholly miserable idea.

What's more, it doesn't matter if the alcohol industry lays down and lets it all wash over them quickly - as alcohol campaigners would wish - or fights it every step of the way. They will still be portrayed as evil big business preying on the misery and suffering of little children. It's a vital component of the whole process.

If the industry is seen as responsible, alcohol control salaries don't get paid and conservatories, loft conversions, circular drives don't get built. The new top-of-the-range car is put on hold and the dining out at Michelin restaurants at the taxpayers' expense becomes more rare. The creation of an opponent allied with Beelzebub to entrap kids is indispensable to prohibitionist wealth creation. Appeasement is entirely futile.

It's what was taught at the tobacco/alcohol summit. It's all part of the plan.

Falling Into The Grand National Pity Trap

You could see this evening's Grand National Twitter storm coming a mile off. Or a week to be precise, as that's how long the BBC has been ramping up the alarm. This week's phone-in entitled "Grand National: A national treasure or national disgrace?" (duplicating exactly the same 'debate' last year) was particularly inflammatory and to be expected from our right-on state broadcaster.

Two horses died but - I imagine to the horror of Aintree's organising committee - one being Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Synchronised had headlines written all over it.

The fact that Synchronised had thrown jockey A P McCoy prior to the race, and gone on a trot a mile around the track beforehand, led inevitably to vile tweets towards McCoy for having carried on with the race. The joy of hindsight from many who know sod all about racing, and wouldn't even have known the horse existed before the event, is more than depressing.

It means more headaches for Aintree and more fixes will be made but, as we know very well here, none of them will appease those who just want to see the event abolished.

It's telling that of the list of fatalities in the race's 170 year history, half have occurred since the 1970s. This coincides with the period where we stopped worrying about how to feed ourselves, make sure the kids were educated properly, and that we had clothes on our backs. The time when full-time worriers began to occupy the extra leisure time we were afforded, using the improved media we could all now see on TV instead of in laborious print.

Since then, tweaks and 'safety improvements' have continuously been made, but the fatalities have increased rather than been eradicated. The two deaths today both happened at Becher's Brook - a fence previously known as fearsome due to its big unseen drop - which had been levelled off prior to this year's race.

Risk compensation has been up to its usual mischievous tricks, it would seem.

Race horses were looked after far worse in the past than they are now, and the fences were incredibly more hazardous than they are now. Yet fatalities are increasing, simply because the risks are reduced so more chances are taken. It's counter-intuitive, but those who claim to care about the welfare of the horses will never seemingly look at the statistics and try a different approach.

There are two reasons in my opinion. Firstly, there's probably the usual class motivation behind much of the heart-bleeding. The sport has always been regarded by many as a preserve of the rich, and served by those evil bookies who want to steal money from people, despite their not being forced to give it to them. It wasn't long before a 'hilarious' tweet was circulated widely advocating similar hazards - floating mines actually - to be placed in front of the University Boat Race crews, presumably in an attempt to conflate two sporting events linked to those who are envied as better off.

Secondly, it's our entire modern attitude to risk itself, and the same ignorance of benefits which we see in other subjects discussed here.

Nothing except total prohibition will ever be risk free. Even if the fences were taken away from the Grand National entirely, there would still be the risk of fatalities due to the exhausting distance of the race, and it would destroy the spectacle and therefore the event itself. So if one truly wants to eradicate these deaths, your only option is a ban, which is the stated position of some.

If you're happy with that, fine. But the loss of enjoyment and financial benefit that the Grand National gives to the nation would be lost forever. Another bit of colour erased from the calendar of already over-populated grey and depressing days.

Yet again, we're pandering to a vocal minority, many of whom have no care about those who enjoy the race simply because they don't particularly care about it themselves. They're not affected, but want it banned anyway.

It says everything about the BBC led debate that they did so by way of repeatedly quoting their darling Ricky Gervais. It was the best way to get it aired as an unbiased piece. They omitted to point out that he objected personally, but was not of the opinion that it should be banned because of that.

Sadly, we have a nation now which is not as intelligent. Instead, it wants everything banned of which it disapproves, and in the pursuit is willing to block out all advantages and benefits without seeing that such crass stupidity is advancing the blandness of everyone's life as a result.

Really Big Forehead Syndrome - The New Public Health Scare?

There now follows a report of an important scientific study by way of a guest post by fellow jewel robber, Ivan.

As government public health policy becomes increasingly ridiculous a group of researchers from the Faculty of Investigating Utterly Stupid Public Health Policies (USPHP), led by Professor B. F. O'Grant, think that they might have hit on an explanation. Professor O'Grant explains “Utterly stupid public health policies and utterances are quite normal amongst politicians, but we have developed a method for identifying the spectacularly bad from the routinely daft background noise. In recent weeks we have seen a huge spike in total stupidity that is practically off the scale, so we began to look at possible causes amongst the worst afflicted.

RBFS - Is forehead size related to specific intellectual dysfunction?

Amazingly, the prestigious research team found a link that suggests a significant inverse relationship between intellectual ability and forehead size which seems to apply mostly, but not entirely, to politicians advocating public health policy. They have christened the condition Really Big Forehead Syndrome (RBFS) and have published a peer-reviewed paper in a leading medical journal explaining it.

Sufferers are afflicted by a range of symptoms that affect their ability to think clearly, or even at all, whenever public health interventions are mentioned:

• They often demonstrate a complete lack of common sense, so believe things that the average schoolchild instinctively knows are ridiculous. Such as the idea that charging 50p for a unit of alcohol will deter hardened alcoholics, and kids, from drinking

• They invariably lose all ability to weigh the evidence and make balanced judgements, so are unduly swayed by single issue campaigners exhorting them to excesses that normal people feel are not justified by the available data. This is accompanied by a fidgety restlessness that makes them feel that something must be done. “God alone knows what they would do if alcohol consumption and binge drinking were actually increasing” said Professor O’Grant.

• They also lose all sense of perspective and pursue policies such as plain packaging, and banning shop displays, despite the fact that virtually none of the population that they allegedly represent supports such pointless and annoying stupidity.

• Proportion follows perspective and the victims become obsessed with enforcing their daft draconian policies. This results in punishments for allowing someone to smoke in a bar, or showing them a branded cigarette packet, often being more severe than those for getting hammered and trashing the local town centre.

• They lose all ability to quote statistics consistently. One subject used 3 different figures for alcohol related hospital admissions in as many weeks.

• They regress to a childlike “doctor knows best” state and believe virtually anything that the medically qualified tell them, however dishonest and however far outside the normal scope of medical principles.

• They become paranoid and avoid debate with more rational uninfected people for fear that their version of reality, based on stories told to them by pressure groups, might be criticised for not actually being the truth.

• They are also haunted by hallucinations in which perfectly legal industries are run by living demons spawned by Satan himself.

• They believe in fairies.

"They associate with the wrong kind of obsessive lunatic"

The USPHP team admit that the fairies part does seem odd but point out that they have shown a statistically significant relationship between all the above symptoms and forehead size.

Some people dispute that forehead size automatically indicates stupidity with respect to public health and claim that this particular form of intellectual dysfunction is the result of nurture rather than nature. “These people mean well but when they take up office, they associate with the wrong kind of obsessive lunatic, get in with a bad crowd, and before you know it they are banning something ... well everything really”, said the leading psychologist Professor I. V. Bigagrant.

Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) claim that the USPHP team are secret Ninja academics hired by horned big tobacco devil lizards to discredit their perfectly reasonable proposals. In any case they point out; if RBFS does turn out to be real then they reckon that 50% of the sample probably consists of ex-smokers, so is certain to be smoking-related.

Alcohol Concern claim to have canvassed a representative group of young people, and have already requested that RBFS sufferers be excluded from pre-watershed TV programming with a view to a complete ban in the near future.

The World Cancer Research Fund claim to have already completed a meta-analysis that definitively proves RBFS to be caused by eating too much red meat. They are now working on alcohol and coffee.

The BBC has no idea what RBFS might be but has promised to bore everyone rigid tomorrow over breakfast with non-expert non-entities from its favourite charities, and tame GPs who want to be writers.

Professor O’Grant and his team are upbeat about their findings. They admit that their sample size is too small to claim a causal link without a lot more very expensive research, but claim that their evidence is compelling.

The Strange Case Of The Doctor Who Book

Via The Radio Times, it would appear that a bit of a Twitter storm has erupted today over a Doctor Who book and the author's account being frozen by PayPal.

Behind the Sofa, a limited-edition charity book full of celebrities' reminiscences about Doctor Who, may not now be published following the decision of online payments service PayPal to freeze the account of the project's organiser.

All profits from the 200-page book were to be given to Alzheimer's Research UK. But payments for pre-orders – which were to be used by editor Steve Berry to fund the manufacture and distribution of the book – have today been frozen by PayPal.

PayPal had been taking payments directly by credit and debit card, as well as from customers with PayPal accounts. Berry may now have to fund the book himself.

Ooh, how very mean!

The book was to feature contributions from, among many others: Paul Whitehouse, Michael Grade, Rufus Hound, Stephen Merchant, Charlie Brooker, Hugh Bonneville, Al Murray, Bill Oddie, Chris Chibnall, Jeremy Dyson, Jonathan Ross, Josie Long, Terrance Dicks, Martina Cole, Mitch Benn, Neil Gaiman, Nicholas Parsons, Paul Cornell, Toyah Willcox and Tracy Ann Oberman.

In fact, according to the author's blog, these just scratch the surface.

Over 100 celebrities have given their time and contributed memories to the book

Now, as the boy and myself are both Doctor Who fans, that is a book I/we would most definitely like to read.

I'm absolutely sure the author has the very best of intentions too, and will feel rather pissed off right now ... BUT.

Why is he resorting to using pre-orders as a way of funding the book? The profits are going to Alzheimer's Research UK, and they're certainly not short of a few bob. Their last submitted accounts show income of £6.5m and they employ 22 full time staff running an 'advertising and fundraising' budget of nearly £300k. A book like this will sell extremely well, surely, and any employee of the charity who refused to fund its production would have to be certifiably insane, especially considering the slebs listed above.

The author says he was forced to go the PayPal route for funding the book's publication because ...

"I set up this site as an experiment in 'crowdfunding' after I couldn't find a satisfactory solution elsewhere."

Now, there are two options to consider here. Why didn't he go to Alzheimer's Research UK? Or, if he did, why did they refuse?

"Had the book failed to generate enough money to fund the book, I was prepared to do so out of my own pocket. It seems that I will now have to do that."

Personally, I don't think there was any chance that such a book would fail to make a profit and the author had offered a guarantee that he would make up the shortfall if need be.

Again, that would be a fairly safe gamble for Alzheimer's Research UK to take if they were asked.

Of course, such a verbal guarantee would not be as easily accepted by an organisation like PayPal which, to all extents and purposes, must act like a bank handling other people's money.

There is obviously no suggestion whatsoever that Berry was going to run off with the money if he couldn't finance the book, but if PayPal had already released it prior to any book being produced and something like that did happen, it was going to be PayPal getting it in the neck from angry 'investors'. It probably explains why they are still keeping the money until certain guarantees are met. They do, after all, have an obligation to consider their assurances to those who send payment via PayPal.

The Radio Times continues.

No monies paid by Doctor Who fans thus far have been lost – PayPal is retaining the project's funds until the situation is resolved. Berry is currently deciding whether to seek alternative means of taking payments for the book.

Or - forgive me for keep saying it - he could go to Alzheimer's Research UK to help him out. They're getting the profit, for crying out loud, what's the problem? There is even the weight of BBC publicity behind it, how can they possibly lose?

So, before a knee should jerk on this, we need to ask some questions. Were Alzheimer's Research UK approached? If not, it would seem to be a silly error. If they were, and refused, they are as much to 'blame' for the possibility of the book not being published as PayPal.

And, if Alzheimer's Research UK did refuse, then surely PayPal are entitled to hold the same reservations. In fact, even more so since they are dealing with other people's money, whereas Alzheimer's Research UK's cash - they being a charity, and all - is donated without the requirement of anything in return.

Of course, in modern discourse, banks are staffed by Cybermen and charities by Adipose so I can understand the over-reaction.

BHF Calls For A Law To Stop People Believing The Truth

Isn't it good when large charities do exactly what the public expect them to? Well, you won't see any of that from the British Heart Foundation today ... they're lobbying government instead.

In a press release which was surprisingly shunned by most news outlets (Mirror and Independent excepted), the BHF advance one of the many paper thin justifications that anti-smoking organisations are dreaming up to hide the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever that plain packaging will have any effect on smoking rates - in children or anyone else.

Among the 2,700 16 to 25-year-olds polled, just over a quarter of regular smokers judged one cigarette brand to be less harmful than another purely on the basis of packaging.

You see, the tobacco control cult are unanimous that dose does not make the poison when it comes to tobacco. It is, apparently, a unique product which manages to circumvent the globally accepted rules of chemistry and biology (and even physics in some instances). This point is explained further in the BHF's tobacco marketing policy statement (via Belinda, emphasis mine).

The outcomes of a study commissioned by ASH show that the branding of cigarette packs profoundly affects consumer perceptions of the attractiveness and relative safety of the products. The same research found that adults and young people were significantly more likely to rate packages with the term “smooth”, “gold” and “silver” as lower tar, lower health risk, and easier to quit compared to “regular” varieties of the same brands.

What a silly idea. I wonder where they got that from, eh?

Well, perhaps from the EU.

Directive 2001/37/EC

Article 3

Cigarettes: maximum tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide yields

1. From 1 January 2004, the yield of cigarettes released for free circulation, marketed or manufactured in the Member States shall not be greater than:

- 10 mg per cigarette for tar,

- 1 mg per cigarette for nicotine,

- 10 mg per cigarette for carbon monoxide.

One must wonder why the EU would be passing directives on the tar, nicotine and carbon monoxide yields, if it weren't to 'lower health risk' and - considering everything the EU does with regards smoking is designed to reduce prevalence - make it 'easier to quit'.

Not convinced? OK, how about this from the Scientific Committee on Smoking and Health (SCOTH)(again, emphases mine)?

Health effects of smoking lower tar cigarettes

Only prolonged smoking of low tar cigarettes can determine the extent to which health risks are reduced. UK figures show that male lung cancer diagnoses have been falling since the early 1980’s which reflects the trend in smoking which has decreased for the last twenty years. This may in part also be due to the lower tar cigarette.

[...]

Another possible explanation for the observed reduction in male lung cancer deaths may be the altered ratio between tar and nicotine in the lower tar cigarettes: the ratio between tar and nicotine has reduced as tar levels have come down and this means reduced exposure to tar and other harmful constituents of smoke measured on a per unit nicotine basis.

That would seem pretty unequivocal. Lower tar cigarettes are considered to be marginally less harmful than higher tar ones, and SCOTH even believe there is evidence to prove it.

Every producer reacts to customer preferences, with brands in all areas introducing lines which are lower in fat, sugar, salt, alcohol content, or whatever else they have been hectored into being scared of. Tobacco is no different. Seeing that smokers were concerned about levels of tar and nicotine, tobacco manufacturers developed a range of products with differing strengths to cater for each individual's choice and risk tolerance. And, yes, "packages with the term “smooth”, “gold” and “silver”" really are lower in the ingredients mentioned, as is helpfully documented by SCOTH here.

The EU set a maximum level on tar, nicotine and CO many years ago because they fully believed that health of smokers would be improved by doing so. If not, they were just spending money for no reason whatsoever. It must be one of the two (or, most likely, both).

So, the BHF's argument here is that young people believe something - which is true according to both the EU and SCOTH - to be true, and that therefore anything indicating this truth must be eradicated.

Hmmm, unless you're a chipboard-brained politician, it's not very convincing is it? Expect much more 'evidence' of the same feeble calibre on this subject in the coming months, though.

'Cos that's the problem when you're a tobacco control junkie scratching round the bottom of the barrel for ever-diminishing fixes to satisfy your prohibitionist cravings - once the easy pickings dry up, all you're left with is the unappealing crud.

"Regulate Junk Food As A Pollutant"

It's been mooted before here that Harvard occasionally get all righteous about food and drink, and blow me if they haven't been doing it again.

Health Experts: Regulate Junk Food as a Pollutant

M'kaaay. Not quite the measured response we'd expect from an intellectual institution, but let's see where it goes.

The U.S. government should deal with unhealthy ingredients in food the same way it deals with pollution: with cap and trade, a suggestion published Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The very same 'expert' journal which published Jill Pell's Scottish heart miracle nonsense, you mean? Oh I see, I think we understand better now.

In the imagined cap and trade policy, companies could manufacture products above a government-capped level of sugar and fat, but would be taxed for the additional unhealthiness at a cost passed on to the consumer.

The idea of government trying to regulate what people eat to improve public health, increase productivity, and reduce health care costs is not that farfetched. Denmark made headlines after implementing a "fat tax," adding a premium to things like sugary soda.

Err, they made headlines precisely because it is that far-fetched. And fundamentally wrong to boot. I'd have thought people living in the (cough) Land of the Free would recognise that.

Kristina Lewis, a doctor at Harvard Medical School's Department of Population, co-author of the report, recognizes that establishing such a policy would be an uphill battle. But she also believes something has to be done ...

Yes, she did say that. This is not satire.

... in the realm of public policy, because she said encouraging people to change their behavior is not enough.

Forgive me for offering a different viewpoint, but I'd say that not only is encouragement definitely enough, anything more is none of their fucking business, quite frankly.

Fortunately, there are still a dwindling number of health professionals who don't seem to have entirely given up on common sense and reason.

[...] health secretary Andrew Lansley launched a new goal to bring down England's obesity levels by 2020. He said Britons should be eating five billion fewer calories a day and urged people to be honest with themselves about what they eat and drink. The government has also been calling for 'fat' taxes on unhealthy food and a ban on advertisements aimed at children.

[Elaine George, specialist bariatric nurse at BMI The Clementine Churchill Hospital] is very against this idea: "I don't think that's a solution, I really don't. It's ostracising people. I do believe that the fast food chains shouldn't be as unhealthy, there should be more healthier options or just take them away. I don't think making things more expensive is going to change anything. I think education is key from an early age. Teaching them good habits and how to cook. There's a lot to be said for education rather than just penalising people."

I fear for the career of Elaine George, however bloody perfect her argument and understanding of the human condition is. She seems blissfully unaware of the modern denormalisation agenda surrounding lifestyle choices.

A heretic burning beckons.

I Have A Dream

You know that the BMA have seriously cocked up when even Ben Goldacre decides he can't ignore their shoddy nonsense. He is the 'Bad Science' guy, after all, even if he quite enjoys bad science in anti-smoking matters.

Just the act of denouncing provable lies obviously made him feel quite dirty, mind, as he spent the rest of the day assuaging his guilt by whipping himself into a frenzy with numerous anti-British American Tobacco tweets such as this.

See, the United Dreams of Europe is a "British American Tobacco front group", according to Goldacre. How they can be a 'front group' when the about page openly states "since 1979 the independent non-profit Foundation for Future Studies – an initiative of British American Tobacco – has conducted scientific and statistical research into current attitudes and behaviour across a range of social and political strata", I just don't know. I always thought a 'front group' was something which hid the identity of those funding them.

Goldacre has a different idea about shadowy enterprises than me, I suppose. I would have said that an organisation which had been in operation since Goldacre was struggling to understand how Lego works - and has never hidden it - would be eminently transparent. But hey! What does a 'tabloid' blogger know about words and shit, eh?

Still, it's good that he pointed this site out, as my 'European Dream' is for righteous arseholes to wind their necks in and leave us the fuck alone to live how we see fit.

So I posted such a dream here.

The Precedent That Keeps On Taking Liberties

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about tobacco control being discussed at an Irish obesity conference.

THE SMOKING ban has not had any appreciable effect on the number of smokers in Ireland, the chief medical officer at the Department of Health has said.

At a forum on obesity yesterday, Dr Tony Holohan said ...

Obesity? Why are you talking about the smoking ban at an obesity forum then, Tony?

He also said there was a need to look at the inter-relationship between different lifestyle factors, including tobacco use, alcohol consumption and obesity, and their effects on health.

“People who smoke just don’t smoke, they are also people who are overweight and they are also people who are high consumers of alcohol and we need to understand the interaction of those,” Dr Holohan said.

Well, how about this? In Canada yesterday, we see obesity being discussed at a tobacco control conference!

"Reductions in smoking are largely the result of specific policy interventions, with price increases through tobacco taxation being most effective," continued [Dr. David Hammond, associate professor at the University of Waterloo School of Public Health and Health Systems]. "Along with changes in where you can smoke, how tobacco companies can market products, and how smoking risk is communicated to the consumer, these interventions have helped reduce smoking prevalence in Canada from 50 per cent in 1960's to 17 per cent in 2010."

Hammond believes that similar policy interventions could lead to a major change in obesity rates among Canadians, and he is not alone in this opinion. Tobacco control professionals from across Canada are gathering to share information and lessons learned with delegates working on obesity prevention.

Through the exchange of knowledge, particularly what worked and did not work for tobacco control, the goal of reducing obesity rates in Canada through policy intervention can get a head start.

That bashing of smokers by those who don't personally partake doesn't seem so wise now, does it? It was only supposed to be those malodorous nicotine addicts in the cross hair, after all. Unlike normal people who enjoy other vices, smokers were a unique problem ... weren't they?

Oh how those who enjoy other vices laughed when we warned them that they would be next, and that their collaboration would come back and bite them on their lardy behinds; or the inebriates on their drooping todger; and that the anti-tobacco precedent would be employed to do so.

Suck it up, wobble-bottomed smokerphobes. Eat reality along with your Cripple Cock, CAMRA. The beast you helped spawn is sharing tips and mass producing finger-waggers tailored specifically for the task of denormalising YOU!

One day, you'll work out that perhaps you should have stood up for smokers - thereby also protecting yourselves for the future - while you had the chance. Your intolerant prejudices opened the floodgates, and now 'public health' hectors are swarming all over the less-than-healthy pleasure that you enjoy.

We did warn the irresponsible, short-sighted idiots. Sadly, they didn't listen, and many will fail to see the connection even when professional scaremongers are crawling all over newly denormalised free choices, conjuring up images of dead children and demanding unconditional abstinence.

The new puritan alliance is up and running now, and the baton they are carrying was supplied by anyone who has ever blithely approved of bans, restrictions, or any other state-led sanctions against substances or practices which they don't personally like.

Divide et impera, I think they call it.

All that's left now is to watch for respective appeasers in each targeted group to come out and give a little ground in the hope of being left alone (oh look, here they are already) but - as smokers are well aware - this is simply not on the wider agenda for prohibitionists. The best example of this comes from ASH's Beyond Smoking Kills report which came after, remember, the implementation of a smoking ban many myopic smokers thought was worth supporting in order to shut them up.

Some smokers may feel that enough has been done to restrict their behaviour and that they should be left alone to enjoy the choices they freely make. Yet this misses the point.

Indeed it does. The 'point' is that these evil nags will never stop.

They were never going to stop once smoking had been denormalised, they were inevitably going to extend their appalling anti-social nature to the users of other unapproved products. And they will never be satisfied with any achievement, however radical or ground-breaking it may be. There will always, but always, be the 'next logical step' towards ultimate prohibition.

Bansturbators aren't even hiding the fact that they're ganging up, globally, anymore. Any chance some of the blinkered in other camps might wake up and do likewise in opposition sometime soon?

Nah, didn't think so.

The New Puritan Alliance

If you're a normal, healthy-minded individual, you will be well aware - because it's really not too difficult to spot - that the point of the smoking ban in your particular jurisdiction had nothing to do with saving bar workers from imminent death. That, transparently, was the only way legislation could be bullied through without risking a charge of acting in contravention of personal responsibility and property rights*. The real reason was to make you, and everyone else, stop smoking. Simple as.

How do we know this? Because governments are stupid, of course. They regularly pass laws on the back of an opaque lie, then sometimes openly boast about their true intentions.

House of Lords Behaviour Change - Science and Technology Committee

Now, in case you didn't want to click and enlarge the image, it puts forward one - presumably perfect, else it wouldn't have been used - example of "restricting the options available to individuals" as "outlawing smoking in public places".

If you truly believed it was about bar workers, you're probably the type who arranges their entire day around 20 words in the morning's tabloid horoscope (that's a polite way of saying 'crashingly gullible').

Of course it wasn't. The whole point of smoking bans worldwide is to pressurise smokers into quitting, and in doing so, buying - or the government buying on their behalf with your taxes - pharmaceutical products.

Sadly, smoking bans worldwide have this irritating habit of having a negligible effect on smoking rates, if at all. The latest country to admit they are barking up the wrong tree is Ireland.

THE SMOKING ban has not had any appreciable effect on the number of smokers in Ireland, the chief medical officer at the Department of Health has said.

You don't say? Ireland in 'exactly the same as everywhere else in the world' shocker, d'you mean? Well, what a surprise that is! And there they were thinking that this particular throw of the dice was going to be different to the long string of losers preceding it.

At a forum on obesity yesterday, Dr Tony Holohan said smoking was still at the same level as it was before the introduction of the ban.

Well, naturally, because smoking bans always result in the same ... oh hold on, wind that back a bit!

At a forum on obesity yesterday, Dr Tony Holohan said ...

Obesity? Why are you talking about the smoking ban at an obesity forum then, Tony?

He also said there was a need to look at the inter-relationship between different lifestyle factors, including tobacco use, alcohol consumption and obesity, and their effects on health.

“People who smoke just don’t smoke, they are also people who are overweight and they are also people who are high consumers of alcohol and we need to understand the interaction of those,” Dr Holohan said.

So what are you saying here, Tony? Why are you lumping all these lifestyle choices in together?

“There is no way these complex, societal challenges which face all of us can be confronted unless we can find a way of working together,” he said.

And crash, bang, wallop if Tony hasn't just encapsulated the ethos of this blog in one sentence.

Because I've said it before many times ...

Without adopting a united front in objecting to assaults on all lifestyle choices - whether you approve of them yourself or not - there is no chance of ever stopping these arseholes in their tracks.

While normal, everyday people are bickering and scratching each others' eyes out about the hierarchy of vice acceptability (I'm looking at the likes of you, CAMRA), public health departments are increasingly uniting a dream team of bansturbatory fun police to clamp down on everything you enjoy which isn't 100% healthy.

They have long since worked out that the way to success is via collusion and a common goal. Whereby those ranged against them are insular and dismissive of anything but their core cause.

When are the barely sentient cattle in this country and the wider world going to realise this, and start uniting themselves against what is, by comparison, a tiny number of loud-mouthed, publicly-funded blowhards?

Kiwi Crampton, as I've also routinely pointed out, offers a brilliant metaphor which encapsulates this self-defeating behaviour perfectly.

It's like a bunch of folks on the scaffolds complaining that the other guy's noose isn't quite tight enough. Y'all might instead direct your attention to the hangman sometime and try helping each other cut those ropes.

If you've ever said "something should be done about this", or "there should be a law against that", you are the problem. Just zip it.

Now - more than ever - it is necessary to fight on all fronts, or expect an almighty illiberal kick in the balls from a righteous elite who use co-operation and note-sharing to their advantage, while their opponents stubbornly don't.

* One might even call it a 'confidence trick'. Oh look, someone already did ... Deborah Arnott of ASH, to be precise.

The State And Its Back Seat Driver

I can see I'm going to be referring to this work of art at Counting Cats for quite some time to come.

Here, for example, is a perfect illustration of the scenario painted so vividly by IanB.

Motorway speed limits could be raised to 80mph to shorten journey times and boost the economy, it is reported.

Fantastic! Before the full story emerges, that is.

The current 70mph restriction is rarely enforced, police often turning a blind eye to anyone driving at up to 10mph faster than the limit.

Experts have argued that by having a higher speed limit that is enforced more readily, drivers are more likely to have respect for the rules.

See what they did there? They'll change the rules for us (ain't they kind?), but only if we have respect for their arbitrary - and now very much out-of-date - limits. This, in technical parlance, is known as giving with one hand while inflicting buggery by way of sandpaper glove with the other.

Let's look at the history here. Motorways were designed when the average family saloon suffered from speed rattle once you hit a mile a minute. However, engineers - as they have always been wont to do - built in a margin and designed them for safe travel at 90mph (can't find a link but, trust me, it's my job). And this was back when cars were heavier; not regulated to hysterical standards as they are now; didn't have ABS, power steering, crumple zones, etc etc; when there were no seat belt laws; when drink drive limits were not yet set; when crash barriers were mostly non-existent, let alone computer crash-tested; and when the driving test could be passed after an hour or two of shite tuition in a Morris Minor with Uncle Freddie.

The 70mph limit is as irrelevant to the 21st Century as The Bay City Rollers. As illustrated by its origin.

Q: When was the 70 mph motorway speed limit introduced in Britain?

A: The 70 mph National Speed Limit was introduced as a temporary measure in December 1965. It is often blamed on Barbara Castle, but at the time the Minister of Transport was Tom Fraser.

The reason given was a spate of serious accidents in foggy conditions, but it is often claimed that the MoT had been alarmed by AC Cars testing their latest Cobra on the M1 at speeds up to 180 mph.

It was confirmed as a permanent limit in 1967, by which time Barbara Castle (a non-driver) had become Minister of Transport.There was surprisingly little debate at the time: the fact that the average family car of the time could only just exceed 70 mph perhaps had something to do with this.

This was a rule originally set to tackle either a phenomenon which is much more unlikely now or, as some believe a rare anomaly, but was done in true political fashion to affect just about no-one too unduly.

This has now been turned into a golden rule which will lead to instant death if it is reviewed. So, yet again, the state approach is to assuage those who would give them grief over it. But unlike in the past, it's not us voters who governments are afraid of, it's the 'campaigners' (aka the righteous). Let's quote IanB.

Just as by the 1970s a government couldn’t make any decision without asking the Unions for permission, now no government can make a decision without consulting The Campaigners. And just as nearly everyone accepted the situation as normal back then, so it is that most everyone treats the situation now as normal too.

The Campaigners in question here are no doubt 'experts' like Brake or RoadPeace. And everyone does indeed think this is normal.

The public would now prefer to abrogate their right to have government listening to them, by allowing unelected - and often publicly-funded - quangoes and fake charities to do the dictating instead.

So we have a situation where even if our parliament comes out with a rare good idea - such as raising the speed limit to a realistic level, commensurate with modern living rather than rent-seeking fantasy - they are obliged to temper it with some hideous big boot to get it past the professionally aggrieved.

If this long overdue re-casting of the motorway speed limit is eventually enacted, you can bet your Nat West piggies it will be accompanied by more fines on non-compliance, and a whole raft of initiatives to bring city driving down to a maximum of 20mph.

If not, the nagging, vilification and shrill squealing by special interests whose livelihoods rely on slicing your freedoms up bit by bit, would become unbearable.

This is how government works in the Britain of 2011. They'll give us more rope, but will hang us high with it to avoid suffering the inevitable incessant whinging that would result otherwise.

Politics Masquerading As Public Health

Rob Lyons at Spiked has put astutely into words something extremely important when it comes to debates about public health. It concerns this 'obesity pandemic' red herring about which you have all, no doubt, read much nonsense.

Lyons - as others have done before - accurately points out that the scare stories are exactly that. Nothing but self-serving hot air.

But he goes that one step further in highlighting a dark message behind the appallingly tortured statistics.

The figures, however, are then used to demand greater intervention in the name of tackling obesity. Here, as with the 2007 Foresight report on obesity produced by the UK government, there is less of an emphasis on changing individuals’ behaviour. Far from individuals being too morally weak to resist another mouthful of food, as might have been suggested in the past, the new paradigm is that we live in an ‘obesogenic’ environment where we are apparently surrounded with ever more opportunities to eat and endless attempts to persuade us to do so.

In that vein, a Lancet editorial says: ‘While business and industry, with their very different aim of making as much money as possible and with an enormous and expensive apparatus of clever advertising, are very effective at nudging people to buy and consume their products, non-regulatory measures to increase consumption of healthy food in isolation are unlikely to be effective.’ The chubbies of Britain are merely dim-witted schmucks, it seems, who are taken in by ‘clever advertising’. Thankfully, the health experts and campaigners are here, like knights in high-fibre armour, to demand that Big Food be regulated just like Big Tobacco has been.

Such campaigners are not the friends of the put-upon masses. Rather, having failed to convince many people of the wisdom of their policy prescriptions and the benefits of lifestyle changes, they’ve decided to go over our heads and appeal to politicians to bash big business instead.

So very true.

Because, d'you see the one thread that runs through all of these portents of doom? Yep, without exception, they all point to a destruction of big business with little valid reasoning for it.

We don't smoke because we enjoy it, it's all tobacco marketing; no-one just enjoys a drink, we're bullied into booze by clever adverts; we don't choose to eat at McDonald's, their marketing department forces us to.

Etc, etc, repeat to fade.

By way of illustration, via the inestimable Crampton, here are some highlights from a perfect working example of modern public health ideology taking place in New Zealand this week.

Creating Our Future - Now

• Junk food sugars resistant even to regular teeth brushing

Deepa Krishnan: New research into the effect of junk food sugar has found the damage it does to teeth is so severe that not even regular and frequent teeth brushing can completely counter it.

Only junk food sugar, note. Other sugar is presumably magic sugar.

• The harm to male-female relationships contained in beer advertising

Christy Parker: The potential for social harm, particularly the perpetuation of a climate of family violence, contained in beer advertising. New research indicates the advertisements, which aim to appeal to young men about the age they are forming their identities, operate as a “manual on masculinity” with excessive beer consumption, larrikin activities, negative attitudes towards women and avoidance of intimacy all constructed as markers of being a “real man”.

For 'negative attitudes towards women', read 'fancying the opposite sex'.

By daring to appeal to men - who tend to like to drink beer - the drinks industry are evil. They should, of course, instead be advising males to drink soft drinks water and embrace feminism.

• Casinos offering warm welcome to lonely refugees: the harm gambling does to the Asian community

Amritha Sobrun-Maharaj: New research finds Asian immigrants and refugees are finding a safe haven at casinos and there, developing gambling habits that contribute to the “huge harm” being done to Asian communities. Often finding it hard to integrate elsewhere, immigrants and refugees are given a warm welcome and are made to feel important at casinos.

Because casinos should be snarling at anyone who dares to exercise their own freedom of choice, instead of welcoming them. It's not the individual's fault, it's those nasty rich people.

• Diversity versus social justice – how inequities are created

Rhys Jones: The notion of diversity is often used in discussions related to health inequalities. However health inequities are about much more than just difference – they are driven by the unequal distribution of power and various forms of discrimination.

In short, the privileged are to blame, natch.

• Climate change and health – what public health practitioners can do to help mitigate the worst effects

Oh Lordy, you're gonna love this one!

Angela Culpin: Increasing proportions of the population are being diagnosed with mental disorders, even where social circumstances are improving. There are also many more stressors on mental health including the fear for our future. Society globally has recently been faced with many threats, including climate change and the drainage of natural resources.

Yes! After years of scare stories about global warming catastrophe, many are going mad with worry.

The Mental Health Foundation is committed to moving towards a new path where prosperity takes into account the mental wellbeing of people, as well as the needs of the planet.

So why not continue to embed that perception by emphasising Mother Earth one more time, eh?

Confusing, isn't it? Here we have a bunch of publicly-funded employees gathering to talk about health, but wandering off into any number of directions which just happen to all line up with lefty politics.

Any wonder, then, that we have this guy trying to reframe the debate.

David Sinclair: “Lifestyle” diseases such as diabetes, lung cancer and cardiovascular disease must result from people’s choices, so they surely can’t have anyone else to blame can they? Why should good taxpayers’ money be used to benefit those who are indolent and poor? Because they are clearly not “lifestyle diseases”, they are diseases associated with living conditions: social, economic and environmental poverty. Deprivation must be the focus, not “lifestyle”. This insidious term must be abandoned if public health’s relevance and legitimacy are not to be further undermined.

Sorry to break it to you, sunshine, but you've been collectively rumbled.

Your legitimacy is diminished because the public health industry is increasingly dedicated to pushing an agenda which wouldn't look out of place in the Morning Star - a desperate re-definition of language hides nothing.

It's beginning to appear as if public health is less about health nowadays, and more about plain old-fashioned political dogma.