USA style

There is a link between drinking any alcohol at all that brings with it the risk of cancer say researchers, so the UK’s Chief Medical Officer now advises drastic and tough reductions in consumption – logically she should though be proposing complete abstinence if there is no such thing as a safe level, surely? Not only that, but since cancer nowadays kills some five hundred every day in Britain and its treatment costs (in excess of fifteen billion pounds a year?) are crippling the NHS, we need enforcement in law, don’t we? American style nineteen-twenties Prohibition Bill should do the trick, shouldn’t it? That would be doubly effective because apart from cancer, the present day widespread abuse of alcohol causes many-many other serious illnesses, apart from destruction of lives and family units, at such enormous financial cost to our society, to boot? Research has also been published last year decrying the previously perceived benefits of drinking wine (particularly red), which has been overstated – so a shame really, but even wine buffs cannot get out of it, eh?

Ah yes, people will moan about the nanny state, but governments have a duty to protect people, even from themselves, their behaviour and their habits – so ignore the disenchanted, why not? Enforcement of Prohibition would also give the police another job to do and soak-up any spare-time capacity they don’t know what to do with – eh?

Furthermore the authorities shouldn’t just stop there should they? No, there are other open goals to be taken advantage of, aren’t there? Like recent news that two slices of bacon (being a processed meat) is a killer – being a top level carcinogen like arsenic. Consumption needs therefore to be properly controlled and this can easily be done by issuing rational books – just like there was in WW2.

Then there is also the ongoing and damaging use by convenience food suppliers of sugar and salt in processed food, which our authorities have not yet found a way of getting curtailed. The simple answer though is to limit the availability, surely? First ban the import of sugar or sugar beet, and then secondly prevent the actual growing of sugar beet in this country (eight million tons of it mainly farmed in the Eastern areas of England and providing half of all our sugar). Future enforcement can be achieved by using specially trained dogs to detect sugar and any land cultivating beet. Salt and salty foods are linked to an increased risk of stomach cancer, and high salt intake can result in a fifth greater chance of death from ‘any’ cause, so also ban the mining or importation of salt, and restrict access to the UK seaside (as sea water contains a lot of salt).

Our roads and pavements present another dire problem, don’t they? Some 500 pedestrians are killed (a quarter of all road deaths) each year, plus many others injured. So we must curtail the high levels of pedestrian activity, particularly in urban areas where nearly all of those fatally injured are hit by motor vehicles. This can be achieved by limiting the number of pedestrian journeys people are authorised to make, and how far they are allowed to walk each time.

Then we have the problems on country roads, when more than half of all road fatalities occur on country roads (amounting to some three a day) plus another nine times as many serious accidents. Motorways are ten times safer than country roads and therein lays the solution – turn all country roads into motorways. Sorted.

At last we all know these days about the health risks of smoking and despite decades of inaction, we do now at least have a basic no-smoking law – though the tobacco barons continue to try to thwart legislation wherever they see a loophole. Further action is required now and it should be a criminal offence to solicit someone to smoke – that would put paid to the manipulating advertisers as well as the irresponsible individuals who offer others a free ciggie from their packet

[Every problem has an answer if one puts one’s mind to it, doesn’t it?]