In my new book, Inside the Sausage Factory, I examine four campaigns for ‘public health’ policies in the 2010s and examined all the evidence that was marshalled for and against them. It turns out that the evidence for them wasn’t very good and there wasn’t much evidence marshalled against them, but that isn’t really the […]
The Guardian is trying to find out how gullible its readers are. How else can you explain a headline like ‘Children’s daily sugar consumption halved just a year after tax, study finds’? It can only be deliberate. The alternative explanation is that Guardian journalists cannot read a simple study and are highly credulous, but since […]
After alienating users of cigarettes and disposable vapes, you would’ve thought there wasn’t much more the Tories could do to make themselves less popular among this demographic. But wait! They could always tax e-cigarette fluid. According to reports today, that is what Jeremy Hunt will be announcing in the Budget next week. It is a […]
Patients have always been a problem for the NHS. If it wasn’t for the burden of people needing medical assistance, the system would work fine. The health establishment has convinced itself that there would be less pressure on the NHS if people were healthier. This is widely believed and feels almost intuitive. As the Oxford […]
If you’ve noticed an unusually large number of hard luck stories from former gamblers appearing in the media in recent weeks, it is because the government’s ‘long awaited’ white paper on gambling regulation has been inching closer to publication. The BBC, in particular, has been scouring the country for problem gamblers to share their stories, […]
The Chancellor’s generous offer to provide 30 hours of ‘free’ childcare for one- and two-year olds will no doubt be popular, but it is symptomatic of Britain’s spiral of decline. Childcare costs are extraordinarily high in the UK. As the graph below shows, a British couple earning the average wage would have to devote 35.7% […]
Public Health England (PHE) is dead but its terrible ideas live on. In 2015, PHE initiated a ruse in which it planned to remove 20% of the sugar from most processed food. The target was set for 2020 and the agency started working with its ‘stakeholders’ in the food industry to achieve ‘health by stealth’. […]
Has banning junk food adverts on the Tube dramatically reduced obesity and saved the NHS £millions? That’s the claim made in a study published today – ‘The health, cost and equity impacts of restrictions on the advertisement of high fat, salt and sugar products across the transport for London network: a health economic modelling study’ […]
Rumour has it that raising the smoking age (or, more accurately, the age at which tobacco can be bought – there is no limit on when you can start smoking) will be one of the recommendations of the ‘Independent Review into Tobacco Control’ when it is published tomorrow. The review has been carried out by […]
When minimum unit pricing was introduced in Scotland in May 2018 it became illegal to sell alcohol for less than 50p per unit. This flagship SNP policy, aimed to reduce alcohol-related harms, including death and crime, by raising the price of the cheap, off-trade (that is, sold to be consumed at home) alcohol that is […]
In these days when conspiracy theories are rampant and misinformation about Covid-19 rife, it would help if senior officials didn’t blatantly lie to the public. It would also be nice if the media didn’t uncritically report claims that are obviously untrue. This morning, various news outlets reported comments from the head of NHS England, Amanda […]
It was a pleasant surprise to be quoted by the Chancellor when he presented his Budget last week. In 2017, I wrote a short paper for the IEA titled A Rational Approach to Alcohol Taxation in which I said that the way we tax booze in Britain ‘defies common sense’. Rishi Sunak quoted these words, […]
The rise in Covid cases that started in early May took many of us by surprise and spooked the Government, leading to the delay of Step 4 in its pandemic roadmap. The Government always expected numbers to tick up as the ‘non-pharmaceutical interventions’ were relaxed, but the rate of growth was unnerving. After loitering at […]
If the World Health Organization wanted to prove beyond doubt that it is no longer fit for purpose, it couldn’t have done a better job than to make the announcements it has made this week. On Monday, the WHO celebrated World No Tobacco Day by giving its Special Director-General Award to India’s Health Minister, Dr […]
After editing four editions of the Nanny State Index, the latest of which has just been published, I have concluded that it is not a good job for a libertarian. A nanny statist would get much more enjoyment from it, although they would rename it the Lifestyle Regulation Progress Index. Since its inaugural edition in […]
There was a moment in Gogglebox a few weeks ago which, as so often, captured the mood of the nation. Watching Boris Johnson announce his roadmap to freedom, the households were aghast to hear him mention the prospect of lifting lockdown “in six or nine months”. Johnson only mentioned this possibility to dismiss it, but […]
Yesterday saw the final of the German Masters snooker tournament in which the world number one Judd Trump comfortably defeated Jack Lisowski (9-2). Top flight snooker competitions are a dime a dozen these days. There were 42 of them in 2019/20, including 17 ranking events. Between the Riga Masters in July and the World Championship […]
The new tier system will close or severely incapacitate pubs in the 99% of the country that will be in Tiers 2 and 3. This amounts to carpet bombing the pub trade. Some 25,000 hospitality venues have closed permanently this year and 30,000 have yet to reopen. Although grants are available to businesses that are […]
Public trust in the Chief Medical Officer, Chris Whitty, may have taken a knock during the pandemic, but the Government was fortunate to have a relative unknown in the post when the daily briefings began in March. How much worse it would have been for the credibility of official health advice if his predecessor, Professor […]
From tomorrow, those in the north-east will no longer be able to meet people from outside from their own household except in public, outdoor places. They have already been banned from mixing with people outside their household in private homes and gardens. The new restrictions will apply to pubs, restaurants and all other indoor venues. […]
