Everywhere you turn these days, there's a cunt with a lab coat talking shit. Opening the health page in a newspaper these days is akin to turning a high-pressure hose full of diarrhoea on yourself; we're binge-drinking, KFC-eating, chain-smoking, sedentary lardbutts. The nation's health is worse than it's ever been, we're told (which is unutterable horsecock; there's never been a healthier point in human history than right now, as you're reading this) and we face an obesity/cirrhosis/lung cancer/diarrhoea timebomb.

There's no doubt that all is not rosy where public health is concerned. Too many people *do* shovel processed crap into their bodies, smoke their lungs to a cinder and drink themselves spastic on cheap rocket fuel, and this *is* going to cost a lot more in the future, because even if old Mr McGlumpher isn't getting pissed on your dime (which he quite often is), when he's admitted to hospital with that persistent hacking cough, it's John Q. Taxpayer who pays for the bedpan to get changed (which it quite often isn't).

Yet the way that our wise overlords choose to tackle this problem says a lot about their attitude towards their doughy, gin-addled subjects. Every bottle must be festooned with warning labels, every fag packet with snapshots of blackened lungs. Let there be a fat tax, a ban on cheap alcohol deals, a fruit and veg database to monitor our children, an inspection regime to check packed lunches for sugary snacks. Let a thousand admonitions bloom.

And amidst all this incessant nannying comes one scaremongering warning after another. A couple of days ago, it was the shock news that suburbia is drinking itself into the gutter. However, it didn't take more than a cursory look beyond the headline to see that all was not quite what it seemed [my emphasis]

Richer areas dominated the list of areas with the highest proportion of men drinking 22-50 units a week, and women drinking 15-35 units a week.

However, Liverpool John Moores University [sic] found the proportion of those who drank to real excess was highest in poorer areas.

When you looked at the figures, there were two categories; 'harmful' drinking, which was over 50 or 35 units a week (depending on your gender), and 'hazardous' drinking, which was anything over 22 and 15 units respectively. This gave hard-pressed hacks the chance to waste billions of trees on poorly-researched boilerplate about the scourge of middle-class drinking. But it wilfully ignores the fact that, even in the worst-affected middle class areas, the proportion of people drinking over 22/15 units is just over a quarter (26% or so); it also ignores the fact that in 1995 the recommended drinking limit was, in effect, raised, from 21/14 units per week to 28/21 (although restated as a daily rather than weekly limit to discourage 'binge drinking', of which more in a moment), so there's no way of telling how many of that 26% are in fact well within the government's official safe drinking limits.

As for the actual numbers of people drinking ridiculous amounts per week, the figures were much, much smaller - still worrying, but not by any stretch of the imagination 'rife'. Never mind; the press department at John Moores University [sic] can congratulate themselves on a job well done - perhaps their boss could treat them to a modest glass of low-alcohol sparkling wine after work tomorrow.

Nor are John Moores University [sic] the only ones on the temperance bandwagon. Today a bunch of Caledonian busybodies called SHAAP (Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems) have issued a 'stark warning' (© all papers) that a million Scots are drinking at 'potentially harmful' levels. This is indeed grim news. But just take a second to read beyond the headline - which few will be fucked to do - and you find this (again, my emphasis):

A new analysis of data by Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems (SHAAP) [1] suggests that over a million people in Scotland are drinking over the recommended government limits on their heaviest drinking day [2] ...

... [2] In the most recent Scottish Health Survey (2003), 63% of men who drank reported drinking more than 4 units on their heaviest drinking day in the previous week and 57% of women drank more than 3 units on their heaviest drinking day in the previous week. Based on all men and women, not just those who drank, the proportions are 47% and 36% respectively.

If you read that carefully, and bear in mind that a pint of Stella adds up to about 2.8 units, the miasma of bullshit around this risible press release begins to clear slightly. What this 'new analysis' ('new' how?) is actually telling us is that fewer than half of Scots drink more than a couple of beers a week.

Scary? I hardly think so. But that doesn't stop SHAAP from trying to con us all into believing that the average Scot is getting skullfucked by a vengeful, strap-on wielding Absinthe Fairy five times a week. Why is nobody pointing out that this is a pathetic way to carry on a public debate into the misuse of alcohol, which is after all a very real problem?

The upshot of all this is that you can be comfortably within the government's recommended maximum drinking levels and still find yourself pressed into service by the anti-alcohol lobby as a cautionary tale to keep the fucktrumpets of the media busy. (Your average hack no doubt gets the press release emailed to his inbox, tops and tails it with a couple of quick quotes from the usual suspects, then goes by the accounts department to pick up his cheque on the way out to the pub. Nice work if you can get it.)

Nor is it just alcohol. Much ire was raised around the blogosphere this week by the publication of a report by the Foresight Programme, which came to the startling conclusion that it's not our fault we all look like walking hackysacks; we're not responsible for what we eat. No, it's society's fault.

Obesity, the authors concluded, was an inevitable consequence of a society in which energy-dense and cheap foods, labour-saving devices, motorised transport and sedentary work were rife.

Dr Susan Jebb of the Medical Research Council said that in this environment, it was surprising that anyone was able to remain thin, and so the notion of obesity simply being a product of personal over-indulgence had to be abandoned for good.

Dr Jebb got both barrels from DK and the Longrider, among others, for this particularly stupid bit of reasoning, and rightly so. Like the alcohol studies earlier on, the report, "Tackling Obesities: Future Choices" (the right-on pluralisation of "obesity" fills me with rage, too) is a mixture of the blindingly fucking obvious and the patently absurd. Of course the combination of sedentary lifestyles, processed burgers and getting taxis everywhere contributes to the rising size of the average Briton. But claiming that we are not responsible for our own actions is as laughable as it is unacceptable.

Most of us took over sole responsibility for what went in our mouths around about the age of three (apart from my brief spell as the prefects' fag at boarding school). It is not Dr Susan Jebb's responsibility nor her business what I eat, and it's certainly not the fucking government's. It's not complicated; take in more calories than you burn off and you'll gain weight; the other way round, you'll lose it. It's not a fucking quadratic equation.

Once again, though, the 'something must be done' brigade are fanning out across the airwaves and print media to bang the drum for more government intervention - even though they had to admit (pdf, p21) that "these results suggest that finding a robust and effective response to obesity is challenging and that individual policies are unlikely to achieve great impact", which is Bunsen Honeydew-ese for saying that nothing the state does will have any fucking effect whatsoever.

It is not the government's job to force me to chug back a salad, any more than it's their business how much I drink. I'm perfectly prepared for them to educate our children about the dangers of drink, drugs or unhealthy eating, but the quid pro quo is that, as an adult, I have the right to do what I wish without a Dawn Primarolo or, God help us, a Ben fucking Bradshaw slapping me on the wrist for it - let alone the egregious Kenny MacAskill, who is Scotland's increasingly nannyish health minister Justice Secretary, rather, who plans to outlaw cheap booze deals (and who, unlike me, has proved himself unable to drink responsibly).

And if that means a privately-owned supermarket wants to sell me 3 bottles of wine for the price of 2, or I want to pour chip fat down my throat, then I will damn well take advantage of the free market to do so, and fuck you all for thinking you have any right to stop me. I know I'm a fat bastard, and I know I drink too much. I don't need the state to hold my hair back while I chunder.

Unfortunately, the more we are treated like children the more we come to expect it; and next time the obesity statistics show another rise, the usual dullards will be paraded in front of the cameras to criticise the government for not doing enough. And a 'new initiative' will be mooted, a 'task force' set up under a 'Fat Tsar' to implement an 'integrated five-year action plan', and another few hundred scientists will make their way onto the public payroll, getting fat research grants for analysing the fat content of breaded chicken drumsticks, while we all have a few more pennies hoovered out of our pockets for the privilege that we could more usefully be spending on fags and beer.

Well, wake up and smell the cock. This is not, for once, the government's fault; it's the grease-covered Jabba lookalike holding the fucking Quintuple Whopper and the litre of Coke. Until you hold people responsible for their choices, they will refrain from exercising responsibility when making them.