Public Health England - goodbye and good riddance
Sunday, August 16, 2020 at 11:46 Delighted to read that Public Health England is to be axed.
The Telegraph has the story here.
Coming on the back of the revelation, which I wrote about here, that the Government had rejected a £350k grant application by ASH, giving the anti-smoking lobbyists a relatively paltry £70k instead, it’s been a good week for critics of the UK’s over-reaching tobacco control industry.
I’m currently in Glasgow so I don’t have time to write at length about PHE, a body I recently called “this odious taxpayer-funded quango”.
Instead I refer you to this post, written on April 5, when I posed the question ‘Day of reckoning for Public Health England?’ and noted:
The reality is that Public Health England spends far too much time targeting smoking and other habits that have nothing to do with public health in the original sense of the term.
It included links to other posts I have written about PHE dating back to 2014:
Public Health England chief vows to get "ruthless" on smoking
Public Health England? They're having a laugh (at our expense)
Hospital smoking bans, Public Health England and Stoptober
Questions for Public Health England concerning Stoptober 2016
Public health: rotten to the core
The price of Public Health England's advice on vaping
Job for the boy at Public Health England
To that list I can add:
Good news! PHE abandons New Year anti-smoking campaign
The price of appeasing PHE’s anti-smoking propaganda
PHE chief declares war on smokers
Why PHE’s pro-vaping crusade is the enemy of choice
The last post is worth revisiting because vapers and vaping advocates have long made a virtue of PHE’s support for e-cigarettes.
However, when I wrote ‘Why PHE’s pro-vaping crusade is the enemy of choice’ in February 2018 I noted that:
As far as PHE is concerned smokers are patients and part of their treatment is to be offered e-cigarettes alongside other nicotine replacement therapies.
As for 'extending consumer choice', forget it. PHE wants to bludgeon smokers into submission, removing outdoor shelters and prohibiting smoking wherever they can.
In the meantime you may be allowed, at their discretion and under their rules, to vape indoors.
In those circumstances some smokers may indeed elect to switch but I imagine many more will feel resentful that tobacco control has, once again, dictated how you live your life.
I still think PHE’s ‘support’ for vaping was of dubious long-term value, not least because it was always clear that PHE never saw vaping as anything other than a temporary smoking cessation tool en route to becoming nicotine free.
If therefore there are any vapers tempted to mourn the demise of Public Health England, don’t waste your breath.
Having set itself up as nanny to the nation, it was only a matter of time before PHE targeted you too because in their eyes you are nothing more than a nicotine junkie.
In short, whether you’re a smoker or a vaper, there should only be one response to the axing of Public Health England and that’s ‘Goodbye and good riddance.’
Reader Comments (8)
Good news but I fear the bullies will just be moved to a new quango with a new name and still force us to quit, lose weight, stop drinking, or suffer discrimination and exclusion.
I hope I am wrong.
It is good to see PHE disbanded and public health efforts refocused toward communicable disease control.
Now it's time to dismantle the legacy of their attack on smokers by amending smoking bans to restore choice.
This is the best news I’ve heard for a long time. PHE has, from the outset, been a hopeless waste of taxpayer money, not fit for its true purpose (as Covid so ably illustrated), and was becoming despised by increasing numbers of people just as their “targets” expanded beyond smokers to drinkers, the overweight, salt-lovers, sugar-lovers, couch potatoes etc etc. They certainly weren’t doing anything to improve the public’s perception of the Government as a bunch of bossy, power-crazed, micro-managing, nosy parkers because it seems that that was almost entirely what PHE was comprised of! As the Public Face of Government Health it wasn't a good look in the current circumstances.
Rather more practically, with the economic fallout from the Covid lockdown now at our doorsteps, PHE and similar organisations really are now a luxury that the Government just can’t afford any more. Less officially (and certainly not publicly), it's also possible that, given the figures you recently showed on your blog, the Government has realised that over the next few months, or even years, they are actually going to need people to go on smoking/drinking/driving to keep the Exchequer from going into the red, and having an organisation which is focussed almost entirely on stopping people from doing those things isn't actually that helpful at the moment! Not that they'd ever publicise that, of course, but ....
Like Pat says, I’m not naïve enough to believe that this will be the end of the hectoring bullies, but at least they no longer have a big, powerful, State-funded “flagship” organisation to all crowd into so that they can “speak as one” with a loud, seemingly-authoritative voice. As you say, Simon – good riddance to bad rubbish.
Let’s hope that this first spark is just the start of the oft-promised “bonfire of the quangos” ...
While I welcome the scrapping of PHE. Is it really scrapping or just another rebranding exercise? With Dodo Harding as interim leader of the new National Institute for Health Protection, who seems to be a weak liability rather than a strong leader, I fear it will be business as usual for the machine behind the name. If it was being scrapped then we wouldn't need a replacement.
Seems I was right. We get a new Nanny State embedded in every aspect of Government and put into the hands of little Hitlers in local Government.
Hancock's announcement is terrifying.
I wonder if the Brexit Party will actually address this issue, get its head out of the anti EU bubble and begin to also address those issues that are making every day life as miserable as sin.
If it does, then it will be worth voting for. Otherwise there is no point in ever voting again as it is obvious that no matter which party you vote for, health fascists always win.
Why can't they just leave us alone and stop the bullying.
I'm sure they will just replace it with something different only in name
Simon,
Latest news from Spain, smoking now banned in outdoor spots of cafes and restaurants unless they are two metres away from anyone, this includes anyone at your table if they smoke or not. If broken can be fined 100 euros or more. They are using the excuse that smokers exhalations carry COVID droplets if you have it. Therefore non smokers don’t exhale COVID if they have it. Just goes to show it has nothing to do with health. It looks as though Spain wants to commit financial and business suicide.
The new outfit will just employ the same people from the old outfit and nothing will change.