Flouride in your water you say? Ah yes good old Flouride. Friend to facists everywhere. Did you know that there is not ONE peer reviewed study giving evidence to the (false) claims that it helps reduce cavities in teeth! And yet there is a plethora of peer reviewed study that shows it has a disastrous harmful effect on the human body. Do a google search and you will find more than you need to make an informed decision. The big "benefit" to the suppliers (your government) is that it actually diminishes the area of the human brain that is responsible to initiate a fight response to oppression and produces a state of docility . Yes, a fact. Flouride was used by the Nazis in their camps, by Mao in his re-education "schools"and by Stalin in his gulags to keep all those being re-educated, or incarcerated more compliant and manageable. Its been used in all the prisons and there is a mass poisoning that is ongoing in NA. Good luck!

Ron Amith, Blackpool, England

I completely agree with the vast majority of people here. It is truly frightening. It is like a nightmare sci-fi tale set in the dystopian future - has anyone seen Demolition Man? (I think that's the name).What is frightening is this is NOT the future but now. Nobody would have believed this stuff 20 years ago.

I think the main problem is that nobody believes in their own judgment any more, let alone common sense. We've had years of so-called experts telling us what to do and how to lead our lives. We've become like sheep, blind and feeble-minded.

Also, of course, this is the age of litigation. Perhaps in the future we can sue shops for selling us unhealthy food or a bar for allowing us to get drunk.

COME ON, WAKE UP, PEOPLE!!! When is this going to end? How long will it be before every single aspect of our lives will be dictated by government?

Oh, God, if only I could emigrate!

Cathy, Ryde,

Human Rights
Bye Bye

You, The People, are mostly Sheeple.

What a SAD STATE OF AFFAIRS.

WAKE UP! HAVE YOUR SAY!

PETITION AND PROTEST NOW!

BEFORE the fluoride turns your mind into mush.

John, Harrogate, England

My Town is Nothing but a town of drunken, ignorant, animals.. (except for a small minority who follow the laws of their religions)

Fat, Drunken, Ignorant.

Clean up Your act... or your government will clean you down to your bones, just as they are doing here in the states.

Bryon, San Francisco, California

Gordon Brown wants a old Russian state, and the control that goes with it. Sooner this control freak is kicked out the better.

Graham, Southend, UK

Nicola from leeds should realise that at the moment we don't have an elected (chosen) leader, just a hand me down one, so he's going to do what ever he like's when he like's untill 2009 so just sit back, think of England, drink your fluoridated water , and enjoy the ride love.

CARY G DEAN, RYDE,, ISLE OF WIGHT

The actions of the bureaucrats and professionals advocating these measures reveal merely yet another group within UK society vying with others for power and influence via old fashioned dissimulation--in this case in the form of showing a concern for public health.
"Take care to trim the beard regularly for one day it might compete with the hair on the head for dominance..."

Bob, Belfast, Antrim

Government's should be frightened of their people, not the other way round. It would appear that we, as a society are heading towards being the latter.
It seems to me that our elected ( chosen ) government is attempting to remove all automomous thought and action from us - our right to responsibility and personal control for ourselves. In the current climate of everything being someone or something ele's fault, it is time to take back our responsibility, for then we take back our control. Our government is there to make sure that our personal voice is heard and acted on. It is there to make sure that we can have all the facts so we can make our own decisions. Have our elected voice forgotten this?

Nicola, Leeds, U K

Another incident detailing the Slow Circling Of The Drain of The Once Great British Empire.

Craig, Deerfield Beach, USA

Anna my reference to 'rebel' was in the context of social unrest, and political dis-enfranchisation resulting in more and more people voting for parties like the BNP. Yes cutting off their noses maybe but nevertheless it could lead to that. Arthur in Bath, I think as with the smoking ban issue you forget that the average drinker/smokers contributes 10 times more than the average 'health person'. The DoH own statistics show that the cost of treating smoking related and alcohol related ill health is in the order of £3 billion combined. The exchequer on the other hand takes upwards of £25 billion combined so the fiscal argument is simply not valid. Some people pay £500/month in NI contributions, I think many would welcome an opt out. Just think what private, safe care you could get for that. Those meekly follow Government edict are sleeping walking into a fascist state.

Robert Feal-martinez, South Marston, England

for public health, cars, and buses should be outlawed instead of cigarettes. they produce more pollution, so there would be way more difference. also, people would have a more active lifestyle.

mcminamin, los angeles,

Surely one could invoke EU Human Rights legislation to stop the madness? After all, everyone seems to....

Government is man's servant, not his master.

David Moore, Hong Kong, China

Do the people of this country not have freedom of choice or will the so-called experts and gullible politicians ( who introduced the Smoking ban ) reduce the population to miserable zombies. Passive smoke does NOT kill, I challenge them to publicly name three medically recorded deaths caused by it. Freedom2Choose . info

Eddie, Edinburgh, Scotland

Fluoridation , latest tests prove beyond doubt that fluoride intake increases the chances of boys aged between 7 and 12 contracting cancer by 80%.
Maybe we should find another way of expressing "nanny state"
Any attempt by authorities to put fluoride in our water must be fiercely opposed.

Caroline Carter, Weybridge, Surrey

In the US, all tubes of fluoride toothpastes have an FDA warning on them as they are classified as a medicine. All these so-called experts tell us fluoride is safe in tiny doses of parts per million (ppm) but have any of their studies or data shown what the cumulative effect of fluoride is?

Fluoride is a waste product of aluminium production and the nuclear industry. It has no documented nutritional value and is certainly not needed for adult's teeth. It was also used by the Nazis and Russians to pacify and stupefy prisoners. It is completely immoral for unelected politicians to try and force this rubbish on to the public.

Bern was one of the last cities in Europe to fluoridate their water and they have stopped this practice of mass medication. Many dentists and doctors are now against the practice. Check out www.fluoridealert.org.

Me personally, I use fluoride-free toothpaste.

David Rosenberg, Golders Green, UK

What I don't understand is how the supposedly more "sensitive" and less "nanny state" concept of "stewardship" justifies the Government introducing "more coercive" policies to force people to behave the way this think-tank wants them to. I thought the whole idea of being "sensitive to individual freedom" allowed people *more* freedom of choice (and freedom from coercion) than the nanny state? It all sounds suspiciously like a textbook application of Orwellian doublethink to me........

Caroline, London, UK

Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, Finland, Northern Ireland, Austria and the Czech Republic have never had fluoridation, banned it or stopped it and declared it illegal.

Surely if we are to tow the EU line, we must follow suit.

Let unelected Lord Krebs feed flouride to his offspring. Once we are assured of its efficacy, then maybe we will consider it!

The dubious benefits of fluoride are topical. It does not need to be added to water and ingested!

Sally Stephenson, Colchester, UK

Banning smoking at home sounds like a Monty Python skit.
I can hear the actors now:

"You can't smoke at home, y'know..."
"But how will they see?"
"Big Brother knows, because he's a camera pointed at thee."

We here in the USA still say 'go to hell' to such nonsense.

Next, they'll ban passing gas when within 100 meters of another living thing.

Royce, Houston, Texas, USA

Raising the taxes on alcohol will just bankrupt the poor. People will drink either way. As for a smoking ban in the home, it's ludicris! Are you going to pay someone to come to my house and arrest me for smoking? Meanwhile all the "other" serious crimes are left unsolved! Will you also deliver food for consumtion that meets your criteria? How about suggesting potential mates? Surely you'll have a report which outlines correct genetic matches between partners. Long live our great democracy! It gives me great faith in our society for the years ahead. I just don't understand how people can sit back and let what little freedoms we have left be eroded without complaint. It's pathetic. There are some people who can still think for themselves.

Shane , edinburgh,

I have no argument with separating roads from cycle tracks and pavements - this does seem like a good, if expensive idea. However, as cigarettes are legal it is my view that it is a restriction on people's rights to say that they cannot smoke in their own homes, particularly if they are home-owners. As Clive said before me: 'People's bodies should be considered their own property that they can pretty much do what they like with".
Delaying NHS treatment for those whose damage is self-inflicted is a dangerous precedent to set. Who will be discriminated against next? Anorexics? Someone who cuts themselves? This delay of treatment is effectively tantamount to refusal of treatment, in violation of the hippocratic oath, medicine's most sacred doctrine.
The nanny state strikes again - rehashed and renamed as 'Stewardship' but bullying and patronising all the same.

Nick, Nottingham,

Lord Krebs :"...but the Government has a duty to look after the health of everyone..."

And where did this new doctrine come from? Probably from Lord Kreb's own brain.

The government's real job is to enable us to be as free as possible: free to look after our own health, or not. And otherwise to get out of the way. To support families and communities, not replace them.

The alternative is to have our lives prescribed by experts with their statistics and so-called 'empirical' evidence, that so often turns out wrong. Being forced to follow a single 'belief' restrains truth : how will the true solution to a problem be discovered if no one is allowed to vere from the official doctrine. And notice how often the official solution treats the symtoms and not the cause.

Greg Lorriman, Leatherhead, UK

Increasing the cost of alcohol will not deter binge drinkers. The result will be that the vast majority of the population who drink in moderation will pay more. The Government interferes far too much in our lives. I wish I was able to leave the UK.

John, Eastbourne, UK

Funnily enough, rich young things like Prince Harry will still be able to go binge drinking, even if the alcohol tax was raised to 500%. The ones that would suffer are not the binge drikers, just ordinary people who used to go out to the pub for a drink and to socialise. Now they have to stand outside to have a cigarette, and already find the price of a few pints makes a deep dent in their money. It's always the poor that get clobbered. George Brown removed the 10% income tax band. This doesn't affect people on high incomes, but it does hit pensioners and the low paid. It doubles my Tax burden on a pathetically low pension.
I would like to eat more healthily, but after paying my bills I have very little left for food, so it has to be filling rather than non fattening. I grow my own veg to help out, but it's a long time since I had lean premium quality meat.

Beryl, WINDSOR, England

No wonder cocaine is on the rise, easy to use I assume, cannot be seen, not looked upon as a leper, given it would be more of the middle and upper class using it.
More and more people on anti-depressants, I am not surprised.
I have never eaten or smoked so much in my life as I have in the last six months. I think the antis are bad for our health.

mandyv, cambs, depressing UK

Fluoridation was introduced by the Nazis in the death camps to pacify the inmates... Need i say more?

James Bejune, Worcestershire, England

Yes your body is yours to ruin if you want to. However as it is my and other health conscious people's NHS contributions that will be paying for your expensive care and operations, I think you should opt out of the NHS and take out your own insurance. You will soon meet the realities of life when the Commercial Insurers either refuse you insurance or charge you enormous premiums.
It should be a requirement for people who refuse to take reasonable care of themselves, should be able to use their contributions to insure privately. As Mr Scroggins has to do in USA
This selfish approach to living is exemplified by those who
get tattoes and then later decide they are embarrassing and cause them 'mental distress' and expect the NHS to remove them.

arthur, bath, uk

On the news today prof Brownswood of Nuffield said that people were able to make sensible decisions, but if they didn't we would make them with taxes or bans.

chas, suffolk, england

Anna of Italy asked: "Not having English as my first language, from this I understand that the British will continue to be more unhealthy than they already are simply to rebel against the government. Would this be a good example of the English phrase, 'Cutting of your nose to spite your face?"

No, Anna, this is a good example of the English refusal to bow down to bullies and our recognition that fascist dictatorships are not good for any country ... I would have thought that you and your countrymen should have learnt that particular lesson a while back.

Alan Thrower, London, UK

We fought the Second World War to avoid Nazi dictatorship, and became stalwart members of NATO to avoid Communist dictatorship - and now we are setting up a dictatorship of our own. Well, I'm 66 years old and in my second year of retirement, but if it comes to another civil war, this time to protect the freedom of the individual against the nanny state, I will fight like hell.

Edmund Burke, Kingston upon Thames, England

'Despite living in Oxford for 35 years, the only other time I've heard George Street in Oxford referred to as 'vomit alley' is today on the Daily Mail website. When I was growing up, George Street was a mix of shops, pubs and other businesses. It was precisely to emulate some sort of 'continental cafe culture' that the entire area was given planning permission for the now virtually uninterrupted rows of 'trendy' bars aimed at younger drinkers. The University and the Council have priced out anything that doesn't make a large profit per metre of floorspace, so Oxford has become a dull city of chainstores, mobile phone shops, over priced pannini cafes and pile 'em in bars. The student population stands at 30,000 (of a total of around 150,000) and now seems awash with economic migrants of prime drinking age. Perhaps Lord Krebs and his 'experts' should look at the effect of a long history of bad planning and greed by the very bodies that now believe- as always- that 'they know best'.

Dan, Oxford, England

They put a tax on cigarettes - people still smoke.

When will people reject this supposedly free society that we live in and embrace a libertarian one?

Glenn, London, England

we do not need no nanny state and dictators to cause more divisions. With the way that smokers are treated in this country it is clear that the goverment is making these laws because the british people have gone weak and is excepting dictatorship, smokers should refuse to pay national insurance and have nothing to do with polititions who take away people's freedom, bar and pub owners should also sue the goverment for damages against there busnesses and for forcing them to treat there customers like animals.

clif, london, england

Other European countries, in particular the Scandinavian ones, have higher taxes on alcohol. However, from my experience and that of my colleagues, this doean't make them any less heavy drinkers on the nights that they do go out. The idea proposed to increase taxation and review the laws, is just as likely to see people binge drinking a couple of times a week; as it is to encourage a few drinks a night. Whilst we have an assumed binge drinking culture; I wonder how often this is compared to other nations. Yes, binge drinking is bad for one's health. But most adults, can remember that time that they got so sloshed on Vodka, Barcardi etc...that they rarely do it again. It is the habitual heavy drinkers that need to be addressed. Personally, I am more concerned about the health of someone who drinks and never seems to get drunk/ after half a bottle of vodka; where tolerance is actually a sign of abuse. Not about those of us who are going to be ill indeed after the xmas party!

Alex, Woking, Surrey

This really is frightening. The government has decided that its job is not to govern the country on behalf of the people, but to steward the people's lives? This is not on.

Considering almost every thing they are trying to ban or get us to cut down on has an element of misrepresentation about it - why are they so surprised that we will rebel?

Being overweight is actually healthier than being the correct BMI weight, according to the New York Times, Lung Cancer seems to be caused by Diesel Fumes more than tobacco and binge drinking is only a problem when you alter the statistics to say it is! Is it really binge drinking when you have 4 pints in an evening?

The point is, these people are trying their damnedest to get a paid position of power within society, and it is only the fact that we are letting them get away with it that it is happening.

Maybe its time the British people learnt a continental habit and revolted?!!

F0ul, Wales,

Governments are the servants of the people, not their jailers or trainers. Coercion takes us down the road to institutional fascism, which may appeal to those from ex-fascist states but not to most of us.

And if Anna from Italy finds us so revolting then, happy thought, maybe she will feel discouraged from coming to see us.

Liz, Llanrwst, Wales

The more tax that is put on alcohol the more will be the amount that is stolen.

Ernest Knowalls, York,

Lord Krebs, who chaired the report committee, said yesterday: “People often reject the idea of a nanny state but the Government has a duty to look after the health of everyone and sometimes that means guiding or restricting our choices.”

No. The government has a duty to democratically represent and administer over the people it has - not the people it would like to have if only they could socially engineer it in that way.

Lord Krebs is obviously an over bearing, patronising, nanny statist who believes that the government should have sovereignty over what individuals choose to do to their own bodies.

He is fascist who needs to have it clearly spelt out to him as to why he is not only wrong but that individual freedom will always trump whatever muddled and incoherent nonsense he thinks represents the so-called “public good.”

If the price of having an NHS means that we have to put up with the likes of him then let’s scrap the whole wretched thing right now.

Jason Mead, Bristol, England

"the Government has a duty to look after the health of everyone "

Excuse me?

It does?

I don't think so! Only the individual has the means, capability and duty to look after their own health. And that's why the welfare state will never work.

And 24 hour drinking? What a joke! Nowhere's open after 2-3AM here in york anyway!

I really wish these people could just be made 'disappear'.

The benefits of dictatorial governments.....

peter, York, UK

End to 24 hour drinking? What 24 hour drinking is this and where is it to be found outside of the media? I cannot buy a pint where I live in Oxford (or anywhere else outside London) past 3 A.M. I am pleased that some pubs are open a little later at the weekend giving you the choice of a late pint without having to go to a club or getting a drink after the cinema closes, but we DO NOT have licensed premises open 24 hours a day. Problematic licensed premises were, on the whole, already open later anyway by virtue of having an entertainments license.

Al, Oxford,

I have to leave this country. I can't take anymore.

Dave, Bath,

Why are we paying any attention to these fascists?

Steven Carrigan, Hove, Sussex

Robert Feal-Martinez stated that the 'Government is there to advise on social policy and health care not dictate. The more this happens the more society will ultimately rebel.'

Not having English as my first language, from this I understand that the British will continue to be more unhealthy than they already are simply to rebel against the government. Would this be a good example of the English phrase, 'Cutting of your nose to spite your face?'

Anna, Catania, Italy

Why not shackle everyone in chains, ban air and water, cover everything in foam padding just in case god forbid someone should do something.

The lunatics are running the asylum and the worlds gone mental.

Laurance Allen, Bodrum, Turkey

People's bodies should be considered their own property that they can pretty much do what they like with.

Clive, London,

Lets remember that Lord Krebs was formally the head of the Food Standards Agency. He was the man who presided over a number of food scares created by the FSA and seriously upset the Hospitality sector by the FSA sending out condescending leaflets, and spending vast sums of money on adverts that would insult the intelligence of a 5 year old. He clearly believes that our lives should be controlled this is very dangerous in a so called democracy. Government is there to advise on social policy and health care not dictate. The more this happens the more society will ultimately rebel.

Robert Feal-Martinez, South Marston, England

Definition of an "expert":

Some clown from out of town with a briefcase.

Allan Bilder, Hammonton, NJ USA

With all due respect to Lord Krebs, he cannot simply assert that 'the Government has a duty to look after the health of everyone'. This is (and should be) a highly sensitive question without a guaranteed answer. There are perfectly legitimate intellectual arguments to reject that position.

John Scott, London,

Why can the British not see themselves from the eyes of other European countries? Believe me, it is not a pretty sight. You glamorise your drunken celebrites in a very strange way. Why do these 'celebrities' even get press coverage of such awful behavoir? You praise clearly overweight celebrities for their 'curves' and their refusal to conform. What mixed messages you send out and no wonder people in Britain are confused and unhealthy.

Being overweight is unhealthy and drinking to excess is unhealthy. Until the British stop the denial and accept these basic facts, then nothing will change, except, of course, your expanding waistlines and enlarging livers.

Anna, Catania, Italy

Nanny State!
Spare me. In the U.S. we are overwhelmed with the "do this"
and "don't do that".
I say "Government get off my back and stop trying to not only
telling me how to live." Not only that but enacting laws to make me
live as they think best.
"Pass the meat and I hope it has a lot of fat on it."
Bad air. Ha. Phoenix, AZ has just had it's first bad air warning
of the coming winter. 2nd hand smoke, well spend the day in
Phoenix sucking in the hydro carbons.

Jerry Scroggin, Phoenix, Arizona/USA