Did she ever go away, one wonders? The Beeb, that bastion of reliable, truthful and impartial reporting gives us the latest witterings from the cleggeron coagulation in the form of an edict from Andrew Lansley. The central plank of the white paper is to pass responsibility for public health back to the local authorities. I wonder if this explains the phone call I received the other day. It was from a survey company wanting to know about my leisure time. When I refused – as I always do with surveys – the caller was a little taken aback. It is to help your local authority make plans, I was told. Don’t care, the answer is still no. Are South Gloucestershire getting ready for the change, one wonders? it was this quote from Dr Frank Atherton that made me consider the possibility:
It feels like we are coming home. Most public health directors are comfortable with being back in local government. This is where the power is to influence all those environment factors, such as housing, leisure and transport, lie and so the potential to really make a difference is definitely there.
These days public health doesn’t mean clean, potable water free of cholera and typhus or an atmosphere free of harmful particulates, it means nonsense like obesity, alcohol consumption and smoking. And, indeed, compulsory seat belts as the article would have us believe. None of which are any business of government, local or national.
The Beeb’s article reminds us of the nannying carried out by Jamie Oliver and the backlash it caused among some of those caught up in it:
Four years on, the images are still shocking. Faced with healthier school dinner options because of Jamie Oliver’s TV series, some mothers began pushing junk food through the school gates.
Others simply swapped the healthier hot dinners for packed lunches. Schools reacted by tightening the rules about what could be put in lunchboxes.
But when children, in turn, responded by spending more on junk food from local shops, stories started appearing about the prospect of bans on take-aways.
In many ways, the pattern perfectly illustrates the challenge facing the government over public health.
To me, this is simple and predictable human behaviour in action. People don’t like to be nagged and hectored and they certainly don’t like the government to start telling them what they may eat. And, given that the term “junk food” is being pretty liberally applied these days, it is not necessarily the case that the food being put through the railings was unhealthy, merely not that approved by the powers that be.
The crunch quote, though is this:
Changing behaviour is not easy.
That’s right, it isn’t. More importantly, it is not up to the state to do it, either. Still, that doesn’t stop the nasty little bansturbators licking their lips in a frenzy of anticipation as they crawl blinking into the light like denizens of the pit, seeking their next victim.
Ms Mawle says: “The major advances in public health, such as seat belts or clean air, have been because of regulation so I don’t think we should shut the door on that.”
What we eat, what we drink and how much is nothing to do with government any more than is how much – or little – exercise we take. These are personal matters and we take personal responsibility for our choices. This is even more so when the statistics used to justify the ever shrill, banshee demands for more regulation are nothing more than junk science based upon guesstimate and prejudice.
I don’t have the proposals from the last lot to hand, but from recollection there isn’t much difference. If that is the case, then this lot “went native” in record time! Agin, if that is the case, it shows how badly we need to adopt the US practice of throwing all the senior administrators out when the government (politicians) changes. One five year term in a lifetime for politicians, and one five year maximum for civil servants, and then only if they have relevant previous experience.
Just been looking around our local councils adoption website due to friends having had their toddler stolen by the ss after an arguement with a poisonous ex-lodger.
Prospective adopters are now required to provide evidence to show how they intend to protect the adopted children from the effects of secondary smoking.
Remember, and please publicise…
The so-called “safe drinking limits” published by NICE etc…
HAVE NO SCIENTIFIC OR FACTUAL BASIS AT ALL
They were made up, on the back of an envelope, in someone’s spare time.
NO research or evalustion has ever been done.
The whole thing is a con and a sham.
I suspect this is the “yes minister” crowd of interfering so-called “civil servants” trying it on, incidentally.
Nanny simply sat back and waited for the deckchair shuffling to finish and then she was good to go again.
I have never grasped why some people have an inbuilt desire to regulate the majority. The nearest I have come is when I ‘follow the money’ as money seems to be at the root of most bansturbation fantasies but sadly not all of them.
I think it was C S Lewis who had them bang to rights – a tyranny for our own good is the worst kind. These people aren’t motivated by money, they are motivated by their sense of righteousness.
Greg, yes, I have mentioned the lack of evidence thing regarding alcohol here before – on a number of occasions. it doesn’t hurt to repeat it very so often, though 😉
If the coalition simply stopped every unnecessary bit of meddling, the deficit would zoom into surplus, and a lot of ex-civil servants could find themselves work to do which was useful enough that other people would freely pay for it.
So why haven’t they ?