I see our smothering Nanny State hasn’t given up yet. It seems nagging us for ages that men should not exceed more than three to four units of alcohol a day, and women no more than two to three units, was not enough to satisfy her thirst to scare us. Now she is screaming and running at us with her hands flapping in the air; even the smallest amounts of alcohol can increase our risk!
Yeah, right! Like I’m going to give up my mouthwash!
Nanny has already driven our children to buying their tobacco products cheaply on the black market with her scaremongering. In twelve years she has created a whole new underground criminal society with local barons and gangs to match only those supplying drugs. Not satisfied with that, this latest move, which because of her closeness to government I suspect is only another footstep to increasing the price of alcohol in an attempt to fill the coffers – like they have tried with tobacco, could be on course to creating yet another underground movement.
It is stupidity in the extreme! The more the prices rise, the more people will buy on the black market – and the less the government will collect. Meanwhile Nanny will strut around telling you what a good job she is doing. Get real, or get some spectacles!
The facts are: approximately one in four people will die from a cancer, most of them in old age – when you are going to die of something anyway, and by recent NHS treatment of some elderly, it may come as a relief! There are more than 200 different types of cancer. Of the 200 plus, just 4 account for over half of all new cases: breast, lung, large bowel (colorectal) and prostate.
The latest news that alcohol is a risk to about 8% of cases in males and about 3% of cases in females may or may not be intended to mislead. If the figures scare you, the word you need to see is “cases”. It is not those percentages (8% and 3%) of the population, but merely of those who will contract the disease. Nanny played with the statistics like this for smoking, and just look at the panic some people suffer now, so if you enjoy a tipple, watch out!
The 8% of males equates to 9,000 cases and the 3% of females 4,000 cases. That’s a total of 13,000 cases out of more than 61 million people. To my calculator, that makes this latest scare relevant to approximately 0.02% of the population.
You can play with those statistics at your will, but only if you are clever with words can you make them appear frightening. For example, if you read them another way, a woman may have 33 other things to fear more than a nip of alcohol. Why isn’t Nanny screaming about them?
What’s that? Oh, perhaps they’re not so easily taxable, I see!
If we REALLY want to save money, let’s cut Nanny out of the NHS and save a fortune!
Have a nice day! Hic!
