Last Orders with Brendan O'Neill

The latest Last Orders is with Spiked's Brendan O'Neill. We talked about Will Smith, the cost of living and a few other things. Quite a depressing episode but a good one. Check it out.

There will be a new Swift Half going online today at 5pm with Johann Norberg.

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NGOs want 'junk food' promotion ban extended to all meat and fish

UK inflation is already above 6% and the Office for Budget Responsibility expects it to hit 8.7% in the autumn. Awkwardly for the government, and very awkwardly for hard-pressed consumers, the ban on multi-buy food promotions is due to come into force in October. 

Once the ban comes into effect, the government's own modelling suggests that consumers will have to spend an extra £634 per household if they want to keep buying the same basket of goods. The intention of the policy is that people will buy a slightly different basket of goods, of course. Nevertheless, the extra cost is likely to run into several hundred pounds which would not be welcome at any time and especially not when inflation is at a 40 year high. 

There are rumours that the government might back off and at least postpone this misguided initiative. Meanwhile, displaying a staggering inability to read the room, a bunch of NGOs want it to go further.

From the Guardian (where else?)...

 

UK supermarkets accused of ‘bombarding’ shoppers with cheap meat

 

Britain’s biggest supermarkets stand accused of “bombarding” shoppers with offers of cheap meat, despite pledging to promote more meat-free diets to improve health and tackle global heating.

 

The word 'bombarding' is here used in the 'public health' sense, meaning 'to make available at a reasonable price'. 

 

Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons are each offering scores of deals every week on meat products such as burgers and sausages to drive sales and boost their profits, according to a report from the charity Eating Better.

 

Because cutting prices is the obvious way to boost profits, isn't it? It's not as if they're in a fiercely competitive industry or anything?

The report also discloses that only 1% of the many hundreds of multi-buy offers for meat products examined by researchers will be banned when the government’s crackdown on the promotion of foodstuffs that are high in fat, salt or sugar – to tackle childhood obesity – begins in October. 

 

Newspapers usually refer to this as a ban on promotions for 'junk food'. Tellingly, that phrase is not used here because most people, quite rightly, do not consider meat to be junk food. That is why the government has excluded meat from its list of HFSS food despite meat sometimes being high in fat. It has to make exemptions because the full list of what activist-academics consider to be junk food is preposterous.

“Supermarkets are bombarding us with Bogof [buy one, get one free] burgers, sausages and cheap chicken of unknown origin, putting profit before population health and that of the planet,” said Simon Billing, Eating Better’s executive director.

“The Big Four are contradicting their own commitments by encouraging customers to buy more meat than they would have if it hadn’t been on promotion.

“The impact of this is that we’re eating more meat than we need, or is good for us. Pushing cheap meat into our baskets also supports intensive animal farming, which is wrecking the planet, emitting a huge amount of greenhouse gas and requiring massive amounts of our precious resources, such as land and water.”

 

Tough. The legislation was supposed to be about childhood obesity, remember? 

Once the government capitulated to one bunch of fanatics, it was inevitable that wowsers of every stripe would line up with their agendas. The demands of the Eating Better coalition are even more extreme than the Guardian suggests. If you look at their report, their recommendation to policy-makers is...

Include all meat and fish products in scope of the Food (Promotion and Placement) Regulation, since increasing their consumption is undesirable from both an environmental and a health perspective

The legislation hasn't even come into effect and yet the usual arrogant, largely state-funded NGOs want a ban that was supposed to discourage children eating too many crisps to be extended to fish.

In the current climate, I don't see them getting very far with these demands, but it will no doubt be seen as "the next logical step" and we know that the ratchet of paternalism only turns in one direction.

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Nothing to see here, just some normal academics doing academic research

Some news from Australia that I came across on Twitter yesterday...

 

 

I've blocked out the name because it's not the person I'm interested but the role.

We’re championing 3 inspired minds who will take on the title of ‘Harmful Industries Fellows’. These roles will fuel fresh, bold research Victorians can use to put our people’s health before industry profit.

New postdoctoral research fellowship program puts Victorians before profit

These 3 early-career research fellows will look at brands, companies or organisations who profit from products that are harmful to health and wellbeing including:

• alcohol
• gambling
• unhealthy food and sugary drinks

They will gather new insights that help us better understand the biggest factors influencing our health.

The main goal? Positive, healthy changes for the people of Victoria.

Call me old-fashioned, but I thought the main goal of postdoctoral research was to contribute to the academic literature and expand the field of human knowledge. Increasingly, however, it seems to be blatant, one-sided political activism. 

Judging by the amazing graphic that accompanied this announcement, 'Harmful Industries Fellows' are going to be very busy. Not only do they have to tackle Big Alcohol, Big Tech and Big Pharma, they also have to take on the Military Industrial Complex, the Gig Economy, Not-For-Profits and Philanthropies.

If they have some spare time at the end of the week, they can also get their teeth into Neoliberalism, Privatisation, Capitalism and Multistakeholderism. Three people hardly seems enough, even if they do have 'inspired minds'.

Regular readers will not be surprised to hear that this radical activism masquerading as academia is being funded by the government. VicHealth AKA the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation was formed in 1987 as a result of Australia's Tobacco Act. It has been syphoning off money from cigarette taxes ever since and last year received $41 million from the government. Not bad for an organisation that is opposed to 'profit'. 

 

It was originally set up as an anti-smoking group, but before you could say 'mission creep', things had snowballed. It seems a strange use of taxpayers' money but, as I say, perhaps I'm very old-fashioned.

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The return of dodgy minimum pricing modelling

The MESAS evaluation of minimum pricing (MUP) in Scotland has produced a report which uses the IRI sales data. This differs from the Nielsen sales data in various ways. Neither system is perfect (they both have to guesstimate how much alcohol is sold in Aldi and Lidl, for example), but it is useful to see how they compare. 

I had a glimpse of the IRI data in 2019 so I was able to report at the time that off-trade alcohol sales actually rose in Scotland in the first ten months of MUP, although by the end of the first full year there had been a slight decline. 

The IRI figures published this week suggest that very little changed between 2017 and 2019. Remember that MUP was introduced in May 2018 and that the figures for 2020 don't tell us much because the on-trade was closed for much of the year. 

According to the IRI data, there was slightly more alcohol sold in the off-trade in the first full year of MUP (2019) than in the first full year before MUP was introduced (2017). There was also very little change in England and Wales.

The exact figures are as follows: 

Off trade (IRI) England and Wales (litres per adult):

2017: 6.61
2018: 6.71
2019: 6.63
2020: 7.81

Off trade (IRI) Scotland (litres per adult):

2017: 7.67
2018: 7.78
2019: 7.71
2020: 9.04

Off-trade sales in Scotland were 0.04 litres higher in 2019 than in 2017. In England and Wales, they were 0.02 litres higher. By any reasonable standard, there was practically no change. You certainly wouldn't guess that a "world-leading" anti-alcohol intervention had taken place. The Scots bought slightly more off-trade alcohol in 2018 and 2019 than they had in the last full year before MUP was introduced.

The picture is very similar when we look at total alcohol (off-trade plus on-trade). The main difference is that consumption fell in 2020, despite the large rise in off-trade sales.

Here are the figures:

Total alcohol sales (IRI) England and Wales:

2017: 9.29
2018: 9.36
2019: 9.23
2020: 8.88

Total alcohol sales (IRI) Scotland:

2017: 10.51
2018: 10.52
2019: 10.44
2020: 10.01

Here we see less alcohol being bought in Scotland in 2019 than in 2017, but that is entirely down to sales in pubs, restaurants and clubs - which were not affected by MUP - and the same thing happened in England and Wales. Overall, there were 0.06 fewer litres per adult sold in England and Wales in 2019 than in 2017 and 0.06 fewer litres per adult sold in Scotland. Exactly the same.

This shows that you can get different results if you use different data sets. With the Nielsen figures, you can just about see a decline in 2019 that could plausibly be due to MUP. It's not much of a decline and there have been larger ones in some previous years, but it is at least consistent with the idea that MUP reduces consumption.

But with the IRI figures, you don't even get that. Sales barely changed at all between 2017 and 2019, not in the off-trade and not overall either. In fact, alcohol sales in Scotland were lower in the off-trade in 2017 than in any subsequent year - and it is only in the off-trade that MUP has an effect on prices.

And so I was baffled to see the MESAS authors come to this conclusion...

In unadjusted analysis using Nielsen data, the introduction of MUP was associated with a 3.7% (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.8% to 5.5%) reduction in the total volume of pure alcohol sold per adult in Scotland. Using IRI data, a 4.3% (2.1% to 6.5%) reduction was observed.

What?!?

 

In the unadjusted and controlled model that used Nielsen data, MUP was associated with a 6.6% (5.2% to 8.0%) reduction in per-adult off-trade alcohol sales in Scotland while the same model using IRI data resulted in a 4.2% (2.9% to 5.6%) reduction.

Eh?!? What were the inputs of this model?

 

In the fully adjusted and controlled model using Nielsen data, a 6.6% (5.1% to 8.0%) reduction was observed compared to a 4.0% (2.7% to 5.3%) reduction when using IRI data.

None of this seems to make sense. Clearly there was not actually a 4% reduction in sales. The model seems to be comparing sales in Scotland with sales in England and Wales. That's fair enough. However, there would have to be a big rise in England and Wales for a model to suggest even a relative decline in Scotland - and there wasn't.

The MESAS authors have access to more data than they have published. The key to understanding their claim is that it refers only to the first year of MUP, i.e. May 2018 to April 2019. Their model ignores what happened afterwards and they only provide figures for calendar years.

It would be interesting to see the full data and it is odd that they haven't published it. It is possible that there was more of a spike in sales in England and Wales between May 2018 to April 2019 than there was in Scotland. All we can say for sure is that if there was any effect from MUP, it was very short-lived because more off-trade alcohol was being sold in Scotland in 2019 than in 2017.  

I'm not saying the IRI figures are necessarily more accurate than the Nielsen figures. I really don't know. But I challenge anyone to look at the graphs and figures above and tell me they can see an effect from minimum pricing.  

It was dodgy modelling that got Scotland into minimum pricing in the first place and it looks like dodgy modelling is going to be used to justify it in retrospect.

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Fixed odds betting terminals: the house didn't always win

The government is in the process of conducting a gambling review. As usual with governments, it is very unlikely to lead to any liberalisation but it is unclear which forms of illiberalisation it has in mind.

I found this podcast a useful guide to what's going on from some people who understand the business, including Philip Davies (Conservative MP), Jon Bryan (poker player and gambling writer) and Emmet Kennedy (presenter on The Final Furlong Podcast). They talk about the prospect of the government limiting how much money people can spend on gambling each month, an idea so ludicrous that I see it as a red herring. More likely are advertising bans and heavy restrictions on online gambling.

As I have said before, this all started with the agitation against fixed odds betting terminals (FOBTs). Once the anti-gambling coalition won that battle, it was open season. 

I discovered something interesting about FOBTs recently. The government's rationale for reducing the maximum stake to £2 was that no one had lost more than £1,000 in a session playing at that level in 2015/16 whereas 170,670 sessions at higher stakes had ended with people losing more than £1,000. 

 

Preventing people from losing £1,000 had never been a principle of UK gambling regulation before and the government's own figures showed that losses of this kind occasionally took place on other gambling machines (and happen all the time with retail betting). The reality was that the government was under pressure to reduce the stake to £2 and needed to find a justification for it.

But if you look at the data the government used to make this decision - which was based on 128 million sessions between July 2015 and June 2016 - you'll notice something interesting. Yes, there were 170,760 sessions ending with a loss of over £1,000, but there 209,464 sessions ending with wins of over £1,000. There were 543 sessions ending in losses of over £5,000, but 592 sessions ending in wins of over £5,000.

There were more big payouts than big losses. This holds true at the £500-£1,000 level too. There were 626,897 sessions ending with losses between £500 and £1,000, but 700,063 sessions ended wins of between £500 and £1,000.

At every point below this, the bookies won. There were 3,008,317 sessions ending with losses of between £200 and £500, for example, whereas only 2,628,258 sessions ended with wins of this amount. The most common loss was between 1p and £5. There were 28.4 million of these, but only 6.5 million winnings of up to £5.

 

But when it came to big wins and losses (i.e. over £500), the players won more times than the bookies. None of the people who won more than £5,000 staked less than £20 a spin and most of them staked more than £50. None of the people who won more than £1,000 staked £2 or less and most of them staked at least £40.

It's not immediately obvious what explains this phenomenon, but it isn't a fluke result. You can see exactly the same thing happening in 2014/15. The nature of the machine's fixed odds is that they produce a reliable profit over time (the house margin is around 3%). The only explanation I can come up with is that players exploited the only advantage they have over a machine: they can walk away when they're winning.

Or is there some other reason that I've missed?

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Australia's anti-vaping fiasco

Once again, it's time to laugh at Australia's misguided 'public health' policies. 

 

From The Age... 

 

Australia needs greater regulation on vaping

 

You can't regulate something that's illegal. 

 

First, they banned the sale of all nicotine-containing vape juice. Then they banned the importation of all nicotine-containing vape juice (unless you have a prescription!). So what the hell are they going to do next?

 

Vaping is growing in popularity...

 

Prohibition working well, then?

...particularly among young people, towards whom many of these products appear to be marketed.

 

E-cigarette marketing is also banned in Australia.

 

Decades of government interventions to stop people smoking tobacco – advertising bans, plain-packaging, a hefty tobacco excise and public health campaigns – have clearly made a difference in Australia. These days, only 11 per cent of Australians aged 14 or over smoke daily, compared to 24 per cent in 1991. But those gains are under threat.

 

The daily smoking rate of people aged 14 or over flatters Australia, but even using this measure there has been only a small decline since 2013 when the figure was 12.8%. 

 

In the UK, where the government actively encourages smokers to switch to vaping, there has been a much greater proportional decline in the current (not necessarily daily) smoking rate of people aged 16 or over, from 20.4% in 2012 to 14.5% in 2020. The latest figures for people aged 18 or over suggest it could be as low as 12%.

 

Between 2016 and 2019, the percentage of Australians aged 18-24 who had tried an e-cigarette jumped from about 19 per cent to 26 per cent...

 

The figures for 2020/21 were published today and they show that 21.7% of 18-24 year olds have ever tried an e-cigarette, so either vaping causes amnesia or something funny is going on in the survey. Either way, we can all agree that it's a large number of users for a product that is illegal (4.8% of 18-24 year olds are current users).

 

....and experts are concerned vaping acts as a gateway into smoking for some e-cigarette users.

Australia's idea of an expert is someone like Simon Chapman or Mike Daube who make Ivor Cummins look like Isaac Newton. As this article shows, they've done a comprehensive job of hypnotising the Aussie media with their anti-scientific nonsense and turning the country into a laughing stock as far as harm reduction goes. Where is the evidence for this "gateway" in Australia? If you look at the official prevalence data for this supposedly at-risk group, you'll find that...

People aged 18-24 years were more likely to have never smoked (83.3%) than any other age group.

 

There are more people of this age who have tried vaping than have tried smoking, so when does the gateway kick in? Could it be - whisper it - that people who vape are actually less likely to start smoking?

 

But back to the article... 

The government’s import ban on nicotine vaping products was delayed because of libertarian concerns among some members of parliament. 

 

No, it was delayed because of health concerns from some members of parliament who said it would push ex-smokers back to smoking.

 

Individual freedoms are important but...

 

There is always a "but" when people don't really think individual freedoms are important.

 

...when it comes to public health, they must always be weighed against broader social concerns. These include the cost to society of providing medical care for associated health problems, and the duty to protect more vulnerable Australians, like children and young people.

 

There aren't really any medical costs associated with vaping and insofar as 'vulnerable Australians' need protecting from e-cigarettes, prohibition clearly isn't the answer.

 

The evidence to suggest e-cigarettes can help smokers quit is also not strong...

 

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

Allowing vaping to continue without greater regulation is a risk Australia cannot afford to take.

What regulation do you want? You've already banned it!

Alas, the author of the editorial doesn't tell us. That is the last line of the article, so let's instead turn to the Sydney Morning Herald which has its knickers in a similar twist.

Australian doctors are calling for the ban of non-nicotine vaping products they say are designed to appeal to children and cause unknown long-term health consequences, while creating confusion that allows a black market to thrive.

 

The only doctor quoted in the article is a chap called Chris Moy and all he can manage is a squeal of confused outrage.

“Why are they even a thing?” he said. “They are the pinnacle of aggressive, scary, malicious marketing to children”.

If this is what passes for comment on matters scientific in Australia, it is no wonder they've ended up trying to ban things that are already banned.

 

Nevertheless, at least we know what the plan is now. They want to extend to the ban to e-cigarette products which don't contain nicotine. The logic must be that people are buying their devices in Australia and then buying their e-cigarette fluid on the black market.

 

The flaw in this scheme is that people can also buy the devices on the black market - and that is exactly what they will do. After everything Australia has gone through in the last decade, first with tobacco and now with e-cigarettes, what kind of fool still thinks that prohibition prohibits?

Meanwhile, The Sun-Herald and The Sunday Age can reveal a law prohibiting the importation of nicotine e-cigarettes without a prescription has barely made a dent in Australia’s black market supply.

 

Well, slap my thigh! You don't say?

 

Since the ban came into force on October 1, Border Force has intercepted 248 shipments of nicotine vaping products at the border. This contained 144,724 nicotine vaping products, including 107,019 e-cigarettes and pods, 5823 refillable vape devices and 31,882 individual units. The records show at least 462.9 litres of liquid nicotine, and another 24,000 products did not list the quantity.

 

Great success! And the winning doesn't end there...

The Sun-Herald previously revealed schools across NSW are locking toilets outside break times to clamp down on students vaping.

 

This last story is almost unbelievable. I urge you to click on the link and read all about it, but here's a sample... 

The Herald has spoken to at least two parents whose teenage girls experienced visible menstrual bleeding at school last week as a result of not being able to quickly access a toilet. Other parents say it is causing anxiety and potential health issues for their children who suffer conditions such as Crohn’s disease, irritable bowel syndrome and type-one diabetes.

 

Way to go, Australia! And all to prevent smokers having access to a product that could save their lives. You little beauties!

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A swift half with Geoff Norcott

I had a good chat with the comedian and author Geoff Norcott this week. Check it out.

 

Fun fact. The last time I was in London before the first lockdown was March 8th when I co-hosted a show with Geoff in a pub for Radio 4. I remember there being a lot of hand sanitiser around, but that was about it for Covid controls. 

 

The show was about the nanny state but sadly it is no longer online. 

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