THANK GOD SHE'S GONE.

Professor Dame Sally Davies, DBE FRS & Chief Medical Officer of the United Kingdom - sounds highly impressive doesn't it ?

In truth the almost septuagenarian Sally Davies is a meddling, control freak, a woman whose aim in life is, apparently, to save the ignorant masses from themselves. No doubt her background, had an influence - her father was a priest and theologian and she was privileged enough to be sent to a private school after she failed the 11-plus exam. Although she qualified as a doctor, she appears to have disliked mixing with patients, leaving the profession for a period before coming back to spend most of her time in laboratories. Admittedly, she seems to have become an expert in her field, but it was a limited one and largely kept her away from the real lives of real people. Unlike most of her predecessors, Doctor Davies has no background in public health medicine although this has not deterred her from pontificating on every aspect of public life.

During her time as CMO, she has campaigned against the consumption of alcohol, sugar, calorie-rich foods and anything else that she deemed to be injurious to the health of the nation. Now she wants to ban what she considers 'snacks', saying that eating or drinking on our public transport should be banned. Is this crazed medic for real ?

Do some people have poor diets ? Yes. Do I dislike seeing people wandering our streets while eating or drinking in the most disgusting manner, seeing others on our buses or trains doing likewise ? Yes. But I also believe in personal responsibility and action, which Doctor Davies clearly does not. Rather than working to educate and encourage, she prefers to use the blunt weapons of taxation and the law, taxing some foods out of the reach of most of us and banning whatever she can't easily tax. Then she wants to place a limit on the calories we can be allowed to consume when we visit restaurants. Can such measures ever be right ?

Doctor Davies' latest, and thankfully final, tirade, against 'snacking' on public transport is utter lunacy. Eating and drinking on buses and trains may be unsavoury and unsightly, it may even be unhealthy, but how on earth would a ban be enforced ? Would we have to recruit yet more wardens and other publicly funded snoopers to monitor our behaviour, empowered to issue fines whenever we contravene yet more newly created laws ? What would count as a 'snack' ? Individual sweets ? Chocolate Bars ? A handful of peanuts, perhaps ? Or would it have to be something more substantial such as a sandwich or steak dinner ? Would supposedly healthy 'snacks', such as oat bars, be exempted ? 

How would those on long distance journeys be treated ? Would they have to starve for the 5 or 6 hour journey from London to Edinburgh ? What about those who habitually forego breakfast at home, preferring to buy something for the journey ? Would the ban also encompass time spent waiting at stations or sitting on delayed and motionless trains ? And what about those who MUST eat regularly, diabetics in particular ? Would they have to be registered as exempt travellers ?

Doctor Davies may have a fancy title and a string of letters after her name but, in reality, she's a proponent of an extreme 'Nanny State', one in which personal responsibility has no part and in which every aspect of the everyday lives of its citizens is monitored and approved, or disapproved of, by the all-knowing and all-seeing State.

Thank God her time is up and she's gone from a job for which she was remarkably poorly suited.