Health zealots in the UK, who apparently only number 40,000 people (is that all? 400,000 would seem more like it.), are seeking to enlist a 20-million-strong ‘wider workforce’.
Bar staff and barbers could soon be crucial players in helping people see the dangers of excessive drinking, lack of exercise and unhealthy diets, according to a government-commissioned report.
The Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH), a charity dedicated to improving health and wellbeing in society, has outlined plans for a range of different occupations – including cleaners, hairdressers, postal workers, and pub and restaurant staff – that could be enlisted to support efforts to tackle the public health crisis in England.
The RSPH report, Rethinking the Public Health Workforce, states that as many as 15 million workers – more than a quarter of England’s population of 54 million – could help form a “wider public health workforce” with sufficient training.
With bookmakers already having dipped their toes in the water by spreading public health messages to men who would normally avoid their local GPs’ surgery, the NHS and local authority services are now being urged to consider going further in nudging reluctant souls of both genders into seeking medical help and advice.
Cleaners and postal workers are among sections of the workforce that could help spread the message, the report says .
Similarly, bars and other businesses could provide less forbidding venues for checking blood pressure and carrying out other medical tests, engaging people in “conversations” about healthy lifestyles and offering “signposts” to steer them on to more specialist services.
Shirley Cramer, RSPH’s chief executive, said: “A wide variety of professions enjoy a trusted relationship and regular contact with the public. Such professionals may be able to offer the public advice or, indeed, be asked for such advice.
“If you consider bars or restaurants as an example, there may be potential for people working in these establishments to help promote healthier choices or to signpost to a range of other lifestyle health services, including smoking cessation or physical activity.”
Cramer added that by engaging with workers far beyond those normally used to spread public health messages, “not only might we help support these individuals to improve their own health and wellbeing, but reaching out to the people they interact with could be significant”.
The society’s research suggested one in four people would be prepared to take public health advice from hairdressers and shop workers.
So you arrive at your local pub one sunny afternoon, and order a pint and a packet of salted nuts, and the barmaid says, “A whole pint? Are you sure about that? We wouldn’t want to see you drive off and crash at the next corner, would we? And do you really want salted nuts? You do know that salt is as poisonous as sugar or fat, don’t you? Studies have shown it.”
But you insist on both the pint and the salted nuts, and set out for the garden, manoeuvring around the new I Speak Your Weight machine that has replaced the dart board, and settle down for a quiet drink and a smoke.
But you’ve hardly been there five minutes when the pub landlord comes out carrying a blood pressure gauge and thermometer and stethoscope, and cheerily asks, “Would you like to take our free health check? It only takes five minutes. We measure your blood pressure and your temperature and ask a few questions, and then tell you how long you’re likely to live, and where your nearest doctor is.”
You politely decline the offer, and settle down again to try and enjoy your pint, when a man who’d been sitting at a nearby table wanders over and says, “I see you’re a smoker. You do know that it’s killing you, don’t you? Three quarters of all smokers are killed by their smoking addiction, some of them by catching fire while lighting cigarettes.”
He pulls out a photo from an inside pocket, lays it on the table, and points a finger at the gory image on it. “This poor chap burnt his whole face off with a butane lighter. One just like yours, as a matter of fact.”
And with that, you abandon both the unfinished pint and the uneaten packet of nuts and head for your car as fast as your legs can take you.
And when you get home, the postman is delivering the mail. As he pushes the last of the letters through the letterbox, he calls through it to you. “Can I interest you in the new gym that’s opened near here? You look like you could do with a bit of exercise. They’ve got weights and pulleys and all sorts of other contraptions. They are also organising a weekly marathon run. It’s all tremendous fun!”
Miles Frost dies aged 31 while jogging.
You can read the whole jargon-laden RSPH report here.
Frank Davis 
Smoking Ban Inspector Stripped Naked in Belgium 2012
In the Belgian village of Sivry Rance an inspector of the Department of Health was attacked by the customers of the Café de la poste and stripped naked. The man was controlling the ban on smoking in bars.
Albert D. (53) was, along with thirty other colleagues, responsible for the control of the entire Belgian territory. His inspection was unannounced and happened as always on a random list of catering businesses.
Cafe de la Poste in the center of the village serves a daily special at noon but in the evening is frequented by a slightly rougher clientele: mostly members of the local Hell’s Angels. According to eyewitnesses, the inspector was stripped to his pants. Personal belongings were tossed way back in the barroom supported by some intense cheering.
Afterwards the man was dropped in the forest and found shelter in an old gamekeeper’s house. dressed in an old horse blanket, he managed to reach the local police station . The public prosecutor of Charleroi condemned this aggression and intimidation of a public official. The prosecution asks anyone who witnessed the incident to contact the police.
LOL! LOVE it Harley!
:>
MJM
I wish I could hibernate until sanity returns, if it ever does!
The ‘public health” crusaders have lost their minds! More proof that the tobacco control movement is a cult. Tobacco control, Temperance, and the anti-sugar movement (as well as the emerging lifestyle controls) are part of a ‘healthiest’ ideology. The entire health crusade is essentially a new religion.
Should have been ‘healthist’ ideology. Spell check must be an antismoker.
“A wide variety of professions enjoy a trusted relationship and regular contact with the public.”
Yup – but these things can change, Ms Cramer. Not so many years back, doctors enjoyed a trusted relationship and regular contact with the public, too. Until, that is, they transformed their role from helpful healers of ailments into nagging, hectoring, finger-wagging, Pharma-supported salespeople. Now, the only people who still trust doctors and other members of the medical profession are the hypochondriac drones who believe every health scare put out by groups like yours and rush to their local surgery in the wake of each one, absolutely convinced that they’ve got all the symptoms and that they’re going to die imminently. (Which, sadly but inevitably, they rarely do).
Normal people simply don’t go to see their doctors unless it’s absolutely essential these days. Why not? Well, because – err – that “trusted relationship” no longer exists. We all know the stories of our overcrowded A&E departments. Well, maybe it isn’t just because people can’t get an appointment with their GP. Maybe it’s also because they’ve been reluctant to see their doctor when they’re only slightly sick, because they don’t want the “lifestyle lecture” that comes attached with every visit. So they stay at home and get worse, instead, until it reaches crisis point. Where’s that “trusted relationship” now, Ms Cramer? Has it not occurred to you that maybe if that “trusted relationship” still existed, there wouldn’t be a need to look to other “trusted relationships” to carry out the functions that doctors once did?
It’s another dangerous move. Only a step away from legally forbidding bar staff from serving more than (say) two or three pints to any one individual per visit – “for the good of their health,” of course. Isn’t that the way it goes? Try the “voluntary” route first and then, when that doesn’t work, make it mandatory …
As a very, very rare pub visitor these days, I will be watching with interest from the sidelines …
Not to mention the legal issues surrounding unqualified people giving out “health” advice. I deal with people everyday in my job in a bank, but there is no way that I would be giving anyone any health advice, as who knows what health problems they already have, and “public health” advice is so dodgy, you could end up killing someone.
That is apart from the fact that I would never nag my customers, about how they live their lives. My profession would soon become very “untrusted” if we became an unofficial evangelist for the “healthism” religion.
I know I would avoid any business whose workers stuck their noses into my private business, my health, and started spouting puritanical nonsense and moral panic, along with healthism propaganda.
Maybe, like the smoking bans and all the other business killing laws that “public healthism” like to propagate, this is designed to sound the death knell to any small business foolish enough to become missionaries in the service of the healthism religion, as this is likely to be the result of such nonsense.
Great point, Jude. However, millions of people are already accepting advice regarding their personal health from the likes of unqualified people such as Deborah Arnott, so what’s the difference, really?
Don’t forget to advise them that there’s a good chance that some of the bills you give them will be contaminated with cocaine dust, so they shouldn’t blow their nose in them or let them get near children.
– MJM
Mike your right I remember some time back in a trial a person who had 10 thousand dollars on him going to mexico for his annual tropical plant buying trip was pulled over for speeding. The cash was found and the cops figuring he was a probable dope dealer confiscated the money under the Federal confiscation law that gives all drug money to the authority that made the bust. It was then tested for drug residue and that was the cops only claim that it was drug money it came back with only minor cocaine residue.
Then a study had been done and experts brought in and it was found nearly all American money had trace amounts of cocaine and other drug residues on them. So with no drugs and no other explanation the cops had to give up there beer fund………..
“I know I would avoid any business whose workers stuck their noses into my private business”
Funnily enough that’s why I avoid going into a bank. And as for trust after the way the banks have behaved over the last few years, a bank is the last place I would trust for financial advice.
I work in a very small local bank, and do not stick my nose into the customer’s private business, I also do not make policy decisions for any of the big banks, and have absolutely no control over how they operate, so will not be taking any responsibility for how they behave. The financial advice I give to customers is always with “their” best interests in mind, which is why they trust our little bank in the first place.
I don’t distrust all doctors, some are genuinely interested in helping their patients, but those in the tobacco control industry cannot claim any such moral or ethical standards, they have sold their souls for a toxic ideology and financial gain. So not all of “public health” should be tarred with the same brush.
Hell Jax Ive got so use to sitting in the house these last 2 months save 1 trip to bingo a smoking ban wouldn’t affect me a damn bit in this state of mind. But I fight for freedom not just smoking bans. We all have a right to live and let live. The government has a right to be overthrown by the people once it outgrows its bounds.
Sounds like the “nazification” of medically-monopolized Public Health. The medically-aligned partnering with the State have tentacles through every level of government and to even local businesses. In a critical sense, local businesses become instruments of the State. It’s a societal takeover. There’s no escape. Wherever you turn, the hairdresser, the pub, the computer shop, the supermarket, it’s in your face – what the State considers important and the priorities that everyone should be living by, for everyone’s own good. It’s the behavioral dimension of eugenics in motion. So you decide not to venture out too much but you won’t escape their “help”. They’ll send over some counselors, probably in State uniforms, to your home concerned that you’re not with The Therapeutic Program®, that you’ve become anti-social and in need of State “education services”…. for your own good.
It’s mind-boggling that there are those in Public Health that enthusiastically promote this idea, prepared to commit it to print and publish it They are dangerously shallow, deluded minds, testimony to how far down the gurgler society has gurgled. It’s entirely antithetical to a relatively free society. Rather than being represented by government, citizens become the property of the State to be shaped in any way a self-installed clique sees fit. Again, we see that health is reduced to only a physical, absence of disease phenomenon, one of the central ideas in the eugenics catastrophe of early last century, and the quest for physical health based on flimsy statistics and bastardized causal argument, another eugenics favorite. Mental, social, ideo-political health do not figure. These fruitcakes believe they have their finger on the pulse of the universe and are the sole arbiters of health and well-being. According to them, there is no other way of thinking. They have a “god complex”. Hopefully there are enough in society that recognize this as a very, very sick idea coming from Public Health that is already out of control with its meddling, self-adulation, and megalomania. These Public Health nut cases need to be given the equivalent of massive kick up the rear end that might push some blood flow to their brains to understand that they are on already trodden dangerous ground.
Mag and the tactics of government are no different than the shake down system the MOB uses to coerce compliance. ZEROCARE has made it nearly impossible for the independent practice doctor to stay in business. The state watches all scripts written for class 2 narcotics and if in the opinion of the state watch dog the doc has written to many scripts they pay him or her a visit and put the scare tactics to the doc.
Basically zerocare and the new system wants all doctors working for the system where they can be controlled and made to sing with the rest of the choir…………
Faced with these willful people ardent defender of the human being and sustainability of the environment, I remember the green valleys of poppies, cannabis, quechua kuka around the world Yoohoo hoohoohoo, You may say I’m a dreamer… Well, business, business, nothing is personal, ok?
excellent article
Simple solution, the moment they open their mouths ask if they are qualified doctors then tell them no thanks, and if they continue, tell them you leaving and that they have just lost your custom and that of those with you. They’ll lose interest fast when it hits their profits.
Not if there in a system like NHS or Zerocare they are a corporate employee simple as that and still get paid. The do their lousy 30-40 hours a week and home they go pulling no ER duty no in hospital duty on patients. Their simply company daylite hour docs and that’s all they want to do. Then they take off in theyre big fancy cars and party………..the patient be damned.
Health zealots in the UK, who apparently only number 40,000 people (is that all? 400,000 would seem more like it.), are seeking to enlist a 20-million-strong ‘wider workforce’.
That’s an awful lot of people going to be told to “fuck off and mind your own business”.
Dry Cleaner: Hmm. That looks suspiciously like a spot from fetuccini Alfredo. Do you know how much butter and cream are in that? And cheese? Good God! Do you know what that’s doing to your arteries? I can’t clean those you know. Nobody can In fact, sir, ‘ I can’t even clean this suit. You won’t live long enough to come pick it up and besides, I’ve heard secondhand sauce can be lethal.
“I’ve heard secondhand sauce can be lethal.”
Overblown nonsense Walt. That true only if you inhale its fumes or kiss someone who’s been around it.
– MJM
first hand farts
Scientists Say Smelling Farts Prevents Cancer
Although hydrogen sulfide gas”—produced when bacteria breaks down food—”is well known as a pungent, foul-smelling gas in rotten eggs and flatulence, it is naturally produced in the body and could in fact be a healthcare hero with significant implications for future therapies for a variety of diseases,” Dr. Mark Wood said in a university release.
Although the stinky gas can be noxious in large doses, scientists believe that a whiff here and there has the power to reduce risks of cancer, strokes, heart attacks, arthritis, and dementia by preserving mitochondria.
Researchers are even coming up with their own compound to emulate the smell’s health benefits.
“We have exploited this natural process by making a compound, called AP39, which slowly delivers very small amounts of this gas specifically to the mitochondria,” Professor Matt Whiteman, of the University of Exeter Medical School said. “Our results indicate that if stressed cells are treated with AP39, mitochondria are protected and cells stay alive.”
So instead of getting upset the next time you catch a whiff… be thankful.
Read more at http://www.sunnyskyz.com/good-…
Oh great. So, now that they’ve expunged pubs of all that “vile, stinky, cancer-causing” tobacco smoke, they’re going to replace it with “vile, stinky, cancer-preventing” farts!
After all, having shoved aside the anti-smoking-ban argument that “pubs aren’t places where you go to to get healthy,” and ploughed on with the ban regardless, it’s only a short step now to making pubs into “places where you do go to get healthy.” I foresee legislation making it compulsory for pubs to pump poo-smells around their establishments, justified – again, just like the smoking ban – “for the benefit of customers’ and employees’ health.” The principle is exactly the same, and all those complacent non-smokers went along with it then, so there’s really no room for argument, is there?
Pub owners’ concerns that this will put even more customers off frequenting their premises will be brushed aside with countless surveys, which will prove that “80% of the public support a measure which could potentially save xxx million lives over the next 10 years,” and the usual drones will be out in force with the usual soundbites: “Actually, once you’ve been in the bar for a couple of minutes, you don’t even notice the smell any more,” and “I’d rather walk into a room full of healthy human wind than a room full of toxic smoke, so I’ll still be going down the pub,” and “After a couple of minutes your nose gets used to it, so it’s no more of an unpleasantness than smokers having to go outside for a couple of minutes for a cigarette. There’s no difference in terms of inconvenience, and it’s worth it for Our Health.”
And, no doubt, many of those supportive voices will come from all those compliant, anti-smoking, pleased-I-haven’t-got-to-empty-ashtrays-any-more landlords, who may well be fitting air circulation equipment direct from their loos into their bar areas as we speak ….
Well, I have to say that my experience of pubs on the couple of occasions when I went to them when I was in UK a few years ago was that they stank of urine and stale beer. I’d never noticed that previously (I left UK well before the ban – 6 years or so) when I used to frequent pubs regularly. So farts would fit in fairly well with the ambiance of our oh-so-modern smoke-free, clean-air pubs.
That’s ok. I doubt I will ever set foot in a UK pub ever again anyway. Which is a crying shame, because I loved traditional English pubs. But they’ve gone forever now.
Collateral damage, but all for the ‘greater good’, eh?
they’ve gone forever now
They’ve gone for the time being. Only time will tell whether that’s forever. For myself, I expect them to re-appear once the current high tide of puritanism ebbs.
I do hope you’re right, Frank, but I have my doubts as to whether the indefinable essence of the British pub will ever be recaptured, even if the bans are rescinded. The continuity has been broken. You may possibly be able to smoke in them again some time in the future, but I feel that by that time they will have changed beyond recognition.
I’ve said this before, but I view what the anti-smokers have done to the British pub as akin to what the Taleban did to the giant Buddha statues in Bamiyan. Ideologically driven vandalism.
Well, they wouldn’t be exactly the same. But the way I see it, when people get together socially, they like to drink and smoke and sing and dance. I think that’s a constant of human nature. Periodically attempts are made to stop them drinking and smoking and all the rest, but it never works for long. And it never will.
A wide variety of professions enjoy a trusted relationship and regular contact with the public
Not for long.
Well I followed the link and scanned through the document, but one section stood out to me as being a sad indictment of the whole lot of twaddle: –
“A pragmatic, rather than a scientific, approach was taken in disseminating the request for case studies via local authorities, employment and housing providers, fire and rescue services, local partnerships, community pharmacies, education providers and Allied Health Professionals.”
So, no science involved! I assume that a “pragmatic approach” is double speak for cherry-picking the studies that they want and ignoring anything that doesn’t fit their world view.
You figured em out,welcome to the club
Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, said last week that there was ‘absolutely no reason’ that children should drink fizzy drinks.
The new findings were last night welcomed by experts – although academics said the Cambridge study only found a statistical link, and did not prove anything concrete about cause and effect.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3170306/Sugary-drinks-linked-8-000-Type-2-diabetes-cases-year.html
‘Only a statistical link’ is how it started and what we actually still have between smoking and some diseases too..but look where we are now: bans, plain packaging, no safe level of passive smoking
Sugar is the new tobacco and sugary drinks are the new cigarettes.
Morecambe’s illegal tobacco trade busted by test shoppers
An investigation is under way after test shoppers found tobacco was being illegally sold in Morecambe.
A global cigarette firm bought non-duty paid tobacco at locations across Morecambe and will hand the evidence to Trading Standards.
The tobacco and cigarettes haul is thought to include counterfeit versions of genuine tobacco brands and products made specifically to be smuggled into the UK to avoid paying tax and sold on illegally, also known as illicit whites.
David Morris, MP for Morecambe and Lunesdale, also saw the evidence for himself and said he was “extremely shocked” at the extent of the illegal tobacco trade.
The test purchases were carried out by Japan Tobacco International (JTI) whose brands include Benson & Hedges and Silk Cut.
A JTI spokesman said: “The impact of the illicit trade in tobacco on society is far reaching and members of the public, retailers, suppliers and the Government all have a role to play to combat the issue. Criminals who deal in illegal tobacco will sell to all-comers, including children. JTI fully supports any efforts to rid our streets of illegal tobacco and stop criminals infiltrating our communities.
“Law enforcement agencies across the world have identified links between tobacco smuggling and globalised crime. The man or woman in the street who sells illegal cigarettes could be the front for a criminal supply chain that can span the globe. The £5 spent by a smoker on illegal cigarettes in Morecambe today can potentially fund major global criminals and terrorist organisations tomorrow.”
The evidence gathered can be used to secure convictions with penalties of up to a seven year custodial sentence.
http://www.lancasterguardian.co.uk/news/local/morecambe-s-illegal-tobacco-trade-busted-by-test-shoppers-1-7368324
I wonder if the government will pause to ponder why it is that there is such a roaring trade in illicit tobacco? They are well past the peak of the Laffer Curve where tobacco taxation is concerned. But do they know it?
Oh they so know it and are scared to death of it…………….you see if the real truth about what bootlegging causes as it really happens day in and day out and was actually reported each day on the MSM. How long would it last. The whole social engineering scheme would collapse in short order from public outrage.
Think ST VALENTINES DAY MASSACRE……………That was amerces final straw with prohibition.
Of course smoking should be banned in prisons – it’s time for inmates to start living like the rest of …
The Independent
Smoking has since been banned in just about every communal space in the UK, and public health now takes unquestionable precedent over the …
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/of-course-smoking-should-be-banned-in-prisons–its-time-for-inmates-to-start-living-like-the-rest-of-us-10407372.html
To take a persons last hope leaves a person with nothing left to lose………….I hope they burn the prisons to the grounds and take a few Nazis with them.
Greek Pilot Flies F16 to Turkey to Withdraw Cash From Bank | Armstrong Economics
Greek Pilot Flies F16 to Turkey to Withdraw Cash From Bank Posted on July 22, 2015 by Martin Armstrong According to a media report from the French website…
Nigel Farage
2 hrs ·
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Only way the UK can fundamentally change relationship with the EU is by leave
Promise of EU reform ‘is not enough’, Foreign Secretary warns
Philip Hammond said the Greek crisis, which showed how a unanimous binding written agreement by all 28 EU leaders could be disregarded, had ‘clearly not been a good moment’.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3170185/Promise-EU-reform-not-wake-Greek-bailout-Hammond-warns-agreements-come-bite-you.html
Confederate Flag Sales Up ‘500 Times’
The government and perpetually offended Americans have continued to call for banning anything remotely connected to the flag
http://www.infowars.com/confederate-flag-sales-up-500-times/
No, I don’t like this one nearly as much as the hooded speed cameras.
French tobacconists dump four tonnes of carrots on street in cigarette protest
“The Confédération des Buralistes – the tobacconists’ union – chose the carrot because it resembles the sign outside French shops selling cigarettes.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/22/french-tobacconists-dump-four-tonnes-of-carrots-on-street-in-cigarette-protest
Perhaps you have to be French to appreciate it properly.
Indeed, Rose. The French, bless ’em, have a completely different approach. I have to admit to a grudging affection for the French – they are really quite bonkers.
What fun to be had, though:
HAIRDRESSER: “So, are you going somewhere nice tonight?”
ME: “Going out for a meal”
HAIRDRESSER; “You know those new menus that have all the calories on….they’re great aren’t they? Jason, my boyfriend, says, since what I order is now about the calories, he really fancies me – our sex life is now fantastic!”
ME: “He evidently adheres to the adage that you don’t look at the fireplace when you’re stoking the fire”.
HAIRDRESSER; “Your hair looks a bit dull and dry – are you drinking a bit too much? You shouldn’t have more than one unit a week, you know, otherwise you’ll never have locks like Cheryl Versnatchy, Vernazy, Ver… Ooh.’eck that Cheryl Cole” (trills with laughter).
ME; “I also won’t be a vacuous, shallow, bint with more money than sense”.
HAIRDRESSER; “Ooh, you’re never a smoker, are you? I didn’t realize til I stopped how much I stank like an old ashtray.”
ME; “Now you just stink as a stupid drone who hasn’t the wit to realize that you’re being played and that you’ll never get any more custom from me – so bye, bye hair extensions, tanning sessions and Jason’s inability to continue to pretend that you’re attractive.”
(In real life I wouldn’t actually be so cruel – just a tad less).
“…Jason’s ability….” (Duh)
According to a new “study,” researchers found that reduced nicotine levels in cigarettes will not help people quit:
Smoking: Reduced Nicotine In Cigarettes Does Not Help Smokers Quit
Strangely, however, they conclude “We don’t know that very low nicotine cigarettes will not’ work to reduce nicotine dependence and enhance quitting.” Not once in the article do they mention the obvious potential implication: that this could actually be evidence that smokers are not “slaves” to nicotine after all.
That 98.4% failure rate for nicotine patches should have given them a clue, but with so much time and money spent by so many on the theory, anyone stating the obvious wouldn’t be at all popular.
Michael Russell
“By the 1960s, the emerging evidence of the danger of cigarette smoking was clear, but there was very little understanding of why people smoked. Cigarette smoking was generally thought of as a habit, with pharmacological factors receiving little or no attention.”
“Russell was a psychiatrist in training at the Maudsley hospital, in south London, when he chose the topic of cigarette smoking for his research thesis in 1967. Based on his review of what was then fragmentary research literature, he concluded in a 1971 paper that the drug nicotine was the motivating force underlying smoking behaviour.”
“His research led to the 1988 report of the US surgeon general, Nicotine Addiction, which finally brought recognition that cigarette smoking is a classic drug dependence.”
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/aug/04/obituary-michael-russell
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