Sounds Alarming

Doesn’t it?

More NHS money is spent treating alcohol-related illness in baby boomers than young people, a study says.

The Alcohol Concern report found the cost of hospital admissions linked to heavy drinking 55 to 74-year-olds in 2010-11 was more than £825m.

That was 10 times the figure for 16 to 24-year-olds.

In total, nearly £2bn was spent on alcohol-related in-patient admissions in England, the report found.

Once again, the BBC publishes one of these “reports” without a word, not a whisper, not a hint that the whole edifice is built on a lie. This time the omitted information that would enable us to see this lie for what it is is the manner in which the NHS records alcohol related admissions.

Note that no account is taken of the amount these people actually drink. It is reasonable to suppose that only fairly heavy drinking could do enough damage to require an admission, but in calculating these figures the assumption is made that there is no threshold below which drinking is safe. So a third of all admissions for cardiac arrhythmias, for example, are attributed to drinking, even if the sufferer happens to be a teetotaller.

If you’ve had a drink, then the admission is alcohol related even if it wasn’t a relevant factor. If you have to return, then it goes down again. Consequently, the figures are not only skewed, they are meaningless. They are a lie.

Yet Alcohol Concern –  a fake charity that steals our money to pay for this claptrap –  has decided that this amounts to alcohol abuse. So, there you are, having a glass of wine with your meal and subsequently have an accident that involves a trip to A&E and you are an alcohol abuser costing the NHS millions –  even if it was because the restaurant burned down.

This report is built on a foundation of lies and junk science, and yet again the state’s propaganda machine reproduces it verbatim. That, frankly, is an outrage –  not to mention that they steal money from us as well.

16 Comments

  1. The figures suggest that over a billion quid is spent on alcohol related illness in the 25 – 54 age bracket so why not say so ?

    Can’t piss off the ones most likely to be in full-time employment and paying the taxes that finance their own slandering. They might notice and look a bit more closely at how and why it’s happening.

    They might even decide to do something about it. 😐

  2. Actually it is worse than what you outline above LR. If you are admitted to hospital with lung cancer but happen to have high blood pressure, you count as a partial alcohol related admission even if you are a teetotaler. Any kind of accident, irrespective of whether you have been drinking or not also counts. This scheme for inflating the numbers was dreamed up by pseudo academics in Liverpool. Liverpool medics are notably prohibitionist and Ian Gilmore is an honorary Professor there.

    Alcohol Concern have no expertise in anything whatsoever so why the BBC think their output newsworthy is anybody’s guess. Surely the BBC cannot have an agenda on alcohol?

  3. And the same corrupt criteria also applies to so called tobacco and diet related death and disease. And yes, we must assume that a drinking, smoking burger eating patient will probably be recorded on several databases resulting in deliberately exaggerated and skewed figures. I reckon that many people actually ‘die’ several times (if you get my drift).

  4. 55-74 year olds covers a 19 year span. 16-24 year olds covers an 8 year span, of which some of the members are likely to still be living at home, daytimes at school etc. etc.

    Whilst still being with Mom & Dad, or attending school do not necessarily preclude being a toper, the original article is still comparing chalk and cheese.

    At best, it’s disingenuous sophistry – or more likely, it’s pretentious bollocks. The latter description no doubt explaining why it’s been avidly and unquestioningly seized by the Beeb.

    I wonder if they would highlight my article:-

    New study finds 87% of BBC journalists produce more crap than Daily Sport reporters – although with far less humour.

    • Not to mention the fact that people in the 55 – 74 age group are patently more likely to be suffering age-related complaints (which will more often than not be attributed to alcohol) than 16 – 24 year olds.

      The whole ‘report’ is utter garbage; tripe; bollocks.

      What is it with the MSM nowadays? Are they really in cahoots with all these puritanical single-issue lobby groups? What happened to rigorous journalism? There is absolutely no critical appraisal of these press releases they’re handed – they just print / publish them verbatim. It really doesn’t portend well for the future.

      • Yes they are, especially the BBC. Nick Triggle is not a journalist. He is a public health groupie and a PR man. Ditto several others at the BBC.

      • What is it with the MSM nowadays? Are they really in cahoots with all these puritanical single-issue lobby groups? What happened to rigorous journalism? There is absolutely no critical appraisal of these press releases they’re handed – they just print / publish them verbatim. It really doesn’t portend well for the future

        Market forces. Newspapers need to fill column inches as cheaply as possible. The way to do this is to employ “journalists” whose only skill is to regurgitate press releases. They come rather chearper than real investiagtive journalists. There is no conspiracy, just the usual operation of the “free market” that libertarians idolise.

        • The BBC is not driven by market forces. It is a state propaganda service funded by coercive taxation. So the “free market” argument tends to fall on stony ground.

          • The BBC is not driven by market forces

            The BBC is not the only news purveyor in this country. And I haven’t noticed private sector news providers behaving any different.

          • Er, that was the point I was making – there is no difference, hence nothing to do with markets, which are nothing more than the free exchange of goods and services between consenting individuals.

      • Somebody threatening them that if they don’t tow the party line, they know where their kids go to school?

        Or that their “Newspaper” may have a sudden financial incident?

  5. A couple of weeks ago a BBC Radio 2 reported, uncritically, a press release from “road safety campaigners” Brake, calling for draconian enforcement of speed limits. I don’t know if Brake is another fake charity, I suspect that it might be, but they frequently demonstrate that they know nothing about road safety. Since brake is something that incompetent drivers do a lot, and skilled drivers do very little, I think that their name is quite appropriate.

  6. I think that ‘Brake’ is more or less a ‘one man (or woman) band’. It thinks that tobacco smoke in a car creates a fog which obscures the windscreen. Holding a cigarette in a car is dangerous because both of a drivers hands are not always upon the steering wheel. Whoever the person is who runs that site clearly does not know how to drive.

  7. As Age Concern said, these figures are not like for like. Given that the complaints they list (heart attacks, strokes, cancers, etc) are far more common in older people anyway, how on earth can they attribute these solely to consumption of alcohol?

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