Public health would really like to ban Christmas (and use your taxes to campaign for this ban)

OK I exaggerate but only slightly. It does feel like it's only the lack of opportunity that's stopping public health from banning Christmas - or at least anything over Christmas involving things they'd like to ban: drinking, staying up late, going out to parties, kisses, eating rich puddings with custard or cream, taking the kids for a festive Happy Meal, lashings of ginger beer, red meat, sausages, cheese, sleeping in the afternoon and anything else involving any sort of pleasure. Including of course the annual (and I'm told, 'much loved') Coca-Cola "Happy Holidays" truck tour.

As you know, I find it very difficult to why it's any part of anyone's business whether or not the Coca-Cola Christmas lorry arrives in town. Especially if your reason for objecting to the bright red truck coming is because you've convinced yourself that somehow Coca-Cola are entirely responsible for children being fat with poor teeth. Here's astroturf "campaign group" Food Active"(100% funded by your taxes):

It is with huge disappointment and concern that we see Coca-Cola are once again using the Christmas period to promote their sugary drinks across the North West in their “Happy Holidays” truck tour.

We are aware of the damage caused by these drinks which play a major role in the soaring obesity and type 2 diabetes figures in our region which place a huge and growing strain on the National Health Service.

The Chief Executive of the NHS has said that “We are now spending more on obesity-related conditions … than we are on the police or fire service.”

In the North West, 35.2% of ten-eleven year olds are overweight or obese and 33.4% of five year olds have teeth decay, largely down to their consumption of sugary drinks.

This contains some untruths - firstly the cost to the NHS of obesity (at least according to those libertarian folk at Public Health England) is £4.2 billion whereas the cost of policing in 2016 was £12.6 billion so Simon Stevens is making stuff up again. And secondly, childhood obesity and tooth rot is not - even a little bit - "down to...consumption of sugary drinks". Even if they were, then it's almost certainly not Coca-Cola that's the primary culprit. More to the point, we know absolutely how to reduce the incidence of dental caries in children - good dental hygeine (you know, brush your teeth twice a day, visit the dentist).

But public health people lying isn't my beef here. Rather it's why on earth they think banning Coca-Cola from promoting its products (including zero and low sugar products that amount to over half of the sales) is any of their business. What is truly offensive here is that your and my taxes are being used to mount an ill-informed and misleading attack on a private business. Hardly a day passes without one or other story about local councils being forced by budget cuts into closing and reducing services. All of the money for 'Food Active' comes from local council budgets in the North West and they are using it for the express purpose of lobbying for national government to change the law (as well as wanting to ban Coca-Cola's "Happy Holidays" promotion).

So next time Manchester or Liverpool council leaders wring their hands about shutting down a library or cutting funding for a community centre ask them how they can justify spending money on astroturf political campaigns like 'Food Active'.

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Alan Johnson - nannying fussbucket of the week

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Alan Johnson the chirpy cockney lefty pundit who used to be a health minister under Tony Blair wants to ban Coca-Cola:

One thing: a single proclamation; a dictat that required no pandering to public opinion or consultation with a focus group. It’s simple. I’d ban Coca-Cola and all its offshoots, lookalikes and variants.

Free from the constraints of good sense, this blokiest of ex-MPs reveals himself as just another health fascist. And it helps that Coca-Cola is a faceless American corporation, one of the dark and sinister groups manipulating our gullibility and corrupting our youth. Now I think Coca-Cola is revolting stuff but millions every day enjoy the pleasure of drinking the foul muck and it's none of my business to be calling for bans or anything of that sort.

Fizzy-pop isn't especially good for us but then neither is that lovely chocolate fudge cake Alan's auntie probably used to make or those wonderful hand-made traditional sweets sold in that lovely old-fashioned shop on the high street. Sweetness - whether from sugar, fruit or honey - is wonderful, a joyful pleasure for young and old alike. Johnson, like all the rest of the health fascists, would have us live in a dull, drab world where nannying doctors dictate where, what and when we all eat.  A world where little brainwashed kids - in Johnson's words - lecture us about our sins:

The result will be an army of happy children marching forward together, eyes bright, teeth gleaming; instead of teaching the world to sing, they will teach it to stop consuming sugar.

If anything should be banned, we should start with ghastly, self-righteous health facsists like Alan Johnson.

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