Was Thatcher the Milk Snatcher right?

So, they’re not going to snatch the milk from the hands of our under fives? Well, that’s nice. But why the U-turn? Well, it’s because Dave ‘doesn’t like’ the idea, and also because the free provision ‘dates back to the war’. Jeez - I guess that means we can anticipate the return of powdered egg and Woolton pie to our national diet.

We’re told that nothing is sacred in the search for financial savings. Except that it now seems that some things are actually sacred - namely, any savings schemes that Dave ‘doesn’t like’ or decisions to cut anything that has ‘been around for a long time’. In the case of homeopathy, the saving grace seems to have been the fact that lots of people ‘find it helpful’ (and of course, the nutjob P of Wales likes the odd slug of arnica when he isn’t talking to flowers, so that presumably won’t have done the homeopaths any harm).

Does anyone else see the link between this craven publicity-seeking, and last week’s intemperate rant against homeopathy? Yes, that’s right, it’s the evidence-based thing again. Is there any actual evidence that giving young children a bottle of milk every day improves their nutrition of general health in any way? No - that’s a genuine question. My instinct is that there isn’t, but no doubt one of you will tell me if I’m wrong.

It might have been different 50 years ago, but these days kids should be getting everything they need from their diet without supplementary milk. And yes, of course I know that some parents feed the fruit of their feckless loins on crap, but I don’t see how giving them a third of a pint of fat-laden calcium solution every day until they are five will mitigate significantly against the effects of the rest of a childhood spent consuming turkey twizzlers and Vimto, graduating to deep-fried pizza and Tennents Super when adolescence kicks in.

So, milk, homeopathy, it’s all the same. If someone, somewhere, whose opinion the politicians regard as important (like a voter, or an heir to the throne, for example) thinks that something is a good thing, it won’t be cut, no matter how little evidence there is for its worth or how much money we waste on it. Actually, I hope one of you does write in saying that there’s good evidence for the positive effects of free milk - it would stop me feeling so angry about this twattery. My therapist says that anger is bad for me, as well as for the dickheads I take it out on. Whoops - terminal preposition. One for the pedants.

Tags: Evidence-based medicine