It always comes down to this

East Lancashire boroughs in top ten WORST in country for child tooth decay

Oh noes! The kids in East Lancashire all have rotten teeth.

Well, not necessarily. It sounds a scary headline and it's probably because whatever press release the Lancashire Telegraph is quoting, was designed to be scary

You see, if you are going to rank anything in order of best to worst, someone has got to be in the top ten worst. There's no escaping it

Data for 2017 shows Pendle has the highest percentage of children with decayed, missing or filled teeth in the country at 49.4 per cent.
While Burnley ‘s figure is 46.5 per cent, Hyndburn’s is 45.8 per cent and Blackburn with Darwen has a child tooth decay rate of 42.6 per cent.
It means that East Lancashire’s boroughs have rates of about double the national average of 23.3 per cent. 

Ok, so as percentages, those figures do sound pretty bad

The figures, branded a ‘tragedy’, were revealed in Public Health England’s latest Child Oral Health Survey.

Not that bad. There's always one, isn't there? A 'Tragedy', is an aeroplane falling out of the sky, not a few kids with bad teeth

But do we really believe those figures?

I don't. I don't have any figures to the contrary, that I can point to, but going off the way 'Public Health' figures are often recorded these days, I don't see any reason to believe these

Childhood obesity figures are hugely inflated due to the often debunked BMI measurements which they insist on using and also by lumping overweight people in with obese people
Smoking related illnesses are inflated by taking illnesses 'linked' to smoking and extrapolating them population wide
Alcohol harm is inflated by lowering the recommended number of units to what the average person might consume with Sunday tea

So why should we believe these? Anyway, I digress

But Blackburn with Darwen has seen a significant drop in the number of children with rotting teeth in the past decade. 

 Then that's a good thing yes? Nothing to see here?

Hyndburn’s health chief Cllr Munsif Dad said [...]
“I think it’s also about raising awareness to parents of the importance of keeping their child’s teeth healthy by eating less sugar food and drinks.

Indeed. So there really is nothing to see here. Tooth decay levels have been falling a long time and we can keep this up through education and parental responsibility
Yes?

Of course not. The Public Health Whack-A-Moles are popping up

Dominic Harrison, director of public health at Blackburn with Darwen Council, said sugar consumption can have a 'devastating effect' on dental health.
He said: "It is vital that we send a message about the damage that is being done to the health of our children and young people; let children be free to choose their food but stop promoting sugar products through advertising and sports sponsorship in a way that makes their choices anything but ‘free’."

Dominic Harrison is one of the biggest Public Health Whack-A-Moles in our borough, and he pops up whenever there's a chance to attack freedom of choice and free enterprise

I've consumed sugar all my life, as have most people, and we've managed to do it without a 'devastating affect' on our dental health. Why? Because we were brought up to brush our teeth properly

"Let children be free to choose their food!? What the hell is he on about. One of the basic principles of good parenting, is that parents make choices for their children, as by definition, children aren't old enough to make those choices themselves, particularly when it comes to food

How many of you as a child, said that when you grew up, you would eat nothing but cake? No, Dominic, that is the polar opposite of parental responsibility. Parents should be choosing their children's food. And making them brush their teeth properly

"Stop promoting sugar products through advertising and sponsorship". Why? Children have no money. Parents have money and parents make purchasing choices. It doesn't matter what food is advertised on the telly or at the football ground. Children cannot just go out and buy it, as the parents control all the cash. Parents should be buying the food. And choosing what the children eat. And making them brush their teeth properly

And advertising removes free choice does it? Maybe you are to dumb to make your own purchasing choices, but don't tar the rest of us with your own idiocy

And there's more pop-up pillocks to go, yet

Mick Armstrong, chairman of dentist trade union the British Dental Association, described it as a ‘tragedy’ that a child’s oral health is still determined by their postcode and their parents’ incomes. 

Tragedy

This one is blaming poverty. There's no poverty in this country that means parents can't afford a quid for a toothbrush and toothpaste and teach their kid how to use them

And children's oral health is not determined by their postcode, it's determined by their parents doing the right thing and making them brush their teeth or being lazy arses and not bothering
I've had a postcode all my life and like others, it hasn't affected my oral health

He said: “We should not accept that a child raised in Pendle will enter primary school with twenty times the levels of decay as one born in the Surrey home of the health secretary.” 

I can only assume that he means the Health Secretary visits every house in Surrey in the evenings and makes children brush their teeth? I can think of no other reason for mentioning that

Can you?