The real public health menaces

I had the, um …... interesting(?) experience of meeting some people who either already are or shortly will be indirectly employed to tackle the island's so-called substance abuse problems last week.
Inevitably, I was not impressed, and rather than yet again hear fact-free drivel that's been printed uncut in the local media for years fell to musing what might be done to tackle one of the island's real social problems.
You know, some days I really worry about the Manx addiction to inventing social panics, linked to the ease with which intellectually challenged middle class deadwood can feed off a social network close to government which will find things for them to do. Frankly, I'd rather they stayed home and did something less socially damaging ..... drink a bottle of supermarket own brand sherry daily, read what Sunday supplement critics pass off as literature, weave baskets, make pots....anything really but engage with the real world and drag others down to their level.
Now this (see http://www.clivebates.com/?p=2391 ) is the kind of thing they should be reading, and to stay well ahead of their publically subsidised games you should too. Take a quick look and have most of your misconceptions about “public health” blown away ...... just like that.
And as Chris Snowden commented (see http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-conceit-of-public-health.html for more):
“Clive is too polite to mention one of the other reasons why 'public health' people are "surprised to find there are people who get up and do something, and do it for nothing", which is that they would never consider doing anything without being paid for it, preferably by the government. A grass roots, volunteer-run 'public health' group is an oxymoron.”
Over here, it is even worse. I suspect most morons would be offended to be associated with the kind of woo-woo merchants and research-free tactics all too common in Manx health scams.
And for another succint analysis of the way this stuff works, you really have to see http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2014/09/soda-sock-puppets.html
Local Government running an astroturf campaign to promote their own no-brainers and money-drainers to taxpayers? You just could not make this stuff up! Thank goodness that kind of stuff never happens on the Isle of Man...
..oh hang on a minute......

Just stop it

At the risk of sounding heartless, stories like this (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/prescription-drugs-warning-issued-1-6135789 ) make me laugh like a drain.

There really should be public health warnings about health warnings posted by people with no demonstrable expertise in the ‘problem’ they warn about. Career parasites who can only describe themselves as ‘health professionals’ because a cheapskate government employs them to offer a sham service to the many who do not need it, instead of paying the going rate for academically and professionally qualified medical workers to treat the small minority who do.

Is there local misuse of prescription drugs? Yes, of course, and probably a market in the unwise redistribution of them. There is in anything a fool with spare cash can be persuaded to want and a chancer with easy availability decides to supply.

But that misses the point, which is that prior to their ‘misuse’ such prescription drugs are supplied, legally and with public subsidy, to somebody else who has been persuaded that they need them and also, thanks to the drug advisory sham profession, probably regards him/herself as some kind of addict who will continue to need them unless they can be persuaded into some sort of costly ‘therapy’ which, to be blunt, they also do not need.

The whole set-up is a farce.

I am reminded of an article in which that old reprobate William Burroughs (hardly an amateur dabbler in such matters) explained how you stop smoking. In a nutshell, you get up one morning and you choose not to light a cigarette, and the next morning you do the same. No therapy, no woo-woo merchants, no pharmaceutical alternative. Nothing. You choose not to do it as naturally as you might choose not to buy a McDonalds.

Oddly enough, someone I know who for many years was on minor tranquillisers for her ‘nerves’ told me a similar story. After some 20 years of repeat prescriptions issued by doctors who probably assumed they were keeping a lid on the problems of a typical overworked woman of slender means she looked in the mirror one morning, said “I’m a bloody fool” and didn’t take her tablets, and never has since.

No therapy, no12-step support group. She just wised up, decided, and stopped.

The best way to stop potential tragedies such as the original incident in the news story is not legislation, or alternative drugs, and certainly not ‘advice’ from pseudo-professionals who talk about as much sense as adolescents on bad disco biscuits washed down with too much ‘energy drink’. The best way is for the real victims to stop.

Because it is common sense. And because they will also stop feeding all the parasites in the chain of misery, from minor street dealers and dodgy, government-funded therapists through to the drug companies.

SNAFU!

This (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/details/52897/charity-plans-adult-drug-survey) gave me a few laughs this week.

So, let’s see now……

A pseudo-charity that failed to supply the basic service suggested by the old working name relaunches as a private enterprise (though actually totally dependent on government work that should be done by skilled professionals - but won’t be - and that also won’t be put up for tender from any genuine private sector qualified professional).

It got the last contract thanks to a pseudo-academic survey which, in theory, identified the drinking patterns of locals. In reality, it was based on the responses of a random group of adults who stepped in when the government sponsors of the project could not even round up an involuntary cross-sample for the researchers to ‘survey’. This is revealed in the original version of the survey, as published in a (presumably) peer reviewed academic journal and so required to outline the methodology in order that other academics could attempt to replicate it. Curiously, that is no longer available, and the version that briefly appeared on a Manx government website at the time had all such relevant details removed in favour of a simplistic ‘shock/horror’ format that could be spoon-fed to the obedient press.

Aforementioned pseudo-charity/private enterprise fails to secure funds to continue failing to provide the original service, so broadens the provision to include services it is equally unable to provide (one also handily underwritten by a ‘sin tax’ from the trade, another coincidentally depriving a fellow pseudo-charity (which used to be a vital ally) of guaranteed government funding).

In order to ‘prove’ the 3^rd service is needed it is calling on government to sponsor another pseudo-academic survey (I’ll take a wild guess that either University of Bath or University of Western England will have already been approached again), citing a Europe-wide survey of teenage drug habits which…….

Oh wait…….. wasn’t that the one which the Chief Minister’s Task Farce on Drugs & Alcohol said was inaccurate when the UK press got hold of Manx results? And wasn’t that also the survey which that very Task Farce actually underwrites again every five years in order to validate policies, committees and QUANGOs which have never, ever, worked and are never, ever, supposed to do anything except perpetuate pseudo-responses by faith-frazzled prodnoses and the public employment of their ineffectual amateur churchmates?

Sorry, laughing too hard by now to continue poking fun, but I think you get the general picture.

SNAFU!

(Bless you)

Wowsers on the wagon

Today's ‘recommendation’ by yet another bunch of prod-nosed piss-artists that older people ought to go teetotal (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13863196 ) has, quite rightly, been greeted with contempt by anyone with an ounce of sense. See Chris Snowdon’s reaction at Velvet Glove, Iron Fist (http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/2011/06/wont-somebody-please-think-of-old.html) for one of the bluntest, most succinct.
Mind you, the Beeb report does quite handily sort out some clueless, self-serving busybodies (Age UK, Alcohol Concern…) from those with more respect for the aged. It also highlights just how much time government agencies waste hectoring those who pay their wages, instead of just doing their job and being of genuine public service.
And what a bunch of puritan pillocks modern psychiatrists are compared to their predecessors in the heyday of that, now almost redundant, profession.
When I first read one of today’s reports, and after I’d finished laughing at all this codswallop posing as 'social concern', it struck me that, back in the days when I worked in those long gone old school mental hospitals that liberals shudder just thinking about, today's ‘recommended maximum daily intake’ was actually less than many patients could get on prescription. I should explain that in those days it was quite common for some of the old boys to get a bottle of Guinness off the medicine trolley.
Yes, really!
Not only that, but once a week, as a student nurse, it was my not-so-solemn duty to accompany a gang of our more mobile long term clientele to the local pub for a couple of hours, where we all got half-cut and struggled back up the hill to the hospital before the front door was locked at 10 PM.
The nub of today’s problem is summed up well by Emma Soames, editor of Saga magazine, who comments: "I think people will be infuriated by this. It's described as a public health problem, it's actually a private health matter."
As Chris Snowdon acidly puts it: “There are, let's face it, only two things that are likely to cause poor health: bad luck and bad habits. You can't do anything about the first and the second is entirely a matter for the individual. Those who interfere in private behaviour do not deserve to be described as part of a public health movement. Call them anything you like—busybodies, wowsers, puritans, zealots, neo-prohibitionists—but don't go along with the charade that the private is public.”
“Busybodies, wowsers, puritans, zealots, neo-prohibitionists”…that only just begins the list of alternative titles we could award to the local amateurs setting such policy for the Manx government.
And given half a chance, they will.

Pimping for Jesus in the Cumbrian gun tragedy

I will get on to cheerier subjects, honest, but I can’t let the intrusion of Jesus Pimps on the Cumbrian shooting tragedy go without comment.
We’re well used to the way religious parasites leech onto any misfortune under the pretence of ‘helping the grieving process’, and also the way the media, having counted the dead and suggested (often inaccurately) some culprits, automatically asks a priest to comment and goes looking for a handy church service for the victims, however irrelevant.
My fellow regulars over at Platitude of the Day have quickly commented on the crass, insensitive offerings heard since the tragedy on Thought For The Day. Real sick bucket scrapings from Dr Sacks and Canon Billing so far.
Can it get worse? They’re professional religious pimps, totally lacking shame or compassion, and this grief-fest has economic potential, so we know the answer already.
But over in Cumbria stage two of the religious intrusion is now in full swing.
Last night there was a high profile service to ‘pray for the souls of the victims’ at St Mary & St Michael, Egremont, and Border TV also announced local churchs are leaving their doors open, lighting candles, praying, singing hymns and generally running about in an attempt to look concerned. In fairness, maybe some folk genuinely will get solace from that, but can I point out something?
There’s a profile of all the known victims by BBC Cumbria at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/10222161.stm#story-heading-6 . With the exception of one elderly couple, James and Jennifer Jackson, who were involved in their church parish council, not one victim is identified by their families or friends as regular church goers or people to whom religion was important.
Furthermore, the family of at least one, Michael Pike, specifically said on both BBC and Border ITV interviews they intend to celebrate his life, not mourn his death, and have no use for or interest in the faith-based irrelevance now taking place.
In fact, Jude Talbot, his daughter, said to the Beeb: "That's the sort of person he was, he was a humanist, he thoroughly believed that we should celebrate life, not rake over coals. So that's what we are doing, we are focusing on my father and the happy times we've had with him."
She said something similar to Border, but it was cut to something less specific about him still being around, literally, through all the work he’d done on the family house and garden. An ex-shipbuilder who went on to work at Sellafield, trade-union organiser and mature Open Uni graduate, he sounded like a great guy to call friend or relative.
Which is why the misapropriation of his identity and misrepresentation of his beliefs, along with those of all the other victims for the St. Michaels and St Mary service and others, without (and in his specific case against) family wishes is another crime we should add to those chalked up by churches.
Perhaps we should also be asking why the gunman had nobody to talk his troubles through with. Or more accurately, as in the Isle of Man, would that be the case if it wasn’t for government pennypinchers closing the advice and social services which should be available, but hiding the closure by ‘supporting’ new, and useless, faith-based schemes which no-one in a small community ever uses unless forcibly sent there, e.g. by a court order. Because we know only too well the bigotry and general worldly ignorance of village idiots paid to light candles, talk to the sky and otherwise waste public money.

Quack Christian 'therapy' causing Ugandan bloodbath

I’ve blogged a couple of times on the effects of Bush’s brand of ‘overseas aid’ to Uganda, and on the way a fine African example of the fight against HIV/AIDS has been reduced to a disaster zone run by Christian bigots – some homegrown, but many just Western parasites following the cash.
The most recent disgrace was a conference led by bogus ‘therapists’ and Holocaust revisionists, not unlike the one organised in London today and tomorrow by Anglican Mainstream and similar lunatics who push the ‘gays can be cured’ lie. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8015711.stm for more.
We really do need to stop this nonsense in its tracks, and distance ourselves from any efforts to export it, be it under the guise of ‘therapy’, ‘medical aid’ or whatever other thin excuse. To see why, read about the way the ‘Exodus International’ event in Uganda has been followed by vigilante campaigns against gays led by major politicians, clergy and mainstream media at http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2009/04/19/10764.
I’ve said it before, and I am going to say it again and again. Don’t just drop your money in the tin, check out the charity – properly. Ask more questions -lots of them. And if you cannot get straight answers, do not risk giving money which could set off a bloodbath instead of improving a life.