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It is strangely comforting to see that the ‘class war’ instincts of old Labour are not entirely dead yet:
John Reid, the Health Secretary, yesterday dismissed the demand for a blanket ban on smoking as “an obsession of the learned middle class”.
Speaking at a Labour Party event, he said he was reluctant to use compulsion to outlaw something that was a source of pleasure, particularly to working class people.
That Mr. Reid has to fight the corner of working-class people at a Labour Party event speaks volumes about the evolutionary path of the modern left.
Earlier, Mr Reid expressed his views even more bluntly when he took part in a round-table discussion with some of those invited to contribute to the consultation.
Told that they were discussing a smoking ban, Mr Reid said: “Let me play devil’s advocate. What enjoyment does a 21-year-old mother of three living on a sink estate get? The only enjoyment sometimes they get is having a cigarette.”
One participant objected quite strongly, telling Mr Reid her mother died of lung cancer.
But Mr Reid, a former chain smoker who has now given up, said it was best to provide people with information and let them decide what to do for themselves.
Now, perhaps, Mr. Reid can take the next logical step and denounce the levels of tax that working people have to pony up in order to enjoy their smoking habit. Then the bien-pensant can safely re-classify him as a ‘right-winger’.
Compared to the length of time it took to hike up the taxes on tobacco, alcohol and petroleum, the great ‘junk food’ shakedown has been completed in remarkably quick time. HMG is clearly honing its modus operandi down to a fine art: [note: link to UK Times may not be available to readers based outside the UK]
BRITAIN’S biggest food companies are to be told by the government to pay an “anti-obesity” levy to fund new sports centres or face punitive laws restricting advertising, marketing and labelling.
Firms such as McDonald’s, Walkers and Cadbury Schweppes are to be asked to contribute tens of millions of pounds towards the sports facilities. The government is set to provide £1m for the scheme for every £3m pledged by the food industry. It will be used to build sports centres, gyms, football pitches and tennis courts.
The food industry confirmed this weekend that it was preparing to co-operate with ministers and could provide hundreds of millions of pounds to fend off regulation.
Of course, I knew this was coming but not even I was prepared for the ugly truth to be revealed quite this rapidly. The Treasury must be desperate for the cash. → Continue reading: The big pay off
Growing up in the 1970’s I recall being rather spooked by dire warnings of an impending ice age and the threat that I would spend my adult life shivering in a cave. Some twenty years later that apocalypse vision had been melted clean away by the dire (and considerably shriller) warnings about global warming and, according to everyone who is anyone, I now face the threat of spending what remains of my adult life sizzling like a sausage.
Two decades in which to manage a complete polar reversal in doomsday-scenario is pretty good going but it pales into ‘also-ran’ status by an eerily similar polar switch in the rather more mundane field of eating disorders.
This is from the BBC website in July 1998:
Doctors have hit out at the media and advertisers for encouraging anorexia by portraying skinny supermodels as the beauty ideal instead of ‘more buxom wenches’.
The British Medical Association’s annual conference in Cardiff voted overwhelmingly for a motion condemning the media obsession with ultra thin supermodels.
Dr Muriel Broome, a former director of public health, said “the constant image of very thin models” encouraged girls to develop eating disorders. “We urge the media to be more responsible and show more buxom wenches,” she said.
I know not whether Dr Broome’s advice was acted upon, but I am now informed that we have, indeed, taken on the mantle of buxomness with some considerable gusto. From the BBC website today:
Improving children’s eating habits is the key to tackling an obesity “timebomb”, MPs have warned.
The Commons Health Select Committee attacks the government, food industry and advertisers for failing to act to stop rising levels of obesity.
From ‘ultra-thin models’ to ‘obesity timebombs’ in the space of slightly over half-a-decade. Now I am no statistician but I think even I am qualified to regard that as a quite remarkable national metamorphosis. → Continue reading: Fat of the land
It is official: food is the new enemy of the international left.
While the crashers were doing their stuff on the neatly-manicured lawns of Geneva, dark plots were being hatched inside the gleaming towers:
All 192 countries in the World Health Organisation have tentatively agreed to an unprecedented policy on diet and health to tackle global obesity.
Did that include the Ethiopeans?
The voluntary plan was hammered out at talks in Geneva in the face of stiff opposition from lobbies such as the sugar-producing nations.
We are privileged indeed to witness the birth of a brand, new imaginary straw-man. Ladies and gentlemen, making its debut on the world stage, but soon to making regular appearances in the columns of every angry, left-wing polemicist in every media venue on earth, please give a warm welcome to….. “the Sugar Lobby” (boo, hiss). Stand right here in the spotlight, Sugar Lobby, and take your place among right-wingers, big tobacco, industrialists, zionists, gun manufacturers, motorists and George Bush.
Nearly one in six people worldwide is now considered overweight.
Amazing is it not? Seems like only five minutes ago that the battlecry of the social-working class was “feed the starving”. Now, in the blink of an eye, they have changed it to “starve the fed”. Astonishing stuff!
The BBC’s Imogen Foulkes in Geneva says this is the first ever attempt to regulate the world’s eating habits.
And we all know that it will not be the last.
Dr Kaare Norum, a Norwegian obesity expert who advised the WHO on the development of the plan, said the agreement was a victory for public health.
DR. NORUM: “I have been studying obese people for many, many years and the incontrovertible data I have collected as a result leads me to conclude that these people are very fat”.
WHO: “You are obviously an expert. Come join our committee”.
Honestly, the whole article sounds as if it has been lifted from an old issue of Pravda. Mind you, it comes courtesy of the Beeb.
So be warned you choca-holics and doughnut-dunkers: your stodgy, sticky delights are on the hit list. Lock them away in secret bunkers while you still can.
The May 1 issue of New Scientist contains an item ‘Why our fears about fat are misplaced’ written by Paul Campos, a Professor of Law from the University of Colorado. We have often stated our belief fat is the new job frontier for government bureaucracy and Professor Campos seems to agree with us. He states unequivocally that no research directly links fat to shorter lifespans. Sedentery lifestyles and other factors, yes. Fat alone? No. In his own words:
Ultimately the current panic over increasing body mass has little to do with science, and everything to do with cultural and political factors that distort scientific enquiry. Among those factors are greed (consensus panels put together by organizations such as WHO that have declared obesity a major health crisis are often made up entirely of doctors who run diet clinics), and cultural anxieties about social overconsumption in general.
He notes that in one recent study:
It added up to just one extra death per 10,000 “overweight” women per year. The authors still treated the findings as strong evidence of a causal relationship between weight and cancer
Professor Campos also has a book on the subject, The Obesity Myth.
Like a lot of folk who spend much of their time working in an office in Central London, I try to grab what exercise I can by going to a gym. I have been visiting one of these places in London for about eight years, and, gratifyingly, my once pencil-thin physique has acquired a bit more muscle. (I have a long way to go, mind, not that I remotely want to look like the Governor of California). I have also acquired other benefits, such as being able to sleep much better, better chance of avoiding injuries in everyday life, and a better pallor… The benefits have not gone unremarked by my girlfriend, either.
Gymnasiums are now a major business. Their success in the West speaks of an ever-expanding desire on our part to live the healthy life and do something direct about it. I find it amusing that at a time when we are constantly told by our masters that we need new laws, taxes and the like to avoid obesity and other problems, that more folk than ever before are getting off their backsides and working out. Screw the nanny state, put on some gym shoes! It is a rather encouraging sign that the spirit of self-help, at least when it comes to developing a flat stomach or a nice torso, is well alive.
The gym culture also I think shows just how secular British society has become. If you lack faith in an afterlife, and want to squeeze the most out of life on this Earth, then get fit! Also, if you do not believe that pride is a sin, as I do not, then there is nothing wrong in doing one’s best to look good and feel physically on top of the world, and enjoy that fact.
Dave Barry links to this:
Phil Henry said he went to Helen Ellis Hospital in Tarpon Springs and was admitted for abdominal pain. A few days into his stay, his I-V malfunctioned causing his right arm to swell.
“On Tuesday night my right arm started hurting. I rung for a nurse. I didn’t get anyone and my arm got swollen up about the size of two golf balls and started bleeding,” Henry said.
After ringing for a nurse several times, he decided to take matters into his own hands.
“I took my urinal can and threw it out in the hallway, still got nobody. I hollered two or three times. Nobody came so I picked up the telephone and dialed 911.”
He said he told the dispatcher his name, where he was and described the problem with the I-V.
He then asked the dispatcher to call the hospital.
“Then I got a nurse. After that they took good care of me.”
Warning to British people: Do not try this with the NHS.
Tony Blair’s 10 Downing Street web site is claiming that some spurious target or other, for the National Health Service to recruit an extra 2,000 General Practitioners, has almost been reached. That is, according to some figures produced, and I use the word advisedly, by the UK government’s Department of Health.
However, I have just watched a hilarious piece on Channel4’s News programme where the Royal College of General Practitioners challenged how these good news figures had actually been arrived at? I felt like phoning the programme up and telling its producer about a civil service game called Hard Target, which involves a pack of marked cards, a set of rusty darts, and a small bag of pistachio nuts. But I relented and listened on.
With an increasing number of GP surgeries refusing new patients and an increasing shortage of GPs around the country, for instance in Barnsley, as mentioned by Channel4 tonight, and even in relatively well-funded towns in Scotland, the Royal College puts the alleged increase in GPs at something more like 200, rather than 2,000, and if you take into account the increasing number of GP retirements and the increase in part-time GP working, the full-time figure actually shrinks, in real world terms, to something more like 26.
So, well worth increasing the spend on the NHS then, to nearly one hundred billion pounds, from about sixty billion. I know that’s almost £1.54 billion pounds per extra GP, but hey, is it really possible for us heartless libertarians to put a monetary price on the sanctity of human life and its guardians in the general practitioner service? Shame on us.
Which leaves me in a dilemma? Do I believe the UK government figures or do I believe the ones from the Royal College of General Practitioners set at about 1% of the government’s own claims? It is a toughie, I will admit, but you know me. I always believe everything the government says on principle. For where would civilisation be if we ever lost trust in the government?
I am an Aardvark.
As someone often accused of never having one word for a subject, where three hundred and fifty seven will do, I am afraid the following act of collectivized lunacy has simply left me stumped. Gazumped. And just plain flummoxed.
A National Health Service surgeon, from the Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham, has been suspended on full pay, for a week now, in a row over whether he took too many croutons to go with his lunchtime soup.
No, I am really not making this up.
I particularly like the comment from some idiot going under the name of Lord Warner:
I am reliably informed that there will be no detriment to patients, because the work that that doctor was due to perform will be covered by his colleagues
Tell you what, to save NHS costs let’s sack every surgeon in the entire country except one, who can cover all the rest. There will be no detriment to patients, obviously. We just better make sure we have a fleet of helicopters ready to whizz him about the country and a good supply of amphetamine pills to keep him awake.
Like I said, words fail me. Just pick your own croutons from the following word soup and gently flavour with Basil:
Parasites. Fools. Cretins. Croutons. Bananas. Idiots. The sooner the NHS is privatized the better. Monkey nuts. Lickspittles. Guardian-reading Enemy Class. Arse. Feck. And of course. Drink. Lots and Lots of Drink.
I particularly like Monkey nuts.
That’s it, I’ve had enough. I just could not believe my ears, last night, listening to some po-voiced BBC reporter agreeing with some equally pompous do-gooding UK doctor that British people simply cannot be trusted to look after their own health. They also agreed that Wanless Chinder’s HM Treasury proposal, to introduce yet more tax-funded social engineering into British health care, was a desperately needed breath of fresh air.
Jesus H. Christ. Just when will you people get it? When will you get it into your thick skulls that it is your damned social engineering policies, over the last sixty years, which have created all of your alleged problems in the first place? When you take away people’s responsibilities for their own health care, by providing them with an MRSA-infested paid-for-by-everybody-else National Health Service, the obvious response is for many of them to start abusing their own bodies, or at the very least to start taking less care of themselves. Why? Because someone else will be forced to pick up the pieces afterwards, that’s why. So what the hell, let’s eat another cream cake, let’s drink another bottle of whisky. Because the NHS will pay for any liposuction I may need, afterwards, and the NHS will always supply me with a new liver, should I need one. And if they refuse to, then I’ll sue them for a loss of human dignity. → Continue reading: Death to the chocolate smugglers
It seems Gordon Brown’s favourite useful idiot, Derek Wanless, has been at it again. The much-criticised former banker, who disastrously turned the giant NatWest bank into a tiddler taken over by the Royal Bank of Scotland, has taken a second lump of taxpayer cash from HM Treasury, to produce a second report telling them, once again, what they wanted to hear in the first place.
This follows his previous report, also commissioned by HM Treasury, which told them National Insurance payroll taxes should be raised to increase government spending on the NHS. Which duly happened, straight after the last General Election.
Dilbert Derek’s latest report tells us essentially that the government should do more to look after the health of its citizens. In much the same way, of course, that pig farmers should look after the health of their pigs. Welcome to the farm, citizens.
What this will undoubtedly turn into is a righteous claim, as predicted by our very own Mr David Carr, that HM Treasury should, unwillingly, and after due consideration, raise our taxes again. For our own good. Bless them.
Who cares what the actual tax will be? A fat tax, a hat tax, a stick it up your jumper tax, don’t worry, they’ll think of something. So my hot gambling tip of the day, if you’ve got any money left after this year’s January self-assessment tax deadline, is to put your loot down on ‘More Taxes Soon’, in the five o’clock at HM Treasury. This may be your last chance to ever have any spare money, so enjoy it while it lasts. Get a McDonalds with your winnings. Don’t worry. They won’t mind. They just want your money.
Back in November 2003, I predicted that the end result of the anti-junk-food campaign would be ‘sin taxes’:
Then on to Step 5: the levying of ‘sin taxes’ on hamburgers to ‘encourage a change of behaviour’. The money raised then pays for a lot more Food Standards Agents.
I hope I will be forgiven for this brief episode of smugness because, not only has my prediction come to pass, but it has come to pass rather more rapidly than even I had anticipated:
A Downing Street-based policy unit has proposed a plan to place a “fat tax” on junk food in an attempt to tackle the rising incidence of heart disease.
According to The Times, the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit raised the prospect of extra duty or VAT being imposed on some of the nation’s favourite foods after heart disease overtook cancer as Britain’s biggest killer, and more young people started developing diabetes.
That is what it was really all about. All the media-hype, all the hand-wringing, all the brow-furrowing and all the phoney ‘caring’. It was all an elaborate ploy by the public sector classes to get their hands on more of your hard-earned. It really is all about revenue.
I heartily recommend pessimism. It enables you to amaze your friends with your powers of prediction and bask in the satisfaction of being borne out by events.
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