Dear Scumbag...

Following the publication of the BMAs ludicrously constructed and depressingly authoritarian report entitled "Under the influence- The damaging effect of alcohol marketing on young people" I decided to write the lead author a little a letter...

Dear Sir George

I am writing to ask for an explanation regarding the inadequacies of your team’s recently published report “Under the influence- The damaging effect of alcohol marketing on young people”.

Firstly, from a close reading, it appears to me as though little scientific evidence has been consulted at all in what has been sold to the media as a scientific study. On page eight the report claims that: “During the 1990s, the prevalence of harmful alcohol use increased among both men and women in the UK, and in particular in the 16 to 24 age group.” However you do not site a source for this statistic and thus I do not know whether the prevalence of harmful alcohol did indeed increase. Furthermore, of what significance is it that prevalence of harmful alcohol may have increased in this period where, as you admit, “the figures peaked in 2003-04” and have been falling since?

The effect of all this is that your report bears little resemblance to a scientific study. Rather it reads like a manual for alcohol prohibition. This is illustrated by the use of normative language throughout the report; such as, on page two, where you recommend that: “specifically, as a part of a comprehensive alcohol control strategy, the UK Governments should: implement and rigorously enforce a comprehensive ban on all alcohol marketing communications…” etc. Surely science is by definition objective? If so, it is not the place for a truly scientific report to say that anything should be the case but rather to simply outline what currently is the case.

In addition, as a further insult to science, your report happily quotes data showing that “In 2007, over a third (37%) of adults (aged 16 and over) in Great Britain were found to have exceeded UK recommended guidelines for regular drinking in the previous week”. However, you have clearly chosen to completely neglect the fact that these guidelines were “plucked out of the air” as the product of an “intelligent guess” by Richard Smith, a member of the Royal College of Physicians working party that produced the guidelines (the quotes in this sentence were taken from the Times Online). By using these fallacious guidelines, you and your team have either been very lazy in your research of the science of drinking or, more likely, have used worthless data in an attempt to firm up your prohibitionist stance by grounding it in statistics. As an examination of the above shows, your report, rather than being built on the grounds of concrete science, has been placed upon quicksand and as such is now sinking to the point where it cannot be taken seriously by anyone in possession of the actual facts. The most lamentable example of this is where you state that “the UK is among the heaviest alcohol consuming countries in Europe”. This is, quite simply, a lie, unless by “amongst the heaviest” you in fact mean twelfth? (Type http://www.forbes.com/2007/11/27/drinking-europe-alcohol-biz-commerce-cx_tvr_1128drinking_slide_13.html?thisSpeed=3000 into your web browser if you would like to view this statistic for yourself.)


It saddens me to see such a flagrant disregard for accurate reporting, particularly as there is no need for you to have chosen to set such low standards for this report. The BMA is, largely, a respectable organisation of intelligent men and women so I fail to see how this report could have been published with so many errors and manipulations of science. (There are many more statistics that I would take issue with in this letter, but I can appreciate that you are probably to busy too reply to them all.) My only conclusion can be that this report, rather than the product of an investigation, is simply dogma aimed to fuel the erosion of British civil liberties through sponsoring of prohibitionist measures that may perhaps “contribute much needed funding for public health research and education”.

If this is the case then I shall make an effort to briefly counter some of your authoritarian thinking and policy pushing. The claims that “public health” is at risk from drinking are all ultimately flawed simply because public health does not exist. There is my health, there is your health and collectively there is the sum of all our individual healths. There is no collective public health and thus my individual health is not your responsibility to improve, because my individual health cannot effect your individual health. If I choose to corrode my liver with alcoholic drink then it is I who shall suffer the consequences. If your response to this would be to state that the NHS, which is funded through the nation’s tax revenues, pays for my treatment and thus my drinking should be discouraged, as it imposes a cost on society, I would say that we have identified the real problem. My drinking only becomes a public problem when the taxpayer has to pay for my treatment. It is neither my choosing to drink nor the advertising which may be encouraging me to drink which causes the public problem. Therefore surely a better policy solution is to stop the NHS for paying for my drink related treatment? Make the irresponsible pay for the cost of their own excessive drinking and they will have a greater disincentive not to drink so much. If you charge every over-drinker for their own stomach pumps and liver operations people will drink less in order to avoid these costs. By contrast, your approach fails on both the pragmatic and ideological levels. The prohibitionist measures outlined in your report take away choice from those who drink alcohol very responsibly. Indeed you yourself in the foreword call for “targeting” more than “irresponsible drinkers alone”. But who are you to advise that our freedoms are taken from us? To advise that those who just drink wine with their meals should pay more for it and only be able to buy it at certain times of the day? In our courts of law do we punish the whole of society for the actions of a few murderers? Does everyone share the price of one person’s parking ticket? Of course not, because most people recognise both that such measures are both unjust and destined to failure. The second that the price of drinking is shared by all those who drink too much will be having more of their tab paid for by everyone else and as such will actually be more encouraged to drink than ever before. If everyone shared a murderer’s sentence his own would be lightened, thus he would surely have less disincentive to kill than if he was held entirely culpable for his own actions?

I shall leave you with that thought. My hope is that you retract your report and advise all governments from acting upon it. Your misuse of statistics is truly abhorrent and a sufficient reason alone for the report’s immediate retraction, if only to save the reputation of yourself and your colleagues. Your report also promotes an equally repugnant ideology of the removal of liberties and the socialisation of other people’s mistakes for no clear benefit. It is for this too that I shall be writing similar letters to my MP and to the House of Commons warning them of this report’s viscous cocktail of false-science and dangerous dogma, until you decide in favour of retraction.

Yours in hope,

Matthew Triggs

This gave me a chuckle

Buses should be free, that facebook group with no understanding of how a country/economy works, just received a necessary douse of common sense:



(:

Sex-ts

That's right 'sexts', the melding of 'sex' and 'text' to produce a word meaning a text containing sexual content. Turn off your teenagers' mobile phones, cast them to the bottom of the sea and move away to the mountains of Scotland to escape the evil reach of the mobile telephone mast! 20% of teenagers have received a 'sext', the apocalypse is nigh!

Yes you have heard correctly. BBC news reported today the findings of the charity Beatbullying which has confirmed, to the abhorrence of Daily Mail readers everywhere, that 38% of teenagers have been using "modern technologies" to send sexual images to each other. Who would have thought that our testosterone and oestrogen pumped younger population would ever engage in such licentious behaviour? Clearly not those at Beatbullying or the quango-tastic UK Council on Child Internet Safety. It saddens, although doesn't surprise, me to observe that a sense of realism is yet to permeate the skulls of those operating within said organisations.

My problem with this unnecessary hysteria is threefold. Firstly Beatbullying's claims that 'sexting' constitutes "bullying" and is a "problem" are absurd. It seems clear to me that if teenagers wish to send sexual images of themselves to others then it is more an exercise of their own immaturity rather than a malicious act against someone else. The recipient always has the choice of deleting, replying in kind, or forwarding the image to all of their friends for comedy value if they so wish. The initial sender, rather than bullying the recipient, only opens themselves up to the possibility of bullying which, some might say, would be well deserved. 'Sexting' comes sans problem.

Secondly, anyone believing that 'sexting' constitutes another symptom of 'Broken Britain' can just fuck off. Go on. Right Now. No? Ok then I shall explain why you should. The fact that 'sexting' is a recent phenomenon is not reflective of any break down of 'traditional values' but can be explained by the simple truth that when Beatrice and Ernest were children mobile phones simply did not exist. Ergo 'sexting' was impossible. The erotic love letters of the past generation, which extend way back to the Courtly Love literary tradition of the 15th Century, were the 'sexts' of the past. 'Sexts' do not reflect societal breakdown, as I expect certain newspapers will claim tomorrow, but technological evolution.

And finally... My ultimate problem with this whole 'revelation' is just how insignificant, pathetic, unimportant, useless, silly and insignificant-again it is. Is it really the role of government, as Schools Minister Diana Johnson claimed it is, to spend our hard earned taxes on "supporting parents to have the confidence to engage with their children on the challenges of modern life"? "Supporting parents to have the confidence". Really? Really? I can't begin to comprehend what that sentence even means let alone the cost to the taxpayer of Mrs Johnson wasting her time inventing it.

I thought that the choice between reacting to nonsensical buzzwords and preserving educational standards/equipping our soldiers properly/repaying the national debt would be an easy choice to make. Clearly not for a New Labour politician.

My First Post...

Firstly a warm hello to anyone who has happened across this, my very first venture into the occasionally beautiful but more often disgustingly shiny underbelly of the blogosphere.

Seeing as today's news has been filled with the usual contemptible cocktail of New Labour's thinly veiled totalitarianism and the wider scandalous behaviour of our Westminster overlords I cannot see how I can attempt to unpack it in anything approaching a light-hearted manner. So I shall simply restate, in block capitals, the opinion of the reasonably IQued. On our behalf I say to all those whom use either MP, PM or Lord (especially you Mandelson) as a prefix before their names: "KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF OUR LIVES AND OUT OF OUR POCKETS YOU CORRUPT WHORES!"

Now, in a more respiratory system friendly fashion, I'd like to take the opportunity to let you know what is likely to crop up in this nouveau blog of mine. Obviously politics will feature quite heavily; that is when it is safe for me to write about it without reaching for the nearest rope/tie/shoelace. To get this out the way my political views are, in a word, libertarian. Small government, free markets and personal liberty? Oh yes. Yet I'd say I'm far more Smith than Friedman, if that is of any consolation. Also vying for wordy attention are my internal literature goblin and my egotistical lust for writing up my private excursions in a manner which presents them for the 'general reader' when, quite clearly, they would only be of interest to me. Or perhaps also the Labour Party's omniscient wet dream.