COVID-19 NUMBERS ARE UTTERLY UNRELIABLE.

Does anyone really know the extent of the COVID-19 epidemic in this country ?

Yesterday, it was announced that due to "technical issues", a significant number of positive tests had not been included in recently published figures. Inevitably, some have blamed this omission on the government, but surely the blame lies with those directly responsible for compiling the numbers. A simple review of the figures released on a daily basis confirms this.

Day to day, the numbers change. not by much but by enough to make one wonder what is going on. I don't mean the total numbers, but going back to the early days of the epidemic, the numbers of cases and deaths recorded on a daily basis change almost every day; not for every day though some days seem to change more often than others. This latest announcement of thousands of cases being 'missed' over recent days simply convinces me that the bodies responsible, mostly Public Health England, are utterly incompetent. I have lost count of the number of times they have told us that the numbers have been adjusted due to some error or other and one can only wonder how reliable any of the figures really are.

Thankfully I have not contracted the virus and have even had a negative test a couple of weeks ago, so I know the epidemic has not reached me yet. That said, the uncertainty surrounding the published numbers leaves me wholly unsure that I'm not the only uninfected person left in the country.

Public Health England is a useless organisation and it can only be a good thing that it's to be abolished. The worry is that it'll simply be replaced by yet another pointless and useless QUANGO, run by a gaggle of faceless bureaucrats, many of them the same as are in post now. Surely it is now time for a genuine re-organisation of the NHS and associated bodies that will allow for the creation of something that is properly competent, is responsive to patients, is not driven by diktat from 'on high' and not drowned in demands for statistics demonstrating how wonderful it is.

The truth is that it's not bad for those who get into the system but it's bloody awful for those on the waiting list. It almost never admits its mistakes, frequently lies in its published statistics and is horrendously bureaucratic in outlook. Envy of the world ? Don't make me laugh !

ps As an afterthought, it occurs to me that "technical issues" was a possible excuse suggested by Sir Humphrey Appleby when looking for a way to explain a government 'cock up' in an episode of the wonderful 'Yes, Minister' / 'Yes, Prime Minister' series. More than 30 years on - how little has changed.

MY CALORIES ARE MY OWN BUSINESS !

I am increasingly concerned by the way in which our supposedly 'free' society is being told what to do.

Over the years, the 'health fanatics' have managed to get smoking, and smokers, not just vilified but banned from many arenas. No longer are cigarette manufacturers allowed to advertise even their names, let alone their products. Today, many of the same do-gooders are working to ban the use of e-cigarettes, the relatively harmless replacement for the real thing on all manner of spurious grounds.

Fair enough, smoking is a proven killer and it may not be such a bad thing to take steps to reduce its impact on society, but those who were so active in the campaign to have it banned have now turned their attention to many other areas of our lives. These health fascists, who believe that they know best how the rest of us should be living our lives, want to stop us drinking alcohol, eating sugary foods, eating 'too much' meat, and now even things like the size of a pizza are under attack.

It is reported today that Public Health England, a ludicrously named government agency which prides itself on 'protecting' the nation's health, is said to be 'targeting'  pizzas, ready meals processed meat and takeaways in what is referred to as a 'new obesity drive'. This is, apparently, part of an initiative aimed at cutting the average calorie intake of individuals by 20% by 2024. For me this is dieting by government diktat and akin to the behaviour of a totalitarian state.

I don't deny that there are many obese people in our country today nor that being obese is a potential health risk, but I fail to see what our individual lifestyles, which do not affect others, have to do with government. If people are happy with eating 'junk food' all day, every day, fine; if some want to drink more than the government recommended limit of 14 units of alcohol each week, good for them. It is not the business of government to dictate what we each do in our private lives - next they will be telling us how many times we should have sex each week and in what positions !

That some people have problems of alcohol consumption or being overweight is undeniable, but the way to tackle such things is by education in the first place and by penalties in the second, not by imposing restrictions on the lives of the entire population. If people have been provided with the appropriate information and choose to ignore it, that is their look out; if they subsequently suffer health problems because of their lifestyle, they should bear the costs of putting things right, not society as a whole. At the same time, if I want to munch on a huge, sugary chocolate bar or a giant pizza, I should not be penalised either by price or by finding that my heart's desire has been withdrawn form sale because it did not meet government guidelines.

Minimum pricing on alcohol, sugar taxes, smaller but no less costly chocolate bars and sweets, smaller pizzas, bans on this, that and everything; is this the way for a 'free' society to live ? The nannies who always 'know best', like Public Health England and the Chief Medical Officer, Sally Davies (whose medical background is in the very limited area of blood disorders) must not be allowed to turn our country into one in which we all live the lives they tell us to rather than living our own and taking responsibility for ourselves.

The people rose up in huge numbers to tell the establishment what we thought about the European Union. Perhaps it is now time to do the same about this creeping intrusion into our everyday lives as well.