Back in 2019, I mentioned SPECTRUM which is, preposterously, meant to be an acronym for Shaping Public hEalth poliCies To Reduce ineqUalities and harM. At the time it was a new organisation that had just received £5.9 million from the unwitting taxpayer...
The Economic and Social Research Council is funded to the tune of £212 million by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. In 2017, it announced the creation of the UK Prevention Research Partnership (UKPRP), a £50 million project aimed at developing ‘robust new knowledge which contributes to demonstrable changes in policy and practice’ by ‘working closely with policy makers'.I suggested in Still Hand In Glove? that this had the hallmarks of another slush fund for political pressure groups. Some news yesterday removed all doubt...
We are delighted to announce that UKCTAS has been successful in securing future funding through a multi-funder research initiative; the UK Prevention Research Partnership (UKPRP). UKTCAS academics joined forces with new collaborators and a range of public and private sector organisations to apply to the UKPRP. The new consortium has now been awarded £5.9 million funding over five years and is called SPECTRUM (Shaping Public hEalth poliCies To Reduce ineqUalities and harM).
A few months later, another new 'public health' organisation - called SIPHER - was set up and given £4.9 million of our money. After years of so-called 'austerity', there is was supposed to be no fat left to trim and yet the gravy train rolled on for the nanny state industry.
As I said at the time, SPECTRUM is a shameless slush fund for the worst people in the anti-capitalist, anti-freedom, authoritarian 'public health' racket.
The list of SPECTRUM's 'co-investigators' features some other familiar faces, including John Britton (director of UKCTAS), Alan Brennan (Sheffield University fantasy modeller), Anna Gilmore (Tobacco Tactics conspiracy theorist) and Mark Petticrew (anti-alcohol crank), plus two senior staff from Public Health England.
I was reminded of them yesterday when they produced a video that they would call 'slick' if one of the many industries they hate had produced it. There is barely any attempt to pretend that they are not political activists.
As you'll see if you have the stomach to watch it, the video makes it clear that all you have to do is make a reference to 'health inequalities' and the government will shower you with cash to further your puritanical agenda. Presumably, we are supposed to be appalled by the behaviour we see in the animation, such as a couple relaxing in a cocktail bar, a man standing outside a bus shelter, in the rain, smoking a cigarette, and two people talking about tobacco and fast food.
Let's not forget that these 'public health' academics spent the only genuine public health crisis of their lifetimes complaining about pubs being used as vaccination centres and whining about businesses donating food to the hungry and medical equipment to hospitals. Rarely has the chasm between public health and 'public health' been illustrated so starkly.
They didn't allow themselves to be distracted by COVID-19. Apart from a few articles spreading doubt about the protective effect of smoking and a long rant about the help provided by 'unhealthy commodity industries', they have spent the last few years watching TV, scouring Twitter and responding to every government consultation they can find.
Since 2020, their published work includes the following indispensable contributions to the scientific literature.
Many of these 'studies' involve the ludicrous Mark Petticrew. That SPECTRUM is helping this buffoon pay his mortgage is reason enough to defund it.
I am at a loss to see how taking millions of pounds from taxpayers and giving it to these juvenile quackademics can ever be justified. The government is burning our money. In fact, it would be better to literally burn the money that to spend it on this drivel.
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