Labour think tank turns on health secretary
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 
Well, there's a surprise. How many of you read the article in yesterday's Financial Times headlined "Labour's Puritans should let us live our lives"? I almost choked on my porridge. It's not the sort of comment I normally associate with the FT.
It began:
Listening to Andy Burnham, the health secretary outline his public health plans always leaves me gasping for a cigarette - and I’m not a smoker. With his earnest schemes to kick the nation’s bad habits of drinking, over-eating and smoking, Mr Burnham embodies the Puritan streak in new Labour.
His latest push is a new strategy on tobacco, entitled A Smokefree Future. The government has halved its 2020 target for the proportion of the population smoking, to 10 per cent, and is pushing legislation to remove branding logos on cigarette packages. Mr Burnham also announced that he is in favour of a ban on smoking at the entrances to office buildings, pubs and restaurants. Remember that smokers have already been forced outside by the government’s ban on smoking inside these buildings ...
And continues:
Over the past few years, there has been a growing range of interventions in personal behaviour: Anti-Social Behaviour Orders, littering fines, public disturbance offences and dozens of local bans on drinking in public parks. The regulatory net around behaviour has tightened. There are calls for minimum pricing of alcohol and a reversal of the extending opening hours legislation. Official anxiety about binge drinking - especially among young women - and sexual promiscuity are reaching new heights.
I like to think I could have written something very similar (on a good day).
But the interesting thing is this. The writer, Richard Reeves, is director of Demos, formerly New Labour's favourite think tank. And last Monday (the day that the government announced its new tobacco control strategy) health secretary Andy Burnham was at Demos giving a speech.
Did Reeves convey his thoughts to Burnham or did convention dictate that he treat his special guest with due deference?
Ten years ago Demos argued that smokers should pay a premium for using the NHS. Now the director is telling us that the health secretary "embodies the Puritan streak in New Labour". Now they're coming over all liberal.
What's going on?
Full article HERE.
Simon Clark
March 2008 ... "Richard Reeves, author of a brilliant new biography of JS Mill, talks to Tessa Mayes about Mill’s desire to inject public debate with truth, energy and freedom and give rise to a ‘whole society of heroes’." Click HERE.
Reader Comments (6)
Too little, too late and more like electioneering in a bid to bring back some of the lost core support.
Big Bloody Deal !
Demos is as pointless as Little Andy: after nearly 13 years of this atrocious government, it's SUDDENLY caught on that it MAY - just may -have gone a LITTLE too far ?
What's going on (asks Simon) ?
The rats are hunting for life-jackets, that's what.
And a new ship.......................
I have read the Mill interview. What struck me as most important in a nutshell is his view that people can take what risks they wish and that it is no business of government to stop them. Only when people take risks do we advance in knowledge and wealth. Further, that when our risks may harm others, it is the degree of risk to others that is important, not simply risk in itself (or, 'harm', as he puts it).
This new study regarding third hand smoke (tobacco residue clinging to furnishings, etc) is a case in point. Precisely what is the risk? It must be infinitesimally small, otherwise few of us would have survived until old age. Because of our ability to survive, it is clear that our bodies are quite capable of handling and dealing with small doses of funny chemicals. This has been pointed out by Dick P (I think) on his site. These funny chemicals are very prevalent, but in small doses. Our bodies cope easily.
People like ASH, in my opinion, are guilty of fraud by their KNOWING promulgation of falsity.
It is about time that they we brought to justice.
All this talk of 'risk', of course, is merely an obfuscatory fog - designed to avoid debate and a rational, clear-headed consideration of the observable facts.
Or, 'bullshit' - in layman's terms.
Our Masters - assuming it was our welfare they were REALLY concerned about - should long ago have absorbed the wisdom contained in the dicta of a judge in a well-known negligence case:
"The Law should guard against REASONABLE PROBABILITIES - not FANTASTIC POSSIBILITIES."
EVERY time the careful motorist drives to Tesco, there's a RISK that a child may be run over.
Should we all WALK to Tesco, therefore ?
The 'Precautionary Principle' would seem to argue so.
A Life Without Risk is NO Life at all.
And the 'risk' of harm to others from SHS - based upon ALL the CREDIBLE science - falls within the category of FANTASTIC POSSIBILITY.
The risk of a broken neck - and consequent paraplegia - to onself or to another during a RUGBY tackle is considerably (and quantifiably) greater.
Logically, you HAVE to ban rugby - IF the sole criterion is Avoiding Foreseeable Harm To Others.
And no-one HAS to play rugby !
Or work in a pub.
It really IS that simple.
But I guess that some people find Complexity a sexier proposition than Simplicity.
And rather more profitable for some.
After all, you don't need An Expert to solve a Non-Problem...................
Maybe he began to see the paralells between anti smoking and racism.
Martin V said - Our Masters - assuming it was our welfare they were REALLY concerned about - should long ago have absorbed the wisdom contained in the dicta of a judge in a well-known negligence case:
I would beg to differ, Martin, in that government are not our masters, but our SERVANTS, as they are in power to serve us, the population and were voted in by 'us' the population; we also pay their wages and expenses via the numerous ways in which we are taxed! Please, don't allow them to get even further above their station than they already are.
Everything else you say, I totally agree with and thank you for putting in such a plain, easy to understand way!