Misrepresenting, misleading, manipulating? Ah, that would be public health then...

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From Chris Snowden:

Be under no illusions about what this guy is up to. He is prepared to defame academics and misrepresent data in a conscious bid to mislead politicians and manipulate the public. He is not just prepared to do this, he has already done so.

Very sadly, this is the absolute truth about public health. Do go and read about Dr Willett.

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Ah that pesky science stuff...

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As ever, it proves tricky for the BBC's Health Correspondent. Here's Raedwald explaining:

...the science really 'proves' that a child in North London in a non-smoking house is exposed to over 8x the particulates level of a child in Aberdeen who spends an hour a day in a car with a chain-smoker.

Yet again we're shown how the mere presence of numbers, calculations and that science stuff confuses the hell out of the BBC reporter. Credulously this reporter just reproduces whatever prohibitionist nonsense the nannying fussbuckets want to get across.

One day maybe a BBC health reporter will actually challenge some of the rubbish peddled by public health people. As I said to a colleague on Council today (in a conversation about shisha), it really does public health no favours when its practitioners use pseudo-science, statistical manipulation and, to be blunt, outright lies to make their case.

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No. Sitting doesn't make you obese. Eating too much does.

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Some halfwit American psychologist wants to ban television because it makes us obese. Trust me folks this man is a weapons grade nutcase:

On average, he says, a British teenager spends six hours a day looking at screens at home – not including any time at school. In North America, it is nearer eight hours. But, says Sigman, negative effects on health kick in after about two hours of sitting still, with increased long-term risks of obesity and heart problems.

No. Eating too much makes you obese not watching the telly. If Prof. Sigman believes otherwise then he really doesn't deserve the title "scientist".

There are 24 hours in the day and the child will spend around ten of them asleep. That leaves around eight hours of other stuff. But the clue to this lies elsewhere in the article (in the Guardian, now leading the way in nannying fussbucketry). This is about ensuring children lead a purposeful life - lying about doing fun stuff because it's fun can't be healthy can it?

The RCPH's Professor Blair said there were some simple steps parents could take, "such as limiting toddler exposure as much as possible, keeping TVs and computers out of children's bedrooms, restricting prolonged periods of screen time (we would recommend less than two hours a day) and choosing programmes that have an educational element."

If sitting watching a screen is bad, it doesn't matter what you're watching surely? Or is there some magic dust that flows from "educational" content that stops kids dying from watching the goggle box?

This is a classic piece of New Puritan propaganda. We must have a purposeful life and the over-riding purpose of life is for it to be a long as possible. Health is everything and any pleasure that does not serve this purpose must be stopped.

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