Liberal Vision

Public Health Success?

If, as some campaigners would have us believe, obesity is more of a health risk than smoking, the data suggest that 50 years of massive investment in the public health industry have yielded very little in the way of overall risk reduction.

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - USA

I do not believe that the relationship between smoking and obesity rates is simple but this graph suggests that as a society we should at least consider taking a more holistic look at health issues.

For far too long now, health policy has been dictated by a dangerous combination of single issue campaigning and statistics based “evidence”.

People are not numbers, they do not conform to the rigid norms dictated by the public health industry and many will choose to accept certain health risks in pursuit of what they consider a more enjoyable if potentially shorter life.

I have no idea how much of the rise in obesity in the USA was fuelled by ex-smokers displacing one potentially harmful activity with another.  Similarly, campaigners have no idea whether trying to reduce young people’s access to tobacco and alcohol might lead to increased uptake of other substances that are potentially more acutely threatening to their health.

One thing that we do know, or should if we bothered to learn the lessons of history is that many public health interventions have had unintended negative consequences and the more illiberal and draconian the intervention then the greater the risk and impact of such consequences.

Chris Snowdon deals with this subject in some depth in his book The Art of Suppression. It is an informative well researched read for anyone interested in the reality behind the rhetoric.  Until I read it, amongst other things I was unaware that Heroin was originally promoted by the pharmaceutical industry as a non-addictive alternative to morphine.  Snowdon covers a range of issues including the disaster of alcohol prohibition in the 1920s, the EUs illogical ban on oral tobacco and the growth in designer drugs as a consequence of Ecstasy prohibition.

He questions why prohibitionist policies remain attractive to many in the light of their historic failure and concludes that “in the end, fear is more intoxicating than hope.”

By Chris Oakley. Chris has previously posted on Liberal Vision:  Smokers-State Aprroved hate and Intolerance is UK policy,   Alcohol is Old News – Minimum Pricing for Digestives is the “Next Logical Step” , Soviet Style Alcohol Suppression Campaign Called for By Public Health Activists , Alcohol Taxation: The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth , A Liberal Tolerant nation? and  What hope is there for liberty if truth becomes the plaything of political lobbyists.

Tags: Christopher Snowdon, health, obesity, smoking, The Art Of Suppression

A letter to a constituent regarding equal marriage

Lib Dem Voice have published the text of an email that I sent to a constituent earlier today.

He wrote to me to ask about my views of the government’s proposals “to re-define marriage”, which he believes “will have far-reaching consequences…[that] will have an adverse effect on the stability and flourishing of our local community.”

I beg to differ.

Happy Europe Day, Bill Cash!

Bill Cash, the preeminent Tory Eurosceptic MP for Stone, has an article published on ConservativeHome that places the centenary of the creation of the Conservative and Unionist Party within the context of the Liberal-Conservative coalition of 2012. Coincidentally, today is also Europe Day.

Unsurprisingly for the backbencher who likes to see everything to do with Europe in apocalyptic terms, he contends that the pro-growth policies needed in Britain and the EU cannot be achieved without putting an end to legislative burdens and “generating policies that the integrationists in Europe – including the Liberal Democrats – simply refuse to allow.”  He concludes by affirming that the British government “cannot achieve growth because the Liberal Democrats, as part of those arrangements, have silenced the Prime Minister’s promise to repatriate, among other policies, burdens on business. It is called 57 votes and the keys to No. 10.” 

Now I’m sure Mr Cash is a committed subscriber to the Daily Telegraph so I am surprised that he overlooked the wise words of the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills a few days ago. The majority of EU states, clubbed together in the Like Minded Group, want to see more deregulation, less red tape and an expanded Single Market (the latter of which was happily signed up to by Margaret Thatcher). For the benefit of those with their fingers in their ears and to separate reality from Mr Cash’s caricature, here’s a snippet of what Vince Cable wrote,

On the Working Time Directive: “I have continued to fight a rearguard action, so far successfully”

On our flexible labour market: “the last thing we need is the imposition of a new set of regulations potentially costing the economy billions a year”

On the ECJ: “I am not just fighting to keep the opt-out. There is also a battle to fend off damaging rulings by the European Court of Justice…I have instructed my officials to roll back these damaging rulings wherever possible…”

On fighting our corner in Europe: “We achieved agreement in Brussels to exempt around 1.4 million UK small businesses from burdensome EU accounting rules. When foolish and costly initiatives come out of Brussels, it is tempting to wave the Union flag and plead British exceptionalism.”

We need to put an end to Cash’s false dichotomy: you can be pro-market and pro-EU. One doesn’t need to unflinchingly subscribe to everything the EU does in order to support our continuing membership. There is, as Vince Cable said, a progressive majority in the EU replacing the dinosaurs of the past – it’s just a shame that some Tory Jurassic Park politicians cannot recognise the facts.

Tags: Bill Cash, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Vince Cable

German Liberals Provide Hope for the Liberal Democrats

It hasn’t been a good time of late for the Liberal Democrats. Our sister party in Germany, the Free Democratic Party, hasn’t had it easy either. Liberal Democrats faced the ignominy of losing to a six-foot intergalactic penguin in Edinburgh and the FDP lost to a bunch of Pirates in Berlin. We both suffer the challenges of being a junior coalition partner.

Nonetheless, their recent showing in the regional election in Schleswig-Holstein has confounded the critics. Widely tipped to fail to reach the necessary parliamentary threshold, they managed to secure a respectable 8.2% after a succession of poor results (Der Spiegel has more).

Interestingly for British Liberal Democrats, the FDP have embarked on a more confrontational approach with their CDU-CSU coalition partners. As one newspaper reported, their parliamentary group leader recently remarked that they had “successfully fought traces of “Social Democratization” among the conservatives”. Sounds like a great guy!

Lib Dems should monitor their strategy with interest. It is not too late to reverse our fortunes. We too can confound the polls and critics.

Tags: Free Democrats, Liberal Democrats, Philipp Rosler, Rainer Brüderle

Support for the Coalition Melts

Voters have expressed their cold feet at the direction of the coalition across the country. In one Edinburgh ward, a man dressed as a penguin – Professor Pongoo – gained more first preference votes than the Liberal Democrat candidate.

Both Conservatives and Liberal Democrats will need to assess where they go from here. Saying its down to mid-term blues after another drubbing won’t do (Alex Salmond, the Scottish Emperor politician, was able to increase the number of SNP councillors whilst in government).

Certain Tories will want their party to move further right to appease UKIP, whilst many Liberal Democrats will no doubt seek to shift the party leftwards after Labour’s gains. It will be hard to reconcile these views. Some may say they are poles apart.

However, the senior party figures that have taken to the airwaves have been silent on the key issue following the local authority elections: just what are the increasingly out of touch Cameron and Clegg going to do about a potential march of the penguins?

Tags: Council Elections, Penguins, Scotland