Sir Liam Donaldson can seriously damage your health

Oedipus Rex

Trouble is they have cellars/bunkers and so on for their lunatics to indulge their fantasies in and don't they also have a seriously high suicide rate?

Hope you had a good break all the same, mine was in Berlin where a similar diet and a now ever dwindling tobacco permissiveness was the norm. The beer's overrated of course.

Life expectancy is probably as much related to the kind of job you do and your standard of living. I wonder how many folks here know what the average life expectancy of a construction worker in the UK was in 1974 when our eminently sensible Health & Safety at Work Act was brought in?

anne allan

My husband's late relatives all ate stodge and fat. Fried in lard, lashings of suet puds. Any veg, salads and fruit came out of the garden or allotment in season. For most of their lives, water came out of a well.
They were born in the 1890's, and lived all their young and middled aged lives long before the advent of modern medical care - Dr. Collis Brown's tummy gunk, folks?
They wouldn't recognise the words 'food intolerance', let alone spell it.
Of course, this life style killed them - at an average of 90.

EyeSee

I never quite 'get' people like Donaldson. Even if you are ideologically led and working to an agenda, you still don't say things that are so palpably wrong as this idiot does. It is like going through life insisting that dice have seven sides.

Optimus Prime

I thought Donaldson had gone away? I haven't heard any dire warnings of my imminent demise preached from the morning news for a long time.

I recommend reading "Medical Nemesis" by Ivan Illich, it's a great book for anyone sceptical about doctors and their role in public health improvements.

Barry

Oedipus Rex: "Trouble is they have cellars/bunkers and so on for their lunatics to indulge their fantasies in.."

No, the bunkers are to protect them from knife-wielding British tourists, innit?

GaryO

Thanks for reminding me why I haven't been to Austria in a long while. Crappy food, bloody smokers and perverts. No wonder you blended in.

PuppetMaster

Do you think they live longer because they have more freedom and thus are happier? Or is it because they are the master race?

Jez

Just read the Telegraph review on Burleigh's book; Moral Conflict.

The article concludes;

".... easily its greatest strength lies in the wise, civilised but unshakeable moral certainty of its author."

May i disagree with that (i haven't read the book btw, but i will have in the next few weeks) and say that (again, just with the quotes and information relayed in the Telegraph article) Burleigh seems purposely detached from the consequences of actions by the Allies... quite provocatively.

I agree with many of his conclusions briefly touched on this little article but could these conclusions be only driven by his underlying feelings of the people or regimes that were on the recieving end of this violence?

e.g. On the 7th of September any Italian town bombed by the USAAF/RAF(in Burleigh's opinion) was morally just..... a day later it would be morally repugnant.

I've got admit though, i am looking forward to reading tis book now...

Cheers.

Lungfish

Budapest is a great place for some total over indulgence.

hiro

i find the health facism in this country actually oppressive. we are a nation of either the reckless or the feeling-guilty.

rod liddle

Lungfish - absolutely agree. Loveliest city in Europe, Budapest.

Don Birnam

At 82, Sir Cyril Smith had a good innings. Yet another inconvenient 'anomaly' for the health fascists.

Simon Stephenson

EyeSee : 12.08pm

"I never quite 'get' people like Donaldson. Even if you are ideologically led and working to an agenda, you still don't say things that are so palpably wrong as this idiot does."

Eh? What about all the AGW and passive smoking rabble-rousers? They're all working to an agenda which, to them, is so important that it excuses any whoppers they tell in order to advance it. Never, ever do they explain why they feel able to disregard the social effects that may result from systematic and repeated treatment of adults as though they are 5-year-olds.

Rik

Yep totally right in WW2.
So say the Finns, Poles,Czechs,Slovaks etc. etc.
Budapest is the best, but they may not take that kindly to your holiday read either?

Jack Dawson

His mentality is not so hard to understand - it is the absolute certainty that he is right, the mindset of witchfinders down the centuries.

Charles

Rod

Pest is great, classy, great food. Buda is not a sink with dodgy drinking holes and leggy blonde prostitutes.

...oh, I see...

Augustus

Liam Donaldson strikes me as just the sort of chap old Winnie could have got his teeth into, in a similar way he addressed King Abdul Asiz bin Saud at a dinner in Egypt in February, 1945. When told that the King could not allow smoking or drinking in his presence, WSC replied: "If it was his religion that made him say such things, my religion prescribes an absolute sacred ritual smoking cigars and drinking alcohol before, after, and if need be during, all meals
and the intervals between them."

Gruss Gott!

EyeSee

Simon S. Yes indeed, they are Donaldsons too. How do their brains never say 'we're intelligent, but we believe something stupid, so we must tell quality lies in support, or at least seek to confuse'. But nope, they just talk shite. The book Intellectual Morons covers it nicely.

BTW, some of the AGW people are fully aware of what they are saying, but they are trying to work the carbon credit scam and get rich, so slightly different case. (Yes Al, I'm talking about you).

John Steadman

I love all this seditious stuff - gives me strength to face the next news bulletin.
Keep it coming people.

Osred

Agreed on the food and beer although the people there are a bit stiff. After a night of beer cakes and pork they unnaccountably object to the odd fart and burp. And their (modern) music and football is pants

Dixon

Im wondering how the Krautosphere will respond to the demands of their increasing Muslim population for prohibitions on pork. Like we have here where some schools and fast food joints only serve halal.

David Ossitt

rod liddle

"Lungfish - absolutely agree. Loveliest city in Europe, Budapest."

And the food is wonderful, they have a superb food-market, I start to slaver just thinking about it.

Oedipus Rex

Were the health fascists responsible for 'schweinhund' flu?

daniel maris

...is cat extermination official policy in Austria?

Baron

Lungfish @ 1.43:

so how many places have you visited to arrive at the choice of Budapest as the over indulgence capital of mankind then? All of them?

William Jay

Oedipus Rex, never mind "schweinhund flu", I've just come down Gammon Flu.

(It was Swine Flu then they cured me!)

Boom! Boom! (I'll get me coat...)

daniel maris

One that's always puzzled me is why Japan (highest per capita cigarette consumption by a long way among industrialised countries) has* the greatest longevity rate of the same countries.

*or had - I am thinking back about 15 years ago.

WB

Andorra has the highest life expectancy in Europe followed by France, Switzerland, Sweden, San Marino, Italy, Monaco, Lichenstein, Spain, Guernsey, Norway and Jersey before we get to Austria at 79.5 years compared to our 79.0 (that's six months more Mel if you're looking in) plus you forgot to mention the dumplings and I hope that was a walking holiday you were doing out there - such a place to walk and such dumplings to return to in your mountain huts - and now can we please have your views directly on the wheelie bin moggy business for which I am very impatient indeed?

dearieme

"Andorra .. San Marino, .. Monaco, Lichenstein, .. Guernsey, ..and Jersey": don't the pocket-handerchief states do well? But there's an obvious one missing. Perhaps prayers don't work?

Oedipus Rex

I think in Austria, moggies are put in cellars, rather than wheelie bins, the naughty, sexy kittens! When the authorities find out, it's time for the wrongdoer to do himself in.

I reckon they (the Austrians, not the kittens) live a bit longer than us because most walks of more than a few meters are seriously uphill and they burn off all that gateau und kuchen.
In all seriousness the greatest threat to our health here in Blighty is that a huge swathe of the population barely puts one foot in front of the other as they have a preference for a comatose existence on a sofa watching shit TV and shoveling stuff not much better into their slavering ignorant mouths...aghhh, rant over!

maddy1

The Austrian Dream to sire you children in a bunker using the genetic material of someone you are extremely close to, this has the makings of a master race! Who needs good food and sunlight if you take the Adams Family as your role model and want the skin tones of Uncle Fester.

GeoffM

The Austrians and Bavarians are a great bunch. I love going skiing and to Kristkindle Markets.

The women are particularly accommodating, the pork knuckle and potato fantastic and the beer, ah, the beer.

Eddie

Most of one's health is determined by one's genes in my opinion, and the available evidence backs that up. Next in importance is what mummy ate when she was up the duff with you, and what she shoved in your demanding gob during childhood.

One's lifestyle is one factor of many; it is actually more important what your grandmother ate in her life than what you do. Everything we eat or not is just one risk factor of many - and a balanced diet is the only thing that is healthy (so one can eat fat and sugar aplenty anyway in that - there is NO such thing as 'junk' food).

Thus those with middle class (old British definition) ancestors who ate a good diet will live longer: see how young working class footballers usually die (60s) compared to smoking, drinking, fat academics (80s +)! Grossly unfair yes, but so what?

Anyway, it's only a tendency we're talking about - a probability based on risk factors. Nothing more. 'Smoking kills' is a lie, as is this 'eat 5 a day and superfoods and never get cancer' shtick.

This nonsense by the health fascists is just that: media puff and scaremongering which, as all good hacks know, sells papers and gets ratings. It's all a multi-billion pound business!

Unfortunately, what it means is that any idiot thinks they're now an expert on nutrition and diet, because they've watched 'doctor' Gillian McTeeth on't telly - she who thinks plants give you 'energy' because they have chlorophyll in them. Oh dear.

I do have to say however that in my experience the German-speaking people's are rather obsessed with crank health cures, usually involving getting naked and having water squirted or pumped in every known orifice... The whole organic scam movement was the brainchild of a mad German (there've been a few...). But maybe they just do that in private eh Rod...

Lungfish

If only my wallet would allow it Baron- if only!

Noa

"Moral Combat...It was an enormous pleasure to have it propped up on the breakfast table as the Austrian waiters scurried hither and thither..."

And smoking in the lift too! Admit it Rod. it all sounds rather like the master race's summer excursion in Paris in June 1940. Were you up at 4 to put a towel on the cake stand chair?

Did the locals have any petitions going opposing Boris's Bomber Command memorial?

And let's be fair to that part of the world on another travesty; after the authorities clamped down on their use in radical poitics in 1923, family gatherings are about all that one remains as a legal activity in the typical keller.
Other, that is, than beer drinking, smoking and what the Austrian equivalent of RiechsHealthFuhrer Donaldzen would laughingly call electro-cardiac resuscitation.

Robert Taggart

Methought, no hoped ! this Dork (Donaldson) had been laid to rest ? !
Why go all the way to the continent to indulge in an unhealthy / satisfying lifestyle ? You can do so here... just order (demand ?) the 'worst' food possible (with extra fries !) at any of our eateries. Then drench it all with the strongest booze !
Oh, as for smoking, ah, well, please... not in our face !
Lungfish... have an Oxford Gold on us !

Bob

No, Rod. Not an interregnum. Go and look it up.

Simon Stephenson

" "Andorra .. San Marino, .. Monaco, Lichenstein, .. Guernsey, ..and Jersey": don't the pocket-handerchief states do well?"

I don't know whether or not this has any foundation, but isn't it possible that the "pocket-handkerchief" states have a greater proportion of inward adult migration than do the larger states, and therefore their average age of death is biassed upwards through having disproportionately lower levels of infant and child mortality to take into account?

Rather as you would expect places like Bournemouth and Littlehampton to have a higher average age of death than the average for Dorset and Sussex as a whole.

Lungfish

Do you mean an Oxford blue Robert?

Oedipus Rex

FORTY-EIGHT!

(That's the answer to my question posed at the top of this thread.)

Noa

Oedipus Rex - 48?

Isn't that also the number of native British construction workers employed on the London Olympic site?

Robert Taggart

Alas dear Lupo, no ! (unless you know something 'blue' in Oxford ? !)
Brakspear Oxford Gold... now you be off 'the wagon' you can indulge ?
Regarding this article this be not irrelevant... weak beers (3.5 -5 %) be a most frustrating part of our nanny state culture. Time we upped the alchi !

Oedipus Rex

Noa,

I'll ask one of my locals in the pub - he organises some of the site works. My unscientific observations would be about 48 per cent!

Noa

Oedipus Rex

I was wrong!
T'was 48% who were foreign workers, including Irish, in February 2009.

No doubt the mix has changed since; but age and accident data
So that's all right then.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1134492/Revealed-One-workers-2012-Olympics-site-foreign-chiefs-advertise-Australia.html

Dixon

daniel maris
September 6th, 2010 9:30pm
...is cat extermination official policy in Austria?

You are getting Austria confused with Australia, where that is indeed the policy.

Ken Bishop

"they have the highest life expectancy of any country in Europe". No they haven'. Acording to the UN, life expectancy is higher in Iceland, Switzerland, Spain, Sweden, France, Italy and Norway. It really isn't difficult to check the facts.

Ken Bishop

"They have the highest life expectancy of any country in Europe". Rubbish. According to the UN, life expectance is higher in Iceland, Switzerland, Spain, Sweden, France, Italy and Norway. The CIA adds half a dozen ,ore in front of Auustria. Where did you get your "facts"?

Inkerman

What more can one ask - short, witty, great book recommendation and rude about Liam Donaldson.

TonyW

Thanks for the heads up on Austria, Rod. Interesting how the 'healthist' religion is not taken too seriously in modern day Austria as compared to the US and UK. Something of a reversal of positions since the 1930s.
@Optimus Prime:
Have you also read the late Professor Petr Skrabanek's book 'The Death of Humane Medicine and the Rise of Coercive Healthism'. He pays tribute to Illich and updates the case robustly. Unfortunately the book is out of print but is available (free) online at http://bradtaylor.wordpress.com/2009/06/05/petr-skrabanek-books/
I have just bought Ivan Illich's book and am very much looking forward to reading it.

Cardinal del Monte

There are 6 countries in Europe with higher life-expectancies than Austria (it comes 16th in the world table). The article is an example of making up facts to support pretty silly opinions (such as that smoking is not bad for your health).

S

How about a buster martin diet... eggs, red meat, no milk, vegetables, brown ale, no water unless it is in a coffee.