Liberal Vision

Norman Lamb: Doh!

 

Only a short while ago Norman Lamb MP was one of our best. He stood up, and spoke out, on principle against needless government intrusion. A true poster boy for all those liberals amongst us who object to the nanny state telling adults how to live our lives.

Back in 2008, when the the Labour government suggested hiding cigarettes behind shutters in shops, Norman was one of the first to speak out. As Shadow Health Minister he rightly stated :

“This is the nanny state going too far.”

And he didn’t stop there. He also said

“This will hit small businesses with added costs while there is no clear evidence that it will actually reduce the number of young people smoking.”

And indeed he said this:

“The Government is obsessed with headline-grabbing gimmicks instead of tackling the real problems. Buying tobacco for children must be made a criminal offence. Ministers also need to clamp down on the shockingly high amount of tobacco that is smuggled illegally into this country.”

Where is that man we wonder? Roll on to 2013 and, when in a position to actually have an impact on the excesses of the nanny state, low and behold he pops up in the Guardian saying:

“As a liberal I would always defend someone’s right to smoke, if that’s what they choose to do. But, given we’re dealing here with a product that kills between 80,000 and 100,000 people a year, I think it’s legitimate for government to seek to control the marketing of that deadly product…”

 

Well, Norman, nothing has changed since 2008. Cigarettes are bad for you. Sure. But no more than they were in 2008, when you were against the display ban. Adults should be treated as adults – even when you are in power.

If ever there was a policy that was nothing more than a “headline-grabbing gimmick” (your words), banning coloured boxes must surely be it? What happened to your concern about the impact of policy gimmicks on small businesses? And why choose this point to ignore the 500,000 voters who registered their opposition to this policy during the consultation? Back in 2008 your concern was rightly focused on the black-market and proxy purchasing. Why, when in power, choose to support a policy that will make it actually easier and cheaper for organised crime to counterfeit cigarettes? You were against the tobacco display ban – but it was introduced anyway – why not at least wait to measure the effectiveness of that policy (and the ban on tobacco vending machines) before arguing for yet more legislation?

You say that:

“I think it would be a legacy for this government to have legislated on something which would be a landmark public health reform and to be out there in front in Europe.”

Great. If that’s the case [or indeed if it is, as it seems, just the usual politician’s desire to be “seen” to be doing something]  here are a few policies that may assist you in leaving a health legacy you can actually be proud of.

 

1. Clear the path for e-cigarettes. This revolution is leaving you behind. Hundreds of thousands are electing to choose this product – yet you waste your time on ruling what colour of boxes you think adults should look at – a campaign gimmick that is untried, untested and unwanted. If you want to be “out there in front of Europe” then let’s get as many e-cigarettes out there as possible. If you hadn’t noticed – they are working – unlike the tired, unimaginative and dangerous “more of the same” policies coming from those in tobacco control. Note that Chris Davies [Libdem] MEP seems to be way ahead of you [see “Politics at it should be done“]

2. Introduce a ban on proxy purchasing (your idea from 2008). Smoking is an adult pursuit. If your concern is children, then make it illegal to purchase cigarettes on behalf of minors.

3. And while you are at it, increase the penalties on those caught selling cigarettes to kids.

4. Act on counterfeiting. Fake cigarettes sell at half the price of UK duty paid cigarettes. Quite attractive to cash strapped youngsters don’t you think? They are sold to minors at school gates, car book sales and markets. They don’t ask for ID, and they don’t care who they sell to. Why not introduce some serious penalties for smuggling and counterfeiting?

That is just four for starters – and they really do start to look like a liberal legacy we can all be proud of.

PS: With great relief we note that education minister, David Laws, and the Home Office minister, Jeremy Browne are reported to remain firmly against this policy.

Seen elsewhere on this topic: “Norman Lamb:Perfect Example of the Genre” and “Open Minded?

Angela Harbutt is currently campaigning against the introduction of plain packaging of tobacco.

Tags: Norman Lamb, plain packaging, smoking, tobacco

Public health ideologues don’t come cheap

Back in 2009, Dick Puddlecote highlighted a particularly odious piece of behaviour from a member of the “caring” profession who had long before decided that he could make a greater contribution to our collective wellbeing and his bank balance by practicing politics rather than medicine. Chris Spencer-Jones attempt to close the legally exempt smoking room in a hospice on ideological grounds were of course ignored by the mainstream media presumably because it views people who hold medical degrees as saints who can never be shown to do anything other than good works for the rest of humanity.  Fortunately the Birmingham Mail is rather less squeamish when it comes to exposing unpleasant ideologues and reported the Public Health Director’s inhumane efforts.

Obviously, Spencer–Jones was not fired or even reprimanded for what he did as common decency is not considered all that desirable in the modern public health bureaucrat.  He soldiered manfully on, talking utter twaddle, attending meetings, preparing PowerPoint presentations and performing all the other duties of a public health official until 2012. The Birmingham Mail also soldiered on, exposing the fact that Birmingham had not one but at one stage five Directors of Public Health and that they cost £600,000 per annum between them.  Two of them were paid more than the Prime Minister. Spencer–Jones was on over £145,000.

Spencer-Jones and his colleagues do appear to have been paid rather extravagantly for doing very little but they were by no means the highest paid public health bureaucrats in the land.  Thanks to the Guardian’s report on civil service pay back in 2010 we can see that the highest paid Director of Public Health at that time was ardent socialist, champion of the NHS, opponent of big business and “plain” packs supporter Gabriel Scally.

I do not normally comment on the salaries of others but I am happy to make an exception in the case of public health because for many years it has been a gravy train for the not especially talented and those with political axes to grind. In recent decades it has cost many millions and delivered very little except for a more divided and unhappy society in which an increasingly judgemental approach is encouraged towards behaviours deemed unacceptable by a well-heeled elite. Huge sums have been spent on lifestyle propaganda whilst the people who work in “real” public health laboratories have had their budgets squeezed.

Gabriel Scally very publicly resigned in 2012 ostensibly because he doesn’t like the current government and what he thinks that it is doing to the NHS. He also doesn’t care much for responsibility deals and is upset by the very thought of elected governments treating legitimate companies that he doesn’t like as anything other than enemies of the state. Prior to resigning he apparently saw his staff shrink from 50 to 9, which although unfortunate for his staff, who I hope found something more worthwhile to do, has to be a very good thing overall. Similar good things seem to have been happening in Birmingham where at around the same time Spencer-Jones and his colleagues were reduced from four to one.

Before we get too excited about the NHS reforms actually doing some good, we should pause and consider the fact that the government is not promising a reduction in spending on the public health industry but is simply shifting responsibility for public health to local authorities and a new QUANGO that may be no less profligate than those that preceded it. A number of local authorities appear to be acquiring Public Health Directors and the going rate seems to be £75-£100,000 which is consistent with what the local authority contingent of the Birmingham four /five were being paid. Chris Snowdon has pointed out that the transfer of budget to local authorities from PCTs has done nothing to curb spending on health lobbyists in the North East where £2.8 Million is already earmarked to pay spin doctors to lobby government and tell people how to behave. Apparently the “The unanimous view of the new directors of public health, together with the Health and Well-being Committees, was that funding … should continue.” Health and Well-being Committees sound rather ominous so I am not hopeful that we are going to see much change. One would hope that local authorities would at least be more accountable than the NHS but does anyone know who the new people responsible for bankrolling the lobbyists are?

By Chris Oakley. Chris’ previous posts on Liberal Vision include: Minimum pricing – policy based evidence ,  Alcohol is Old News – Minimum Pricing for Digestives is the “Next Logical Step” , Soviet Style Alcohol Suppression Campaign Called for By Public Health Activists , Alcohol Taxation: The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth ,  Lies, damn lies, statistics &… , The Department of Health is Watching You! , New bounty on smokers helps GPs balance their books, Smoking ban health miracles

 

 

Tags: civil service pay, Gabriel Scally, Public health costs, tobacco control costs

The Worst of It

I was recently asked to list my three least favourite government policies. As you can imagine, this was a tall order… But I’ve managed to narrow it down.

1. War

Governments kill in times of war but it’s never clear that they have reached their aims from an IR perspective. Apart from the the death and destruction there’s the awkward legislation that follows in times of war. Wars are expensive, your taxes rise to pay for them and they don’t come down once the war is over. Your civil liberties get eaten up and you never get them back. There is still legislation in this country which was made in World War One and is not getting repealed anytime soon. There are both selfish and selfless reasons to opposed war. The killing of innocent men, women and children and the fact that 10 years after Iraq they are still groping our b*llocks at the airport – nobody wins.

2. Agricultural Policy

I suppose we should be grateful that we have agricultural markets at all since we have food and people in North Korea don’t. But distortions in the agricultural markets in the form of trade tariffs, subsidies and regulation (although I do appreciate that this is slightly simplifying things) are the reason some people on this planet still don’t have food despite the fact we have the capacity to produce more than enough for everyone.The food system isn’t free/fair and, sadly, the many meaningful efforts to make it more fair (e.g. Fairtrade) simply amount to more distortions.

Further more agriculture is one of the biggest polluters. Were the markets not so stilted I’ve no doubt that people in cities would be eating a greater variety of fresher produce grown in carbon neutral, pollution-free, super-efficient vertical farms by now. More importantly those who previously had no seat at the table would be able to eat at last.

3. School Policy

School choice, or lack thereof, is one of my biggest pet peeves. Not only that but schools in England are oversubscribed and over subscription is a problem you can solve very easily. Privatise all schools. Give parents vouchers so they can send their children to the school of their choosing. Government vouchers give poor people what rich people have – choice. New schools rise to meet demand and all schools compete for higher quality and better value for your voucher. You would slowly see greater plurality and innovation in the education sector.

So there you have it. What I consider to be the worst of it!

Why I Hate ‘Neutral’ News

I hate ‘neutral’ news outlets and yet they don’t exist.

That’s because every news outlet has a bias. That is inevitable. The only news outlet that comes even near to having no bias is Drudge Report and let’s face, it’s not a text heavy site…

News doesn’t have to be neutral any longer. We don’t all get our news from the same 2 or 3 radio or TV channels anymore. We pick and choose from hundreds of thousands of web, tv and radio outlets and gravitate to the ones that fit our innate bias and preferences.  We like having our own prejudices reaffirmed.

Because of this, I would argue that it would be better if news outlets just stopped trying to be neutral. BBC News has a bias and because they think they’re not biased, they’ve ended up with a bias they’re not aware of. This vexes me so much more than outlets who have biases I don’t agree with.

The Daily Mail and Fox News are unabashed about having a bias and they do what they do very well. They are incredibly good at engaging the people who consume news from them. These individuals return again and again to their outlets. It appears to me that the reason Fox News became as aggressive as it is was because other news outlets were so adamantly calling themselves neutral when they weren’t. Most journalists in the US are liberal arts graduates, have a moderate liberal bias and, until the inception of Fox News, lacked seemingly all introspective analysis.

I think the reason deliberately biased outlets work so well is because admitting your bias gives you freedom. If I were told to write a neutral article on China’s ‘one child’ policy it would be a lot harder to write than if I wrote an article on China’s ‘one child’ policy with my own bias (I think it’s abhorrent, if you were wondering…).

We’ve got to stop thinking of bias as a dirty word. Bias used to be synonymous with poor quality but I don’t know if that has ever truly been the case. Jezebel has a strong liberal (US) bias but it’s content is usually incredibly novel and high quality. BBC News has a liberal bias and it’s decline is painful to watch… Channel 4 News is similarly biased and is increasingly impressing me with it’s depth and quality. The Times and The Sun are both owned by the same owner, both hold a right-leaning bias but are of noticeably different qualities.

If you’re not neutral don’t pretend to be. Forgo the pretense and strive for quality.

The Stacked Deck

There’s a great discussion regarding income/wealth equality over at Cafe Hayek and Bleeding Heart Libertarians:

I care – very deeply – whether the process for pursuing one’s life’s goals is fair or not.  I want everyone to have as fair a chance in the economy as is humanly possible.  I despise special privileges that stack the deck either in favor of Jones or against Smith.  (We can have a debate about what the details of “fair process” and “special privileges” look like, but this post is not the place for such a debate.)  But I do not care about differences in monetary income or wealth as such.

If (by whatever criteria) the process is fair, then the outcomes are fair.  If the process is not fair, then at least some outcomes are lamentable.  If those lamentable outcomes involve too little income for Smith and too much for Jones, then this income difference is evidence of the unfair or skewed or crony-fied process.  But the object of my concern in such situations isn’t the income difference as such; rather, it’s the unfair or skewed or crony-fied process that gave rise to it.

I’m all for correcting the process, and would be no less in favor of correcting the process if I were told that such a correction will increase income inequality as I would be in favor of correcting the process if I were told that such a correction will decrease income inequality.  Again, income differences can at best serve as evidence of a problem; the differences themselves – the income inequalities themselves – are not the core problem.

Interesting stuff.