Friday 13 February 2015

Down, boy! Down!

A theme is starting to emerge from the journalism of the BBC's pet 'public health' poodle at the BBC, Nick Triggle.

Here he is celebrating the vote on the ban on smoking in cars in February 2014...



And here he is celebrating the implementation of the ban on smoking in cars yesterday...



We all know that "Nick feels strongly about this", but isn't it a little unseemly for a BBC employee to be slavering over the 'next logical step' so openly?

3 comments:

Christopher Snowdon said...

In the words of Darryl Kerrigan, "Tell him he's dreamin" .

Christopher Snowdon said...

It looks like he suffers from a bias that makes his journalistic objectivity severely questionable.


Although he's not the only journalist with an antismoking bias; just take a look at the coverage of the NEJM report suggesting that links to smoking should be investigated for an additional number of diseases. (The Conclusion stated: "A substantial portion of the excess mortality among current smokers between 2000 and 2011 was due to associations with diseases that have not been formally established as caused by smoking. These associations should be investigated further and, when appropriate, taken into account when the mortality burden of smoking is investigated." See http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1407211?query=TOC.) Almost all media coverage reports that that connection has already been found.

As for a total ban, that isn't going to happen. Almost all the polls on recent bans suggest the public does not support them (although sometimes these get censored). A total ban would hasten the eventual backlash toward prohibition.

Christopher Snowdon said...

Is a complete ban on smoking next?

The repetition reminds me of when my kids were in the car when they were young: "Are we nearly there yet"?