Public health: another day, another silly costume
Saturday, August 1, 2015 at 12:54 I was on BBC Radio Stoke this morning.
They wanted to talk about the local council's new tobacco control strategy that includes six "strategic priorities":
1. Helping tobacco users to quit
2. Helping young people to be tobacco free
3. Establishing ‘smokefree’ as the norm
4. Tackling cheap and illicit tobacco
5. Effective communications for tobacco control
6. Influencing change through advocacy
Specifically "one of the most important strategies in reducing the uptake of youth smoking is to reduce the rates of adult smoking in the city".
To achieve that children will be encouraged to ask (nag?) their parents to quit. In addition 'voluntary' smoking bans will be implemented in children's play areas and other public spaces.
Now that local authorities have been given the power to tackle 'public' health issues many more councils will undoubtedly follow suit.
Some already have. On Wednesday it was reported that:
The Take Seven Steps Out initiative has been launched by Norfolk County Council in a bid to reduce the risks of second-hand smoke to youngsters.
Bizarrely the campaign featured a man dressed as a giant kangaroo but that's par for the course.
Writing in today's Guardian, public health consultant Dr Lisa McNally admitted:
My team always tries to ensure that our campaigns involve me dressing up in something silly. Recently, my work outfits have included everything from an orange wig (anaphylaxis campaign) to a full length cigarette suit (Stoptober).
Is it just me or are most public health campaigns an extension of children's TV, frequently patronising and more than a little infantile?
More interesting perhaps was the confirmation that 'public' health is now firmly in the grip of local politicians and all the baggage that brings.
According to McNally:
Evenings will often see me in the council chamber. Since public health moved from the NHS into local government, I now work for politicians, and I’ll go along and face the scrutiny of my elected members.
Naturally, she finished her article with an ill-disguised plea for more funding:
There’s more we could be doing to improve people’s health, if only we had the time and resources. There is more that could be achieved through public health work and I constantly feel that we’re only scratching at the surface of that potential. Still, there’s always tomorrow. Another day – and another silly costume.
If 'public' health campaigners are "only scratching at the surface" of what can be achieved to change our lifestyles that's quite a terrifying, Orwellian thought.
The good news is that instead of a '1984' Big Brother type figure, Big Government will in future be disguised as an oversized cuddly toy or puppet.
That's the way to do it.
PS. McNally also wrote:
While this ‘big P’ politics part of my job can be scary, it’s not half as bad as the small ‘p’ politics. Public health operates today within the context of the nanny state debate, which at times can get fierce and personal. Once, after writing an article in a national newspaper about protecting people using mental health services from second-hand tobacco smoke I received a tide of hate mail. One chap called me a ‘left-wing, do-gooder, fascist bitch!’.
As readers know I don't condone such language but who created this climate of intolerance and abuse? 'Public' health campaigners have a lot to answer for.
Reader Comments (18)
Simon! That didn't take you long. I knew I'd upset you on Twitter today with my 'below the belt' comment - but to inspire you to include my stuff immediately in a blog - wow you are upset!
I know you don't "condone" abusive language in debate. I realise that you're above all that... (by the way - I loved your "arseholes" tweet to that guy commenting on smoking in pubs the other day ").
Anyway - looking forward to random bile and other bleating that will surely follow this post - I always found the shrill, paranoid cries of the tobacco lobby's conspiracy theorists and "freedom fighters" fascinating. Just please make sure you keep keep directing people to the Guardian article.
Love to Anthony!
Lisa
x
Such a shame so much time & (wo)manpower is directed to social engineering when the NHS needs all the help it can get from Government and, of course, real doctors of the medical sort.
Society belongs to the people who created it not those who enjoy the largesse of Government and wish to change it to suit their whims and wants --- There --- not abusive simply disgusted with highly remunerated meddlers.
PS: Another point on which you are mistaken... the silly costumes are NOT oversized! They fit perfectly - in fact sometimes I can barely get my rather large backside into them.
Too much information, but thank you for the image.
Dear Dr McNally,
I realize that your post was intended to provoke – I'll run the risk that my response will merely provide amusement for you if, indeed, you bother to check back in to hear the bleating of the tobacco lobby flock.
I would be most grateful if you would campaign to have tobacco prohibited altogether. If smoking presents a degree of danger that necessitates continuous action to keep smokers well away from non-smokers then it's outrageous that the Government still allows it: it's doing nothing less than colluding in the slow deaths of its citizens. I don't believe that further action is required to help smokers to quit – there can't be a smoker in the land who is unaware of the risks of smoking. Of course your role would become redundant but that must surely be a small price to pay for the eradication of an evil which consumes such huge resources – and lives.
If you aren't willing to campaign for prohibition, then please find a more useful role. I feel entitled to suggest this because, as a taxpayer, I'm funding your salary. As a smoker I also pay huge amounts in duty to the Government. I, therefore, expect to be treated with a modicum of respect: I expect that accommodation is made for me and I don't expect government-sponsored propaganda to be levelled against me. As an adult I expect to be allowed to make choices in life which others consider foolish.
I don't expect to be accused of being a tobacco shill because I defend my right to choose to smoke by an official of an industry which has corrupted the term 'public health' and has no evidence to present to justify further restrictions on smokers – how could it when the smoking ban had to be pushed through on trumped-up hogwash? As a taxpayer I'd prefer my taxes to be spent tackling poverty, homelessness and poor education rather than on patronizing campaigns involving silly costumes. As an individual, I'll decide for myself which risks I'll take, thank you very much.
This has got very confusing.
"Public health: another day, another silly costume
Saturday, August 1"
"Writing in today's Guardian, public health consultant .."
So it's this one from yesterday?
I protect the public from infectious diseases – whether from sneezing or sex
Friday 31 July 2015
"Evenings will often see me in the council chamber. Since public health moved from the NHS into local government, I now work for politicians, and I’ll go along and face the scrutiny of my elected members."
http://www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/2015/jul/31/protect-public-infectious-diseases-public-health
Not this one in the same paper on the same day.
Sweeping cuts will harm efforts to improve public health, councils warn
Friday 31 July 2015
"A 6.2% across the board cut in public health grants to local authorities threatens to undermine attempts to reduce levels of obesity, drinking and smoking in England, councils have warned."
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jul/31/sweeping-cuts-will-harm-efforts-improve-public-health-councils-warn
OK, got it now.
"Public health" campaigners and politicians want me to be like them? But they are so unpleasant. In their dreams.
“ … random bile and other bleating that will surely follow this post - I always found the shrill, paranoid cries of the tobacco lobby's conspiracy theorists and "freedom fighters" fascinating.”
Good to see one of those who wish to “help” people quit smoking showing such a sympathetic and supportive attitude whenever those whom they wish to “help” express any misgivings about their offers of “assistance.”
Careful Dr McNally – you’re in danger of showing your true colours …
Lisa appears to be the Millwall of public health. She simply doesn't care that what she does is ugly and that many people dislike her. It would be rather refreshing if that were the case, but I think that she may be seriously delusional and truly believe that the only people who oppose her totalitarian approach and dislike her doublespeak are somehow in the pay of industries that she doesn't like.
This sad detachment from reality may be the consequence of having spent far too much of her life and far too much of the tax payers money talking to other inhabitants of the public health bubble.
I did read her Guardian piece and her 2006 article about smoking bans in mental health facilities. Back then, she was all for banning smoking inside such establishments "to protect patients and staff" and, ignoring the obvious humane solution of segregated internal smoking facilities, justified this by claiming that secure areas outside the buildings should be provided for those patients who wanted to smoke. I wonder how she will now justify the banning of smoking from those secure areas for no really good reason at all.
On a positive note, switching public health funding to local authorities may yet prove a stroke of genius. Those who feed from the public health gravy train will be far more accountable at local level and faced with pressing local needs to improve more useful services, people may start asking why they are forking out £80K a year for Lisa to prance about in a tight fitting cigarette suit.
Anyone who condones a total ban of smoking in secure mental health hospitals based on flimsy evidence (that SHS is harmful) is not a 'do-gooder'. Nor one who thinks that prescribing a drug that is proven to induce suicidal tendencies to vulnerable people is a suitable treatment.
What we're not told is whether or not the physical and mental health of those who have been FORCED to quit has improved in 100% smoke free institutions these last 8 or so years. I heard obesity is now a major issue.
Hi Lisa,
Fret no more. The surely inevitable sugar tax will take care of your "backside" issues. In the meantime, take a look at the Eatwell plate.
Come on there Lisa McNally, answer Joyce's post.
Dont tell me you're lost for those 'words' that keep you in your job!
The problem with public health staff like Lisa is that they can dish it out but can't take it back. I've smoked since childhood for 48 years possibly longer than you've been breathing. I am the 60s child smoker you couldn't save so feel justified in abusing me now i am in healthy grannyhood. I am not a tobacco lobbyist. I am a consumer. Children today don't smoke but thanks to your forcing tobacco underground there will soon be a new generation of child smoker not seen since my generation.
I have never felt unequal in my life until your sort started creating inequalities for me because I won't quit and I'm not dead nor do I have any alleged tobacco related illness that justifies your constant whining and frankly fantasy propaganda. You owe me health information if anything and not the scaremongering a lifetime of smoking experience has taught me is wrong. Dose makes poison was a real and honest public health message that got through to me back in the early 80s. You lost me when your profession began to get hysteric about it.
You wonder why you get abuse? Well maybe because people like me are sick of people like you Lisa dependent on bullying the vulnerable to ensure you keep your fat salary.
Smokers who want help know exactly where to go to get it and do. I don't. I enjoy smoking. I resent being socially excluded from places I have every right to be and angered that for the first time in my life I am being excluded from healthcare I 'be paid for over my lifetime. Gimmie my 48 years of product tax back and my adult working life national insurance contributions back and I'll happily pay for the equality your well paid profession is denying me.
We don't fight for tobacco companies. We fight to be left alone without harassment and abuse from thugs like you. Just leave us alone.
@ Ann 'Come on there Lisa McNally, answer Joyce's post.
Dont tell me you're lost for those 'words' that keep you in your job!'
TC 'holier than thou' rarely lower themselves to enter into discussion with the likes of us. Our opinions don't count, as literally demonstrated by the biased pp consultation result.
@David (August 2)
"Thomas Sowell on the politics of self-congratulation:
T.S. Eliot once said, “Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm - but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.” This suggests that one way to find out if those who claim to be trying to help the less fortunate are for real is to see if they are satisfied to simply advocate a given policy, and see it through to being imposed - without also testing empirically whether the policy is accomplishing what it set out to do. The first two steps are enough to let advocates feel important and righteous. Whether you really care about what happens to the supposed beneficiaries of the policy is indicated by whether you bother to check out the empirical evidence afterwards."
http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/
Well, Lisa? I've seen no 'random bile and other bleating' in the comments so far, just intelligent questioning of your stance on the subject.
So are you prepared to engage in intelligent debate?
Or is the ground you stand on so shaky that you don't have the confidence to engage people who actually know more about the subject than you do?
Come on, Lisa - the stage is yours. Justify your persecution of people who enjoy smoking, and let us answer. None of us are paid by anyone to hold the opinions we do (unlike yourself). We all speak from a position of knowledge of the actual facts. So let's pit your propaganda soundbites against the actual serious research that's been done and see where we end up.
Is that not a fair proposition?
Or are you not prepared to defend your position? You have, after all, thrown down the gauntlet in your original comment, so it is only fair that you follow it up. It's hardly good form to come here and spit your bile and then refuse to deal with the inevitable reaction. One might think that there is an inherent weakness in your argument, although I have to say that in my experience, arrogance such as you display is usually born of weakness.
So prove me wrong, Lisa. If right is on your side, it should be no problem for you.
And...... she's gone.
More like Lisa's spin doctor is gone on hols.
For all we know Lisa doesent even know that her underling wrote the 'words' on this blog in the first place.
Its all posturing with these guys in the health gravy train.
Figure heads like 'Dr' McNally are just there for funding purposes, they wouldnt know how to get down and dirty with debates on blogs, too boring dont you know and no profit in that.
Wouldnt be surprised if Lisa enjoyes a puff herself with a glass of wine!