"Nicole what happens in another country is neither here nor there."
It absolutely IS relevant. If mothers here are a) deciding not to breastfeed in much larger numbers at birth and b) struggling to continue breastfeeding and stopping much earlier than other women in developed countries then that tells us that the main barriers to breastfeeding are cultural and social, rather than biogical.
"Here people have the right to do what they like without any bf/ff enthusiasts deciding who is right"
But 'breastfeeding enthusiasts' (by which I assume you mean breastfeeding advocates) don't tell women that they 'should' or 'must' breastfeed. Their role is to flag up the barriers to breastfeeding that so many UK mums experience and to tackle the widespread ignorance about the health issues. (I appreciate you probably think that everyone in the UK knows everything they need to know about the benefits of breastfeeding because of NHS health promotion, but actually research suggests not)
"It is their child and so long as nobody is being neglected or abused it really isn't anyone's business."
So you don't think it's a public health issue? Why do you think the NHS considers it a public health issue? Can you not accept that while nobody has the right to approach anyone individually and question or comment on how they feed their child, that like all other public health issues, it's a fitting subject for general debate on forums like this?
Or would you like it to become a totally taboo subject?
"@I have done both and all dc turned out exactly the same health wise"
But your children are different and therefore comparing health outcomes in the case of two individuals is meaningless. You could have smoked all the way through one of your pregnancies and the likelihood is that you'd never see the difference it made to your child's development in comparison with your other child. And to be honest, it makes me a bit sad that you use arguments like that to try to rationalise your feeding choices - because they are so lacking in any sort of developed understanding of the complexity of the issue. It's also clear that you feel the need to apply a completely different standard of proof than you would to any other health issue (Unless you've in the past been happy to ignore other health advice like not to smoke during pregnancy or not to put your babies down to sleep on their fronts etc on the basis that not following this advice doesn't seem to make any visible difference to the health of the vast majority of individuals).