Monday 18 January 2016

Well said

Simon Cooke on the public health industry...

It is hard to think of a section of government that so completely (and for its practitioners unconsciously) embraces the warnings about soft totalitarianism set out by Orwell and Huxley - and especially the latter with his observation that totalitarianism would be a matter of acceptance not something violently imposed by a powerful, all-seeing state. Restrictions on our lives - repeat the mantra of don't smoke, don't drink, eat the right food - are accepted because the experts with their evidence tell us that embracing these restrictions is the right thing. Just as as self-appointed stasi helped enforce the smoking ban, we will see similar as new fussbuckets arise to challenge those who drink openly, who eat sugary or salted foods.

The truth about public health spending is that nearly all of it is wasted, is money spent on promoting an ideology of control. No lives are saved by public health's actions. No money is saved for the wider health system by the interventions of public health. No-one's wellbeing is improved by public health. Indeed for many thousands the actions of these ideologues result in a worse life. Yet in my city of Bradford over £30 million is spend on public health programmes, money that could fix the roads, could provide care for the elderly, could smarten up parks. Instead we'll spend it on nannying the hell out of the population, on promoting an unpleasant controlling ideology founded on a myth of wellbeing that has no basis in fact or substantive value to the poor masses it is being imposed upon.

Too right. Do read the rest.







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