Thursday 26 January 2012

Anne Milton On Top Form!

The BBC have reassuring news for all those who weren't too worried in the first place:

Alcohol related deaths in the UK have increased slightly between 2009 and 2010, according to official figures. The number of deaths linked to drinking has gone from 8,664 to 8,790 - a rise of 126. The Office for National Statistics said the increase was due to more deaths in men.

However, the long term trends in men have been relatively stable, with a small rise in 2010 cancelling out a small fall in 2009. Figures which take account of changes in the size and age of the UK population showed the alcohol-related death rate has hovered at around 18 deaths per 100,000 men since 2003, after earlier increases.

The number of women dying as a result of alcohol has fallen slightly between 2009 and 2010, however, the long term figures show the death rate is stable at just over eight per 100,000 for women... The report said alcohol consumption had fallen since 2002...


So nothing to worry about then, really. But apparently somebody didn't get the memo:
... The Public Health Minister for England, Anne Milton, said: "We will set out a new approach to tackling alcohol harm shortly in our alcohol strategy for England. As part of that, we will be giving local councils the power and the budget to help them tackle the huge variations we see in levels of harm in different regions of England. Before that, next month, we are launching new Change4Life adverts which, for the first time, will help people realise the damage drinking too much can do to our health."

WTF?

Wouldn't any sane and normal person think, oh, this is good, one thing fewer for us (or the government) to worry about? Or is this some Pavlovian reflex where a Minister sees the words "alcohol" and "deaths" near the top of a bit of paper and just spews out the same mini-speech yet again without even bothering to read the first couple of paragraphs?

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Or is this some Pavlovian reflex where a Minister sees the words "alcohol" and "deaths" near the top of a bit of paper and just spews out the same mini-speech yet again without even bothering to read the first couple of paragraphs?

A rhetorical question I assume ...

Besides which, poor old Anne is probably, as we speak, having to deal with a string of letters from the anguished CEO'(er, temporary acting CEO hoiked out of retirement when the previous CEO saw the money drying up and figured "being righteous is one thing, but NOT for less than £70,000 a year" and duly um pissed off in search of a "more rewarding employment") saying :-

"do you realise Minister, what unending damage will be caused by your department deciding to organise its hectoring programme by paying a PR firm £1 million to provide it, rather than giving us just a mere third of that every year; and besides they may be good at PR but do they have a proven track record of devising specious statistics to underpin the hectoring like we do? We provide value for money - how can you justify not employing us? Plus of course, we are a charidee!"

to spend time reading anything else ...

Macheath said...

Sad to say, I think you've got it in one. W S Gilbert sums up that parliamentarian mindset beautifully:

'I always voted at my party's call
And I never thought of thinking for myself at all.'
'No, he never thought of thinking for himself at all!'

By the time they've climbed the greasy pole, they are so rigidly programmed that the soundbites don't seem to go anywhere near their frontal lobes on the way out.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Anon 13.12: "do they have a proven track record of devising specious statistics to underpin the hectoring like we do?"

These particular stat's are from the ONS, who are a) pretty straight and b) love undermining what the government says. I mean, 9,000 deaths a year out of half a million every year who peg it? 18 deaths out of 100,000? I'd call those 'pretty reassuring'.

The [politically] correct statistic is somthing like "Unless measures are introduced to tackle alcohol abuse, up to 100,000 people could die from drink-related illnesses, warn experts." And then in the small print it says "...over the next fifteen years".

McH, true. It's referred to as DuckSpeak.

Anonymous said...

MW - I wasn't having a pop at the ONS - far from it - the specious statistics in question being the ones devised by bodies like AC or by "research studies" funded by AC because AC know in advance the study will "produce" (lit.) the outcome they want.

By the way, if you've looked at those ONS stats do the "mortality" figures equate to "one person, where the death was beyond peradvanture, primarily caused by alcohol" or are they a mix of those, plus others compiled under the hospital admission stats methodology whereby if you go in for treatment for an ingrowing toenail your admission will be scored "0.1" alcohol related and if your admission is straight into the hospital morgue because you have been fished cold and lifeless from a river that automatically scores probably "0.2" as an alcohol related admission ?

A K Haart said...

I wonder if we can monitor true alcohol-caused deaths by checking if the amount of gas used by the crematorium goes up or down?

Mark Wadsworth said...

Anon 14.36 the article said two-thirds of those deaths are liver disease (seems fairly conclusive).

The truly made up figures are for "alcohol related hospital admissions" that's where all admissions are assumed to be alcohol related unless there's conclusive evidence to the contrary.

The ONS took the piss here as well, they published a chart showing a sudden jump in alcohol-related admissions, with a footnote saying "Due to changes in the way statistics are compiled, the new figures are not directly omparable with the old ones" which is ONS speak for "The new figures are complete bollocks".

Anonymous said...

Good to see that stand in AC CEO Eric was in there pitching "for the cause" - what and more to the point whose "services" do you think he had in mind ? A body that could show the ONS how to compile and present 'proper statistics' - those which show that something standing still, visibly falling or quite clearly down was in fact just a misreading of figures which clearly demonstrated something was going up and up and up ?

"" Eric Appleby, chief executive of Alcohol Concern, said: "Yet again, the figures for alcohol-related deaths show that the alcohol policies in place in England and Wales are just not having an impact in reducing alcohol harm.

"In the new Alcohol Strategy, the government must ensure that services are always available for the early identification and support of problem drinkers. They must also take notice of the evidence and bring in minimum alcohol pricing as soon as possible." "

Mark Wadsworth said...

Anon 15.31, the sneaky buggers added that rent-a-quote after I first read the article.

For us, it's a lose-lose though:

"alcohol policies in place in England and Wales ARE JUST NOT having an impact in reducing alcohol harm" = we need more of this sort of stuff.

"alcohol policies in place in England and Wales ARE having an impact in reducing alcohol harm" = we need more of this sort of stuff.

It wouldn't occur to them that there is relatively little alcohol harm, so whatever they do or don't do will have little effect either way. Like it'd be difficult to reduce the harm caused by asteroids hitting roofs.

Bayard said...

"Anon 14.36 the article said two-thirds of those deaths are liver disease (seems fairly conclusive)."

I'm not reassured; they used that weasel word "linked" which could mean anything, as we are not told who's doing the linking. It could be someone from Alcohol Concern....

Mark Wadsworth said...

AKH, is that a science joke? I'm baffled.

B, well spotted. But seeing as at least a third of us are heavy boozers, if one-in-fifty deaths is "linked to" boozing, that's not too shocking, it is such a small number as not to be worth checking. We've all got to die of something and it is quite possible that boozing speeds this up with some people (and slows it down with others, of course).

James Higham said...

Might be so on actual deaths but doesn't say anything about all the other things happening to women as a result of acute inebriation.

Bayard said...

JH, I think you'll find that information in the birth rate statistics.

Mark Wadsworth said...

JH, no it doesn't, why would it? Our of interest, are you referring to what women who get drunk do, or what men who get drunk do to women? Or what drunk people of the opposite sex do?

B, why would it? On a birth certificate it says name of mother and father (hopefully), it says nothing about date, time and method of conception etc.