Bad Medicine

The tyranny of public health

Recently Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, whose face is what AI generates if you put in the prompt ‘sanctimonious’, announced plans to finish off Britain’s, already on its knees, pub industry.

Of course he didn’t put it quite like that.

Doubling down on Rishi Sunak’s already ridiculous and infantilising age specific smoking ban, Starmer announced that he’s considering going one better, and banning smoking for all adults.

Outside. In beer gardens.

What a joyless puritanical scold, this empty eyed drone really is.

I genuinely don’t understand how the pub trade can sustain itself, especially in central London where walking into most ale houses any time but a Friday night is like stepping into a sticky floored morgue.

If the prices alone weren’t enough to put you off, you also have to factor in the dangers of simply getting there.

Because venturing into the West End means you run the risk of being stabbed with a zombie knife, accosted by a drug addict, mugged for your phone, or worst of all, finding yourself half drunk on a tube station platform, staring into the eyes of Sadiq Khan, as his smug face scolds back at you from a poster informing you that only a rapist could possibly dislike women’s football.

I hope it’s not so bad where you live.

The ban is being considered because according to the joyless public health lobby, just one sniff of second hand smoke will render even the healthiest lung a tar filled quagmire, an emphysema riddled wasteland, a black bronchial abyss.

This is clearly nonsense.

You are as likely to get cancer from sitting vaguely near a smoker in a pub beer garden as you were of catching Covid on a windswept beach.

Which for those of you who I see, still wearing your N95 masks, as you sneakily feel up the avocados in the Kings Cross branch of Waitrose, is not very likely.

But hey, you do you.

Sadly the do gooders don’t seem to care much about facts or reason, and even less about personal autonomy. Smokers are in danger of enjoying themselves, at risk of having a nice time, in jeopardy of letting their hair down.

And so it has to stop.

Starmer was recently asked if the withdrawal of the winter fuel allowance from shivery old folk was payback, a punishment for hate filled, far right, non diverse pensioners voting Tory.

He denied it. (Though it clearly was).

So you could be forgiven for wondering if this spiteful and malicious smoking ban was conceived as a way to get one over on Wetherspoons, for having a boss who supported Brexit, and a clientele which is (mainly) white, often working class, and proudly British.

Of course Starmer would vigorously deny any such allegations. Instead he has justified his joyless jackbooting in the same way that busy body happiness vacuums like him always justify their pernicious, fun sapping, nannying.

The supposed ‘burden’ our sinfulness imposes on the sainted NHS.

But smokers are not a cost on the Health Service’s finances. If anything, they represent a benefit.

Because just as the cost of a litre of petrol is mainly fuel duty, most of the cost of a pack of smokes, is tax.

(As an aside, I’ve only just realised that you pay VAT on top of fuel duty. The government literally makes you pay 20% Value Added Tax on your petrol tax )

So over their (short) lifetimes the average smoker pays proportionately more into the health service than the rest of us.

If we were genuinely keen on allocating NHS resources in relation to how much we were each contributing, then smokers would be lording it up in special five star hospitals, gasping their last while lolling about on golden ventilators, in diamond encrusted oxygen tents.

And as they age, smokers don’t tend to put as much of a strain on the NHS as their non smoking cohorts, on account of them being. You know. Dead.

Also, if Sir Keir really wants to reduce the ‘burden’ on the NHS. Here’s an idea. Try importing 700,000 fewer new patients each year.

I’m guessing that might possibly maybe make a teeny tiny difference.

Of course the reason we need to lift that burden in the first place is because surprise, surprise, the NHS is currently in crisis.

Again.

Let’s be honest, the NHS is always in crisis. It pretty much has been for as long as I can remember, and I expect it will continue to be, long after I expire. Probably at the foot of my stairs, after waiting two days for an ambulance to turn up.

Of course all the NHS’s problems are the fault of the Tories. At least according to baby faced Health Secretary Wes Streeting who says

‘it’s not just that the Conservatives didn’t fix the roof while the sun was shining. They doused the house in petrol, left the gas on, and Covid just lit the match. That’s why waiting lists have ballooned to 7.6 million-long today.”

Listen, I defer to no one when it comes to contempt for the last Tory administration.

Its culturally suicidal, and economically illiterate policies are undoubtedly responsible for the decline our country has suffered over the last fifteen years of incompetence, hubris, and gross mismanagement.

But Streeting’s claim is simply not true.

NHS funding has absolutely ballooned over the last 15 years. Growing from £131bn in  2010 to almost £180bn today. That’s a huge 38% increase.

So it’s hardly the cash strapped wastrel the left always claim.

And the number of NHS staff rose 35% between 2013 and 2023. Today the Health Service employs a frankly staggering 1.3 million people.

With all these resources, it beggars belief that NHS productivity is currently 11% lower than it was in 2019.

I don’t know what all these extra staff are doing, They can’t all be busy making Tik-Tok videos.

And yes I know Covid. But other countries didn’t shutter their entire health systems to deal with the virus. That’s the main reason our waiting list is so long. And the Labour Opposition didn’t object, in fact they demanded lockdowns which were harder, stricter and longer.

Also, who has been in charge of the NHS for the last fifteen years? If it really was the venal Tories making all these terrible high level decisions, then fair enough, but why does it even need a Chief Executive?

Surely if it’s the politicians pulling all the strings, it won’t matter if we just got rid of the NHS’s supposed boss Amanda Pritchard, and saved ourselves a few quid.

Quite a few quid in fact. Amanda’s currently raking in over £260,000 a year.

Just imagine how many lovely outfits the fragrant Mrs Lady Starmer could buy herself with that.

Let’s be honest, the Tories biggest mistake wasn’t that they intervened too much in  the affairs of the NHS. It was that they didn’t intervene enough.

So frit were the evil Conservatives of being accused of plotting to privatise the creaking behemoth, that they pretty much left the crumbling NHS to its own devices. Hoping the left would leave them alone as long as they chucked ever larger chunks of tax payer cash down its ravenous maw.

How did that work out for them?

Now we’re left with a straining, failing health system, where, yes, it might be ‘free at the point of use’, but for many, actually gaining access to its services is an absolute nightmare.

Though not for every one of course.

Labour MP Jess Phillips took a funny turn last month and ended up at her local A&E.

The waiting room might have been like a scene from one of Hieronymus Bosch’s less jolly paintings. But not to worry.

According to the Daily Mail, when the Palestinian doctor on duty heard that ‘pro-Palestine’  Labour bigwig Jess Phillips was waiting for treatment, he ignored those who had been patiently hanging on for hours, and whisked the down to earth, salt of the earth, woman of the people, straight to the front of the queue, quicker than you could say ‘Holly Willoughby’.

A couple of things jumped out at me about this story.

Firstly, I can’t really believe this is true. Because our Jess is known for her decency and integrity. So she would have surely denied herself any special treatment. After all, elbowing your way to the front of the line while the children of your constituents languish in misery on the blood and piss soaked floor of an A&E waiting room is probably not a good look for any democratically elected representative.

Secondly, if this doctor is so concerned about injustice in his homeland, why is he treating sprained ankles on a hefty NHS salary (recently increased by 22% thanks to the generosity of Rachel ‘Black Hole’ Reeves) in the admittedly grim city of Brum, rather than fixing gunshot wounds for free, in the war zone of Gaza?

And thirdly, having allegedly barged her way past the plebs who foolishly voted her into office, why did our Jess not hang her head in shame, rather than merrily boast about her privilege to an auditorium full of admirers, during the vainglorious and self promoting theatre production, An Evening With Jess Phillips?

It’s all so brazen.

Look. Maybe this was a one off. Maybe the Mail got its story wrong. I doubt it, but OK.

But the fact that there was not an immediate scandal about corruption, patronage, privilege, and a ‘two tier health service’ speaks volumes.

And is it only me who remembers how sniffy some sections of the self righteous left became when there was the merest hint that cake loving Prime Minister Boris Johnson might possibly have got a little extra attention when he was in hospital nearly dying from Covid?

But fear not.

All these problems belong in the past. The grown ups are back in the room and Sir Keir has just announced his plan to reform the NHS.

Rejoice. Rejoice.

Unlike his Health Secretary, Starmer seems less convinced that the parlous state of the NHS is all the fault of the nasty Tories.

Obviously they should shoulder some of the blame, they are Tories after all,  but no, Starmer seems to find most fault not with the people who have supposedly been running the NHS.

But more with the people who have been using it.

You. And me.

Too many of us are clearly the wrong type of patient, our bloated bodies, wheezing lungs and blocked arteries, a clear impediment to the smooth running of the otherwise brilliant organisation.

After all, how is the NHS supposed to function properly when so many of the boorish louts it’s trying to fix keep turning up sick?

But not to worry, Sir Keir Starmer has promised to make us all live healthier, cleaner lives, which he claims is achievable through what he describes as a ‘prevention revolution.’

Sir Keir is aware he has set himself quite the task, and that some of us won’t want to take our medicine.

But he remains undeterred, saying

‘I know some prevention measures will be controversial, but I’m prepared to be bold, even in the place of loud opposition.’

Sounds more like bullying than nannying to me, but fair enough.

What’s more worrying, is that it has become increasingly clear in the weeks since he was elected, that Starmer doesn’t merely intend to prevent us from eating cakes, smoking cigarettes, vaping vapes, drinking fizzy pop or driving a car faster than 20mph.

His grim regime seems equally committed to preventing us keeping any of our own money, renting out our own property, heating our homes, saving for our old age, and accessing a free, and uncensored internet.

And is especially devoted to preventing us voicing our incorrect opinions concerning inconvenient topics like mass immigration, Islamist violence, or the erosion of those pesky women’s rights.

Don’t be fooled, Starmer isn’t simply intent on using ‘prevention’ to build a nanny state.

He has much bigger ambitions than that.

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Thank you for reading Low Status Opinions.

If I seem to be going on about Labour at the moment. It’s only because this government is so irredeemably awful.

At least the useless Tories had the decency to be incompetent.

Sure, they came up with endless crappy schemes but you could always console yourself that they lacked the wherewithal to see them through. Not this lot. They are not only small minded. Spiteful. Divisive. And destructive.

They are also efficient.

I have no doubt that before long any criticism of Labour’s dogmatic pursuit of the annihilation of personal liberty and intellectual freedom will be smashed out of us with a gleeful brutality. So I figure I better get mine in while I can….

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LSO