It's All In A Day's Work For The Mail

Panic!

By Jenny Hope
Last updated at 8:36 AM on 7th December 2010

Britain is the most boozy nation in the world, with more people drinking – and more regularly – than any other country, says a survey today.

Or not, as the case may be.

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 6:53 PM on 7th December 2010

Surprisingly British adults were not the biggest drinkers in Europe, consuming 19 pints of pure alcohol every year, which is the same as the EU average.

This is more than Germany, Greece and Italy but less than France who guzzle a whopping 22 pints and Spain who drink 20 pints.

Good grief.

This Week's Righteous Sunday Sermon *UPDATED a tad*

As is customary, those reliant on over-weening health scares for their living have taken the relaxation of a weekend and sprayed their intefering, selective mind-piss all over it.

High salt levels in ready made Sunday lunch warning

I love these articles as the more shrill public health boondogglers become, the more people are going to realise they are quite barking.

However, as this article illustrates, they are very careful not to condemn the Sunday roast itself, nor those who home-cook it. That is too much of a step right now, even for miserable authoritarians such as these. Oh no, it's only 'ready-made' items they are digging at (emphases mine).

Including too many ready-made items in a Sunday roast could lead to excessive salt intake, says research from a health charity.

[...] it found that choosing all ready-made products for a typical Sunday lunch - meat, vegetables and condiments - could result in nearly 10 grams of salt being consumed.

I've mentioned before that one of the prime motivators for the righteous is a deep-seated hatred of big business. This, again, fits perfectly into that agenda.

But if people read the labels and buy fresh meat and veg, it is also possible to cook a roast dinner with less than 2g of salt, CASH says.

This salt content is almost six times less than the total for the saltiest products.

It's only evil companies who add salt for flavour, you see, and it's 'possible' to use almost none at all if you cook at home.

But is that what actually happens if we want a scrumptious Sunday roast? Let's ask Delia, shall we?

To make the fat extra crusty during cooking, dust the fat surface of the beef with 1 level dessertspoon each of English mustard powder and plain flour – just rub them in gently – then season with salt and pepper.

And pork? Well, on the BBC website, ironically, Delia gives us the lowdown.

Now take about 1 tbsp of crushed salt crystals and sprinkle it evenly over the skin, pressing it in as much as you can.

How about roast potatoes, Delia?

Thinly peel the potatoes using a potato peeler, then cut them into fairly even-sized pieces, leaving the small ones whole. Then place them in a saucepan, pour over boiling water from a kettle, just to cover, then add salt and simmer for about 10 minutes.

And yorkshire puddings?

Make up the batter by sifting the flour into a bowl and making a well in the centre. Break the egg into it and beat, gradually incorporating the flour, and then beat in the milk, 2 fl oz (50 ml) water and seasoning (salt and freshly milled black pepper).

And I don't know about you, but Mrs P Snr always taught me to boil or steam vegetables in salted water. What says the nation's cooking treasure?

Pour in some boiling water from the kettle, add some freshly grated nutmeg and salt, then cover and steam the cauliflower till tender – about 12 minutes.

Wowser! It would appear that ready-made products are going to have to go some, then, to match the salt content of a typical Sunday lunch as advocated by the country's head cookery teacher.

Despite this, though, one of the hectoring fucknuggets at the root of this hysterical scaremongery ploughs on regardless.

However Professor Graham MacGregor from the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine, and chairman of CASH, said they should do more.

"Unnecessary amounts of salt are still being hidden in our food," he said.

I think he means 'hidden' in a 'forced-by-government-to-display-the-precise-salt-content' kind of way.

"This puts both adults and children at risk of developing high blood pressure which causes strokes, heart attacks and heart failure, the commonest cause of death and disability in the UK."

Fuck me! Really? Call the cops and throw Delia in the slammer for reckless endangerment!

Look, Graham, we're talking a once a week meal here. The clue is in the 'Sunday' part of Sunday roast. Just because you irrelevantly bung death and misery into your sentence, it doesn't make your rent-seeking agenda any less obvious, you know.

"It is the food industry's responsibility to take the salt out."

I would comment on this, but I reckon Steve Shark has already done so in an accurate and succinct manner.

Sorry, Graham, but it’s people’s responsibility to monitor their own salt intake, you controlling cunt.

Quite.

UPDATE: Note to self - be more thorough.

I looked into CASH a while ago and vaguely remembered that they received paltry income while paradoxically enjoying huge media interest. It also struck me that they were working out of someone's office in Tooting.

That someone didn't concern me at the time ...

Prof Graham MacGregor, of St George's Hospital, in Tooting, South-West London, welcomed the move but added: "Why do they need to put salt on the chips at all? Why not leave them as they are and let customers sprinkle on what they want?"

Hmm, interesting.

But the BBC article says he is from the "Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine".

Funny enough, so now is the HQ of CASH.

Principal address:
Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine,
Charterhouse Square,
London ECIM 6BQ

So it would seem that this entire organisation consists of Graham MacGregor and, err, a couple of mates.

Voluntary income is from tin-rattling sources such as the Food Standards Agency, Nissan, the Co-Op and OMC Investments. They did raise £717 themselves from selling old stuff, though, it has to be said.

CASH, and dictating the lives of others, is just Graham's little hobby.

Bless.

Feed Or Starve A Cold? I Can Never Remember

It's not often lurgey gets me, but on waking this morning there were tell-tale signs that a cold was doing its damnedest. It only got worse after watching 2012 at the insistence of the little Ps. I felt my antibodies - and my soul - throwing a stick and spotted hanky over their shoulders at around about the hour mark.

So, as you can imagine, I'm not much in the mood for writing. Instead, urgent restorative measures are required, consisting of Mrs P's friend coming over to help mop my fevered brow, alongside the application of known remedies - red wine (I prefer white but cures were never meant to be easy, eh?), and copious servings of curry - to limit the damage. Yes, it's going to be tough, but I can handle it.

In the meantime, here's something I lazily pinched from the comments at one of the few places I visited today. I'm sure many will have seen this Independent article from 2000, but I hadn't. Well, it made me laugh anyway.

Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past

However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event".

"Children just aren't going to know what snow is," he said.

David Parker, at the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in Berkshire, says ultimately, British children could have only virtual experience of snow. Via the internet, they might wonder at polar scenes - or eventually "feel" virtual cold.

Especially after seeing this on the same thread.

Anyway, must go. Our visitor is expected so I need to prepare myself for the upcoming torturous treatment.

Oh, woe is me!

Link Tank 04/12

Proof that it is possible to wade through Wikileaks articles and find other stuff.

Bernard Matthews and food snobbery - yes, that's you, Jamie Oliver

Women and the less-educated fear death more than men and university graduates

Alberta bans niche high-strength craft beers to tackle binge-drinkers who don't buy them

Winning the war on terror by causing it on the cheap

What a surprise! Pharmaceutical interests are behind the drive to ban e-cigs

The health benefits of sunbathing outweigh the risks of skin cancer

The EU may be bailed out by the US!

We are becoming a miserable country

Prominent US radio host rubbishes the passive smoking fraud with reference to a WHO study

The latest 'legal high' ... nutmeg

Google Earth reveals Star of David on roof of Iran Air HQ

Rising student fees? It's a Europe-wide thing

Plus ... a little prompt as I'm still waiting patiently for part 2

The State: Using Violence So You Don't Have To

A couple of weeks ago, Lord Norton spoke in the Lords about the need for schools to teach children how government works.

[...] if citizenship education disappears, then we will end up with a massive divide between those who do understand how our political system works, and how they can contribute to it, and those who have a limited awareness and for whom the political system may be a closed book.

That may be all well and good, but one would have more respect for such a position if it weren't seemingly wedded to the assumption that the system we have now is entirely perfect.

For example, if films such as this were shown to kids as a basis for discussion of the very concept of violence-backed, enforced state funding by taxation, we could truly be said to be providing an all-round education on political matters.

Of course, this doesn't only hold true for taxation. One could also query the strength of mandate for coercion and restriction of liberty - in any of tens of thousands of policy areas - afforded to government by an electoral system which is inflexible and reliant on a minority of voters, and which offers very little to those who may object strongly to certain policies.

Unfortunately, any state-funded teacher who dared to raise such ideas would be more likely to be sacked than applauded, one suspects.

Fake Health Stats Lead To ... Fake Health Stats

"Each day a few more lies eat into the seed with which we are born, little institutional lies from the print of newspapers, the shock waves of television, and the sentimental cheats of the movie screen." Norman Mailer

If I were a BBC website editor, I couldn't have engineered a more apposite article to complement my recent efforts here than this.

One in five people aged over 50 lie to their GPs about their lifestyle, according to a new survey by Saga.

The UK-wide study asked patients about their visits to the doctor and found a huge number are covering up their health habits.

A quarter of men lie about the amount of alcohol they drink, while one in five women avoid the truth about their diet.

One in five people tell fibs about their stress levels, while 7% refuse to divulge the truth about the number of cigarettes they smoke.

Well, of course they would. It's a natural human position when faced with a government tabling policy on the back of game theory, as I do believe I talked about last month.

As a concept of social control, [game theory] fails miserably since it relies on people acting as a homogenous, computer-generated, mass of unthinking drones with no outliers or rebels.

Humans are not machines. They cheat, they avoid, and they self-administer in a society which has been accustomed to a semblance of freedom. In short, the British tradition of self-determination has never been compatible to the application of a one-size-fits-all measure of the perfect lifestyle.

The state can advise with no problem at all, but once the wagging finger - or, the more prevalent 21st century state bully's rough prod - is unsheathed, unintended consequences abound.

People will lie because they feel intimidated, threatened even, by the approach public health is taking. Is it really so surprising, then, that the reaction to the wildly out-of-control nanny state is personal self-preservation by way of fibs, or a refusal to reveal personal information?

Now, let's just apply this to the recent series of articles I posted surrounding dentist enrolment forms and the insistence on garnering info on alcohol and tobacco intake.

If the dentist is unable to access the information he may feel necessary to maintain your oral health and dental care he could decide that he would therefore be unable to treat you.

I suggested that this defence was overly melodramatic, but the BBC ramped up the scare exponentially when talking of GPs.

Doctors have warned that lying during medical visits can have dangerous consequences.

Dangerous, so it is. Patients are in mortal peril if they don't tell doctors what is going on in their lives. And they may very well be correct, who knows?

Yet it is precisely the hectoring, condemnatory attitude of many GPs which provokes such a defensive stance in their patients. And how have GPs been manoeuvred into acting in such a way? Well, by the abrupt, rigid and over-weening policies of organisations such as the Royal College of GPs, the Royal College of Physicians, the Faculty of Public Health, and the National Obesity Forum, amongst others.

The health professionals who are now talking up the danger of lying to one's GP are the very same people who created the problem in the first place.

Now, come on guys and girls, let's place the blame where it truly belongs, eh? If the public's health is in danger, it's your arrogant self-indulgence which has caused it.

But that's not the end of the chain, now is it? Because their irresponsible (if their own risk assessment of lying is to be believed) tactics are dictated by a practice which brings us full circle.

That being the bare-faced mendacity of fake charities, vested interest quangoes, pharmaceutical profiteers, mortgage-funding civil servants, rent-seeking lobby groups, funding-hungry faux scientists, and generally obsessive health freaks with a profit motive. In every area mentioned above, from tobacco control, through alcohol temperance, to fast food restriction, salt hyperbole, and exercise regimes, the lies spew forth on a daily basis.

They lie, sometimes outrageously, and it leads eventually to GPs being fed lies as an antidote. It's a great big game of 'quid pro quo', with cash flying into healthist bank accounts while everyone's life is rendered that little bit more miserable and poorer as a result.

As Mailer said, "each day a few more lies eat into the seed with which we are born"; and our spirit; and our way of life; and our enjoyment of it. But while the state still promotes the professional lying industry, they will increasingly reap the same by return from the public.

Thereby rendering future intentionally dodgy health stats even more meaningless than the dodgy ones already used to dictate policy. Fake health statistics have led to even more fake health statistics which make any public health initiative by Westminster flawed from the outset.

If any government wants to tackle health problems, perhaps the first thing they should be doing is clamping down on the dangerous liars who produce bullshit for a quick buck.

World Health Organisation: Time To Ban E-Cigs

It would appear that 'nudging' isn't just the preserve of craven health department MPs who don't understand the original concept. Oh no. That august organisation, the WHO, are kicking off about nicotine being delivered by anyone other than the pharmaceutical industry. I wonder who may have elbowed them into such an action? [pdf]

Regulators of medical and tobacco products should collaborate in assessing the regulatory framework within their own countries to determine the most effective means of regulating (or possibly banning) Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (that's e-cigs to you and me) to protect public health.

They admit there is no evidence of any harm yet, but are desperately scrambling to find some.

There is [...] insufficient evidence currently to assess whether Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems may be used to aid cessation, whether they create or sustain addiction, and whether they deliver constituents other than nicotine to smokers.

The Study Group recommended that clinical trials, behavioural and psychological studies, and post-marketing studies at individual and population levels are needed to answer these questions.

I reckon there will be more than a few profitable organisations (who also chip in to WHO coffers, funny enough) queueing up to provide such evidence, don't you?

The interesting part is an emphasis on aiding 'cessation'. The implication being that if e-cigs don't do so, they shouldn't exist. It's precisely the approach taken by the UK's MHRA earlier this year.

Whether products containing nicotine should be considered by the Agency to be medicinal products by function [...]

Because, you see, government cannot - and will not - accept that any product can be enjoyed purely for the enjoyment itself. It's either harmful and should be banned, or it is medicinal and should be regulated.

The state insists that you shall never choose to subject yourself to any kind of risk, however miniscule, even if you bloody love it. Enjoyment doesn't pay WHO mortgages, you see.

The state as father, the state as mother, the pharmaceutical industry as generously-donating Godparent.

In the same document, they talk of the billions of people enjoying smokeless tobacco (which pharma also don't control), and the need to stop them doing so. The problem is that they've spent so much time fabricating science on second, third, fourth, and extra-terrestrial smoke, that the tobacco product which doesn't make their hair and clothes smell has gotten away with it.

Pfizer's nicotine patch sales figures were being neglected, so something had to be done. In short, although ...

Nicotine is a highly toxic and addictive substance that poses a serious risk to health.

... it should be purely the preserve of big pharma to supply it, because ...

Nicotine and nicotine products for human use should be regulated.

... except if they are manufactured by tobacco companies and already heavily regulated. In which case, they should be banned.

Expect much junk science towards snuff, snus and e-cigs in the near future. It's been ordered by pharma nicotine suppliers in suits.

Just a reminder. No-one in the world has ever voted for anyone working for the WHO.

UPDATE: This E-blogs article from Spain asks "Can we still believe the WHO?", and comes to the conclusion that:

I will begin to trust the WHO when the management changes and can ensure that they have no links with laboratories. Until then I won’t believe anything from there.

I make him very correct. If you do too, why not click on his Spanish blog just to alert him that there are Brits who think the same way?