Government 'fixing health consultations' with taxpayer-funded groups(UK)

Telegraph ^ | July 2, 2009 | Jon Swaine

[libertarian27]

The Government has been accused of fixing the outcome of public consultations on health policy after it emerged that reviews were flooded with block votes from groups funded entirely by the taxpayer.

Earlier this month the Health Secretary, Alan Johnson, announced that the display of cigarettes and tobacco in shops would be banned in England and Wales from 2011.

He added that people wanting to buy cigarettes from vending machines would in future have to show proof of age to obtain a token to activate the machine, and machines could be banned altogether in the future.

Mr Johnson boasted that the display ban was favoured by an "overwhelming majority" of 96,000 responses to a six-month public consultation on the subject.

Yet only a handful of those 96,000 respondents came from individuals submitting their personal views. Almost 70,000 came from those collected by pressure groups entirely funded by the Department for Health.

Among the groups submitting block responses were SmokeFree NorthWest, SmokeFree Liverpool and SmokeFree North East, which were all set up by the Government to lobby against the tobacco industry.

The finding has prompted critics to accuse the Government of spending taxpayers' money on establishing groups designed merely to back the Government line on public health issues.

Ministers have effectively been accused of "astroturfing" - cultivating a fake grassroots movement in order to make a position appear more popular than it really is.

[libertarian27]

Taking smoking out of the equation, this is about the government creating a need for legislation that the government wants - paid for by the taxpayer funded Department of Health in the UK.

Coming to a neighborhood near you. Aw heck, it's already here.

[Pining_4_TX]

Yes, with all the supposed “epidemics” we have that scream for government taxes and intervention - obesity, inactivity, smoking, drinking alcohol, fast food, sugary foods, high fructose corn syrup, cholesterol, diabetes,too much sun, too little sun, etc.

Funny, with all these ongoing epidemics, people are living longer than ever. Most of these ideas have been accepted as true by almost everyone, but in many cases, these epidemics have been created by lowering the bar for what constitutes an abnormal value, studies funded by drug companies that massage or misuse data to give the results they want, and by the health Nazis who want to run our lives.

I recommend the books by Nortin Hadler, MD (Worried Sick) (The Last Well Person) as well as his articles online at ABCnews.com. The blog, Junk Food Science. http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/ is another contrarian view of health matters. Many of you will not believe what they have to say, but you can look up the data for yourselves. See how many studies report on relative risk reduction rather than absolute, for example.

[libertarian27]

We do have an epidemic, it’s the government cohersing money from the tax payers to make sure the agencies that report to them are flush with funding.

BTW, love JunkFoodScience and read it often:)

I was amazed that an article like this was published in a MSM paper in the UK, looking forward to more articles like this.

Apparently many of these departments have ACORN-like tactics.