Second of a trilogy of posts here today about Labour governance, I just want to assure anyone reading this that I am not inherently anti-Labour, just anti-pointless and stupid policy decision making. It just so happens that Labour are trumping the market on that kind of news recently. This particular subject is about the missing-the-point-by-a-mile talk by Alan Johnson about adding fluoride to our water system to improve dental health.

This isn't a tinfoil hat reaction, I don't really buy in to the idea that adding more of this kind of stuff will detriment our health and most evidence is to the contrary of that view. In fact I don't necessarily disagree with the proposals in question, I just wonder what the point of them is given the state of dentistry in this country

One in six people have not visited a dentist in over two years through no fault of their own, a fifth of people avoid dentists because of the rising costs as well as one in twenty of us seemingly happy to try and pull rotting teeth out ourselves than fork out the cash to have it done safely. It is these facts and figures that Alan Johnson should be trying to tackle first.

It is entirely disappointing the the government has done, and seemingly will do, nothing to stop the trend of people (quoted at almost 80%) that struggle to find an NHS dentist and the trend of basic dental health costing too much for even basic emergency work. The government has seemingly made the choice to not fund dentistry properly, and the incentives are clearly not there to either reverse the shortage in dentists that started over five years ago, nor to encourage them to practice under the NHS. Adding a bit of "medicine" for our teeth to the water is not going to tackle these underlying shortfalls of the state, and with junk food consumption at an all time high in Britain no safe level of fluoride is going to stop the rot.