What will the manifestos bring?

FTI Consulting have published a briefing paper about what to expect from the General Election. On page 32 there is a section on 'lifestyle' that is worth reading.

Following the end of the duty “escalator” on beer, the cut in beer duty in the March Budget demonstrated once again that politicians believe lifestyle industries and products capture the electorate’s attention. Albeit nuanced by broader arguments around choice, health and public responsibility, these complex consumer issues will continue to be a feature of debates in the commons long into the next parliament.

The tobacco industry has been rocked by the last-gasp success of the campaign to standardise “plain” packaging, the consequences of which are yet to arise after its implementation. The debate is far from over, especially if the Conservatives form another government: questions about illicit trade and intellectual property remain unanswered and noises about costly and time-consuming lawsuits are rumbling. Tobacco companies have set their sights on other industry challenges too: the evolution of alternative tobacco and nicotine products such as Electronic Vaping product (EVps, commonly known as e-cigarettes) means that “big tobacco” faces continued uncertainty as to what their products will look like and how they can be sold in the near future.

Going into the election, support for the alcohol industry appears sweetened with a 1p reduction in beer duty and duty on cider and spirits such as scotch whisky cut by 2 per cent, “to back one of the UK’s biggest exports”, as Osborne outlined in the last Budget. Whilst currently unsuccessful, the argument for minimum unit pricing has not been permanently defeated, with a report emerging from the house of Lords recommending a trio of paternalistic measures: minimum pricing, a variable tax rate in line with alcoholic strength and new rules on alcohol labelling. These are particularly likely to be pursued in the event of a Labour victory at the polls.

Alcohol faces a local / national pincer movement; the Local Government association has called for the government to divert a fifth of the current total annual duty on alcohol to councils and has requested power for councils to take public health issues into consideration when deliberating licenses, and supporting licensing and trading standards departments to tackle the black market in alcohol.

Authorities like Newcastle and Ipswich are mooting the prospect of local control over late night levies or the strength of alcohol which can be sold in their areas. as with proposals for local control over gambling (the number of bookies in an area, and what’s available within them), such measures can grow, spreading out so that in the end the effect is the same, or similar to, a national ban, without the national debate that would have gone with it.

The government faces pressure to take action against fixed odds betting terminals (FoBTs) in efforts to tackle problem gambling. This is not as simple an argument as it may seem; whilst some argue that too many outlets offering FoBTs on a high street can lead to a degradation of the street appearance and impact on the local economy, the impact of shop-based terminals (with the employment they offer and rates they generate) versus internet gambling as a source of addiction and poverty is more complex. There’s a safety point at play too, since the ability to police the age of gamblers, verify that they’re not drunk, observe and identify problem gamblers and so forth is much easier when the provider of the opportunity to gamble can actually see the punter – which of course doesn’t happen when the gambling’s being done at home. The government has set out that the future of FoBTs is “unresolved”. With the industry being placed under continued scrutiny, it can be expected that the gambling industry’s future faces uncertainty, though the Treasury will be wary of legislation that reduces the income it receives from the already heavily taxed and regulated gambling industry.

Sugar and fat in food and drink are next in the firing line, with a coordinated campaign by health bodies having grown momentum over the course of this parliament. A tax on soft drinks and energy drinks has been debated by public health officials and opposed by industry, but the government has not yet committed to a review or any progress on the issue. The debate should not be dismissed given the focus public health research is placing on diet and sugar intake, and the repeated cycle shown throughout this parliament in all of the tobacco, gambling, alcohol and food and drink debates – that progress for the “nannying” side of the argument is never permanently beaten. seemingly, it’s just delayed.

This briefing covers many of the big issues, but there are others—mandatory food reformulation, outdoor smoking bans, and a multitude of advertising bans, for example. These (state-funded) campaigns will continue regardless of which party is in charge. The shrieking will get louder and the pseudo-academic 'evidence' will get more and more absurd.

Whether they succeed doesn't much depend on the make up of the next parliament either. The last five years have shown that you cannot expect a party with the word 'conservative' or 'liberal' to be either of those things, while Labour's crusade against e-cigarettes at the EU level shows that the socialists are as hostile to free markets and free choice as ever. So long as the public health parasites keep saying 'think of the children!' there will be a gormless or ambitious politician ready to grab a quick headline.

Whatever happens, don't expect to see it in the manifestos before the election. Being unpopular, 'public health' garbage tends not be the kind of thing politicians want to put to a vote. The Tories and Liberals brought in the tobacco display ban despite being opposed to it when Labour were in charge. Plain packaging wasn't in any of the parties' manifestos and Labour's 2005 manifesto explicitly promised that its smoking ban wouldn't include wet pubs and private members' clubs. In fact, the only major 'public health' policy in the 2010 manifestos was minimum pricing in the Liberal Democrats'—and that never happened.

It's almost as if you can't trust them, isn't it?

Share

Tweet

The cost of binge drinking - more junk from Bath University

From the Telegraph...
 

Binge drinking is costing UK taxpayers £4.9 billion a year, a study has suggested.

... The team from University of Bath's Institute for Policy Research and the University of Essex ... said to offset these costs, policy recommendations such as including a 52 pence minimum unit price for alcohol and an increase in alcohol excise duty directly in line with alcohol strength should be considered.

This is based on a working paper (which went online six weeks ago) that makes estimates of how much binge-drinking costs the NHS and police service. These calculations have been made before, notably by the Cabinet Office in 2003. The Cabinet Office's research had its flaws, but the Bath University methodology is really shaky. For example, it derives the cost to the UK's Accident and Emergency departments by extrapolating from an estimate of the cost to one Primary Care Trust in Solihull.

The problems with the methodology are not terribly important compared to the study's main flaw, of which more in a moment. There is little doubt that drinking creates negative externalities and excess costs to public services. £4.9 billion may be in the right ballpark, albeit at the high end.

In addition there are costs from chronic, as opposed to binge, drinking. The Cabinet Office figures suggest that the total cost to government of alcohol consumption in all its forms are in the order of £4-6 billion. Adjusting for inflation and including every conceivable cost, the absolute upper limit would be £8-9 billion.

The problem with the Bath Uni research isn't so much the methodology as the conclusion.

Consider the estimate of £4.86 billion per year. According to industry estimates, each individual aged 15 or more consumed 9.9 liters of pure alcohol in 2011 (Sheen 2013). With almost 52 million individuals aged 15 or more in 2011 and noting that there are 100 alcoholic units in one liter of pure alcohol, the total number of alcoholic units drunk in the UK was 51.57 billion in 2011. Our estimate then implies a negative externality of over 9p per alcoholic unit or £9.43 per liter of pure alcohol...

That's fair enough.

...which represents an increase of at least 20% in the current average price. This is equivalent to an additional tax of 95p per bottle of wine or 22p per pint of beer.

Woah! Hold on there. Why does it require an additional tax? The government already gets £12.5 billion a year in alcohol duty. That is more than enough to cover any reasonable estimate of the externalities borne by government.

A conservative estimate of the externality is £4.86 billion per year. This implies a negative externality of 9p extra per alcoholic unit or an additional tax of 95p per bottle of a standard red wine and 22p per pint of beer.

No, it doesn't. It implies that there should be a total tax on alcohol equivalent to 9p per unit. Which there already is. And then some. Current alcohol duty amounts to an average of 24p per unit. If you wanted alcohol duty to be a Pigouvian response to the cost of binge-drinking you would reduce it by more than half.

Incredibly, the authors never mention the current rate of alcohol tax in any of the study's 75 pages, nor in the press release. Their whole argument rests on the assumption that there are no sin taxes on alcohol at all! It's extraordinary. Perhaps if it had been peer-reviewed, someone would have pointed out this glaring oversight, although since it falls under the umbrella of 'public health' probably not. In any case, at least the authors are upfront about their reasons for producing the study:

“We hope this calculation of the economic costs can act as a catalyst for policy makers in the UK to take targeted action that reduces the cost of binge drinking to society.”

One of the policies that they want to be a catalyst for is minimum pricing, which they also get completely wrong:

Based on the average retail price of 42p per unit of alcohol in 2013/14, this research suggests that even the higher minimum price of 50p per unit falls short of the adjustment needed to offset the cost of binge drinking. According to the estimates in this research, a minimum price of 52p per unit would be required to offset the cost.

This is nonsense on stilts. They don't seem to understand the difference between a minimum price and an average price. Their assumption is that drinkers should be paying an extra 10p per unit tax (it was 9p a minute ago, but never mind). They are wrong about that for the reasons given above, but even if they were right, introducing a minimum price of 52p would not result in alcohol being sold at an average price of 52p, because lots of alcohol is already sold above that price already.

Moreover, even if you introduced a 52p unit price, it would not "offset" any of the costs to the NHS and police service because minimum pricing isn't a tax (it would raise a little bit through VAT on more expensive alcohol, but that would be fairly negligible).

This research demonstrates that current and proposed policies to regulate alcohol sales and consumption are inadequate to fully mitigate the economic impact of binge drinking. Any policy solution will need to increase the average retail price of alcohol by at least 10p per unit to fully offset this cost.

No, no and thrice no. The research doesn't demonstrate that the economic impact of binge drinking is not mitigated by existing polices because it doesn't acknowledge that one of the existing policies is to have some of the highest alcohol taxes in the world. Current alcohol duty covers their dubious cost estimate with £7.9 billion to spare. The cost of binge-drinking is "fully offset" and more.

How can any self-respecting academic put their name to research that has such basic and obvious flaws that you could drive a coach and horses through it? These kind of shabby tricks are an insult to our intelligence. How much lower can policy-based evidence from the 'public health' lobby sink?

Share

Tweet

Liberty and the nanny state

I was at the Liberty League annual conference yesterday, on a panel discussing threats to liberty. Brendan O'Neill spoke about censorship on campus (you can read his speech here). I was asked to talk about the 'nanny state'. This is roughly what I said...


It’s easy to see ‘nanny state’ issues as some of the less pressing threats to freedom today. Partly this is the result of the term nanny state itself, which sounds rather cuddly but is misleading because nannies generally have the interests of their clients at heart—something that can’t always be said about the modern public health movement. And partly it is because the public health lobby is often regarded as an arm of the medical community and people generally respect and trust doctors. This is also a misconception. The public health has very little to do with health and more to do with statism, snobbery and anti-capitalism.

I am going to argue that the public health lobby is, in fact, one of the most dangerous threats to liberty. Firstly because it is not just a looming or potential threat. The damage it does is very real and is growing by the day. Secondly, because unlike earlier moral crusades against food, alcohol and tobacco, it is heavily funded by the government and therefore has more power and influence. And thirdly because its entire modus operandi is to tax, control and ban—especially ban.

Earlier in the week you may have read about the public health group that ranked Britain’s high streets in order of their healthiness. This was the media hook upon which they hung a whole slew of policy demands which amounted to having the state decide which shops could open up, what they could sell and where they could position their products. They want differential taxation for 'unhealthy' businesses to encourage them to close. They want a cap on how many 'unhealthy' businesses can be allowed on a street. And they want these businesses to be run in a very specific way—for example, no e-cigarettes at the counter and no chocolate near the checkout.

What is an unhealthy business? According to this group, it’s things like tanning salons and fast food shops, but also - quite tellingly - payday loan shops and bookmakers. What have pawn shops and bookies got to do with health? Nothing, as far I can see, but their inclusion is a clue to the fact that the modern public health lobby has more in common with the middle class reform movements of the nineteenth century than it does with medicine.

What do you think this public health group mean when they talk about fast food outlets? Do they mean Leon? Pret a Manger? Yo Sushi? No, they mean kebab shops, McDonalds, chippies—the places they associate with the great unwashed. Why this obsession with minimum pricing? Because it will raise the price of the alcohol that poor people drink without affecting the price of craft beer and champagne. Why the relentless drive to turn smokers into second class citizens? Could it be because only 1 in 10 professionals smoke, whereas the rate is more like 1 in 3 amongst unskilled workers?

Policies such as plain packaging, minimum pricing, advertising bans and licensing controls are all direct attacks on economic freedom. The aim is for the state to control every lever of competition: price, availability, packaging and marketing. The current agitation from the likes of Action on Sugar is for the government to dictate how much of a given ingredient can legally be put into food products. The aim is for the state to decide what a product costs, what it look likes, what's in it and where it can be sold. The rate of tax on tobacco and alcohol is already so high that the government makes more profit than the manufacturers. This all amounts to a virtual nationalisation of industry without the state having to go to the trouble of manufacturing the product itself. No wonder the public health movement is full of antediluvian socialists, deep Greens and anti-capitalist throwbacks. It is not uncommon for public health demagogues to blame cancer and heart disease on free trade and so-called neo-liberalism.

But whilst the public health lobby is overtly anti-business and anti-market, this is largely a device by which they portray themselves as Davids in a David and Goliath battle. Their real target is the individual and it is the individual who ultimately pays the price of tax rises, advertising bans and prohibitions.

The attack on individual freedoms in quite blatant in the case of smoking bans. The totalitarian tendencies of those who want the state to restructure the high street to save the working class from temptation and vice were on open display last year when Lord Darzi called for a ban on smoking in London’s parks to turn them into what he called ‘Beacons of Health’. The justification for this Orwellian measure was that children should not have to see people smoking. This is the same mentality that drives the campaign to label films that depict smoking with an 18 certificate. As loopy as that campaign is, it is at least only trying to censor fiction, whereas Darzi wants to censor reality using the full apparatus of state force. The logic behind it is the that the individual must sacrifice his desires and unite behind the collectivist fantasy that Britain is a GOOD, CLEAN COUNTRY.

Some time ago, it was suggested that all adults be given photo IDs with which they could buy alcohol, but with the clever twist that it would not allow more than three drinks to be bought within 24 hours. This idea soon hit the buffers because its implementation was considered too expensive and impractical. But it was this, and not any ethical objection to stopping grown men and women living freely, that were raised. On the contrary, one prominent doctor said it was a jolly good idea, it was just a shame it was so impractical. It was the same when someone suggested making smokers buy a licence to purchase cigarettes a few years ago.

In short, the health lobby is not constrained by any concerns about liberty. The only thing holding it back is practicalities. In recent years, some anti-smoking campaigners have finally started to admit that the prohibition of tobacco is their ultimate goal. Others disagree, but only because it is not yet seen as feasible. But they all agree that prohibition is ideal in theory. The thought that people should be allowed to smoke regardless of whether prohibition is feasible probably doesn’t even cross their minds.

The same is true of most of those who want to legalise, or at least decriminalise, drugs. For libertarians, drug legalisation is a no-brainer and it has been gratifying to see more and more people coming over to our side of the argument in recent years. But very few people in the public health racket support legalisation because they believe that it’s none of the government’s business what people put into their mouths, lungs or veins. If drugs could be successfully suppressed they would support prohibition in a heartbeat. You only need to look around the world to see the bans on e-cigarettes, smokeless tobacco, alcopops and any number of other products and activities to see that the public health lobby will never be a principled ally against prohibition. On the contrary, it is the most potent source of prohibition, petty regulation and illiberalism that we face.

Share

Tweet

Glorious Daylight Saving Time

As any fool knows, the world is run by people who get up early in the morning ^{[citation needed]} so it is surprising that Daylight Saving Time has lasted as long as it has. It is 99 years old in the UK but there are still those who object it, including farmers, Scottish highlanders and Peter Hitchens. The latter recently described this "mad annual ritual" as "lying about the time".

They will say that it is 9.00 a.m. when it is in fact 8.00.

Churches, shops cafes, railways, buses, TV stations and everyone else will join in the mass deception. You can stand aside if you like, but unless your life is totally private, you will (at the very least) inconvenience yourself.

Over the years, supporters of DST have made various empirical claims about energy conservation, road accidents and efficiency to defend their position. Opponents have countered with claims of their own. Some of these arguments are pertinent and can be debated sensibly. Others—such as saying that DST involves "lying about the time"—are preposterous, but they have a long pedigree.

There is a wonderful little book called Roads to Ruin by E.S. Turner (out of print these days, but secondhand copies are easy to find) which looks at fallacious and reactionary arguments made against sensible reforms in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The last chapter looks at Daylight Saving Time, a policy that many regarded as dangerously irresponsible and close to lunacy.

Amongst the dire warnings and hysterical objections made against moving the clocks forward were the following:

• People wouldn't go to the theatre in broad daylight.
• Cricket matches would finish too late for close-of-play results to appear in evening newspapers. 
• It emulated the Germans.
• Country squires would refuse to put their clocks forward. 
• Few people would be awake at 2am to change their clocks.
• It would encourage the working class to eat breakfast in the pub.
• People would still wake up at the old time because they "know instinctively what hour it is."
• Firework manufacturers would be put out of business (because firework displays would have to start at an inconveniently late hour).
• It would harm the lighting industry.
• People who used the sun to tell what time it was would be disadvantaged.
• Likewise, people who used sun dials.
• Businesses would "lose thousands of man-hours through workers forgetting to alter their clocks and arriving at their factories late."
• It was "a plot to get the working classes out of bed earlier".

The commonest argument against DST, which is still heard today, is that if people want to see more daylight they should get up an hour earlier. There are two responses to this. The first is that it is more appropriate and practical to enjoy leisure time after work, not before it. The second is that the beauty of DST is that everyone can benefit from it, whether they wake up early or not.

Rather than complaining about people getting up too late, it could be argued that opponents of DST get up too early. Here's Peter Hitchens again...

If you are, like me, a habitual early riser who has been enjoying the steadily increasing amount of light in the early morning, the change will be an annoying nuisance. It was fully light around six. Now you will have to wait till seven o’clock for the same amount of light.

One man's meat is another man's poison. In my view, the fact that there is any sunlight, let alone full sunlight, at six o'clock in the morning while the night draws in before 7pm is proof of the need for DST. How many Britons are up and around to enjoy sunlight at 6am? Not many, I suspect, and for good reason.

A further objection is that supporters of DST believe that moving the clocks forward magically creates more hours of sunlight. Needless to say, we believe no such thing. It is just a question of whether you want more sunlight in the morning or more sunlight in the evening. Call me an old-fashioned utilitarian if you must (I'm not) but it seems fairer to have it when everybody is awake rather than when lots of people are asleep.

The campaign for DST was a one-man crusade by a man called William Willett (fun fact: he was the great, great grandfather of Coldplay's Chris Martin, who wrote a song called 'Clocks'). For the reasons given above, he was ignored and ridiculed for many years until a young(ish) Winston Churchill took the cause on as his own.

It is well known that Churchill was fond of a snooze. Willett, by contrast, was an early riser. As E.S. Turner recounts, he was...

...in the habit of rising on horseback at seven in the morning - 'the most joyous hour of the day' - in the woods near his Chislehurst home. On his rides he met no one, except the odd labourer, postman or chimney sweep. As the years passed he became obsessed with the absurdity of the nation lying slumbering behind shutters during the brightest, freshest, most wholesome hours, and in the evenings striving, by artificial light, to catch up with the pursuits they had been unable to overtake through their tardy rising. Mankind had wandered far from the natural hours of sleeping and waking and was trying to fit its life to an artificial pattern of clocks and timetables. Over the generations the urban populations had tended to sleep in later and later, thanks to the invention of gaslight, the increasing range of amusements and the natural indolence of man.

Did this revelation lead him to cajoling his fellow man into rising earlier? Did he try to turn the clock back on modernity? As you already know, he didn't. He decided to turn the clock forward and, as far as I'm concerned, hallowed be his name.

DST came into effect on 21 May 1916. Sadly, William Willett had died the previous year. Winston Churchill predicted that a statue would be built to his memory some day. He hasn't got one yet, but there is a memorial sundial in his honour near Chislehurst.

In 1968, Daylight Summer Time was rolled out throughout the year, but the usual coalition of milkmen, farmers and Scots successfully lobbied against it and Greenwich Mean Time returned in 1971. Since farmers can get up when they want and the Scots want independence, and since there are hardly any milkmen left, perhaps next year's centenary of DST would be a good time to try again?

Share

Tweet

More evidence on alcohol advertising

No matter how much evidence shows that advertising affects brand choice rather than total consumption, the public health racket will continue to say the exact opposite.

For example, Gerard Hastings recently appeared before a House of Lords committee to talk about alcohol regulation. Whilst there, he told this brazen whopper...

"All the evidence is that if marketing is encouraging you to consume a particular brand, it is also going to have an impact on category."

"All the evidence" does not say that. On the contrary, the overwhelming majority of the evidence shows that advertising for any established category, including alcohol, has little or no effect on overall consumption.

Yet another study confirmed this last week. Looking specifically at the alcohol market in the USA since 1971, the authors concluded:

This study has provided evidence of consumption changes across categories of alcohol beverages over the past 40-plus years with the preponderance of those changes significantly correlated to fluctuations in demography, taxation and income levels – not advertising. Despite other macro-level studies with consistent findings, the perception that advertising increases consumption exists. The findings here indicate that there is either no relationship or a weak one between advertising and aggregate category sales. Therefore, advertising restrictions or bans with the purpose of reducing consumption may not have the desired effect.

The authors note that there has been a 400% rise in alcohol ad spend in the last 40 years...

...and there has been a rise in consumer spending on alcohol...

...but there has been no commensurate rise in alcohol consumption...

And as the authors say, summarising the body of evidence of alcohol advertising...

...even though advertising appeared to not influence new consumers to drink alcohol, it has influenced existing consumers to switch brands or alcohol categories. Advertising has been a competitive marketing tool in the ongoing market share battles between individual brands to obtain increased sales at the expense of their competitors.

...In a market that is not expanding or is more mature, any sales gains by one brand will be at the expense of a competitor’s, thereby impacting a competing brand’s or category’s market share. Furthermore, advertising may be related to increases in consumption at the aggregate level, but only within a favourable social and economic climate such a expanding or growing market.

This is both common sense and evidence-based. As such, it will be ignored by the dogmatic denizens of pretend public health as they continue to rail against the reflected image of products they wish didn't exist at all.

Don't forget that you can download the new edition of Advertising in a Free Society (with a foreword by yours truly) here.

Share

Tweet

Healthy high streets

The medical establishment's bid for world domination continued today, with the Royal Society for Public Health (whoever they are) demanding the right to decide which shops are allowed to open and where they should be allowed to position their goods. In the same way as Lord Darzi has a fascist desire to turn public parks into 'Beacons of Health', this mob wants to live out their Albert Speer fantasies in our town centres.

We believe that business has a responsibility to ensure that what they offer doesn’t undermine the public’s health

Do you? Is that what you think? Because I think it should be up to us what we buy and we can "undermine" our health if we damn well please.

And we want to ensure that local authorities have the powers they need in order to curtail those business practices which may undermine the public’s health and the great work that many public health teams are doing.

Eurgh. The totalitarian tendencies of the 'public health' lobby are on full display in this document. There is no aspect of life that they don't want dominated by lectures and harassment. For example...

On a healthy high street businesses would create opportunities for health optimisation. This could include signposting customers to health services, high street employees engaging customers in healthy conversations, health promotions in local shops, such as health shopping trolleys and outreach activities in pubs and bars, including smoking cessation or health checks.

"Engaging customers in healthy conversations"? What does that even mean? As for "outreach activities in pubs and bars", go on, I dare you.

The businesses on a healthy high street would not only enable basic needs, including access to affordable healthy food and affordable financial services, to be met...

"Affordable" thanks to a system of subsidies and price controls, no doubt. And behold, these zealots have made a little graphic listing the good and bad businesses...

Notice how pubs and bars have suddenly become "health promoting". The RSPH say this is because they "encourage social interaction". A more likely reason is that pubs have been so battered by taxes and the smoking ban that the 'public health' lobby no longer sees them as much of a threat and prefers to pretend to be on their side while they go after the off licences and supermarkets.

Notice also how payday lenders and bookmakers have found themselves on the list of unhealthy businesses, despite having nothing to do with health. This gives the game away that 'public health' itself has nothing to do with health, rather it is a classic middle class crusade against temptation and vice.

This is further confirmed by the RSPH's league table of Britain's healthiest and unhealthiest high streets, which have been plastered across the media today. The 'unhealthy' ones are mostly working class cities in the North and Midlands, whereas the 'healthy' ones are mainly nice southern market towns, like Cambridge and Salisbury, plus a few places north of Watford that Hampstead intellectuals occasionally visit, such as York.

Using a ridiculous methodology, they have decided that Preston has the country's least healthy high street and Shrewsbury, of all places, has the healthiest.

The obesity rate is Shrewsbury is 25.9%, well over the national average and considerably higher than the rate in Preston (20.8%). Just saying.

Naturally, all this bollocks is accompanied by demands for state intervention into all sorts of areas that are none of the state's business. These include:

1. Taxing bookies, payday loan shops, tanning salons and fast food outlets at a higher rate than other businesses to "discourage" them from opening.

2. "Introduction of cigarette-style health warnings" for payday loans, fast food and sunbeds. No slippery slope there, then.

3. "We call on the Government to introduce a ban on the positioning of unhealthy food items next to all checkouts and queuing areas."

4. "Ban the positioning of e-cigarettes next to all checkouts" on the basis that "these products contain nicotine, which is a highly addictive, potentially harmful chemical."

Above all, they want councils to be able to close down 'unhealthy' businesses and cap the number of premises run by any one industry at the (totally arbitrary) limit of five per cent.

At a time when high street shops are closing at the rate of 16 a day, the 'public health' lobby are just the people to finish them off. These obsessives must be resisted.

Share

Tweet

Where are John Dalli's supporters now?

Silvio Zammit is currently on trial in Malta as a part of the John Dalli corruption scandal. It's not easy to summarise such a long-running saga briefly, but these are the basic facts:

• John Dalli, a Maltese politician, was the EU Health Commissioner until he was sacked by Manuel Barroso, then the president of the European Commission, in October 2012.

• A close friend of Dalli named Silvio Zammit was caught on tape trying to solicit a €60m bribe from the snus company Swedish Match in return for Dalli overturning the EU ban on snus. Swedish Match recorded this conversation and immediately handed them over to the EU fraud office, OLAF.

• Telephone records show that Zammit and Dalli had clusters of conversations on the same days that Zammit had conversations with Swedish Match.

• John Dalli "took at least two trips to the Bahamas as part of an effort to arrange the transfer of tens of millions of dollars." Dalli claims he was setting up a charity... in violation of the EU code of conduct... with a international con artist. (Read more about these secret trips here.)

• Dalli has not been prosecuted—there is only "strong circumstantial evidence" that he was involved—but OLAF's file on the Bahamas affair remains open and Zammit is in front of the judge in Malta.

In court last week, a new piece of evidence came to light:

Two new witnesses from the Cabinet of the former Commissioner testified that Dalli inquired about lifting the ban on snus in January and February 2012. This is new evidence of relevance, since Dalli had always maintained that the last time he took an interest in the snus issue was at the meeting on January 6, 2012 with Zammit and a lobbyist.

It doesn't look too good for Dalli, does it? Perhaps fearing that this new evidence has brought his own day in the dock a little closer, Dalli launched into one of his characteristically strange rants. He has called almost everybody involved in this investigation a liar, and now he is saying the same of the two new witnesses. Meanwhile, he has accused OLAF's head Giovanni Kessler of perjury and claims that the OLAF report is a "fraud". In his view, everybody but Zammit should be facing prosecution.

"I believe that the conclusion of these procedures should be judicial action against Kessler and against the employees of Swedish Match, Hildingsson, Gabrielsson and Delfosse who have concocted and implemented the setup against me. Not to mention politicians and functionaries in Brussels and in Malta who were privy to this fraud."

Dalli's conspiracy theories are the stuff of legend (Barroso has called them "incomprehensible"). He is, of course, unable to supply any motive for why the EU's corruption watchdog would hound an innocent man for three years, nor why Barroso would decide to sack him without good reason, nor why Swedish Match would invent a story that could not possibly benefit them. Nor has he come up with an explanation for the crucial and undeniable fact that his mate was recorded on tape promising to arrange something that only Dalli could deliver. For €60 million.

As Kessler said recently, isn't it telling that Dalli has turned on everybody except the man who got him in this trouble...

"What would you do if a former friend betrayed you and that cost you your career?” Giovanni Kessler asked. “He could have taken Mr Zammit to court for tarnishing his reputation... He could have accused him of trading in influence to his detriment. There is no question that Silvio Zammit has damaged Mr Dalli, greatly. Mr Dalli also has the right I think, to be a civil party in the criminal case. It would give Mr Dalli the right to have a lawyer in that case putting questions to Mr Zammit. He didn’t. Why?”

As the trial has gone on, the penny has started to drop even amongst Dalli's biggest supporters that their man might have been sacked with good reason. After hearing the evidence laid out in court, New Europe, a website which has been strongly pro-Dalli in its coverage to date, ended its report with a mea culpa.

At this point New Europe has to clarify that in extensively covering the Dalli case in the past, had no idea of the parallel games of Silvio Zammit and was not aware of all such details.

Our interventions stemmed from the fact that the OLAF report did not accuse directly Dalli but referred only to “circumstantial evidences” and verified that Dalli had not changed the Directive and did not take any bribe.

... Indeed, with the new facts unveiled in the Maltese Court, it is obvious that Jose Barroso whom we have strongly criticized, acted on moral grounds, ignoring the rules. Obviously he knew or suspected the truth, which we did not

New Europe are not the only ones with egg on their faces after falling to realise that Dalli was toxic. There are a whole bunch of NGOs and MEPs—not to mention Private Eye—who chose to believe Dalli's bonkers conspiracy theory because it fit their narrative of industry corruption. It was, however, clear from the start that it was Zammit who solicited the bribe and Swedish Match that blew the whistle. If anyone has been wrongly hounded, it's Giovanni Kessler who has been the subject of some extraordinary attacks by Green MEPs.

The Zammit case continues. Fortunately for Dalli's erstwhile cheerleaders, it is only being reported in the Maltese press. The last word should go to the Maltese journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia, who has followed this story like a hawk from day one...

There is something very wrong with John Dalli, properly wrong, and if you think about it, this may well have been the case from the start.

Let justice be done, right Monika?

Background reading:

Dalli is damned

More Dalli and Snusgate

Private Eye's pisspoor Snusgate report

What's got into Private Eye?

John Dalli - the facts finally emerge

John Dalli does a lot for charity but doesn't like to talk about it

John Dalli's conspiracy theory

Share

Tweet