Atlantic Insight has an interesting interview (podcast & transcript) with Christopher Snowdon, Head of Lifestyle Economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs. He’s not at all impressed by the nanny state or public health lobbyists.
It’s worth a read, or listen: Interview with Christopher Snowdon
Category Archives: current affairs
Opinions
Guys, can we get this one straight once and for all?
Barack Obama is a human being.
As such he is entitled to an opinion on anything and everything.
Moreover he is entitled to express that opinion.
Whether you like this or not is irrelevant.
End of.
Boost for GP Services
NHS in £2.4bn funding boost for GP services in England says the BBC News headline.
So OK, our hard-pressed GPs are going to get a funding increase over the next four years which will pay for 5000 more GPs and the same number of other GP practice clinicians (nurses, pharmacists etc.). There will also be:
– a relaxation of rules to make it easier to renovate premises or build new ones
– a public campaign to encourage junior doctors to become GPs
– the recruitment of 500 doctors from abroad to boost numbers.
While any extra help for GPs is to be welcomed, this does beg lots of questions, including:
- Is this actually new money, or is some other part of the NHS being salami-sliced to find the cash?
- Where does the government think it is going to find 5000 new GPs in four years, especially if only 500 are coming from overseas? Remember, it takes 10 years to train a GP from scratch and at least 4 years if they are already finishing their basic medical training. Oh and we’ve been hearing this “5000 new GPs” for the last 2 years or more, so this isn’t new!
- What good is a public campaign going to be to encourage junior doctors to become GPs? It isn’t the public who need convincing, but medical students.
- It is all very fine relaxing the rules on renovating/building premises, but this doesn’t help unless there is the money to do the work … and there’s no sign of that! [Just as an example, my GP’s have had planning permission for a small extension for 2 years or more, but so far no funding.]
- Yes, we need more GPs, but existing practices also need a general funding boost as they are struggling not just with workload but the ability to pay for all the things they have to do. [You want the phones answered quicker? That means extra reception staff and they have to be paid.]
So yes, good, but …
Many Years On …
A few days ago there was an article in the Guardian under the banner Why it’s time to dispel the myths about nuclear power.
Just a couple of snippets:
Chernobyl was a perfect storm, a damning tale of ineptitude leading to needless loss of life. It was also unequivocally the world’s worst nuclear accident. To many, it is also heralded as proof-positive that nuclear energy was inherently unsafe, a narrative adopted by many anti-nuclear groups … But perception and reality do not always neatly align; in the wake of the disaster, the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) and others undertook a co-ordinated effort to follow up on health effects … Despite aggressive monitoring for three decades, there has been no significant increase in solid tumours or delayed health effects, even in the hundreds of thousands of minimally protected cleanup workers who helped purge the site after the accident. In the words of the 2008 UNSCEAR report: “There is no scientific evidence of increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality rates or in rates of non-malignant disorders that could be related to radiation exposure … The incidence of leukaemia in the general population, one of the main concerns owing to the shorter time expected between exposure and its occurrence compared with solid cancers, does not appear to be elevated”.
… … …
Unlike the accident in the Ukraine, events at Fukushima in March 2011 were not the result of ineptitude but rather a massive natural disaster in the form of a deadly 15-metre high tsunami** … While the world media fixated on the drama unfolding at the plant, it lost sight of the fact that around 16,000 had just been killed in a massive natural disaster. Despite the preponderance of breathless headlines since the reality is that five years later, radiobiological consequences of Fukushima are practically negligible — no one has died from the event, and is it extraordinarily unlikely that anyone will do so in future. The volume of radioactive leak from the site is so small as to be of no health concern; there is no detectable radiation from the accident in Fukushima grown-food, nor in fish caught off the coast.
… … …
It is important also to see these disasters in the wider context of energy production: when the Banqiao hydroelectric dam failed in China in 1975 it led to at least 171,000 deaths and displaced 11 million people … None of this is to denigrate the vital importance of such technologies, but rather to point out that every form of energy production has some inherent risk.
Do go and read the whole article.
** It is worth noting again that the containment at the Fukushima plant worked largely as designed. Excepting the natural disaster, the root cause failure appears to have been one of shortcomings in plant external safety design and process which would be just as likely with any major plant.
Rightly Measured (2)
Following up his Tuesday piece in the Guardian (mentioned here) Simon Jenkins yesterday expanded on his reactions and why current reportage, reaction and policy is so dangerous. As he says in
our current reactions serve only to act as recruiting sergeants for Isis.
Moreover compare the current paranoia with:
During the more dangerous and consistent IRA bombing campaigns of the 1970s and 1980s, Labour and Conservative governments insisted on treating terrorism as criminal, not political. They relied on the police and security services to guard against a threat that could never be eliminated, only diminished. On the whole it worked, and without undue harm to civil liberties.
All in all I find this rather worrying.
Rightly Measured
Simon Jenkins, writing for the Guardian website has a properly measured response to yesterday’s horrific events in Brussels: Our response to the Brussels bombings requires patience and restraint.
Sweet and Sour
As one might expect, Christopher Snowdon (he who has taken the new alcohol guidelines apart) writing over on City AM is not at all impressed by George Osborne’s new tax on sugar.
It’s a money spinner; no more, no less — at least according to Snowdon. For my money, if we really want a tax on sugar to reduce consumption as well as raise revenue, Osborne has missed several tricks:
- tax all forms of sugar in all products
- tax all sweeteners (natural and artificial) including honey and stevia (on the basis that they encourage a liking for extra sweetness)
- make the tax a sliding scale, starting at something small for less than (say) 1g per litre or kilo, rising to something draconian (20%, 25%) for over 10g per litre or kilo
- make it a consumer tax (like tobacco duty) rather than a levy on the producers
That would hopefully affect all consumers, relatively equitably. It would encourage people to buy less-sweetened products (without having to give up sweetness completely). And encourage producers to reduce sweetener content with substantial price advantages, and hence hopefully higher sales/greater market share.
Plonkers to the Left of 'em …
… plonkers to the right of ’em.
This, from the Guardian a week or so ago, encapsulates the “Brexit problem” rather well.
The real problem is that no-one knows; there is no objective information; just lies, innuendo and wishful thinking.
Gawdelpus!
Herbally High
At last. Some people who might have some influence are finally getting the message: prohibition doesn’t work. And that by decriminalising and licensing things you can not only control them but you can tax them.
No, for once I’m not talking about sex work. This is about cannabis.
The headline in yesterday’s Guardian read:
Sell cannabis to over-18s in licensed shops, says Lib Dem panel
It isn’t quite the Dutch model, but the recommendations have been put forward by a panel of experts including a couple of top cops.
The article is worth a read.
Decriminalising the Sex Industry
There have been lots of media reports this week along the line of Jeremy Corbyn is right: decriminalising the sex industry is the way forward.
Thank God someone in political circles is getting the message.
More of this common sense please.