Last month I wrote about how pragmatic discourse is often sacrificed at the altar of fake statistics. Misleading figures, however, are merely one cog in a far greater pro-interventionist machine, all of which serves the oldest trick in the public health playbook: the ratchet effect.
It was Ronald Coase who famously said, “If you torture the data enough, it will confess to anything.” Professional public health fanatics have taken this a step further — not only twisting data to fit their narratives but also employing an insidious strategy to ensure their true goals are kept concealed. The ratchet effect is a deliberate method used to disguise the true intentions of extremist campaigners. Knowing that their ultimate objective is too radical to be accepted outright, they break it down into incremental, seemingly reasonable measures — slowly eroding opposition along the way. Policymakers, often naïve or short-sighted, rarely stop to ask what will be demanded next, but they ought to. With £3.9 billion of ring-fenced public health grant money for 2025-26 announced last month, can we really afford to continue this charade?
Consider the case of tobacco regulations. First, smoking was banned in public places. Then, cigarettes were moved to higher, more obscure shelves, followed by the introduction of plain packaging.
Each step was presented as a logical progression, justified by appealing to public health concerns. Yet, despite a dramatic decline in smoking rates over this period, the ultimate goal has remained unchanged: the complete prohibition of cigarette sales. Along the way, many of the foundational arguments for these policies — such as the exaggerated dangers of second-hand smoke — have been debunked, but the interventionists march forward undeterred.
Smoking regulation is one the zealots habitually gravitate towards, because even the most libertarian among us have to acknowledge that smoking is indiscriminately harmful. Tobacco is the case study these radical organisations use in their efforts to sound sensible – until you arrive at baby formula. With generic advertising and promotional activities such as discounts banned under the Infant Formula and Follow-on Formula Regulations 2007, Baby Milk Action piggybacked on this legislation to call for a total ban on formula marketing. There are now campaign groups calling for baby formula to be made prescription only. I breastfed all three of my children, and the scientific benefits are clearly undeniable, but there is nothing to be gained by forcing all women to feed their children naturally. It is the moral equivalent of banning caesareans.
What makes the ratchet effect deeply undemocratic is that each policy, when viewed in isolation, appears reasonable. The public is reassured that no further steps will be taken, but history shows otherwise. Once a restriction is implemented, another soon follows, always framed as the next logical step. By the time people recognise the full extent of the agenda, the battle is already lost. It is a calculated manipulation of public trust.
Moreover, this strategy lowers the burden of proof for new interventions. By normalising each incremental policy as an unquestionable necessity, virtually anything can be elevated to a public health issue. I recently discovered an entry in the American Journal of Psychiatry called “school avoidance syndrome“, otherwise known as truancy. It seems deeply ironic that those who advocate a greater remit of the state are also those who routinely acknowledge how overstretched our health systems are. But when you learn that the Public Health Grant money increases in its millions year on year, all becomes clear.
With such a seismic amount of taxpayer money, there is no incentive for resolution. It is no surprise that public health has become a juggernaut akin to the Industrial Revolution — a self-sustaining machine that absorbs endless funding to justify each successive measure, even when the previous ones have already achieved their stated objectives. In Scotland, deaths by alcohol fell from 1,399 in 2008 to 1,020 in 2019 through better training of staff and education of the dangers of excessive alcohol intake. That was not enough for the nanny statists. Their insatiable desire to push through the prohibitionist goals led to the introduction of minimum alcohol pricing, and arguably as a result, death by alcohol in Scotland is now at a 14 year high.
We should be able to demand the same level of transparency from institutions and charities involved in policymaking as we do from elected politicians. The only problem is there are hardly any avenues to do so. According to analysis by Regulus Partners, between December 16th 2024 and February 14th 2025 Britain’s gambling market regulator wrote to just two publications to ask for articles to be corrected, despite receiving notification of at least 18 instances of misuse by media organisations, campaign groups and politicians in that period. This is what allows the rachet to keep moving in a forwardly direction, and one campaigners have already primed to advance their nanny state assault.
Anti-gambling fanatic and former aide to Jeremy Corbyn Matt Zarb Cousin has, in his bid to make placing a bet a near impossible endeavour through excessive regulation, recently strategically chosen to target slot machines rather than horse racing. He has inferred that the latter is subject to more robust defences from MPs, eager to protect the rural economies of their constituencies, and is now advantageously making useful idiots of them.
His argument hinges on the claim that slot machines, rather than sports betting, are the most addictive form of gambling. This is, of course, a gross oversimplification and a flawed portrayal of addiction — one that wrongly suggests addiction is a static condition tethered to a particular product rather than an individual’s predisposed brain chemistry.
The reality is that if slot machines are banned or heavily restricted, compulsive gamblers will simply migrate to other forms of betting, including sports gambling. This will artificially inflate the number of people supposedly ‘harmed’ by sports betting, but this is exactly what they want. It is the means to justify further regulatory interventions. Worse still, this line of argument forces even reasonable opponents into a rhetorical trap: by conceding that slot machines are more harmful than sports betting, they inadvertently accept the flawed premise that addiction is caused by the product rather than individual vulnerabilities.
The ratchet effect is not just a theoretical concept; it is a demonstrable strategy employed by activists who understand that outright prohibition or draconian regulations will never be accepted in one fell swoop. Instead, they chip away at freedoms incrementally, ensuring that each new restriction becomes the baseline for the next demand. This is why vigilance is crucial. Without scepticism and resistance of their dishonest methods, we risk sleepwalking into a world where personal responsibility is eroded, and every aspect of life is subject to bureaucratic control, all in the name of public health.
Abbie MacGregor is the Head of Communications at the Gamblers Consumer Forum.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
The Guardian ceased to be a neutral investigative paper about 10 years ago when MI6 paid them a visit after they had released some Snowden Files.
It is now run by Head Girls and read only by teachers.
They are sell about 60,000 copies – mainly to the BBC and other leftie organisations – and so were steadily going bankrupt so Bill Gates stepped in to prop them up.
Having, of course, been founded using Taylor’s profits from trading in US cotton…
With slave connections. Nice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79t_gmfue54
Would The Guardian have quit “X” had Trump not won? I reckon not. This looks more like a fit of pique caused by Musk’s support for Trump than any principled stand against the immoral horrors of “X” which have remained consistent since Musk took it over.
If Trump had not won, it is likely that the US Gov’t would increase their on-going investigations and eventual prosecutions of Musk and all his companies. Goal to destroy his businesses and his life, along with same for so many others. Musk risked everything. All In. His style.
A friend commented about X that if you want to know what is really going on it is the only way to get news.
So much for the Grauniad. Throwing their toys out of the pram but taking their ball away so no one else can play with it and them.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
A fake newspaper if ever I saw one. You cannot get a straight take on anything in the Grauniad so I stopped even looking at it despite being free. After all it is only worth as much as anyone is prepared to pay for it and nowt is my bid.
Nuff said.
Socialists, by their nature, have to be capable of juggling two completely opposite propositions at the same time. Such as their support for gay people, but their support for religious groups who kill gay people. Or, supporting democracy, but not for you, just for their friends. It must be exhausting to live in such a fantasy world where everything matters, but nothing matters..
I have hopes that their heads will explode as a result.
Leftists support democracy – just so long as it comes up with the “correct” result.
A bit like the EU. Remember how they forced countries to re-run the Maastricht referendum if it produced the “wrong result?
Take the Red Pill and the Blue Pill at the same time.
The socialists I know stopped reading The Guardian many years ago when it was taken over by neoliberals.
Socialism is a form of mental illness.
Are your friends(?) receiving appropriate treatment?
As ‘stakeholder’ Blobs … have captured Western government departments and intergovernmental agencies … so ordinary people have been increasingly denied any formal mechanisms for confronting politicians with their grievances.
As the British Left became imbued with Marxism – after the Second world War – it also imbibed the Leninist poison that the working class is comprised of ignorant dolts who should be disenfranchised (and preferably replaced). This is the reason the contemporary marxo-fascists (e.g. The Guardian and its readers) believe that the leadership role in society belongs to “those who know better”. The purpose of this arrangement is to prevent politics from being an arena of public choices.
A fundamental left wing driving force is the march towards some distant Utopia where all social and political and moral aspects are perfect.
And the more recent development is the polarisation into those who are committed to the march, and those who are not. From which it ‘follows’ that those who don’t support the march to perfection must be social, political, and moral enemies.
Many years ago, The Guardian ran a TV advert video showing a skinhead pushing over a well-dressed man walking on the pavement.
The camera would pan out showing the skinhead was saving the man from being crushed by falling bricks.
Their catch line was “there is always two sides to every story”.
Unfortunately, now, The Guardian only show one side of the story and that is of the establishment corporatists and their Globalist, neoliberal, warmongering propaganda.
I used to buy the paper for 35 years and have witnessed its decline.
I stopped buying it about 15 years ago and now only comment on their page every time they get something wrong, which is quite often.
They are probably the most dangerous media outlet as they have this air of respectability and balance when in fact, they promote phony wars, bogus man-made climate change and dangerous vaccines.
I also remember that ad and thought is was very powerful, in fact it often pops into my head when shouty idiots can’t/won’t acknowledge there may be different interpretations of a situation.
I also bought the Guardian but not for well over 40 years.
Similar to me, I stopped buying it about ten years ago.
However I am no longer allowed to comment because I fell foul of their “Community Rules” about four years ago.
Needless to say they wouldn’t/couldn’t tell me precisely why the ban – but I think it just might have been my anti vaccine/bigpharma/Vallance comments. I had quite a few arguments with “Dave 4567” or similar who professed him/her/itself to be A Scientist, but I suspect he may well have been 77th
Yes, I was “moderated” for below the line comments years ago so I just troll them now on facebook.
I went to offGuardian when it first started but ended up being banned for berating the “viruses do not exist” clowns.
Wow! I just found that old Guardian advert on Youtube, using your description, and it is superb! Thanks for that. Here’s the link for those who haven’t seen it, or want to remember it:
The Guardian 1986 Points of View
It’s only when you get the whole picture, you can fully understand what’s going in
is something the people making the Guardian are still perfectly aware of. The 2024 version of this ad would continue with It’s our job to prevent this from ever happening!
Too true!
Establishment media do actually present “the other side” normally.
But they do so dismissively through ridicule, parody and distortion.
Just like the BBC then!
Yes. The BBC relies on the UK government for its funding by allowing it to tax the population with a license. The license is compulsory, and you will be fined if don’t have one. The UK government appoints the Director General. Ergo the BBC is “state funded”, part of the UK and Western world “establishment” and is a very poor news media outlet and far from “independent”.
I used to read it online and comment (in the years running up to the EU Referendum) and, despite my clear right-wing views, which were expressed very politely, I managed to never be censored/banned.
I reckon I’d last about 24 hours if I did that now. Dissent from their worldview is not tolerated.
And so has La Vanguardia in Spain.
What good news from Ben Pile, and a great photo of the Argentinian President Javier Milei!
His leading the Argentinians out of the CPO29 is astonishing and superb.
Why Google’s first reference to just about every single question asked is the Guardian? Why most public sector recruitment ads appear in the Guardian? Why Whitehall mandarins have limitless airtime in the Guardian? Are the BBC and the Guardian related?
“Focus groups and opinion polls have taken the place of dialogue between the public and politicians, and such forums are invariably controlled by Blobbish wonks whose views are narrowed even further by their funders’ priorities.”
Succinctly put. They ignore the masses and then present themselves as somehow “progressive”. Not an ounce of honesty between them.
Trump by name & his name has Trumped Cop (out)29 Fancy arranging this latest Private Jet Fest just as Trump forms his team of realists ! Starmer & Milipede now look like the dumbest arse lickers at this phoney gathering, glorious
Put the Chainsaw to Net Zero
Keep tweeting … and support / keep supporting the non-conformist alternative media/podcasts …. the keyboard and broadcasting warriors who are fighting back on our behalf. Many of them are free. Some charge a small amount – little more than the price of a coffee a month – so you CAN afford it.