The Lucy Letby case

I've been writing a bit about the Lucy Letby case recently. Some people think she's innocent. One of those people is Peter Hitchens, with whom I had a debate recently. You can watch it below.

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Christopher Snowdon on the Drinks Insider podcast

I was interviewed for the latest episode of the Drinks Insider podcast talking about the anti-alcohol lobby. You can listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.

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A glimmer of hope for British healthcare

I've written for the Express about how public opinion is slowly changing with regards the NHS:

 

The NHS model is something of an outlier in not only paying for everyone’s healthcare but in owning the infrastructure, employing all the medics and being run by the government. In mainland Europe, it is more normal for people to take out health insurance with a provider of their choice and for hospitals to be running privately.

Governments ensure that everybody is covered, either by paying for everyone’s health insurance or by paying for those who cannot afford it, but none of them has an enormous state-run leviathan like the NHS. This introduces an element of choice and competition that raises standards and promotes efficiency.

Moreover, the NHS is not under-funded by any reasonable definition. According to the latest data, only five OECD countries spend more on healthcare as a percentage of GDP than the UK. NHS spending was ring-fenced in the ‘austerity’ years and there were never any cuts to its budget.

On the contrary, its budget has rocketed since 2018. The good news is that public opinion has started to change. As recently as May 2021, a YouGov survey found that 39 percent of British adults believed that the NHS provided better healthcare than other European countries while only 10 percent thought the opposite.

When the same survey was carried out last month, 33 percent said that European systems deliver better healthcare than the NHS and only 17 percent thought the NHS was superior (the rest said that they either didn’t know or that both systems delivered similar results).

Perhaps more surprisingly, when another poll published this month asked people what the biggest problem with NHS funding is, only 33 percent said it was that "the NHS does not receive enough funding" whereas 55 percent said that "the funding the NHS does receive is not spent as effectively as it should be".

 

Do read it all.

 

And read Kristian Niemietz's new report in which he shows how we can move the NHS towards a social insurance system and end the misery.

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The dark arts of Chris Whitty

There was a period during the pandemic in 2020 when the pubs were open but you could only go to one if you sat on your own and had a meal. You were allowed to buy an alcoholic drink but once you had finished your meal you could not buy another one. There was also a 10 p.m. curfew when the pub had to close and everyone had to go straight home.

Whether this did much to stop the spread of Covid is debatable (there were reports of a lot of house parties starting just after 10 p.m.), but it allowed the ‘public health’ establishment to turn pubs into what it thought they should always have been: functional, sterile restaurants where fun is discouraged if not outright illegal. At the top of that establishment sits the Chief Medical Officer, Professor Sir Chris Whitty. Since the pandemic, Whitty has been busy lobbying successive prime ministers for a series of fanatical nanny state measures. He persuaded Rishi Sunak to announce the gradual prohibition of all tobacco sales and, according to the Times, has been ‘leading the push for an outdoor smoking ban’.

An outdoor ban would be a shattering blow for the pub trade, but Whitty is not done yet. According to the Telegraph, the public health minister Andrew Gwynne is considering ‘tightening up the hours of operation’ of pubs and bars. 10 p.m. curfew anyone?

Once again we see the hand of Chris Whitty at work. Speaking at a fringe meeting at the Labour conference, Gwynne explained that Whitty had met him on his first day in the job and shown him a series of slides (of course!). The first slide showed that 40 per cent of NHS spending is on preventable health conditions and that this is projected to rise to 60 per cent in the next 15 years. For Gwynne, the conclusion was obvious. Never mind reforming the NHS, we must reform the public.

Read the rest at the Spectator.

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Orwell chat

I was on the Unlicensed Philosophy podcast recently talking about Orwell and Nineteen Eighty-Four. You can watch it below if you so wish.

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Taxes. Is there anything they can't solve?

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) has published what it calls “the most ambitious blueprint for the nation’s health since Beveridge”. I wouldn’t get too excited. Their previous contributions to the debate about the nation’s health include demanding plain packaging for crisps and sweets. Surprisingly, that doesn’t get a mention this time around but the report does include 20 recommendations, many of which don’t have much to do with health but are things that left-wing think tanks always want, including “a full restart of Sure Start”, a legal “Right to Disconnect” at work, abolition of the two child benefit cap, more spending on research, more work for quangos, even more “free” school meals, etc.

But the IPPR also wants a “healthy industrial strategy” based on the “polluter pays principle”. Their thinking is rooted in two absurd beliefs that have become the orthodoxy in ‘public health’ through repetition. The first is that if you drink yourself to death, it has nothing to do with you and is instead the fault of Heineken or the French wine industry or some other commercial entity. The second is that the greatest public health win of the last ten years was Lucozade putting more artificial sweeteners in their drinks. Despite the sugar tax having no effect on childhood obesity, the IPPR reckons it was “among the most successful government policies of the last decade” (to be fair, it hasn’t been a great decade for government policies) and wants it to be “expanded’, not just to food and drink but to a bunch of products and services that are already heavily taxed.

 

Read the rest at The Critic. 

 

Meanwhile, EU countries have got their own problems...

European Union countries should consider extending smoking bans to cover children’s play areas, outdoor pools, amusement parks, and terraces, the European Commission will recommend Tuesday, according to a document obtained by POLITICO.

The EU executive will also recommend stricter rules on e-cigarettes “whether containing nicotine or nicotine-free” as it looks to tackle the “uptake and appeal” of vapes among children and young people.

 

The fun police are out of control.

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The runaway train of the nany state

There was never any doubt that the government would introduce its so-called “junk food” advertising ban next October. After all, that was the date set by Rishi Sunak last year and Keir Starmer is even keener on big government than he was. The only interesting thing about yesterday’s “announcement” is that it came on the same day as Starmer’s big speech about reforming the NHS. As I mentioned last week, the Prime Minister genuinely believes that the slovenly public are to blame for Britain’s dismal health service. I very much doubt that he is going to reform the NHS. It is beyond reform. Instead, he is going to try to reform us.

For the next five years, the UK will be the playground of every “public health” blowhard and nanny state crank. The slippery slope of lifestyle regulation will become a runaway train. If resistance is futile, we should at least demand accountability. The advertising ban, for example, is supposed to reduce child obesity. If it fails to do so, we should repeal it and strip the academics who promoted it of their government grants. It’s only fair.

 

Read the rest at The Critic.

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