...The report comes after the Guardian revealed ministers were told they were putting children at lifelong risk of ill health after shelving policies to tackle obesity and junk food until 2025.
Michael Marmot, the director of UCL’s institute of health equity, said the new report spotlighted a dramatic worsening in children’s health in the last decade.
“We used to think of the combination of undernutrition and obesity as a feature of low and middle income countries. We are now seeing it in Britain in 2024.”
“Over a century of history has led us to expect continuous improvements in health. Over the last dozen years that has changed. Healthy life expectancy has declined. Quite simply, people’s fundamental human needs are not being met.”
The Food Foundation report, which included a new analysis of data from government and health sources, spotlighted the rapidly deteriorating state of children’s health.
The height of five-year-olds in the UK has been falling since 2013 and children are also shorter than those in almost all other comparable countries, the report said.
Obesity levels among 10 and 11-year-olds in England have increased by 30% since 2006, with one in five children already officially obese by the time they leave primary school, researchers found.
Cases of type 2 diabetes, which is linked to obesity, have risen by 22% among those aged under 25 in England and Wales in the last five years, the study added...
Morning all. Another drop in VI for the Tories with Survation-on-the-blower, 44 polls since a like for like increase and counting...... The MRP tonight will be interesting, especially given the 140 seat one was modelled on 25% share of the vote
It's just such a remarkable stat. I don't know what kind of distribution pollsters use to get 3% as the 95% CI - but there's probably a 40% odd chance that all else being equal the Tories will have an error in their favour in the headline VI for a poll with 5-10% of the overall percentage to be a multiple point error in their favour. To be hitting the other 60% odd chance of declining or flat every time is quite an impressive achievement.
Yes, it's quite astonishing really. Perhaps their luck changes today?? Or not......
Round up of creeps and nutters standing for Reform. Really quite something
And gosh that pic of KCIII at Troopy colz. I greatly fear he will not see 2025.
King William awaits.
The King does not look well. It would be ironic if he waited many years for the top job only to get it for a short time.
I think everyone, including him, saw that as a given the older his mother got.
I have the impression that William would be quite happy not to get the top job for at least another decade, but it looks like he will be thrown into it before too long. Arguably reluctant monarchs are better at it.
Britain last had a PM older than a monarch when Margaret Thatcher was PM, although she was only half a year older than QEII. Sunak is two years older than the future KWV, and Starmer nearly twenty years older.
Morning all. Another drop in VI for the Tories with Survation-on-the-blower, 44 polls since a like for like increase and counting...... The MRP tonight will be interesting, especially given the 140 seat one was modelled on 25% share of the vote
Another noticeable thing - a lot of ppl speculated that telephone polls would be much more downbeat than online for Reform - so 15% on the telephones seems to fly in the face of that slightly.
Farage is notably more popular - and less unpopular - with the public than Sunak is.
Morning all. Another drop in VI for the Tories with Survation-on-the-blower, 44 polls since a like for like increase and counting...... The MRP tonight will be interesting, especially given the 140 seat one was modelled on 25% share of the vote
Another noticeable thing - a lot of ppl speculated that telephone polls would be much more downbeat than online for Reform - so 15% on the telephones seems to fly in the face of that slightly.
A further thing is that Deltapoll, Focaldata and Survation have shown a pretty large Con to Ref movement over fieldwork this weekend
Morning all. Another drop in VI for the Tories with Survation-on-the-blower, 44 polls since a like for like increase and counting...... The MRP tonight will be interesting, especially given the 140 seat one was modelled on 25% share of the vote
It's just such a remarkable stat. I don't know what kind of distribution pollsters use to get 3% as the 95% CI - but there's probably a 40% odd chance that all else being equal the Tories will have an error in their favour in the headline VI for a poll with 5-10% of the overall percentage to be a multiple point error in their favour. To be hitting the other 60% odd chance of declining or flat every time is quite an impressive achievement.
It's obviously a real decline, Farage returning to lead the party to the right of the Tories will bed in all the way to election day.
The signs are everywhere that the Conservatives are going to decide they lost the election because they weren’t right wing enough. Unusually the post-election bickering is already out in the open.
Exclusive:
Defence minister says the PM could have gone further on tax cuts and ECHR in the manifesto.
Leo Docherty tells @Stefan_Boscia and me that “loads” of people in his seat are supporting Reform which could impact politics in a "revolutionary way" politico.eu/newsletter/lon…
Remarkable how parties do this repeatedly. They lose to an opposition on the other wing of politics, sometimes badly. And in response they decide that what the electorate really wanted was their wing of politics, only more so.
Then 2 or 3 elections later the penny half drops.
It will depend on how Reform do.
If Reform poll in the 12-16% range their voters will be the low-hanging fruit and a Braverman type leader will be elected to try to attract them. Would make some sense.
If Reform poll 5-8% saner heads may prevail and they might conclude a headlong rush further to the right is a dead-end.
It will all come down to the political make-up of the Tory MPs that are left and which 2 they choose to go forward to the membership. The membership will opt for the most right wing option and I don't see that changing for some years.
The only way the Tories are coming back to towards the centre is if the membership are denied any other option.
Survival rates for prostate, bowel, breast and cervical cancer are only just reaching levels that other nations achieved in the early 2000s, according to the most recent figures available.
Experts at Macmillan Cancer Support, which produced the analysis, warned that survival rates were “stuck in the noughties”, trailing decades behind countries such as Denmark and Norway.
Is this another function of the fact the UK population is just far less healthy than some other parts of Europe, same with COVID deaths early on. Being a fatty was very bad for COVID, it can't be good for surviving cancer either.
The link between obesity and cancer is startling. I'll try and dig out some stats but I was really surprised by them last time I had a look. The NHS should be shouting from the rooftops about it.
These new anti-obesity wonder drugs should help with this, and indirectly with diabetes (currently rocketing) as well as cancer.
There seem to be general (possibly anti-inflammatory) beneficial effects with them which go beyond what you'd expect solely from weight loss. We need a few years' more data to be sure, though.
In terms of financial cost/benefit, NICE will be all over the stats in the next few years as data accumulates. I would expect them to save the NHS a lot of money over time, even though long term prescriptions are quite expensive.
The interesting question is how quickly that net benefit would materialise.
Once generic, the savings would be immense. But that's well beyond the next government.
Personally I think if anything sounds too good to be true it usually is.
There are no short cuts. Exercise and healthy diet are the safest route to longer life.
The problem is what is a healthy diet?
For too long our advice has been the completely failed food pyramid and five fruit and veg a day etc which has seen a surge in obesity and suits some people but not others. And the selling of low fat foods as being healthy alternatives.
When in fact for many people's bodies cutting out carbs not fats is far healthier. I've made no secret of the fact I'm on a carnivore ketogenic diet, eating zero fruit and veg a day. Done this for seven months now and am 47 lbs down and counting. Blood healthy, resting heart rate healthy. And able to exercise more too now I'm not carrying around that excess weight anymore. All around in a much, much healthier state.
People need to be more open minded as to what a healthy diet is.
I think you are being a bit simplistic. Simple carbs like sugar, white pasta, and refined grains are of poor nutritional value, but complex carbohydrates such as wholegrain, legumes, fruits, vegetables etc contain a wealth of fibre and micronutrients. As they are slower to breakdown in the gut they do not cause the same insulin spike and are better for gut flora*. Variety in diet matters a lot.
The massive NHANES study showed the risks of a low carb diet in the long term:
* I think the distinction between simple and complex carbs goes a long way to explain the UPF effect.
To remain in a state of ketosis I go for fewer than 20 grams of carbs per day. Complex or simple carbs even a single apple contains more than that so is out.
There are multiple flaws with that study and the conclusion it found. Obviously it's not a double blind study so risks finding correlation rather than causation which is a problem in this era when the medical advice for too long has been that higher carbs are healthier (when my contention is they're not) so you end up with an ice cream sales cause shark attacks conclusion by comparing people who take other, sound, medical advice with those who don't.
Furthermore the conclusion is horribly flawed by making a fundamental category error. It compares non-obese people on a low-carb diet with non-obese people on a higher-carb diet. That's fundamentally flawed as going onto a low-carb diet is a cure for obesity for those who have struggled with it.
Compare non-obese people on a low-carb diet with obese people on a high-carb diet and check the numbers again.
It's a real life cohort study that looked at multiple variables. It does confirm that it works for weightloss in the short term, but does look like keeping weight off that way is dangerous long term.
It's a free country, so ignore the evidence if you like.
It's also true that some of the longest living communities (eg in parts of the Med, or Japan) have diets which are very high in carbohydrates from things like beans/pulses etc.
Refined carbs are pretty clearly bad for you; the story on carbs in general is quite different.
Supercentenarian and remarkable age records exhibit patterns indicative of clerical errors and pension fraud
Nothing is ever certain in politics, of course five years ago Johnson was about to win big.
And then in 2021 many were talking about ten years of Johnson at his peak.
So whilst I am not prepared to say for definite Labour will be in for a decade, it does not appear at the moment they will want to understand why they've lost so many voters. More right wing politics is not what centre-ground voters in the south are looking for, including and especially voters of working age. We want house building, competence and action on how expensive everything is.
The Tories seem to think we're thick and that the ECHR is really the problem. I am telling them right now, nobody cares about this.
Labour are not that good - but the Tories are making them look amazing with this nonsense they are putting out. There is still time to about turn and go back to the centre. But the music is not good, so far.
The problem for the Tories is not primarily one of ideological positioning. Their problems are more general and less readily fixed than that - competence, trust, credibility.
This means they are losing votes in the centre and on the right at the same time. They can't simply go back to the centre. Voters in the centre aren't listening, and they'd lose more voters on the right.
They do have an ideological problem with a lack of coherence. They will need to create a coherent story into which everything they say can fit together, and they haven't had that since they gave up on levelling up and taking advantage of Brexit.
Spot on.
Competence is the main reason the Tories will lose badly: that and lack of credibility. You can’t keep a voter coalition together if all you have to offer them is words. Look at how REF are becoming the UK’s third party on vote count - the reason they are polling as they are is because they don’t have the competency/credibility problem to the right wing, because they’ve never been in power and they’re saying they’ll follow through with what they pledge. Everyone knows the Tories won’t.
At risk of confusing those who think I am a CCHQ plant I rather agree with most of this, although think it should at least partly be used to raise income tax thresholds rather than increase spending
"The six taxes Labour want to raise 1. Extend National Insurance to all sources of income – including savings and property. Pension payments would remain exempt under the £12 billion tax grab but working pensioners would be forced to pay."
Agree. Go further. Merge it. Ridiculous that work is subject to higher rate of tax than unearned income
2. Remove cap on National Insurance. Workers now pay the 8 per cent main rate of NI on earnings up to £50,268, with a rate of 2 per cent on income above this. Under the new plan, higher earners would pay the main rate all the way up the income scale, raising £20 billion.
Doubt this is true as it amounts to a 8%nincrease in higher rate tax, unless they have a wheeze to abolish the 45% rate at the same time.
"3. Equalise capital gains tax with income tax rates, raising an estimated £16 billion."
Can't see an issue but I think the return of indexing would be required
"4. Plug gaps in inheritance tax by ending reliefs that allow farmland, business property and pension pots to be passed on tax-free. This would raise £4 billion."
Why on earth are pensions (other than between spouses) *not* subject to IHT?
=5. Reform property tax to make it ‘fairer’. While those in low-cost homes would see bills cut, those living in more expensive areas could see charges more than double."
Painful but fair.
"6. Introduce a ‘jackpot tax’ on ‘extreme wealth’ – raising £10 billion a year."
Should be levied on corporations as well as individuals.
I would not quarrel with some of those.
And £60bn is a number in the rough ballpark we need, and they do target wealth which is also correct. Part of that may I hope be savings due to falling interest rates etc. One hopes part of that number will be savings as interest rates fall.
The farmland one would be ... interesting ... and probably not in a good way.
Not so good for Mr Jones with a few fields and some cattle, probably OK for Mega-farm Ltd.
At risk of confusing those who think I am a CCHQ plant I rather agree with most of this, although think it should at least partly be used to raise income tax thresholds rather than increase spending
"The six taxes Labour want to raise 1. Extend National Insurance to all sources of income – including savings and property. Pension payments would remain exempt under the £12 billion tax grab but working pensioners would be forced to pay."
Agree. Go further. Merge it. Ridiculous that work is subject to higher rate of tax than unearned income
2. Remove cap on National Insurance. Workers now pay the 8 per cent main rate of NI on earnings up to £50,268, with a rate of 2 per cent on income above this. Under the new plan, higher earners would pay the main rate all the way up the income scale, raising £20 billion.
Doubt this is true as it amounts to a 8%nincrease in higher rate tax, unless they have a wheeze to abolish the 45% rate at the same time.
"3. Equalise capital gains tax with income tax rates, raising an estimated £16 billion."
Can't see an issue but I think the return of indexing would be required
"4. Plug gaps in inheritance tax by ending reliefs that allow farmland, business property and pension pots to be passed on tax-free. This would raise £4 billion."
Why on earth are pensions (other than between spouses) *not* subject to IHT?
=5. Reform property tax to make it ‘fairer’. While those in low-cost homes would see bills cut, those living in more expensive areas could see charges more than double."
Painful but fair.
"6. Introduce a ‘jackpot tax’ on ‘extreme wealth’ – raising £10 billion a year."
Should be levied on corporations as well as individuals.
I would not quarrel with some of those.
And £60bn is a number in the rough ballpark we need, and they do target wealth which is also correct. Part of that may I hope be savings due to falling interest rates etc. One hopes part of that number will be savings as interest rates fall.
Me too.They all seem sensible in priciple, and fairer as an approach. The devil would be in the detail (I don't know enough about the IHT gaps to comment) and arguments over what level to set some of them at.
Top of my own personal hit list would be to get rid of the inverted Council Tax gearing so that Band H properties pay a much lower proportion of their value than Band A. If anything it should be ratcheted the other way round. In the long run it ought to become a better property tax based on value rather than crude bands.
Morning all. Another drop in VI for the Tories with Survation-on-the-blower, 44 polls since a like for like increase and counting...... The MRP tonight will be interesting, especially given the 140 seat one was modelled on 25% share of the vote
Another noticeable thing - a lot of ppl speculated that telephone polls would be much more downbeat than online for Reform - so 15% on the telephones seems to fly in the face of that slightly.
A further thing is that Deltapoll, Focaldata and Survation have shown a pretty large Con to Ref movement over fieldwork this weekend
It's remarkable - I expected it to fizzle out but it seems like they're picking up steam. Deltapoll, R&W, Techne, and Yougov the ones to watch for more crossover (and if there's a couple clustered together it'll be yet more attention for Farage).
Round up of creeps and nutters standing for Reform. Really quite something
And gosh that pic of KCIII at Troopy colz. I greatly fear he will not see 2025.
Not living in the UK I don’t know how matters such as Reform candidates with interesting views get publicised locally in constituencies - is it the sort of thing that gets splashed all over the local newspapers, local social media pages and regional tv news or is it just a couple of minutes on Radio 4 news round up and a mention by Amol?
Will enough people who might have voted for these candidates hear about this and change their vote in disgust to matter or is it just white noise in the election?
It's a good question. I'd identify:
1 - Probably twitter to get attention.
2 - To spread amongst gathered community, Facebook Groups. Especially amongst the older, like most of us. Community FB groups of 1-20k size groups are fairly routine afaics.
3 - Is there a mention for Instagram and Youtube shorts?
4 - Then local papers, local radio and an honourable mention to BBC regions and their Local Democracy Reporting Service. How important is chat by DJs and Drivetime?
There are also local TV stations but they don't imo get cut through.
Round up of creeps and nutters standing for Reform. Really quite something
And gosh that pic of KCIII at Troopy colz. I greatly fear he will not see 2025.
That one in Melton and Syston was all over the local paper. It isn't old Social Media.
Reform is a fascist party in all but name. These are people who would have followed Mosley, and I don't mean Michael.
We are not far off the "Everyone who disagrees with me is Hitler" Meme.
I'm a big fan of believing what people are brave enough to put in their manifestos and Reform's is... concerning.
Is it ? What is so concerning about it. Not enough cycle lanes ?
Their net zero policy doesn't concern me. They clearly want us to play our part in reducing Emissions and will go for Nuclear.
I read it, or skim read it, some of it is okay, some of it I do not agree with. Wouldn't say it was concerning apart from the financial stuff. Been ably demolished on Twitter.
I would not vote for them but they are hardly going to Annexe the Sudetenland.
The signs are everywhere that the Conservatives are going to decide they lost the election because they weren’t right wing enough. Unusually the post-election bickering is already out in the open.
Exclusive:
Defence minister says the PM could have gone further on tax cuts and ECHR in the manifesto.
Leo Docherty tells @Stefan_Boscia and me that “loads” of people in his seat are supporting Reform which could impact politics in a "revolutionary way" politico.eu/newsletter/lon…
Remarkable how parties do this repeatedly. They lose to an opposition on the other wing of politics, sometimes badly. And in response they decide that what the electorate really wanted was their wing of politics, only more so.
Then 2 or 3 elections later the penny half drops.
Or, like Labour and the Left in 1983, they will simply blame the result on the Right being split, not appreciating that if Reform simply disappeared, they'd still have lost big time. But blaming someone else is always easier than accepting some home truths about their own performance and record.
It is also a manifestation of the problem the Left used to have: the manifesto should be a consumer-friendly presentation of a programme for Government not a fantasy checklist of the desires and aspirations you think will get people to vote for you.
Round up of creeps and nutters standing for Reform. Really quite something
And gosh that pic of KCIII at Troopy colz. I greatly fear he will not see 2025.
That one in Melton and Syston was all over the local paper. It isn't old Social Media.
Reform is a fascist party in all but name. These are people who would have followed Mosley, and I don't mean Michael.
We are not far off the "Everyone who disagrees with me is Hitler" Meme.
I'm a big fan of believing what people are brave enough to put in their manifestos and Reform's is... concerning.
Is it ? What is so concerning about it. Not enough cycle lanes ?
Their net zero policy doesn't concern me. They clearly want us to play our part in reducing Emissions and will go for Nuclear.
I read it, or skim read it, some of it is okay, some of it I do not agree with. Wouldn't say it was concerning. I would not vote for them but they are hardly going to Annexe the Sudetenland.
Round up of creeps and nutters standing for Reform. Really quite something
And gosh that pic of KCIII at Troopy colz. I greatly fear he will not see 2025.
That one in Melton and Syston was all over the local paper. It isn't old Social Media.
Reform is a fascist party in all but name. These are people who would have followed Mosley, and I don't mean Michael.
We are not far off the "Everyone who disagrees with me is Hitler" Meme.
I'm a big fan of believing what people are brave enough to put in their manifestos and Reform's is... concerning.
Is it ? What is so concerning about it. Not enough cycle lanes ?
Their net zero policy doesn't concern me. They clearly want us to play our part in reducing Emissions and will go for Nuclear.
I read it, or skim read it, some of it is okay, some of it I do not agree with. Wouldn't say it was concerning. I would not vote for them but they are hardly going to Annexe the Sudetenland.
Well if they pledged to annexe the Sudetenland at least it'd show 1 party in the country is serious about economic growth.
"But Farage is also close to and has repeatedly praised Trump, who he interviewed for GB News in March. For his part, Trump has described Farage as a “handsome guy” at a campaign rally earlier this year — and appeared via video at Farage’s lavish 60th birthday celebration in April to congratulate the Brexiteer on a “truly remarkable sixty years on Earth.” "
If you repeatedly praise a fascist, get a job offer to help elect one, and get lavish praise in return, I think that pretty well defines you in their image, whatever else you might choose not to say in public.
Just an aside, but it absolutely pissed it down in Yorkshire yesterday. Hours of incredibly heavy rain. Must've been plenty of flooding. Horrendous stuff. Unlikely, but if it recurs on polling day that could affect things a lot.
Don't worry about it, my Yorkshire grandma always told me
If on St Alena's day it pisses with rain On St Elizabeth of Aragon's day you'll see the sun plain
Appen
Plus the less waterproof will have postal voted. The ebikers will stay at home, apparently the motors can't take UK weather, which will hit the lib Dems.
The theory used to be that bad weather helped Tories because lab voters are spineless and lazy. Now that con equals over 70 it probably hurts them
Morning all. Another drop in VI for the Tories with Survation-on-the-blower, 44 polls since a like for like increase and counting...... The MRP tonight will be interesting, especially given the 140 seat one was modelled on 25% share of the vote
Another noticeable thing - a lot of ppl speculated that telephone polls would be much more downbeat than online for Reform - so 15% on the telephones seems to fly in the face of that slightly.
A further thing is that Deltapoll, Focaldata and Survation have shown a pretty large Con to Ref movement over fieldwork this weekend
It's remarkable - I expected it to fizzle out but it seems like they're picking up steam. Deltapoll, R&W, Techne, and Yougov the ones to watch for more crossover (and if there's a couple clustered together it'll be yet more attention for Farage).
My gut says to lay REF this week as it’ll be the high water mark. But I started this election expecting the Tory vote to firm up and REF to fall back. And I kept expecting it; and kept expecting it; and kept expecting it. It’s not come so far. Will it come in the next 7 days? So I am starting to really doubt myself.
Inflation down to 2%. But apparently the "wrong sort of inflation" to cut rates. Come back Mark Carney
I think the forecasters could be wrong and we could see a 0.25 cut tomorrow. I wouldn’t, however, then expect to see further cuts (if any) until the Autumn.
Would be a much needed boost for the Tories. Could help them get into triple digit number of MPs...
Round up of creeps and nutters standing for Reform. Really quite something
And gosh that pic of KCIII at Troopy colz. I greatly fear he will not see 2025.
Not living in the UK I don’t know how matters such as Reform candidates with interesting views get publicised locally in constituencies - is it the sort of thing that gets splashed all over the local newspapers, local social media pages and regional tv news or is it just a couple of minutes on Radio 4 news round up and a mention by Amol?
Will enough people who might have voted for these candidates hear about this and change their vote in disgust to matter or is it just white noise in the election?
It's a good question. I'd identify:
1 - Probably twitter to get attention.
2 - To spread amongst gathered community, Facebook Groups. Especially amongst the older, like most of us. Community FB groups of 1-20k size groups are fairly routine afaics.
3 - Is there a mention for Instagram and Youtube shorts?
4 - Then local papers, local radio and an honourable mention to BBC regions and their Local Democracy Reporting Service. How important is chat by DJs and Drivetime?
There are also local TV stations but they don't imo get cut through.
A friend of mine ran a local TV station for all of 6 months. Told him it would be a flop. It was. He had 21 full and part time staff and was expecting to turn over £70K a month. Was never going to work. Ended up being a fire sale to a larger group. They have no cut through. A crazy idea.
Round up of creeps and nutters standing for Reform. Really quite something
And gosh that pic of KCIII at Troopy colz. I greatly fear he will not see 2025.
That one in Melton and Syston was all over the local paper. It isn't old Social Media.
Reform is a fascist party in all but name. These are people who would have followed Mosley, and I don't mean Michael.
We are not far off the "Everyone who disagrees with me is Hitler" Meme.
I'm a big fan of believing what people are brave enough to put in their manifestos and Reform's is... concerning.
Is it ? What is so concerning about it. Not enough cycle lanes ?
Their net zero policy doesn't concern me. They clearly want us to play our part in reducing Emissions and will go for Nuclear.
I read it, or skim read it, some of it is okay, some of it I do not agree with. Wouldn't say it was concerning. I would not vote for them but they are hardly going to Annexe the Sudetenland.
Oddly enough, no boomer baiting on cyclists. +1 from me.
This bit caught my eye though: Protect our servicemen and women on active duty inside and outside the UK from civil law and human rights lawyers.
"But Farage is also close to and has repeatedly praised Trump, who he interviewed for GB News in March. For his part, Trump has described Farage as a “handsome guy” at a campaign rally earlier this year — and appeared via video at Farage’s lavish 60th birthday celebration in April to congratulate the Brexiteer on a “truly remarkable sixty years on Earth.” "
If you repeatedly praise a fascist, get a job offer to help elect one, and get lavish praise in return, I think that pretty well defines you in their image, whatever else you might choose not to say in public.
Headwinds for UK fascism
PM not head of state PM not commander of military Roderick Spode No guns
Remarkably, with the one exception of that poll showing RefCon on 41%, the polling of these loose left and right blocs has been almost in stasis, over time and between pollsters. Only the tiniest of variation. All the churn has been intra-bloc rather than between. The last time there was an actual major shift was during the Truss autumn PMship.
Election campaign swing at the moment all seem to be about people faffing over their precise vote and tactical considerations, rather than being convinced or put off by one or other of the main parties.
At risk of confusing those who think I am a CCHQ plant I rather agree with most of this, although think it should at least partly be used to raise income tax thresholds rather than increase spending
"The six taxes Labour want to raise 1. Extend National Insurance to all sources of income – including savings and property. Pension payments would remain exempt under the £12 billion tax grab but working pensioners would be forced to pay."
Agree. Go further. Merge it. Ridiculous that work is subject to higher rate of tax than unearned income
2. Remove cap on National Insurance. Workers now pay the 8 per cent main rate of NI on earnings up to £50,268, with a rate of 2 per cent on income above this. Under the new plan, higher earners would pay the main rate all the way up the income scale, raising £20 billion.
Doubt this is true as it amounts to a 8%nincrease in higher rate tax, unless they have a wheeze to abolish the 45% rate at the same time.
"3. Equalise capital gains tax with income tax rates, raising an estimated £16 billion."
Can't see an issue but I think the return of indexing would be required
"4. Plug gaps in inheritance tax by ending reliefs that allow farmland, business property and pension pots to be passed on tax-free. This would raise £4 billion."
Why on earth are pensions (other than between spouses) *not* subject to IHT?
=5. Reform property tax to make it ‘fairer’. While those in low-cost homes would see bills cut, those living in more expensive areas could see charges more than double."
Painful but fair.
"6. Introduce a ‘jackpot tax’ on ‘extreme wealth’ – raising £10 billion a year."
Should be levied on corporations as well as individuals.
I would not quarrel with some of those.
And £60bn is a number in the rough ballpark we need, and they do target wealth which is also correct. Part of that may I hope be savings due to falling interest rates etc. One hopes part of that number will be savings as interest rates fall.
Me too.They all seem sensible in priciple, and fairer as an approach. The devil would be in the detail (I don't know enough about the IHT gaps to comment) and arguments over what level to set some of them at.
Top of my own personal hit list would be to get rid of the inverted Council Tax gearing so that Band H properties pay a much lower proportion of their value than Band A. If anything it should be ratcheted the other way round. In the long run it ought to become a better property tax based on value rather than crude bands.
IHT is tied up with IHT avoidance via eg lifetime gifts and trusts, and companies where the Directors are just swapped around.
I'm not sure it's complex, but it would be a sea change in the basics.
Daily Mail would Wail and the Rump Tories would fume, but if Starmer has a decade, now is the time with time for benefits to feed through to local services. There may be a great howling noise from London, but less so than say 3-4 years ago as property values have quite significantly 'levelled up' regionally.
I'll potentially take a hit on rental property, especially in losing my leeway to charge below market rents, but my main dwelling is Band D, which is the formal average so should be relatively unaffected.
"But Farage is also close to and has repeatedly praised Trump, who he interviewed for GB News in March. For his part, Trump has described Farage as a “handsome guy” at a campaign rally earlier this year — and appeared via video at Farage’s lavish 60th birthday celebration in April to congratulate the Brexiteer on a “truly remarkable sixty years on Earth.” "
If you repeatedly praise a fascist, get a job offer to help elect one, and get lavish praise in return, I think that pretty well defines you in their image, whatever else you might choose not to say in public.
Headwinds for UK fascism
PM not head of state PM not commander of military Roderick Spode No guns
Not going to happen here
Italy would like a word re the first two and the fourth. The third is a fictional character.
Morning all. Another drop in VI for the Tories with Survation-on-the-blower, 44 polls since a like for like increase and counting...... The MRP tonight will be interesting, especially given the 140 seat one was modelled on 25% share of the vote
It's just such a remarkable stat. I don't know what kind of distribution pollsters use to get 3% as the 95% CI - but there's probably a 40% odd chance that all else being equal the Tories will have an error in their favour in the headline VI for a poll with 5-10% of the overall percentage to be a multiple point error in their favour. To be hitting the other 60% odd chance of declining or flat every time is quite an impressive achievement.
Standard confidence interval of a proportion gets to ~3pp for the 95%CI width on normal vote shares and normal poll sizes for major parties, so I've assumed it's just that.
And yes, the lack of any, even within the 95%CI, increases in point estimate is pretty astonishing.
Round up of creeps and nutters standing for Reform. Really quite something
And gosh that pic of KCIII at Troopy colz. I greatly fear he will not see 2025.
That one in Melton and Syston was all over the local paper. It isn't old Social Media.
Reform is a fascist party in all but name. These are people who would have followed Mosley, and I don't mean Michael.
We are not far off the "Everyone who disagrees with me is Hitler" Meme.
I'm a big fan of believing what people are brave enough to put in their manifestos and Reform's is... concerning.
Is it ? What is so concerning about it. Not enough cycle lanes ?
Their net zero policy doesn't concern me. They clearly want us to play our part in reducing Emissions and will go for Nuclear.
I read it, or skim read it, some of it is okay, some of it I do not agree with. Wouldn't say it was concerning. I would not vote for them but they are hardly going to Annexe the Sudetenland.
Oddly enough, no boomer baiting on cyclists. +1 from me.
This bit caught my eye though: Protect our servicemen and women on active duty inside and outside the UK from civil law and human rights lawyers.
Inside. Inside.
Civil Law and Human Rights Law. Not criminal Law.
The USA will not allow any of its troops to be subject to the IWT.
We have Tories campaigning for the same as Reform advocate. Human Rights Lawyers were abusing their position over Iraq and some were struck off.
At risk of confusing those who think I am a CCHQ plant I rather agree with most of this, although think it should at least partly be used to raise income tax thresholds rather than increase spending
"The six taxes Labour want to raise 1. Extend National Insurance to all sources of income – including savings and property. Pension payments would remain exempt under the £12 billion tax grab but working pensioners would be forced to pay."
Agree. Go further. Merge it. Ridiculous that work is subject to higher rate of tax than unearned income
2. Remove cap on National Insurance. Workers now pay the 8 per cent main rate of NI on earnings up to £50,268, with a rate of 2 per cent on income above this. Under the new plan, higher earners would pay the main rate all the way up the income scale, raising £20 billion.
Doubt this is true as it amounts to a 8%nincrease in higher rate tax, unless they have a wheeze to abolish the 45% rate at the same time.
"3. Equalise capital gains tax with income tax rates, raising an estimated £16 billion."
Can't see an issue but I think the return of indexing would be required
"4. Plug gaps in inheritance tax by ending reliefs that allow farmland, business property and pension pots to be passed on tax-free. This would raise £4 billion."
Why on earth are pensions (other than between spouses) *not* subject to IHT?
=5. Reform property tax to make it ‘fairer’. While those in low-cost homes would see bills cut, those living in more expensive areas could see charges more than double."
Painful but fair.
"6. Introduce a ‘jackpot tax’ on ‘extreme wealth’ – raising £10 billion a year."
Should be levied on corporations as well as individuals.
I would not quarrel with some of those.
And £60bn is a number in the rough ballpark we need, and they do target wealth which is also correct. Part of that may I hope be savings due to falling interest rates etc. One hopes part of that number will be savings as interest rates fall.
The farmland one would be ... interesting ... and probably not in a good way.
Not so good for Mr Jones with a few fields and some cattle, probably OK for Mega-farm Ltd.
Do you have numbers on how many of those small farms there are? UK farms area stats have always had us at the upper end of size distribution in European farm sizes since the 1960-70s afaics.
There has been a trend to 'downshifted farmers who used to be professionals' and 'hobby farmers' and 'weekend smallholders' for a couple of decades; I would not be *that* concerned about those, but they can sometimes be distinctive small contributions to local food economies who get disproportionate attention.
Examples would be Kate Humble and Sarah Beaney (I think). Jeremy Clarkson is on the egde, as it is a sizeable farm. Adam Henson is in the "diversified farmer" rather than "farm on the side" group.
"The Labour Party has published its manifesto today. Astonishingly, its 136 pages provide not a single concrete action relating to welfare benefits – the issue has been almost entirely airbrushed from the document, leaving disabled claimants with no idea what Labour has in store for them."
Benefits and Work charity.
Lack of concrete sums up Labour's manifesto well I think.
Inflation down to 2%. But apparently the "wrong sort of inflation" to cut rates. Come back Mark Carney
I think the forecasters could be wrong and we could see a 0.25 cut tomorrow. I wouldn’t, however, then expect to see further cuts (if any) until the Autumn.
Can’t imagine they’d want to be in the spotlight for what would come across as an overtly political decision, two weeks before the election.
Morning all. Another drop in VI for the Tories with Survation-on-the-blower, 44 polls since a like for like increase and counting...... The MRP tonight will be interesting, especially given the 140 seat one was modelled on 25% share of the vote
It's just such a remarkable stat. I don't know what kind of distribution pollsters use to get 3% as the 95% CI - but there's probably a 40% odd chance that all else being equal the Tories will have an error in their favour in the headline VI for a poll with 5-10% of the overall percentage to be a multiple point error in their favour. To be hitting the other 60% odd chance of declining or flat every time is quite an impressive achievement.
What we're interested in here is the change between one poll and the other, so the occurrence we're most interested in is where one poll has an error not in the Tories favour, and the next poll does, producing a change in the Tories favour on top of whatever underlying real change in support occurs.
For a theoretically perfect opinion poll with a sample size of 2,000 and for an opinion with 25% support, the standard error is ~1%. This means that about two-thirds of the time you would expect the measured support to be in the range +/-1% (and 95% of the time within +/-2%)
So, for any pair of polls, the probability that the Tories see at least a +2pp increase in support due to statistical noise is 1-in-36. That is the probability that the first poll of the pair was on the low tail of the distribution, and the second poll was in the high tail.
The probability of that not happening in 44 pairs of polls is 29%. If it has happened, then the reason we've not seen the Tories go up in the polls at all is because the underlying trend is at least 2pp against them between every pair of polls (so possibly 4pp in total, because this extends over two weeks)
So there's a pretty good chance that the trend against the Tories is very strong, indicative of a very poor election campaign.
It's notable that in the 2017GE campaign, the benchmark against which all disastrous campaigns are measured, May only lost about 5pp from her polling peak. Most of the closing of the gap came by Labour squeezing votes from all the other opposition parties, seeing their support rise by 15pp from their nadir.
So, on a purely numerical basis, on the basis of the opinion poll evidence we have thus far, Sunak is making a decent fist of challenging May for having rum the worst-ever general election campaign.
"But Farage is also close to and has repeatedly praised Trump, who he interviewed for GB News in March. For his part, Trump has described Farage as a “handsome guy” at a campaign rally earlier this year — and appeared via video at Farage’s lavish 60th birthday celebration in April to congratulate the Brexiteer on a “truly remarkable sixty years on Earth.” "
If you repeatedly praise a fascist, get a job offer to help elect one, and get lavish praise in return, I think that pretty well defines you in their image, whatever else you might choose not to say in public.
Headwinds for UK fascism
PM not head of state PM not commander of military Roderick Spode No guns
Not going to happen here
Italy would like a word re the first two and the fourth. The third is a fictional character.
Rain on my parade, why don't you. You will be telling me there's no such person as James Bond next. Shorthand for susceptibility to ridicule vs the humourless Germans, Italians etc
We will have to hope that Good King Billy is made of sterner stuff than VEIII
Survival rates for prostate, bowel, breast and cervical cancer are only just reaching levels that other nations achieved in the early 2000s, according to the most recent figures available.
Experts at Macmillan Cancer Support, which produced the analysis, warned that survival rates were “stuck in the noughties”, trailing decades behind countries such as Denmark and Norway.
Is this another function of the fact the UK population is just far less healthy than some other parts of Europe, same with COVID deaths early on. Being a fatty was very bad for COVID, it can't be good for surviving cancer either.
The link between obesity and cancer is startling. I'll try and dig out some stats but I was really surprised by them last time I had a look. The NHS should be shouting from the rooftops about it.
These new anti-obesity wonder drugs should help with this, and indirectly with diabetes (currently rocketing) as well as cancer.
There seem to be general (possibly anti-inflammatory) beneficial effects with them which go beyond what you'd expect solely from weight loss. We need a few years' more data to be sure, though.
In terms of financial cost/benefit, NICE will be all over the stats in the next few years as data accumulates. I would expect them to save the NHS a lot of money over time, even though long term prescriptions are quite expensive.
The interesting question is how quickly that net benefit would materialise.
Once generic, the savings would be immense. But that's well beyond the next government.
Personally I think if anything sounds too good to be true it usually is.
There are no short cuts. Exercise and healthy diet are the safest route to longer life.
The problem is what is a healthy diet?
For too long our advice has been the completely failed food pyramid and five fruit and veg a day etc which has seen a surge in obesity and suits some people but not others. And the selling of low fat foods as being healthy alternatives.
When in fact for many people's bodies cutting out carbs not fats is far healthier. I've made no secret of the fact I'm on a carnivore ketogenic diet, eating zero fruit and veg a day. Done this for seven months now and am 47 lbs down and counting. Blood healthy, resting heart rate healthy. And able to exercise more too now I'm not carrying around that excess weight anymore. All around in a much, much healthier state.
People need to be more open minded as to what a healthy diet is.
I think you are being a bit simplistic. Simple carbs like sugar, white pasta, and refined grains are of poor nutritional value, but complex carbohydrates such as wholegrain, legumes, fruits, vegetables etc contain a wealth of fibre and micronutrients. As they are slower to breakdown in the gut they do not cause the same insulin spike and are better for gut flora*. Variety in diet matters a lot.
The massive NHANES study showed the risks of a low carb diet in the long term:
* I think the distinction between simple and complex carbs goes a long way to explain the UPF effect.
To remain in a state of ketosis I go for fewer than 20 grams of carbs per day. Complex or simple carbs even a single apple contains more than that so is out.
There are multiple flaws with that study and the conclusion it found. Obviously it's not a double blind study so risks finding correlation rather than causation which is a problem in this era when the medical advice for too long has been that higher carbs are healthier (when my contention is they're not) so you end up with an ice cream sales cause shark attacks conclusion by comparing people who take other, sound, medical advice with those who don't.
Furthermore the conclusion is horribly flawed by making a fundamental category error. It compares non-obese people on a low-carb diet with non-obese people on a higher-carb diet. That's fundamentally flawed as going onto a low-carb diet is a cure for obesity for those who have struggled with it.
Compare non-obese people on a low-carb diet with obese people on a high-carb diet and check the numbers again.
It's a real life cohort study that looked at multiple variables. It does confirm that it works for weightloss in the short term, but does look like keeping weight off that way is dangerous long term.
It's a free country, so ignore the evidence if you like.
It's also true that some of the longest living communities (eg in parts of the Med, or Japan) have diets which are very high in carbohydrates from things like beans/pulses etc.
Refined carbs are pretty clearly bad for you; the story on carbs in general is quite different.
Supercentenarian and remarkable age records exhibit patterns indicative of clerical errors and pension fraud
There was also a response, which I see makes the same point I did ("blue zones regions are not defined as places with supercentenarians, as the pre-print author seems to think."):
“The database developed for the present study includes all individuals born in Villagrande from 1876 to 1912. For each individual we traced the exact date at death or the proof that he/she was still alive at the date of investigation. The data was gathered from civil registers (which record all births, marriages, and deaths), parish registers and the population register (anagrafe). All information has been collected in the municipality population registration office and was cross-checked with information reported in the military register and orally reported information from any relatives of these persons. With regard to those who died outside the village, the information was recovered by using annotations on date and place of death reported in the margin of the birth certificate or transcription of the date of death in the anagrafe. For those who emigrated and for whom no death has been reported, the survival status has been verified with the municipality of current residence.”..
Read the whole thing.
It doesn't completely disprove the alternative hypothesis, obviously - but it does completely debunk a number of its claims (for example its conflation of unfit young Okinawans with healthy elderly ones).
Wanted to ask a question re this so called huge activity on social media that the parties are involved in. I'm only on Facebook (I use whatsapp a lot, but don't get ads there and very occasionally Twitter, but tend to avoid it).
So far I have not had an ad from anyone. I get lots of local LD stuff, but that is because I am signed up for it. I also read the Tory candidates 'Re-elect' Facebook page daily (1 post per day) but I haven't received an ad from anybody. The Tory Facebook page is also noticeable by its lack of activity. Most days there are no comments and if there is it is only 1 or 2 and only about half a dozen likes. Each day it is the same. A number of group photos from different places in the constituency and a plug for the cafe/pub they visited that day.
Who are these ads going to and why not me? It is difficult to believe the algorithms know I am a wasted effort (or can they?).
Survival rates for prostate, bowel, breast and cervical cancer are only just reaching levels that other nations achieved in the early 2000s, according to the most recent figures available.
Experts at Macmillan Cancer Support, which produced the analysis, warned that survival rates were “stuck in the noughties”, trailing decades behind countries such as Denmark and Norway.
Is this another function of the fact the UK population is just far less healthy than some other parts of Europe, same with COVID deaths early on. Being a fatty was very bad for COVID, it can't be good for surviving cancer either.
The link between obesity and cancer is startling. I'll try and dig out some stats but I was really surprised by them last time I had a look. The NHS should be shouting from the rooftops about it.
These new anti-obesity wonder drugs should help with this, and indirectly with diabetes (currently rocketing) as well as cancer.
There seem to be general (possibly anti-inflammatory) beneficial effects with them which go beyond what you'd expect solely from weight loss. We need a few years' more data to be sure, though.
In terms of financial cost/benefit, NICE will be all over the stats in the next few years as data accumulates. I would expect them to save the NHS a lot of money over time, even though long term prescriptions are quite expensive.
The interesting question is how quickly that net benefit would materialise.
Once generic, the savings would be immense. But that's well beyond the next government.
Personally I think if anything sounds too good to be true it usually is.
There are no short cuts. Exercise and healthy diet are the safest route to longer life.
The problem is what is a healthy diet?
For too long our advice has been the completely failed food pyramid and five fruit and veg a day etc which has seen a surge in obesity and suits some people but not others. And the selling of low fat foods as being healthy alternatives.
When in fact for many people's bodies cutting out carbs not fats is far healthier. I've made no secret of the fact I'm on a carnivore ketogenic diet, eating zero fruit and veg a day. Done this for seven months now and am 47 lbs down and counting. Blood healthy, resting heart rate healthy. And able to exercise more too now I'm not carrying around that excess weight anymore. All around in a much, much healthier state.
People need to be more open minded as to what a healthy diet is.
I think you are being a bit simplistic. Simple carbs like sugar, white pasta, and refined grains are of poor nutritional value, but complex carbohydrates such as wholegrain, legumes, fruits, vegetables etc contain a wealth of fibre and micronutrients. As they are slower to breakdown in the gut they do not cause the same insulin spike and are better for gut flora*. Variety in diet matters a lot.
The massive NHANES study showed the risks of a low carb diet in the long term:
* I think the distinction between simple and complex carbs goes a long way to explain the UPF effect.
To remain in a state of ketosis I go for fewer than 20 grams of carbs per day. Complex or simple carbs even a single apple contains more than that so is out.
There are multiple flaws with that study and the conclusion it found. Obviously it's not a double blind study so risks finding correlation rather than causation which is a problem in this era when the medical advice for too long has been that higher carbs are healthier (when my contention is they're not) so you end up with an ice cream sales cause shark attacks conclusion by comparing people who take other, sound, medical advice with those who don't.
Furthermore the conclusion is horribly flawed by making a fundamental category error. It compares non-obese people on a low-carb diet with non-obese people on a higher-carb diet. That's fundamentally flawed as going onto a low-carb diet is a cure for obesity for those who have struggled with it.
Compare non-obese people on a low-carb diet with obese people on a high-carb diet and check the numbers again.
It's a real life cohort study that looked at multiple variables. It does confirm that it works for weightloss in the short term, but does look like keeping weight off that way is dangerous long term.
It's a free country, so ignore the evidence if you like.
And someone I know who was on it dropped dead of a heart attack at 50. So that’s obvious proof! And prior to that he was praising it verbatim just like @BartholomewRoberts
Seriously I suspect it’s lethal for the organs and pretty terrible for the body long term.
BR is correct about low fat diets and the dangers. But the problem isn’t complex carbohydrates. It’s sugars. Obviously carbs convert to glycogen but that’s not bad.
Personally? It’s a fairly crazy fad that will eventually be shown to cause serious long term damage. By then it will be too late for some.
...The report comes after the Guardian revealed ministers were told they were putting children at lifelong risk of ill health after shelving policies to tackle obesity and junk food until 2025.
Michael Marmot, the director of UCL’s institute of health equity, said the new report spotlighted a dramatic worsening in children’s health in the last decade.
“We used to think of the combination of undernutrition and obesity as a feature of low and middle income countries. We are now seeing it in Britain in 2024.”
“Over a century of history has led us to expect continuous improvements in health. Over the last dozen years that has changed. Healthy life expectancy has declined. Quite simply, people’s fundamental human needs are not being met.”
The Food Foundation report, which included a new analysis of data from government and health sources, spotlighted the rapidly deteriorating state of children’s health.
The height of five-year-olds in the UK has been falling since 2013 and children are also shorter than those in almost all other comparable countries, the report said.
Obesity levels among 10 and 11-year-olds in England have increased by 30% since 2006, with one in five children already officially obese by the time they leave primary school, researchers found.
Cases of type 2 diabetes, which is linked to obesity, have risen by 22% among those aged under 25 in England and Wales in the last five years, the study added...
And, contrary to what certain people believe, that's not happening because they're eating fruit and vegetables. Eating too much of Big Food's UPF on the other hand.....
Morning all. Another drop in VI for the Tories with Survation-on-the-blower, 44 polls since a like for like increase and counting...... The MRP tonight will be interesting, especially given the 140 seat one was modelled on 25% share of the vote
Another noticeable thing - a lot of ppl speculated that telephone polls would be much more downbeat than online for Reform - so 15% on the telephones seems to fly in the face of that slightly.
Really? I would go the other way. I would argue a phone poll is more likely to find older voters and the less online voters, and that that’s the Reform pool. I also can’t shake the ten year old sense that phone polls are better, but I know that’s wrong really.
Wanted to ask a question re this so called huge activity on social media that the parties are involved in. I'm only on Facebook (I use whatsapp a lot, but don't get ads there and very occasionally Twitter, but tend to avoid it).
So far I have not had an ad from anyone. I get lots of local LD stuff, but that is because I am signed up for it. I also read the Tory candidates 'Re-elect' Facebook page daily (1 post per day) but I haven't received an ad from anybody. The Tory Facebook page is also noticeable by its lack of activity. Most days there are no comments and if there is it is only 1 or 2 and only about half a dozen likes. Each day it is the same. A number of group photos from different places in the constituency and a plug for the cafe/pub they visited that day.
Who are these ads going to and why not me? It is difficult to believe the algorithms know I am a wasted effort (or can they?).
I get nothing either. I have max privacy settings and follow nothing political, but I’d have thought that makes me look like a blank slate.
Survival rates for prostate, bowel, breast and cervical cancer are only just reaching levels that other nations achieved in the early 2000s, according to the most recent figures available.
Experts at Macmillan Cancer Support, which produced the analysis, warned that survival rates were “stuck in the noughties”, trailing decades behind countries such as Denmark and Norway.
Is this another function of the fact the UK population is just far less healthy than some other parts of Europe, same with COVID deaths early on. Being a fatty was very bad for COVID, it can't be good for surviving cancer either.
The link between obesity and cancer is startling. I'll try and dig out some stats but I was really surprised by them last time I had a look. The NHS should be shouting from the rooftops about it.
These new anti-obesity wonder drugs should help with this, and indirectly with diabetes (currently rocketing) as well as cancer.
There seem to be general (possibly anti-inflammatory) beneficial effects with them which go beyond what you'd expect solely from weight loss. We need a few years' more data to be sure, though.
In terms of financial cost/benefit, NICE will be all over the stats in the next few years as data accumulates. I would expect them to save the NHS a lot of money over time, even though long term prescriptions are quite expensive.
The interesting question is how quickly that net benefit would materialise.
Once generic, the savings would be immense. But that's well beyond the next government.
Personally I think if anything sounds too good to be true it usually is.
There are no short cuts. Exercise and healthy diet are the safest route to longer life.
The problem is what is a healthy diet?
For too long our advice has been the completely failed food pyramid and five fruit and veg a day etc which has seen a surge in obesity and suits some people but not others. And the selling of low fat foods as being healthy alternatives.
When in fact for many people's bodies cutting out carbs not fats is far healthier. I've made no secret of the fact I'm on a carnivore ketogenic diet, eating zero fruit and veg a day. Done this for seven months now and am 47 lbs down and counting. Blood healthy, resting heart rate healthy. And able to exercise more too now I'm not carrying around that excess weight anymore. All around in a much, much healthier state.
People need to be more open minded as to what a healthy diet is.
I think you are being a bit simplistic. Simple carbs like sugar, white pasta, and refined grains are of poor nutritional value, but complex carbohydrates such as wholegrain, legumes, fruits, vegetables etc contain a wealth of fibre and micronutrients. As they are slower to breakdown in the gut they do not cause the same insulin spike and are better for gut flora*. Variety in diet matters a lot.
The massive NHANES study showed the risks of a low carb diet in the long term:
* I think the distinction between simple and complex carbs goes a long way to explain the UPF effect.
To remain in a state of ketosis I go for fewer than 20 grams of carbs per day. Complex or simple carbs even a single apple contains more than that so is out.
There are multiple flaws with that study and the conclusion it found. Obviously it's not a double blind study so risks finding correlation rather than causation which is a problem in this era when the medical advice for too long has been that higher carbs are healthier (when my contention is they're not) so you end up with an ice cream sales cause shark attacks conclusion by comparing people who take other, sound, medical advice with those who don't.
Furthermore the conclusion is horribly flawed by making a fundamental category error. It compares non-obese people on a low-carb diet with non-obese people on a higher-carb diet. That's fundamentally flawed as going onto a low-carb diet is a cure for obesity for those who have struggled with it.
Compare non-obese people on a low-carb diet with obese people on a high-carb diet and check the numbers again.
It's a real life cohort study that looked at multiple variables. It does confirm that it works for weightloss in the short term, but does look like keeping weight off that way is dangerous long term.
It's a free country, so ignore the evidence if you like.
And someone I know who was on it dropped dead of a heart attack at 50. So that’s obvious proof! And prior to that he was praising it verbatim just like @BartholomewRoberts
Seriously I suspect it’s lethal for the organs and pretty terrible for the body long term.
BR is correct about low fat diets and the dangers. But the problem isn’t complex carbohydrates. It’s sugars. Obviously carbs convert to glycogen but that’s not bad.
Personally? It’s a fairly crazy fad that will eventually be shown to cause serious long term damage. By then it will be too late for some.
...The report comes after the Guardian revealed ministers were told they were putting children at lifelong risk of ill health after shelving policies to tackle obesity and junk food until 2025.
Michael Marmot, the director of UCL’s institute of health equity, said the new report spotlighted a dramatic worsening in children’s health in the last decade.
“We used to think of the combination of undernutrition and obesity as a feature of low and middle income countries. We are now seeing it in Britain in 2024.”
“Over a century of history has led us to expect continuous improvements in health. Over the last dozen years that has changed. Healthy life expectancy has declined. Quite simply, people’s fundamental human needs are not being met.”
The Food Foundation report, which included a new analysis of data from government and health sources, spotlighted the rapidly deteriorating state of children’s health.
The height of five-year-olds in the UK has been falling since 2013 and children are also shorter than those in almost all other comparable countries, the report said.
Obesity levels among 10 and 11-year-olds in England have increased by 30% since 2006, with one in five children already officially obese by the time they leave primary school, researchers found.
Cases of type 2 diabetes, which is linked to obesity, have risen by 22% among those aged under 25 in England and Wales in the last five years, the study added...
And, contrary to what certain people believe, that's not happening because they're eating fruit and vegetables. Eating too much of Big Food's UPF on the other hand.....
Got to be true about UPF's. A daytime TV Doctor wrote a book on it.
Wanted to ask a question re this so called huge activity on social media that the parties are involved in. I'm only on Facebook (I use whatsapp a lot, but don't get ads there and very occasionally Twitter, but tend to avoid it).
So far I have not had an ad from anyone. I get lots of local LD stuff, but that is because I am signed up for it. I also read the Tory candidates 'Re-elect' Facebook page daily (1 post per day) but I haven't received an ad from anybody. The Tory Facebook page is also noticeable by its lack of activity. Most days there are no comments and if there is it is only 1 or 2 and only about half a dozen likes. Each day it is the same. A number of group photos from different places in the constituency and a plug for the cafe/pub they visited that day.
Who are these ads going to and why not me? It is difficult to believe the algorithms know I am a wasted effort (or can they?).
I live in a very safe Labour seat and am under 30 - only things I've seen were around national service.
At risk of confusing those who think I am a CCHQ plant I rather agree with most of this, although think it should at least partly be used to raise income tax thresholds rather than increase spending
"The six taxes Labour want to raise 1. Extend National Insurance to all sources of income – including savings and property. Pension payments would remain exempt under the £12 billion tax grab but working pensioners would be forced to pay."
Agree. Go further. Merge it. Ridiculous that work is subject to higher rate of tax than unearned income
2. Remove cap on National Insurance. Workers now pay the 8 per cent main rate of NI on earnings up to £50,268, with a rate of 2 per cent on income above this. Under the new plan, higher earners would pay the main rate all the way up the income scale, raising £20 billion.
Doubt this is true as it amounts to a 8%nincrease in higher rate tax, unless they have a wheeze to abolish the 45% rate at the same time.
"3. Equalise capital gains tax with income tax rates, raising an estimated £16 billion."
Can't see an issue but I think the return of indexing would be required
"4. Plug gaps in inheritance tax by ending reliefs that allow farmland, business property and pension pots to be passed on tax-free. This would raise £4 billion."
Why on earth are pensions (other than between spouses) *not* subject to IHT?
=5. Reform property tax to make it ‘fairer’. While those in low-cost homes would see bills cut, those living in more expensive areas could see charges more than double."
Painful but fair.
"6. Introduce a ‘jackpot tax’ on ‘extreme wealth’ – raising £10 billion a year."
Should be levied on corporations as well as individuals.
I would not quarrel with some of those.
And £60bn is a number in the rough ballpark we need, and they do target wealth which is also correct. Part of that may I hope be savings due to falling interest rates etc. One hopes part of that number will be savings as interest rates fall.
The farmland one would be ... interesting ... and probably not in a good way.
Not so good for Mr Jones with a few fields and some cattle, probably OK for Mega-farm Ltd.
Do you have numbers on how many of those small farms there are? UK farms area stats have always had us at the upper end of size distribution in European farm sizes since the 1960-70s afaics.
There is the new trend to 'downshifted farmers who used to be professionals' and 'hobby farmers' and 'weekend smallholders'; I would not be *that* concerned about those, but they can sometimes be distinctive small contributions to local food economies who get disproportionate attention.
I don't have the stats, I'll have a dig. We do have larger farms than eg France I think, mainly because land there was traditionally split rather than being inherited entire by the eldest son/child.
A personal friend has a farm with few fields, a woodland and some cattle so I was thinking of him. It isn't a hobby farm in the sense that it was inherited and used to be more intensive but he rents out a lot of it and no longer has a dairy.
There's not much money in it so IHT would be a problem unless food prices were pushed up.
Turning it into agri-business (goodbye hedges and wildflower meadows) or a solar farm might make more money but ultimately wouldn't be that great for the environment
It seems to me that the key question is where the Reform vote sits, and I have seen no analysis. If it’s evenly spread, the Tories are totally screwed. If there’s been a bit of a swap with the Tories so each dominates some areas, they are only normally screwed. Time will tell.
Morning all. Another drop in VI for the Tories with Survation-on-the-blower, 44 polls since a like for like increase and counting...... The MRP tonight will be interesting, especially given the 140 seat one was modelled on 25% share of the vote
It's just such a remarkable stat. I don't know what kind of distribution pollsters use to get 3% as the 95% CI - but there's probably a 40% odd chance that all else being equal the Tories will have an error in their favour in the headline VI for a poll with 5-10% of the overall percentage to be a multiple point error in their favour. To be hitting the other 60% odd chance of declining or flat every time is quite an impressive achievement.
What we're interested in here is the change between one poll and the other, so the occurrence we're most interested in is where one poll has an error not in the Tories favour, and the next poll does, producing a change in the Tories favour on top of whatever underlying real change in support occurs.
For a theoretically perfect opinion poll with a sample size of 2,000 and for an opinion with 25% support, the standard error is ~1%. This means that about two-thirds of the time you would expect the measured support to be in the range +/-1% (and 95% of the time within +/-2%)
So, for any pair of polls, the probability that the Tories see at least a +2pp increase in support due to statistical noise is 1-in-36. That is the probability that the first poll of the pair was on the low tail of the distribution, and the second poll was in the high tail.
The probability of that not happening in 44 pairs of polls is 29%. If it has happened, then the reason we've not seen the Tories go up in the polls at all is because the underlying trend is at least 2pp against them between every pair of polls (so possibly 4pp in total, because this extends over two weeks)
So there's a pretty good chance that the trend against the Tories is very strong, indicative of a very poor election campaign.
It's notable that in the 2017GE campaign, the benchmark against which all disastrous campaigns are measured, May only lost about 5pp from her polling peak. Most of the closing of the gap came by Labour squeezing votes from all the other opposition parties, seeing their support rise by 15pp from their nadir.
So, on a purely numerical basis, on the basis of the opinion poll evidence we have thus far, Sunak is making a decent fist of challenging May for having rum the worst-ever general election campaign.
I would say Sunak’s campaign is several orders of magnitude worse than May’s so he probably deserves to lose more votes.
May made the error of fatally undermining her messaging by going wobbly on policy. She and her advisers were also far too complacent and just expected to be handed a majority.
Sunak doesn’t even have any consistent messaging, and to the extent he posits anything he then immediately shoots himself in the foot the day afterwards. He also projects massively about Labour having no plan - the Tory offering is about as uninspiring and boring as you can get, aside from a weird national service policy that wasn’t thought through properly.
Survival rates for prostate, bowel, breast and cervical cancer are only just reaching levels that other nations achieved in the early 2000s, according to the most recent figures available.
Experts at Macmillan Cancer Support, which produced the analysis, warned that survival rates were “stuck in the noughties”, trailing decades behind countries such as Denmark and Norway.
Is this another function of the fact the UK population is just far less healthy than some other parts of Europe, same with COVID deaths early on. Being a fatty was very bad for COVID, it can't be good for surviving cancer either.
The link between obesity and cancer is startling. I'll try and dig out some stats but I was really surprised by them last time I had a look. The NHS should be shouting from the rooftops about it.
These new anti-obesity wonder drugs should help with this, and indirectly with diabetes (currently rocketing) as well as cancer.
There seem to be general (possibly anti-inflammatory) beneficial effects with them which go beyond what you'd expect solely from weight loss. We need a few years' more data to be sure, though.
In terms of financial cost/benefit, NICE will be all over the stats in the next few years as data accumulates. I would expect them to save the NHS a lot of money over time, even though long term prescriptions are quite expensive.
The interesting question is how quickly that net benefit would materialise.
Once generic, the savings would be immense. But that's well beyond the next government.
Personally I think if anything sounds too good to be true it usually is.
There are no short cuts. Exercise and healthy diet are the safest route to longer life.
The problem is what is a healthy diet?
For too long our advice has been the completely failed food pyramid and five fruit and veg a day etc which has seen a surge in obesity and suits some people but not others. And the selling of low fat foods as being healthy alternatives.
When in fact for many people's bodies cutting out carbs not fats is far healthier. I've made no secret of the fact I'm on a carnivore ketogenic diet, eating zero fruit and veg a day. Done this for seven months now and am 47 lbs down and counting. Blood healthy, resting heart rate healthy. And able to exercise more too now I'm not carrying around that excess weight anymore. All around in a much, much healthier state.
People need to be more open minded as to what a healthy diet is.
I think you are being a bit simplistic. Simple carbs like sugar, white pasta, and refined grains are of poor nutritional value, but complex carbohydrates such as wholegrain, legumes, fruits, vegetables etc contain a wealth of fibre and micronutrients. As they are slower to breakdown in the gut they do not cause the same insulin spike and are better for gut flora*. Variety in diet matters a lot.
The massive NHANES study showed the risks of a low carb diet in the long term:
* I think the distinction between simple and complex carbs goes a long way to explain the UPF effect.
To remain in a state of ketosis I go for fewer than 20 grams of carbs per day. Complex or simple carbs even a single apple contains more than that so is out.
There are multiple flaws with that study and the conclusion it found. Obviously it's not a double blind study so risks finding correlation rather than causation which is a problem in this era when the medical advice for too long has been that higher carbs are healthier (when my contention is they're not) so you end up with an ice cream sales cause shark attacks conclusion by comparing people who take other, sound, medical advice with those who don't.
Furthermore the conclusion is horribly flawed by making a fundamental category error. It compares non-obese people on a low-carb diet with non-obese people on a higher-carb diet. That's fundamentally flawed as going onto a low-carb diet is a cure for obesity for those who have struggled with it.
Compare non-obese people on a low-carb diet with obese people on a high-carb diet and check the numbers again.
It's a real life cohort study that looked at multiple variables. It does confirm that it works for weightloss in the short term, but does look like keeping weight off that way is dangerous long term.
It's a free country, so ignore the evidence if you like.
And someone I know who was on it dropped dead of a heart attack at 50. So that’s obvious proof! And prior to that he was praising it verbatim just like @BartholomewRoberts
Seriously I suspect it’s lethal for the organs and pretty terrible for the body long term.
BR is correct about low fat diets and the dangers. But the problem isn’t complex carbohydrates. It’s sugars. Obviously carbs convert to glycogen but that’s not bad.
Personally? It’s a fairly crazy fad that will eventually be shown to cause serious long term damage. By then it will be too late for some.
...The report comes after the Guardian revealed ministers were told they were putting children at lifelong risk of ill health after shelving policies to tackle obesity and junk food until 2025.
Michael Marmot, the director of UCL’s institute of health equity, said the new report spotlighted a dramatic worsening in children’s health in the last decade.
“We used to think of the combination of undernutrition and obesity as a feature of low and middle income countries. We are now seeing it in Britain in 2024.”
“Over a century of history has led us to expect continuous improvements in health. Over the last dozen years that has changed. Healthy life expectancy has declined. Quite simply, people’s fundamental human needs are not being met.”
The Food Foundation report, which included a new analysis of data from government and health sources, spotlighted the rapidly deteriorating state of children’s health.
The height of five-year-olds in the UK has been falling since 2013 and children are also shorter than those in almost all other comparable countries, the report said.
Obesity levels among 10 and 11-year-olds in England have increased by 30% since 2006, with one in five children already officially obese by the time they leave primary school, researchers found.
Cases of type 2 diabetes, which is linked to obesity, have risen by 22% among those aged under 25 in England and Wales in the last five years, the study added...
And, contrary to what certain people believe, that's not happening because they're eating fruit and vegetables. Eating too much of Big Food's UPF on the other hand.....
Got to be true about UPF's. A daytime TV Doctor wrote a book on it.
It's nothing to do with a daytime TV Doctor. I could link to dozens of peer reviewed scientific studies by actual scientists and experts from across the globe, but we've had enough of experts, haven't we? UPF will one day be treated the same way as tobacco, if there's any justice in the world. Nestle doesn't exist to nourish you.
It seems to me that the key question is where the Reform vote sits, and I have seen no analysis. If it’s evenly spread, the Tories are totally screwed. If there’s been a bit of a swap with the Tories so each dominates some areas, they are only normally screwed. Time will tell.
UKIP 2015, Brexit 2017 and Brexit 2019 (Where they stood) are the baselines surely ?
Round up of creeps and nutters standing for Reform. Really quite something
And gosh that pic of KCIII at Troopy colz. I greatly fear he will not see 2025.
That one in Melton and Syston was all over the local paper. It isn't old Social Media.
Reform is a fascist party in all but name. These are people who would have followed Mosley, and I don't mean Michael.
No, there is a difference between Facism and just plain loopy. Facism is about a militarised centralised state. So Putins Russia is Facist, but Trump or Reform are not even if they are rather fash friendly.
Trump is very clearly keen on a centralised state, with unlimited presidential power. His projects to remake the civil service; to send the national guard into states to round up immigrants for deportation; desire to control the media; to prosecute political opponents etc are moves in an authoritarian direction.
He's personally disorganised, but that doesn't mean he is without fascistic tendencies.
Trump denied the result of a fair election - that puts him in the fascist column for me.
Morning all. Another drop in VI for the Tories with Survation-on-the-blower, 44 polls since a like for like increase and counting...... The MRP tonight will be interesting, especially given the 140 seat one was modelled on 25% share of the vote
Another noticeable thing - a lot of ppl speculated that telephone polls would be much more downbeat than online for Reform - so 15% on the telephones seems to fly in the face of that slightly.
A further thing is that Deltapoll, Focaldata and Survation have shown a pretty large Con to Ref movement over fieldwork this weekend
It's remarkable - I expected it to fizzle out but it seems like they're picking up steam. Deltapoll, R&W, Techne, and Yougov the ones to watch for more crossover (and if there's a couple clustered together it'll be yet more attention for Farage).
My gut says to lay REF this week as it’ll be the high water mark. But I started this election expecting the Tory vote to firm up and REF to fall back. And I kept expecting it; and kept expecting it; and kept expecting it. It’s not come so far. Will it come in the next 7 days? So I am starting to really doubt myself.
As someone who is heavily invested in Reform I’d maybe give it another day or two for potentially YouGov’s MRP to bed in, if it’s favourable.
I think we might be seeing Farage’s message of ‘the Tories are finished, you might as well vote Reform’ whether correct or not, starting to have an effect on the polls.
...The report comes after the Guardian revealed ministers were told they were putting children at lifelong risk of ill health after shelving policies to tackle obesity and junk food until 2025.
Michael Marmot, the director of UCL’s institute of health equity, said the new report spotlighted a dramatic worsening in children’s health in the last decade.
“We used to think of the combination of undernutrition and obesity as a feature of low and middle income countries. We are now seeing it in Britain in 2024.”
“Over a century of history has led us to expect continuous improvements in health. Over the last dozen years that has changed. Healthy life expectancy has declined. Quite simply, people’s fundamental human needs are not being met.”
The Food Foundation report, which included a new analysis of data from government and health sources, spotlighted the rapidly deteriorating state of children’s health.
The height of five-year-olds in the UK has been falling since 2013 and children are also shorter than those in almost all other comparable countries, the report said.
Obesity levels among 10 and 11-year-olds in England have increased by 30% since 2006, with one in five children already officially obese by the time they leave primary school, researchers found.
Cases of type 2 diabetes, which is linked to obesity, have risen by 22% among those aged under 25 in England and Wales in the last five years, the study added...
One trusts the researchers allowed for the changing ethnic origins of British 5-year-olds when averaging their heights and weights.
...The report comes after the Guardian revealed ministers were told they were putting children at lifelong risk of ill health after shelving policies to tackle obesity and junk food until 2025.
Michael Marmot, the director of UCL’s institute of health equity, said the new report spotlighted a dramatic worsening in children’s health in the last decade.
“We used to think of the combination of undernutrition and obesity as a feature of low and middle income countries. We are now seeing it in Britain in 2024.”
“Over a century of history has led us to expect continuous improvements in health. Over the last dozen years that has changed. Healthy life expectancy has declined. Quite simply, people’s fundamental human needs are not being met.”
The Food Foundation report, which included a new analysis of data from government and health sources, spotlighted the rapidly deteriorating state of children’s health.
The height of five-year-olds in the UK has been falling since 2013 and children are also shorter than those in almost all other comparable countries, the report said.
Obesity levels among 10 and 11-year-olds in England have increased by 30% since 2006, with one in five children already officially obese by the time they leave primary school, researchers found.
Cases of type 2 diabetes, which is linked to obesity, have risen by 22% among those aged under 25 in England and Wales in the last five years, the study added...
I don't know why this isn't front and centre of every newspaper and at the heart of the election campaign. We are facing an impending public health catastrophe in this country, which will have massive implications for productivity, economic growth, health outcomes and the public finances, as well as being a personal tragedy for millions of people. It illustrates the collosal short sighted stupidity of making children the principal target of austerity policies - the ultimate penny-wise, pound stupid kind of fiscal policy, as well as the need for a complete culture change in our approach to food policy. I really hope that Labour focuses on turning this around, although it is too late already for millions of people whose whole lives will be blighted by poor childhood nutrition.
It seems to me that the key question is where the Reform vote sits, and I have seen no analysis. If it’s evenly spread, the Tories are totally screwed. If there’s been a bit of a swap with the Tories so each dominates some areas, they are only normally screwed. Time will tell.
UKIP 2015, Brexit 2017 and Brexit 2019 (Where they stood) are the baselines surely ?
I agree that’s the best we have; but there’s uncertainty in that. Reform is closer to Brexit than UKIP and polling much higher at the point of actual voting. Are the “extra 5%” evenly spread?
It seems to me that the key question is where the Reform vote sits, and I have seen no analysis. If it’s evenly spread, the Tories are totally screwed. If there’s been a bit of a swap with the Tories so each dominates some areas, they are only normally screwed. Time will tell.
UKIP 2015, Brexit 2017 and Brexit 2019 (Where they stood) are the baselines surely ?
Brexit party did not exist in 2017. Ukip got 1.8% standing in about 60% of seats
Morning all. Another drop in VI for the Tories with Survation-on-the-blower, 44 polls since a like for like increase and counting...... The MRP tonight will be interesting, especially given the 140 seat one was modelled on 25% share of the vote
Another noticeable thing - a lot of ppl speculated that telephone polls would be much more downbeat than online for Reform - so 15% on the telephones seems to fly in the face of that slightly.
Farage is notably more popular - and less unpopular - with the public than Sunak is.
Although I doubt the Tory collapse will get this far down the defence list, Bet365 have priced the Lib Dems at 20-1 in East Surrey (Coutinho's seat, 24k majority). I think that's way off - elsewhere it's 9 or 10 - and will get on accordingly. The tactical voting sites say Labour for this, probably accounting for the boundary changes adding a more Labourey area, but I live here and the Lib Dems seem serious value at that price - they have longstanding local representation and a strong ground game in much of the constituency, and were second in 2019.
Survival rates for prostate, bowel, breast and cervical cancer are only just reaching levels that other nations achieved in the early 2000s, according to the most recent figures available.
Experts at Macmillan Cancer Support, which produced the analysis, warned that survival rates were “stuck in the noughties”, trailing decades behind countries such as Denmark and Norway.
Is this another function of the fact the UK population is just far less healthy than some other parts of Europe, same with COVID deaths early on. Being a fatty was very bad for COVID, it can't be good for surviving cancer either.
The link between obesity and cancer is startling. I'll try and dig out some stats but I was really surprised by them last time I had a look. The NHS should be shouting from the rooftops about it.
These new anti-obesity wonder drugs should help with this, and indirectly with diabetes (currently rocketing) as well as cancer.
There seem to be general (possibly anti-inflammatory) beneficial effects with them which go beyond what you'd expect solely from weight loss. We need a few years' more data to be sure, though.
In terms of financial cost/benefit, NICE will be all over the stats in the next few years as data accumulates. I would expect them to save the NHS a lot of money over time, even though long term prescriptions are quite expensive.
The interesting question is how quickly that net benefit would materialise.
Once generic, the savings would be immense. But that's well beyond the next government.
Personally I think if anything sounds too good to be true it usually is.
There are no short cuts. Exercise and healthy diet are the safest route to longer life.
The problem is what is a healthy diet?
For too long our advice has been the completely failed food pyramid and five fruit and veg a day etc which has seen a surge in obesity and suits some people but not others. And the selling of low fat foods as being healthy alternatives.
When in fact for many people's bodies cutting out carbs not fats is far healthier. I've made no secret of the fact I'm on a carnivore ketogenic diet, eating zero fruit and veg a day. Done this for seven months now and am 47 lbs down and counting. Blood healthy, resting heart rate healthy. And able to exercise more too now I'm not carrying around that excess weight anymore. All around in a much, much healthier state.
People need to be more open minded as to what a healthy diet is.
I think you are being a bit simplistic. Simple carbs like sugar, white pasta, and refined grains are of poor nutritional value, but complex carbohydrates such as wholegrain, legumes, fruits, vegetables etc contain a wealth of fibre and micronutrients. As they are slower to breakdown in the gut they do not cause the same insulin spike and are better for gut flora*. Variety in diet matters a lot.
The massive NHANES study showed the risks of a low carb diet in the long term:
* I think the distinction between simple and complex carbs goes a long way to explain the UPF effect.
To remain in a state of ketosis I go for fewer than 20 grams of carbs per day. Complex or simple carbs even a single apple contains more than that so is out.
There are multiple flaws with that study and the conclusion it found. Obviously it's not a double blind study so risks finding correlation rather than causation which is a problem in this era when the medical advice for too long has been that higher carbs are healthier (when my contention is they're not) so you end up with an ice cream sales cause shark attacks conclusion by comparing people who take other, sound, medical advice with those who don't.
Furthermore the conclusion is horribly flawed by making a fundamental category error. It compares non-obese people on a low-carb diet with non-obese people on a higher-carb diet. That's fundamentally flawed as going onto a low-carb diet is a cure for obesity for those who have struggled with it.
Compare non-obese people on a low-carb diet with obese people on a high-carb diet and check the numbers again.
It's a real life cohort study that looked at multiple variables. It does confirm that it works for weightloss in the short term, but does look like keeping weight off that way is dangerous long term.
It's a free country, so ignore the evidence if you like.
And someone I know who was on it dropped dead of a heart attack at 50. So that’s obvious proof! And prior to that he was praising it verbatim just like @BartholomewRoberts
Seriously I suspect it’s lethal for the organs and pretty terrible for the body long term.
BR is correct about low fat diets and the dangers. But the problem isn’t complex carbohydrates. It’s sugars. Obviously carbs convert to glycogen but that’s not bad.
Personally? It’s a fairly crazy fad that will eventually be shown to cause serious long term damage. By then it will be too late for some.
...The report comes after the Guardian revealed ministers were told they were putting children at lifelong risk of ill health after shelving policies to tackle obesity and junk food until 2025.
Michael Marmot, the director of UCL’s institute of health equity, said the new report spotlighted a dramatic worsening in children’s health in the last decade.
“We used to think of the combination of undernutrition and obesity as a feature of low and middle income countries. We are now seeing it in Britain in 2024.”
“Over a century of history has led us to expect continuous improvements in health. Over the last dozen years that has changed. Healthy life expectancy has declined. Quite simply, people’s fundamental human needs are not being met.”
The Food Foundation report, which included a new analysis of data from government and health sources, spotlighted the rapidly deteriorating state of children’s health.
The height of five-year-olds in the UK has been falling since 2013 and children are also shorter than those in almost all other comparable countries, the report said.
Obesity levels among 10 and 11-year-olds in England have increased by 30% since 2006, with one in five children already officially obese by the time they leave primary school, researchers found.
Cases of type 2 diabetes, which is linked to obesity, have risen by 22% among those aged under 25 in England and Wales in the last five years, the study added...
And, contrary to what certain people believe, that's not happening because they're eating fruit and vegetables. Eating too much of Big Food's UPF on the other hand.....
Got to be true about UPF's. A daytime TV Doctor wrote a book on it.
If you spent literally two minutes looking you would find a stack of primary scientific evidence. You are doing the very thing you think you are satirising.
Morning all. Another drop in VI for the Tories with Survation-on-the-blower, 44 polls since a like for like increase and counting...... The MRP tonight will be interesting, especially given the 140 seat one was modelled on 25% share of the vote
Another noticeable thing - a lot of ppl speculated that telephone polls would be much more downbeat than online for Reform - so 15% on the telephones seems to fly in the face of that slightly.
A further thing is that Deltapoll, Focaldata and Survation have shown a pretty large Con to Ref movement over fieldwork this weekend
It's remarkable - I expected it to fizzle out but it seems like they're picking up steam. Deltapoll, R&W, Techne, and Yougov the ones to watch for more crossover (and if there's a couple clustered together it'll be yet more attention for Farage).
My gut says to lay REF this week as it’ll be the high water mark. But I started this election expecting the Tory vote to firm up and REF to fall back. And I kept expecting it; and kept expecting it; and kept expecting it. It’s not come so far. Will it come in the next 7 days? So I am starting to really doubt myself.
As someone who is heavily invested in Reform I’d maybe give it another day or two for potentially YouGov’s MRP to bed in, if it’s favourable.
I think we might be seeing Farage’s message of ‘the Tories are finished, you might as well vote Reform’ whether correct or not, starting to have an effect on the polls.
We're two weeks away now. Traditionally this is when voters firm up on their intentions.
If nothing much happens in the next couple of days, nothing much is going to happen by July 4th.
I wonder why MRP polls tend to put the Conservatives in the mid 20’s and Reform in the low teens, when standard polling shows them converging.
Because standard polling is over-sampling politically engaged voters? Which would explain why Green is so high in several polls too.
Local election results since the election was called are much more supportive of Tories in mid to high 20s or even higher than they are of Reform drawing close to crossover.
I mean in some local byelections the Tory has actually gained votes!
I wonder why MRP polls tend to put the Conservatives in the mid 20’s and Reform in the low teens, when standard polling shows them converging.
Lack of data from 2019 as to who would have voted Brexit/Reform in the seats the Tories held in 2017 which Brexit/Reform didn't contest?
This could be huge yes. The 2 constituency polls we have had so far (Hartlepool and yesterday’s Gillingham and Rainham) have both shown Reform doing pretty well and the Tories doing pretty terribly.
Now, constituency polls might be limited, etc etc… but who knows what lies ahead
Although I doubt the Tory collapse will get this far down the defence list, Bet365 have priced the Lib Dems at 20-1 in East Surrey (Coutinho's seat, 24k majority). I think that's way off - elsewhere it's 9 or 10 - and will get on accordingly. The tactical voting sites say Labour for this, probably accounting for the boundary changes adding a more Labourey area, but I live here and the Lib Dems seem serious value at that price - they have longstanding local representation and a strong ground game in much of the constituency, and were second in 2019.
Thanks Lloyd, and welcome.
This is the kind of local information we need more of.
One saving grace for the Conservatives is that their remaining seats are likely to be large rural ones. So the shellacking won't look as bad as it actually is on a map.
Round up of creeps and nutters standing for Reform. Really quite something
And gosh that pic of KCIII at Troopy colz. I greatly fear he will not see 2025.
That one in Melton and Syston was all over the local paper. It isn't old Social Media.
Reform is a fascist party in all but name. These are people who would have followed Mosley, and I don't mean Michael.
No, there is a difference between Facism and just plain loopy. Facism is about a militarlarised centralised state. So Putins Russia is Facist, but Trump or Reform are not even if they are rather fash friendly.
Even with the caveats that fascism is an overused and poorly understood word and almost any time it's used in political debate it's an error... I am not convinced Trump isn't a fascist. Before seizing control of the state, a fascist needs to be sure he has the preponderance of violence on his side. If he can't control the streets, he can't control all branches of government. Trump's attempted coup showed that he didn't have that preponderance. He had a mob, but its numbers were insufficient and the security services remained loyal to the USA rather than Trump himself. But all that says is that the USA isn't fascist. Trumps wishes and methods resemble a cautious attempt to seize total control. We might not see the same caution in future. If he could get the already militarised police on his side, loyal to him, it's easy to see him enacting his clearly racist ideology on the leftists, Muslims, and other minorities.
I lean towards the idea that Trump is a fascist, but that the US state has prevented him from being a fascist in power.
Francis Fukuyama has an interesting read on Fascism in his end of history book. He distinguishes the true fascism of the 20th century in Italy, Germany and Japan from the right wing authoritarianism of the 19th and early 20th C dictatorships like Franco, the Austro Hungarians and several other central European powers.
Fascism he says had a coherent ideology, albeit a bonkers one. The supremacy of the volk, the all powerful state and the need for war and conquest as a proof of the virility of the nation. That is true of Putin's Russia but I'm not sure it chimes with Trump's vision for America.
The traditional authoritarians have a coherent ideology: family, church, traditional values. Enforced with a rod of iron but different from Fascism. True of US evangelicals, but is it true of Trump? Probably not either.
Then he describes the post-war dictators, focusing on former colonies but equally relevant to the West these days. No coherent ideology except self-enrichment or protection of clan and tribe. Patronage. That feels more like Trump. A post-colonial populist.
Its easy to imagine Trump declaring himself King of Scotland, crowning himself Emperor or hosting the Rumble in the Jungle.
Morning all. Another drop in VI for the Tories with Survation-on-the-blower, 44 polls since a like for like increase and counting...... The MRP tonight will be interesting, especially given the 140 seat one was modelled on 25% share of the vote
It's just such a remarkable stat. I don't know what kind of distribution pollsters use to get 3% as the 95% CI - but there's probably a 40% odd chance that all else being equal the Tories will have an error in their favour in the headline VI for a poll with 5-10% of the overall percentage to be a multiple point error in their favour. To be hitting the other 60% odd chance of declining or flat every time is quite an impressive achievement.
What we're interested in here is the change between one poll and the other, so the occurrence we're most interested in is where one poll has an error not in the Tories favour, and the next poll does, producing a change in the Tories favour on top of whatever underlying real change in support occurs.
For a theoretically perfect opinion poll with a sample size of 2,000 and for an opinion with 25% support, the standard error is ~1%. This means that about two-thirds of the time you would expect the measured support to be in the range +/-1% (and 95% of the time within +/-2%)
So, for any pair of polls, the probability that the Tories see at least a +2pp increase in support due to statistical noise is 1-in-36. That is the probability that the first poll of the pair was on the low tail of the distribution, and the second poll was in the high tail.
The probability of that not happening in 44 pairs of polls is 29%. If it has happened, then the reason we've not seen the Tories go up in the polls at all is because the underlying trend is at least 2pp against them between every pair of polls (so possibly 4pp in total, because this extends over two weeks)
So there's a pretty good chance that the trend against the Tories is very strong, indicative of a very poor election campaign.
It's notable that in the 2017GE campaign, the benchmark against which all disastrous campaigns are measured, May only lost about 5pp from her polling peak. Most of the closing of the gap came by Labour squeezing votes from all the other opposition parties, seeing their support rise by 15pp from their nadir.
So, on a purely numerical basis, on the basis of the opinion poll evidence we have thus far, Sunak is making a decent fist of challenging May for having rum the worst-ever general election campaign.
I would say Sunak’s campaign is several orders of magnitude worse than May’s so he probably deserves to lose more votes.
May made the error of fatally undermining her messaging by going wobbly on policy. She and her advisers were also far too complacent and just expected to be handed a majority.
Sunak doesn’t even have any consistent messaging, and to the extent he posits anything he then immediately shoots himself in the foot the day afterwards. He also projects massively about Labour having no plan - the Tory offering is about as uninspiring and boring as you can get, aside from a weird national service policy that wasn’t thought through properly.
Morning everyone! It appears to my wife and myself that the only ‘plan’ Sunk et al have is to assert, without apparent foundation, that ‘Labour will put up your taxes!’
On the ‘contact’ point we have had two pieces of paper from Labour, one from the Tories but nothing, so far, from Green, Indie, LD or Reform. The Independent, a rather attractive young lady, has appeared on Facebook. However, they are all, apparently, booked to attend an election meeting at the Parish Church on Sunday afternoon. Could be interesting.
I think we need to start considering shy Tories again. But for different reasons than those purported in the past.
The old thing was that people didn't want to admit voting Tory for fear of looking nasty, selfish etc. Now I wonder if there's a shyness born of the fact it's unfashionable to vote Conservative. So someone might say they are voting Labour, or Reform, because the in thing is to diss the Tories. No longer about nastiness, more about wanting to be with the in-crowd.
The in-crowd in the blue wall is Lib Dem or Labour. So they might be overstated if people are saying one thing but then come election day they retreat back home to Conservative. Whereas in the red wall or Eastern England the in-crowd is probably flirting with Farage and Reform, so they might be overstating it there.
That said, I was convinced there was a shy Lib Dem vote in the run up to 2015 for exactly the same reasons of fashion, and it didn't materialise.
"But Farage is also close to and has repeatedly praised Trump, who he interviewed for GB News in March. For his part, Trump has described Farage as a “handsome guy” at a campaign rally earlier this year — and appeared via video at Farage’s lavish 60th birthday celebration in April to congratulate the Brexiteer on a “truly remarkable sixty years on Earth.” "
If you repeatedly praise a fascist, get a job offer to help elect one, and get lavish praise in return, I think that pretty well defines you in their image, whatever else you might choose not to say in public.
Headwinds for UK fascism
PM not head of state PM not commander of military Roderick Spode No guns
Not going to happen here
Italy would like a word re the first two and the fourth. The third is a fictional character.
Rain on my parade, why don't you. You will be telling me there's no such person as James Bond next. Shorthand for susceptibility to ridicule vs the humourless Germans, Italians etc
We will have to hope that Good King Billy is made of sterner stuff than VEIII
My contention is not that Farage is Hitler, so whoever said that, do not be fucking ridiculous. My contention of his crypto-fascism is also not based on what he says he believes in but what his actions are. The evidence is first his support (as mentioned by @Wulfrun_Phil ) for election denying anti-democracy would be dictator Trump, who is probably quite happy with being described as a fascist. Along with Trump, he is an obsequious admirer of Putin, who is, IMO a fascist.
Secondly he is certainly a racist, or so says UKIP founder Alan Sked who tells of Farage's use of the n-word and disdain for people of colour. His attack on Sunak's supposedly not being "a patriot" sounds like a dog whistle for racists. He was also described as a fascist by his private school housemaster, and while that is a long time ago, people's views rarely get more moderate with age. Then there are the people he associates with, including the Le Pens and many of the candidates for his party that were too dim to delete their distasteful views. We know little of those that have limited understanding of cleaning up their online trail.
My contention remains. Reform Party is a fascist party. Maybe not in the blackshirt wearing, goosestep marching of the past, but a modern fascist party for the 21st century nonetheless.
Anyone that votes for Farage and his repulsive party are useful idiots at best and at worst are apologists for Trump and Putin.
It seems to me that the key question is where the Reform vote sits, and I have seen no analysis. If it’s evenly spread, the Tories are totally screwed. If there’s been a bit of a swap with the Tories so each dominates some areas, they are only normally screwed. Time will tell.
UKIP 2015, Brexit 2017 and Brexit 2019 (Where they stood) are the baselines surely ?
I agree that’s the best we have; but there’s uncertainty in that. Reform is closer to Brexit than UKIP and polling much higher at the point of actual voting. Are the “extra 5%” evenly spread?
The other problem is the considerable churn. In a lot of seats that vote is likely to have been 2019 Tory, but it might have moved from 2019 Tory to REF via Labour, for instance. You also then have to factor in non-voters from 2019 too. I can see a voter profile who couldn’t bring themself to vote for Boris or Corbyn in 2019 who might be more swayed by Farage.
It is a bit of a minefield but the seat profile I think we can confidently start to build is more coastal than inland, more northern-midland than southern, more working class than middle class, more eastern than western, more rural/semi-rural than urban.
The big question mark for me is the Shires and the blue rinse brigade. If REF manage to break through with that demographic it becomes catastrophic for the Tories.
Morning all. Another drop in VI for the Tories with Survation-on-the-blower, 44 polls since a like for like increase and counting...... The MRP tonight will be interesting, especially given the 140 seat one was modelled on 25% share of the vote
It's just such a remarkable stat. I don't know what kind of distribution pollsters use to get 3% as the 95% CI - but there's probably a 40% odd chance that all else being equal the Tories will have an error in their favour in the headline VI for a poll with 5-10% of the overall percentage to be a multiple point error in their favour. To be hitting the other 60% odd chance of declining or flat every time is quite an impressive achievement.
What we're interested in here is the change between one poll and the other, so the occurrence we're most interested in is where one poll has an error not in the Tories favour, and the next poll does, producing a change in the Tories favour on top of whatever underlying real change in support occurs.
For a theoretically perfect opinion poll with a sample size of 2,000 and for an opinion with 25% support, the standard error is ~1%. This means that about two-thirds of the time you would expect the measured support to be in the range +/-1% (and 95% of the time within +/-2%)
So, for any pair of polls, the probability that the Tories see at least a +2pp increase in support due to statistical noise is 1-in-36. That is the probability that the first poll of the pair was on the low tail of the distribution, and the second poll was in the high tail.
The probability of that not happening in 44 pairs of polls is 29%. If it has happened, then the reason we've not seen the Tories go up in the polls at all is because the underlying trend is at least 2pp against them between every pair of polls (so possibly 4pp in total, because this extends over two weeks)
So there's a pretty good chance that the trend against the Tories is very strong, indicative of a very poor election campaign.
It's notable that in the 2017GE campaign, the benchmark against which all disastrous campaigns are measured, May only lost about 5pp from her polling peak. Most of the closing of the gap came by Labour squeezing votes from all the other opposition parties, seeing their support rise by 15pp from their nadir.
So, on a purely numerical basis, on the basis of the opinion poll evidence we have thus far, Sunak is making a decent fist of challenging May for having rum the worst-ever general election campaign.
I would say Sunak’s campaign is several orders of magnitude worse than May’s so he probably deserves to lose more votes.
May made the error of fatally undermining her messaging by going wobbly on policy. She and her advisers were also far too complacent and just expected to be handed a majority.
Sunak doesn’t even have any consistent messaging, and to the extent he posits anything he then immediately shoots himself in the foot the day afterwards. He also projects massively about Labour having no plan - the Tory offering is about as uninspiring and boring as you can get, aside from a weird national service policy that wasn’t thought through properly.
Morning everyone! It appears to my wife and myself that the only ‘plan’ Sunk et al have is to assert, without apparent foundation, that ‘Labour will put up your taxes!’
On the ‘contact’ point we have had two pieces of paper from Labour, one from the Tories but nothing, so far, from Green, Indie, LD or Reform. The Independent, a rather attractive young lady, has appeared on Facebook. However, they are all, apparently, booked to attend an election meeting at the Parish Church on Sunday afternoon. Could be interesting.
Luke Tryl from MiC was saying yesterday, interestingly enough, that 'super majority' and 'Labour taxes' were starting to creep into focus group discussions. However, this was with what should normally be solid tory votes. His feeling it may be the difference between heavy defeat and annihilation.
...The report comes after the Guardian revealed ministers were told they were putting children at lifelong risk of ill health after shelving policies to tackle obesity and junk food until 2025.
Michael Marmot, the director of UCL’s institute of health equity, said the new report spotlighted a dramatic worsening in children’s health in the last decade.
“We used to think of the combination of undernutrition and obesity as a feature of low and middle income countries. We are now seeing it in Britain in 2024.”
“Over a century of history has led us to expect continuous improvements in health. Over the last dozen years that has changed. Healthy life expectancy has declined. Quite simply, people’s fundamental human needs are not being met.”
The Food Foundation report, which included a new analysis of data from government and health sources, spotlighted the rapidly deteriorating state of children’s health.
The height of five-year-olds in the UK has been falling since 2013 and children are also shorter than those in almost all other comparable countries, the report said.
Obesity levels among 10 and 11-year-olds in England have increased by 30% since 2006, with one in five children already officially obese by the time they leave primary school, researchers found.
Cases of type 2 diabetes, which is linked to obesity, have risen by 22% among those aged under 25 in England and Wales in the last five years, the study added...
I don't know why this isn't front and centre of every newspaper and at the heart of the election campaign. We are facing an impending public health catastrophe in this country, which will have massive implications for productivity, economic growth, health outcomes and the public finances, as well as being a personal tragedy for millions of people. It illustrates the collosal short sighted stupidity of making children the principal target of austerity policies - the ultimate penny-wise, pound stupid kind of fiscal policy, as well as the need for a complete culture change in our approach to food policy. I really hope that Labour focuses on turning this around, although it is too late already for millions of people whose whole lives will be blighted by poor childhood nutrition.
Yes but who are these children? Have there been no immigrant children in the past decade? Do Black children have the same size norms as their White playmates? Do Asian families have the same diet as Eastern European families? What of poverty? In the first world war officers might be a foot taller than the troops they commanded, as viewers of the BBC documentary Blackadder will recall.
That our averages are down are rightly a cause for concern but we need details before action.
Round up of creeps and nutters standing for Reform. Really quite something
And gosh that pic of KCIII at Troopy colz. I greatly fear he will not see 2025.
That one in Melton and Syston was all over the local paper. It isn't old Social Media.
Reform is a fascist party in all but name. These are people who would have followed Mosley, and I don't mean Michael.
No, there is a difference between Facism and just plain loopy. Facism is about a militarlarised centralised state. So Putins Russia is Facist, but Trump or Reform are not even if they are rather fash friendly.
Even with the caveats that fascism is an overused and poorly understood word and almost any time it's used in political debate it's an error... I am not convinced Trump isn't a fascist. Before seizing control of the state, a fascist needs to be sure he has the preponderance of violence on his side. If he can't control the streets, he can't control all branches of government. Trump's attempted coup showed that he didn't have that preponderance. He had a mob, but its numbers were insufficient and the security services remained loyal to the USA rather than Trump himself. But all that says is that the USA isn't fascist. Trumps wishes and methods resemble a cautious attempt to seize total control. We might not see the same caution in future. If he could get the already militarised police on his side, loyal to him, it's easy to see him enacting his clearly racist ideology on the leftists, Muslims, and other minorities.
I lean towards the idea that Trump is a fascist, but that the US state has prevented him from being a fascist in power.
Francis Fukuyama has an interesting read on Fascism in his end of history book. He distinguishes the true fascism of the 20th century in Italy, Germany and Japan from the right wing authoritarianism of the 19th and early 20th C dictatorships like Franco, the Austro Hungarians and several other central European powers.
Fascism he says had a coherent ideology, albeit a bonkers one. The supremacy of the volk, the all powerful state and the need for war and conquest as a proof of the virility of the nation. That is true of Putin's Russia but I'm not sure it chimes with Trump's vision for America.
The traditional authoritarians have a coherent ideology: family, church, traditional values. Enforced with a rod of iron but different from Fascism. True of US evangelicals, but is it true of Trump? Probably not either.
Then he describes the post-war dictators, focusing on former colonies but equally relevant to the West these days. No coherent ideology except self-enrichment or protection of clan and tribe. Patronage. That feels more like Trump. A post-colonial populist.
Its easy to imagine Trump declaring himself King of Scotland, crowning himself Emperor or hosting the Rumble in the Jungle.
Yes, I think this is the model for Trump. Amin, or Mobutu, or Gaddafi, or Assad.
Not an ideologue like Pol Pot or the Ayatollahs, or a control freak like Mubarak or the Burmese Junta, but a corrupt narcissist who intends to run the country like an organised crime racket for the benefit of his kinsmen.
I'd like to think of myself as being fairly intelligent (stop sniggerring at the back...) , but I am pretty much clueless on the 'truth' of the debate and UPF.
For me, the problem is that it's an area where fads and money rules: dieting is a massive industry, and charlatans are always willing to fill their bank accounts rather than help people be healthy. Studies show incompatible results, and the results lauded by whichever group supports them. Dieting itself can almost become a modern-day religion.
So I fall back on the old 'everything in moderation'. We have a McDonalds once a week after swimming lessons, because the lesson's time is inconvenient to cook before or after (and my son loves them). We have regular fruit and veg; but not religiously (if we have a naughty day where we miss some, we'll have a good day later). I don't try to cut anything out of my diet, but try not to have too much of anything.
Mental happiness also counts; and I find counting calories and reading ingredients to be absolutely soul-crushing.
One saving grace for the Conservatives is that their remaining seats are likely to be large rural ones. So the shellacking won't look as bad as it actually is on a map.
What's the minimum number of seats that would cover half of Britain by land area?
Survival rates for prostate, bowel, breast and cervical cancer are only just reaching levels that other nations achieved in the early 2000s, according to the most recent figures available.
Experts at Macmillan Cancer Support, which produced the analysis, warned that survival rates were “stuck in the noughties”, trailing decades behind countries such as Denmark and Norway.
Is this another function of the fact the UK population is just far less healthy than some other parts of Europe, same with COVID deaths early on. Being a fatty was very bad for COVID, it can't be good for surviving cancer either.
The link between obesity and cancer is startling. I'll try and dig out some stats but I was really surprised by them last time I had a look. The NHS should be shouting from the rooftops about it.
These new anti-obesity wonder drugs should help with this, and indirectly with diabetes (currently rocketing) as well as cancer.
There seem to be general (possibly anti-inflammatory) beneficial effects with them which go beyond what you'd expect solely from weight loss. We need a few years' more data to be sure, though.
In terms of financial cost/benefit, NICE will be all over the stats in the next few years as data accumulates. I would expect them to save the NHS a lot of money over time, even though long term prescriptions are quite expensive.
The interesting question is how quickly that net benefit would materialise.
Once generic, the savings would be immense. But that's well beyond the next government.
Personally I think if anything sounds too good to be true it usually is.
There are no short cuts. Exercise and healthy diet are the safest route to longer life.
The problem is what is a healthy diet?
For too long our advice has been the completely failed food pyramid and five fruit and veg a day etc which has seen a surge in obesity and suits some people but not others. And the selling of low fat foods as being healthy alternatives.
When in fact for many people's bodies cutting out carbs not fats is far healthier. I've made no secret of the fact I'm on a carnivore ketogenic diet, eating zero fruit and veg a day. Done this for seven months now and am 47 lbs down and counting. Blood healthy, resting heart rate healthy. And able to exercise more too now I'm not carrying around that excess weight anymore. All around in a much, much healthier state.
People need to be more open minded as to what a healthy diet is.
I think you are being a bit simplistic. Simple carbs like sugar, white pasta, and refined grains are of poor nutritional value, but complex carbohydrates such as wholegrain, legumes, fruits, vegetables etc contain a wealth of fibre and micronutrients. As they are slower to breakdown in the gut they do not cause the same insulin spike and are better for gut flora*. Variety in diet matters a lot.
The massive NHANES study showed the risks of a low carb diet in the long term:
* I think the distinction between simple and complex carbs goes a long way to explain the UPF effect.
To remain in a state of ketosis I go for fewer than 20 grams of carbs per day. Complex or simple carbs even a single apple contains more than that so is out.
There are multiple flaws with that study and the conclusion it found. Obviously it's not a double blind study so risks finding correlation rather than causation which is a problem in this era when the medical advice for too long has been that higher carbs are healthier (when my contention is they're not) so you end up with an ice cream sales cause shark attacks conclusion by comparing people who take other, sound, medical advice with those who don't.
Furthermore the conclusion is horribly flawed by making a fundamental category error. It compares non-obese people on a low-carb diet with non-obese people on a higher-carb diet. That's fundamentally flawed as going onto a low-carb diet is a cure for obesity for those who have struggled with it.
Compare non-obese people on a low-carb diet with obese people on a high-carb diet and check the numbers again.
It's a real life cohort study that looked at multiple variables. It does confirm that it works for weightloss in the short term, but does look like keeping weight off that way is dangerous long term.
It's a free country, so ignore the evidence if you like.
And someone I know who was on it dropped dead of a heart attack at 50. So that’s obvious proof! And prior to that he was praising it verbatim just like @BartholomewRoberts
Seriously I suspect it’s lethal for the organs and pretty terrible for the body long term.
BR is correct about low fat diets and the dangers. But the problem isn’t complex carbohydrates. It’s sugars. Obviously carbs convert to glycogen but that’s not bad.
Personally? It’s a fairly crazy fad that will eventually be shown to cause serious long term damage. By then it will be too late for some.
...The report comes after the Guardian revealed ministers were told they were putting children at lifelong risk of ill health after shelving policies to tackle obesity and junk food until 2025.
Michael Marmot, the director of UCL’s institute of health equity, said the new report spotlighted a dramatic worsening in children’s health in the last decade.
“We used to think of the combination of undernutrition and obesity as a feature of low and middle income countries. We are now seeing it in Britain in 2024.”
“Over a century of history has led us to expect continuous improvements in health. Over the last dozen years that has changed. Healthy life expectancy has declined. Quite simply, people’s fundamental human needs are not being met.”
The Food Foundation report, which included a new analysis of data from government and health sources, spotlighted the rapidly deteriorating state of children’s health.
The height of five-year-olds in the UK has been falling since 2013 and children are also shorter than those in almost all other comparable countries, the report said.
Obesity levels among 10 and 11-year-olds in England have increased by 30% since 2006, with one in five children already officially obese by the time they leave primary school, researchers found.
Cases of type 2 diabetes, which is linked to obesity, have risen by 22% among those aged under 25 in England and Wales in the last five years, the study added...
And, contrary to what certain people believe, that's not happening because they're eating fruit and vegetables. Eating too much of Big Food's UPF on the other hand.....
Got to be true about UPF's. A daytime TV Doctor wrote a book on it.
It's nothing to do with a daytime TV Doctor. I could link to dozens of peer reviewed scientific studies by actual scientists and experts from across the globe, but we've had enough of experts, haven't we? UPF will one day be treated the same way as tobacco, if there's any justice in the world. Nestle doesn't exist to nourish you.
Experts are fine, condescending pricks aren't.
UPF is the latest health fad grifters are jumping on. Fill your boots. An infectious diseases Doctor has written a book on it and put in a submission to Parliament.
UPF is a meaningless term at the moment, like Junk Food. Like your last comment there is an anti capitalism element to this. From Tulleken's FAQ
"UPF is industrially produced for profit. This is part of the definition. If you make food because you love someone and you want to nourish them, then you’re not ultra-processing."
Although I doubt the Tory collapse will get this far down the defence list, Bet365 have priced the Lib Dems at 20-1 in East Surrey (Coutinho's seat, 24k majority). I think that's way off - elsewhere it's 9 or 10 - and will get on accordingly. The tactical voting sites say Labour for this, probably accounting for the boundary changes adding a more Labourey area, but I live here and the Lib Dems seem serious value at that price - they have longstanding local representation and a strong ground game in much of the constituency, and were second in 2019.
Thanks Lloyd, and welcome.
This is the kind of local information we need more of.
...The report comes after the Guardian revealed ministers were told they were putting children at lifelong risk of ill health after shelving policies to tackle obesity and junk food until 2025.
Michael Marmot, the director of UCL’s institute of health equity, said the new report spotlighted a dramatic worsening in children’s health in the last decade.
“We used to think of the combination of undernutrition and obesity as a feature of low and middle income countries. We are now seeing it in Britain in 2024.”
“Over a century of history has led us to expect continuous improvements in health. Over the last dozen years that has changed. Healthy life expectancy has declined. Quite simply, people’s fundamental human needs are not being met.”
The Food Foundation report, which included a new analysis of data from government and health sources, spotlighted the rapidly deteriorating state of children’s health.
The height of five-year-olds in the UK has been falling since 2013 and children are also shorter than those in almost all other comparable countries, the report said.
Obesity levels among 10 and 11-year-olds in England have increased by 30% since 2006, with one in five children already officially obese by the time they leave primary school, researchers found.
Cases of type 2 diabetes, which is linked to obesity, have risen by 22% among those aged under 25 in England and Wales in the last five years, the study added...
I don't know why this isn't front and centre of every newspaper and at the heart of the election campaign. We are facing an impending public health catastrophe in this country, which will have massive implications for productivity, economic growth, health outcomes and the public finances, as well as being a personal tragedy for millions of people. It illustrates the collosal short sighted stupidity of making children the principal target of austerity policies - the ultimate penny-wise, pound stupid kind of fiscal policy, as well as the need for a complete culture change in our approach to food policy. I really hope that Labour focuses on turning this around, although it is too late already for millions of people whose whole lives will be blighted by poor childhood nutrition.
‘Poor kids though, innit? Fuck ‘em. We can’t be having troublesome red tape that impedes lining our pockets when it’s generally only a problem that affects thick stupid proles. Ok, we’ve decimated their playgrounds, we’ve ensured fresh food prices rise, we’ve culled youth clubs, we’ve limited child benefit throwing millions into poverty so they can only afford shit, cheap food, but these bovine masses need to take some responsibility. Besides, my kids are fine.’
Although I doubt the Tory collapse will get this far down the defence list, Bet365 have priced the Lib Dems at 20-1 in East Surrey (Coutinho's seat, 24k majority). I think that's way off - elsewhere it's 9 or 10 - and will get on accordingly. The tactical voting sites say Labour for this, probably accounting for the boundary changes adding a more Labourey area, but I live here and the Lib Dems seem serious value at that price - they have longstanding local representation and a strong ground game in much of the constituency, and were second in 2019.
@LloydBanks - Thanks for that feedback. Good post. The LDs wont be targeting it so it would be interesting getting some feedback from you as to the level of activity by the LDs there. Is there noticeable effort from the local LDs who aren't moving elsewhere?
The MRP polls and tactical voting sites are frustrating with some seats. The big Lab lead and the low LD percentage does distort a lot of seats where the LDs are the challengers. Labour will come through from 3rd to win in some seats, but the confusion could also cause the Tories to hold more seats because of the split opposition in what are typically considered LD/Tory seats.
One saving grace for the Conservatives is that their remaining seats are likely to be large rural ones. So the shellacking won't look as bad as it actually is on a map.
What's the minimum number of seats that would cover half of Britain by land area?
One saving grace for the Conservatives is that their remaining seats are likely to be large rural ones. So the shellacking won't look as bad as it actually is on a map.
What's the minimum number of seats that would cover half of Britain by land area?
The likely (I'd have thought considering SNP weakness ?) holds of DCT, BRS and D&G keep far more than 3/650ths of the map blue for starters.
One saving grace for the Conservatives is that their remaining seats are likely to be large rural ones. So the shellacking won't look as bad as it actually is on a map.
What's the minimum number of seats that would cover half of Britain by land area?
Sort the list of seats by land area and cumulate your way down until you hit 50%.
...The report comes after the Guardian revealed ministers were told they were putting children at lifelong risk of ill health after shelving policies to tackle obesity and junk food until 2025.
Michael Marmot, the director of UCL’s institute of health equity, said the new report spotlighted a dramatic worsening in children’s health in the last decade.
“We used to think of the combination of undernutrition and obesity as a feature of low and middle income countries. We are now seeing it in Britain in 2024.”
“Over a century of history has led us to expect continuous improvements in health. Over the last dozen years that has changed. Healthy life expectancy has declined. Quite simply, people’s fundamental human needs are not being met.”
The Food Foundation report, which included a new analysis of data from government and health sources, spotlighted the rapidly deteriorating state of children’s health.
The height of five-year-olds in the UK has been falling since 2013 and children are also shorter than those in almost all other comparable countries, the report said.
Obesity levels among 10 and 11-year-olds in England have increased by 30% since 2006, with one in five children already officially obese by the time they leave primary school, researchers found.
Cases of type 2 diabetes, which is linked to obesity, have risen by 22% among those aged under 25 in England and Wales in the last five years, the study added...
I don't know why this isn't front and centre of every newspaper and at the heart of the election campaign. We are facing an impending public health catastrophe in this country, which will have massive implications for productivity, economic growth, health outcomes and the public finances, as well as being a personal tragedy for millions of people. It illustrates the collosal short sighted stupidity of making children the principal target of austerity policies - the ultimate penny-wise, pound stupid kind of fiscal policy, as well as the need for a complete culture change in our approach to food policy. I really hope that Labour focuses on turning this around, although it is too late already for millions of people whose whole lives will be blighted by poor childhood nutrition.
‘Poor kids though, innit? Fuck ‘em. We can’t be having troublesome red tape that impedes lining our pockets when it’s generally only a problem that affects thick stupid proles. Ok, we’ve decimated their playgrounds, we’ve ensured fresh food prices rise, we’ve culled youth clubs, we’ve limited child benefit throwing millions into poverty so they can only afford shit, cheap food, but these bovine masses need to take some responsibility. Besides, my kids are fine.’
The mentality of the last 14 years.
And we have improved school meal standards. Remember Jamie Oliver and turkey twizzlers? We have school breakfast clubs in many places. At the same time we have sold off school playing fields because Michael Gove was no good at football in his youth, but guess what, we shall soon be selling off more as schools are closed as the number of children falls.
Survival rates for prostate, bowel, breast and cervical cancer are only just reaching levels that other nations achieved in the early 2000s, according to the most recent figures available.
Experts at Macmillan Cancer Support, which produced the analysis, warned that survival rates were “stuck in the noughties”, trailing decades behind countries such as Denmark and Norway.
Is this another function of the fact the UK population is just far less healthy than some other parts of Europe, same with COVID deaths early on. Being a fatty was very bad for COVID, it can't be good for surviving cancer either.
The link between obesity and cancer is startling. I'll try and dig out some stats but I was really surprised by them last time I had a look. The NHS should be shouting from the rooftops about it.
These new anti-obesity wonder drugs should help with this, and indirectly with diabetes (currently rocketing) as well as cancer.
There seem to be general (possibly anti-inflammatory) beneficial effects with them which go beyond what you'd expect solely from weight loss. We need a few years' more data to be sure, though.
In terms of financial cost/benefit, NICE will be all over the stats in the next few years as data accumulates. I would expect them to save the NHS a lot of money over time, even though long term prescriptions are quite expensive.
The interesting question is how quickly that net benefit would materialise.
Once generic, the savings would be immense. But that's well beyond the next government.
Personally I think if anything sounds too good to be true it usually is.
There are no short cuts. Exercise and healthy diet are the safest route to longer life.
The problem is what is a healthy diet?
For too long our advice has been the completely failed food pyramid and five fruit and veg a day etc which has seen a surge in obesity and suits some people but not others. And the selling of low fat foods as being healthy alternatives.
When in fact for many people's bodies cutting out carbs not fats is far healthier. I've made no secret of the fact I'm on a carnivore ketogenic diet, eating zero fruit and veg a day. Done this for seven months now and am 47 lbs down and counting. Blood healthy, resting heart rate healthy. And able to exercise more too now I'm not carrying around that excess weight anymore. All around in a much, much healthier state.
People need to be more open minded as to what a healthy diet is.
I think you are being a bit simplistic. Simple carbs like sugar, white pasta, and refined grains are of poor nutritional value, but complex carbohydrates such as wholegrain, legumes, fruits, vegetables etc contain a wealth of fibre and micronutrients. As they are slower to breakdown in the gut they do not cause the same insulin spike and are better for gut flora*. Variety in diet matters a lot.
The massive NHANES study showed the risks of a low carb diet in the long term:
* I think the distinction between simple and complex carbs goes a long way to explain the UPF effect.
To remain in a state of ketosis I go for fewer than 20 grams of carbs per day. Complex or simple carbs even a single apple contains more than that so is out.
There are multiple flaws with that study and the conclusion it found. Obviously it's not a double blind study so risks finding correlation rather than causation which is a problem in this era when the medical advice for too long has been that higher carbs are healthier (when my contention is they're not) so you end up with an ice cream sales cause shark attacks conclusion by comparing people who take other, sound, medical advice with those who don't.
Furthermore the conclusion is horribly flawed by making a fundamental category error. It compares non-obese people on a low-carb diet with non-obese people on a higher-carb diet. That's fundamentally flawed as going onto a low-carb diet is a cure for obesity for those who have struggled with it.
Compare non-obese people on a low-carb diet with obese people on a high-carb diet and check the numbers again.
It's a real life cohort study that looked at multiple variables. It does confirm that it works for weightloss in the short term, but does look like keeping weight off that way is dangerous long term.
It's a free country, so ignore the evidence if you like.
And someone I know who was on it dropped dead of a heart attack at 50. So that’s obvious proof! And prior to that he was praising it verbatim just like @BartholomewRoberts
Seriously I suspect it’s lethal for the organs and pretty terrible for the body long term.
BR is correct about low fat diets and the dangers. But the problem isn’t complex carbohydrates. It’s sugars. Obviously carbs convert to glycogen but that’s not bad.
Personally? It’s a fairly crazy fad that will eventually be shown to cause serious long term damage. By then it will be too late for some.
...The report comes after the Guardian revealed ministers were told they were putting children at lifelong risk of ill health after shelving policies to tackle obesity and junk food until 2025.
Michael Marmot, the director of UCL’s institute of health equity, said the new report spotlighted a dramatic worsening in children’s health in the last decade.
“We used to think of the combination of undernutrition and obesity as a feature of low and middle income countries. We are now seeing it in Britain in 2024.”
“Over a century of history has led us to expect continuous improvements in health. Over the last dozen years that has changed. Healthy life expectancy has declined. Quite simply, people’s fundamental human needs are not being met.”
The Food Foundation report, which included a new analysis of data from government and health sources, spotlighted the rapidly deteriorating state of children’s health.
The height of five-year-olds in the UK has been falling since 2013 and children are also shorter than those in almost all other comparable countries, the report said.
Obesity levels among 10 and 11-year-olds in England have increased by 30% since 2006, with one in five children already officially obese by the time they leave primary school, researchers found.
Cases of type 2 diabetes, which is linked to obesity, have risen by 22% among those aged under 25 in England and Wales in the last five years, the study added...
And, contrary to what certain people believe, that's not happening because they're eating fruit and vegetables. Eating too much of Big Food's UPF on the other hand.....
Got to be true about UPF's. A daytime TV Doctor wrote a book on it.
It's nothing to do with a daytime TV Doctor. I could link to dozens of peer reviewed scientific studies by actual scientists and experts from across the globe, but we've had enough of experts, haven't we? UPF will one day be treated the same way as tobacco, if there's any justice in the world. Nestle doesn't exist to nourish you.
Experts are fine, condescending pricks aren't.
UPF is the latest health fad grifters are jumping on. Fill your boots. An infectious diseases Doctor has written a book on it and put in a submission to Parliament.
UPF is a meaningless term at the moment, like Junk Food. Like your last comment there is an anti capitalism element to this. From Tulleken's FAQ
"UPF is industrially produced for profit. This is part of the definition. If you make food because you love someone and you want to nourish them, then you’re not ultra-processing."
Good news, shorter supply chains for key ammunition.
Meanwhile, the enemy has to go grovelling to Pyongyang, to try and get his hands on a few hundred more museum-piece death-trap T62 tanks and some ammo for them, Kim being pretty much Putin’s last friend on Earth.
I know it’s been said several times before that the corner was being turned, but the last few weeks have been mostly good news for the Ukranian defenders.
One saving grace for the Conservatives is that their remaining seats are likely to be large rural ones. So the shellacking won't look as bad as it actually is on a map.
What's the minimum number of seats that would cover half of Britain by land area?
Answering my own question, for the UK as a whole, you would need the 45 largest constituencies to cover half of the UK area.
6 of the 45 are in NI, the ten largest constituencies are all in Scotland, and there are 16 Scottish seats in total in the 45.
One saving grace for the Conservatives is that their remaining seats are likely to be large rural ones. So the shellacking won't look as bad as it actually is on a map.
What's the minimum number of seats that would cover half of Britain by land area?
Sort the list of seats by land area and cumulate your way down until you hit 50%.
Well, yes, the challenge is finding the list of seats by land area.
Comments
Food Foundation says height of five-year-olds falling, child obesity up by a third and type 2 diabetes by a fifth
https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jun/19/uk-children-shorter-fatter-and-sicker-amid-poor-diet-and-poverty-report-finds
Pretty appalling figures.
...The report comes after the Guardian revealed ministers were told they were putting children at lifelong risk of ill health after shelving policies to tackle obesity and junk food until 2025.
Michael Marmot, the director of UCL’s institute of health equity, said the new report spotlighted a dramatic worsening in children’s health in the last decade.
“We used to think of the combination of undernutrition and obesity as a feature of low and middle income countries. We are now seeing it in Britain in 2024.”
“Over a century of history has led us to expect continuous improvements in health. Over the last dozen years that has changed. Healthy life expectancy has declined. Quite simply, people’s fundamental human needs are not being met.”
The Food Foundation report, which included a new analysis of data from government and health sources, spotlighted the rapidly deteriorating state of children’s health.
The height of five-year-olds in the UK has been falling since 2013 and children are also shorter than those in almost all other comparable countries, the report said.
Obesity levels among 10 and 11-year-olds in England have increased by 30% since 2006, with one in five children already officially obese by the time they leave primary school, researchers found.
Cases of type 2 diabetes, which is linked to obesity, have risen by 22% among those aged under 25 in England and Wales in the last five years, the study added...
Britain last had a PM older than a monarch when Margaret Thatcher was PM, although she was only half a year older than QEII. Sunak is two years older than the future KWV, and Starmer nearly twenty years older.
If Reform poll in the 12-16% range their voters will be the low-hanging fruit and a Braverman type leader will be elected to try to attract them. Would make some sense.
If Reform poll 5-8% saner heads may prevail and they might conclude a headlong rush further to the right is a dead-end.
It will all come down to the political make-up of the Tory MPs that are left and which 2 they choose to go forward to the membership. The membership will opt for the most right wing option and I don't see that changing for some years.
The only way the Tories are coming back to towards the centre is if the membership are denied any other option.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/dr-saul-newman-has-a-big-idea-it-might-change-how-we-think-about-ageing-20210316-p57b32.html
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/carrie-johnson-holiday-sardinia-boris-children-instagram-beach-general-election-b1165090.html
Competence is the main reason the Tories will lose badly: that and lack of credibility. You can’t keep a voter coalition together if all you have to offer them is words. Look at how REF are becoming the UK’s third party on vote count - the reason they are polling as they are is because they don’t have the competency/credibility problem to the right wing, because they’ve never been in power and they’re saying they’ll follow through with what they pledge. Everyone knows the Tories won’t.
Not so good for Mr Jones with a few fields and some cattle, probably OK for Mega-farm Ltd.
Top of my own personal hit list would be to get rid of the inverted Council Tax gearing so that Band H properties pay a much lower proportion of their value than Band A. If anything it should be ratcheted the other way round. In the long run it ought to become a better property tax based on value rather than crude bands.
1 - Probably twitter to get attention.
2 - To spread amongst gathered community, Facebook Groups. Especially amongst the older, like most of us. Community FB groups of 1-20k size groups are fairly routine afaics.
3 - Is there a mention for Instagram and Youtube shorts?
4 - Then local papers, local radio and an honourable mention to BBC regions and their Local Democracy Reporting Service. How important is chat by DJs and Drivetime?
There are also local TV stations but they don't imo get cut through.
Their net zero policy doesn't concern me. They clearly want us to play our part in reducing Emissions and will go for Nuclear.
I read it, or skim read it, some of it is okay, some of it I do not agree with. Wouldn't say it was concerning apart from the financial stuff. Been ably demolished on Twitter.
I would not vote for them but they are hardly going to Annexe the Sudetenland.
I did it once, but I think I got away with it ..
882 people detected crossing English Channel on Tuesday in highest number for single day this year
https://news.sky.com/story/882-people-detected-crossing-english-channel-on-tuesday-in-highest-number-for-single-day-this-year-13155330
"But Farage is also close to and has repeatedly praised Trump, who he interviewed for GB News in March. For his part, Trump has described Farage as a “handsome guy” at a campaign rally earlier this year — and appeared via video at Farage’s lavish 60th birthday celebration in April to congratulate the Brexiteer on a “truly remarkable sixty years on Earth.” "
If you repeatedly praise a fascist, get a job offer to help elect one, and get lavish praise in return, I think that pretty well defines you in their image, whatever else you might choose not to say in public.
Anything suggesting the economic climate will be less stormy once they are in government gives them a better chance in 2029.
If on St Alena's day it pisses with rain
On St Elizabeth of Aragon's day you'll see the sun plain
Appen
Plus the less waterproof will have postal voted. The ebikers will stay at home, apparently the motors can't take UK weather, which will hit the lib Dems.
The theory used to be that bad weather helped Tories because lab voters are spineless and lazy. Now that con equals over 70 it probably hurts them
This bit caught my eye though: Protect our servicemen and women on active duty inside and outside the UK from civil law and human rights lawyers.
Inside. Inside.
PM not head of state
PM not commander of military
Roderick Spode
No guns
Not going to happen here
Remarkably, with the one exception of that poll showing RefCon on 41%, the polling of these loose left and right blocs has been almost in stasis, over time and between pollsters. Only the tiniest of variation. All the churn has been intra-bloc rather than between. The last time there was an actual major shift was during the Truss autumn PMship.
Election campaign swing at the moment all seem to be about people faffing over their precise vote and tactical considerations, rather than being convinced or put off by one or other of the main parties.
I'm not sure it's complex, but it would be a sea change in the basics.
Daily Mail would Wail and the Rump Tories would fume, but if Starmer has a decade, now is the time with time for benefits to feed through to local services. There may be a great howling noise from London, but less so than say 3-4 years ago as property values have quite significantly 'levelled up' regionally.
I'll potentially take a hit on rental property, especially in losing my leeway to charge below market rents, but my main dwelling is Band D, which is the formal average so should be relatively unaffected.
I don't know how bold Sir Keir would be.
And yes, the lack of any, even within the 95%CI, increases in point estimate is pretty astonishing.
The USA will not allow any of its troops to be subject to the IWT.
We have Tories campaigning for the same as Reform advocate. Human Rights Lawyers were abusing their position over Iraq and some were struck off.
Tom T wrote about it in September.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/19/human-rights-lawyers-now-present-a-real-threat-to-british-troops/
Personally I find the fetishisation of the military and veterans a little tiresome, Those that commit crimes on service need to be held to account.
But look at the reaction to the Murderous Marine A who was treated as a hero in some parts of the media and not just the usual suspects.
There has been a trend to 'downshifted farmers who used to be professionals' and 'hobby farmers' and 'weekend smallholders' for a couple of decades; I would not be *that* concerned about those, but they can sometimes be distinctive small contributions to local food economies who get disproportionate attention.
Examples would be Kate Humble and Sarah Beaney (I think). Jeremy Clarkson is on the egde, as it is a sizeable farm. Adam Henson is in the "diversified farmer" rather than "farm on the side" group.
Benefits and Work charity.
Lack of concrete sums up Labour's manifesto well I think.
For a theoretically perfect opinion poll with a sample size of 2,000 and for an opinion with 25% support, the standard error is ~1%. This means that about two-thirds of the time you would expect the measured support to be in the range +/-1% (and 95% of the time within +/-2%)
So, for any pair of polls, the probability that the Tories see at least a +2pp increase in support due to statistical noise is 1-in-36. That is the probability that the first poll of the pair was on the low tail of the distribution, and the second poll was in the high tail.
The probability of that not happening in 44 pairs of polls is 29%. If it has happened, then the reason we've not seen the Tories go up in the polls at all is because the underlying trend is at least 2pp against them between every pair of polls (so possibly 4pp in total, because this extends over two weeks)
So there's a pretty good chance that the trend against the Tories is very strong, indicative of a very poor election campaign.
It's notable that in the 2017GE campaign, the benchmark against which all disastrous campaigns are measured, May only lost about 5pp from her polling peak. Most of the closing of the gap came by Labour squeezing votes from all the other opposition parties, seeing their support rise by 15pp from their nadir.
So, on a purely numerical basis, on the basis of the opinion poll evidence we have thus far, Sunak is making a decent fist of challenging May for having rum the worst-ever general election campaign.
We will have to hope that Good King Billy is made of sterner stuff than VEIII
There was also a response, which I see makes the same point I did ("blue zones regions are not defined as places with supercentenarians, as the pre-print author seems to think."):
https://www.bluezones.com/news/are-supercentenarian-claims-based-on-age-exaggeration/
...An example of how vigorously data collection was in blue zones regions:
“The database developed for the present study includes all individuals born in Villagrande from 1876 to 1912. For each individual we traced the exact date at death or the proof that he/she was still alive at the date of investigation. The data was gathered from civil registers (which record all births, marriages, and deaths), parish registers and the population register (anagrafe). All information has been collected in the municipality population registration office and was cross-checked with information reported in the military register and orally reported information from any relatives of these persons. With regard to those who died outside the village, the information was recovered by using annotations on date and place of death reported in the margin of the birth certificate or transcription of the date of death in the anagrafe. For those who emigrated and for whom no death has been reported, the survival status has been verified with the municipality of current residence.”..
Read the whole thing.
It doesn't completely disprove the alternative hypothesis, obviously - but it does completely debunk a number of its claims (for example its conflation of unfit young Okinawans with healthy elderly ones).
So far I have not had an ad from anyone. I get lots of local LD stuff, but that is because I am signed up for it. I also read the Tory candidates 'Re-elect' Facebook page daily (1 post per day) but I haven't received an ad from anybody. The Tory Facebook page is also noticeable by its lack of activity. Most days there are no comments and if there is it is only 1 or 2 and only about half a dozen likes. Each day it is the same. A number of group photos from different places in the constituency and a plug for the cafe/pub they visited that day.
Who are these ads going to and why not me? It is difficult to believe the algorithms know I am a wasted effort (or can they?).
Eating too much of Big Food's UPF on the other hand.....
They have abandoned the plan that doing well in the upcoming election would be a de facto Indyref.
The new plan is that if they get humped in the upcoming election, that is a mandate for IndyRef...
A personal friend has a farm with few fields, a woodland and some cattle so I was thinking of him. It isn't a hobby farm in the sense that it was inherited and used to be more intensive but he rents out a lot of it and no longer has a dairy.
There's not much money in it so IHT would be a problem unless food prices were pushed up.
Turning it into agri-business (goodbye hedges and wildflower meadows) or a solar farm might make more money but ultimately wouldn't be that great for the environment
May made the error of fatally undermining her messaging by going wobbly on policy. She and her advisers were also far too complacent and just expected to be handed a majority.
Sunak doesn’t even have any consistent messaging, and to the extent he posits anything he then immediately shoots himself in the foot the day afterwards. He also projects massively about Labour having no plan - the Tory offering is about as uninspiring and boring as you can get, aside from a weird national service policy that wasn’t thought through properly.
I could link to dozens of peer reviewed scientific studies by actual scientists and experts from across the globe, but we've had enough of experts, haven't we?
UPF will one day be treated the same way as tobacco, if there's any justice in the world.
Nestle doesn't exist to nourish you.
"Yes"
"THAT IS A MANDATE FOR INDYREF!"
"Oh, I meant No"
"THAT IS ALSO A MANDATE FOR INDYREF!"
Northrop’s coproduction agreement is the first publicly acknowledged deal between a US defense prime and the Ukrainian government for a manufacturing project inside Ukraine.
https://breakingdefense.com/2024/06/northrop-planning-to-build-munitions-inside-ukraine/
I think we might be seeing Farage’s message of ‘the Tories are finished, you might as well vote Reform’ whether correct or not, starting to have an effect on the polls.
If nothing much happens in the next couple of days, nothing much is going to happen by July 4th.
Local election results since the election was called are much more supportive of Tories in mid to high 20s or even higher than they are of Reform drawing close to crossover.
I mean in some local byelections the Tory has actually gained votes!
Now, constituency polls might be limited, etc etc… but who knows what lies ahead
This is the kind of local information we need more of.
It appears to my wife and myself that the only ‘plan’ Sunk et al have is to assert, without apparent foundation, that ‘Labour will put up your taxes!’
On the ‘contact’ point we have had two pieces of paper from Labour, one from the Tories but nothing, so far, from Green, Indie, LD or Reform.
The Independent, a rather attractive young lady, has appeared on Facebook.
However, they are all, apparently, booked to attend an election meeting at the Parish Church on Sunday afternoon. Could be interesting.
The old thing was that people didn't want to admit voting Tory for fear of looking nasty, selfish etc. Now I wonder if there's a shyness born of the fact it's unfashionable to vote Conservative. So someone might say they are voting Labour, or Reform, because the in thing is to diss the Tories. No longer about nastiness, more about wanting to be with the in-crowd.
The in-crowd in the blue wall is Lib Dem or Labour. So they might be overstated if people are saying one thing but then come election day they retreat back home to Conservative. Whereas in the red wall or Eastern England the in-crowd is probably flirting with Farage and Reform, so they might be overstating it there.
That said, I was convinced there was a shy Lib Dem vote in the run up to 2015 for exactly the same reasons of fashion, and it didn't materialise.
Secondly he is certainly a racist, or so says UKIP founder Alan Sked who tells of Farage's use of the n-word and disdain for people of colour. His attack on Sunak's supposedly not being "a patriot" sounds like a dog whistle for racists. He was also described as a fascist by his private school housemaster, and while that is a long time ago, people's views rarely get more moderate with age. Then there are the people he associates with, including the Le Pens and many of the candidates for his party that were too dim to delete their distasteful views. We know little of those that have limited understanding of cleaning up their online trail.
My contention remains. Reform Party is a fascist party. Maybe not in the blackshirt wearing, goosestep marching of the past, but a modern fascist party for the 21st century nonetheless.
Anyone that votes for Farage and his repulsive party are useful idiots at best and at worst are apologists for Trump and Putin.
It is a bit of a minefield but the seat profile I think we can confidently start to build is more coastal than inland, more northern-midland than southern, more working class than middle class, more eastern than western, more rural/semi-rural than urban.
The big question mark for me is the Shires and the blue rinse brigade. If REF manage to break through with that demographic it becomes catastrophic for the Tories.
That our averages are down are rightly a cause for concern but we need details before action.
Not an ideologue like Pol Pot or the Ayatollahs, or a control freak like Mubarak or the Burmese Junta, but a corrupt narcissist who intends to run the country like an organised crime racket for the benefit of his kinsmen.
I'd like to think of myself as being fairly intelligent (stop sniggerring at the back...) , but I am pretty much clueless on the 'truth' of the debate and UPF.
For me, the problem is that it's an area where fads and money rules: dieting is a massive industry, and charlatans are always willing to fill their bank accounts rather than help people be healthy. Studies show incompatible results, and the results lauded by whichever group supports them. Dieting itself can almost become a modern-day religion.
So I fall back on the old 'everything in moderation'. We have a McDonalds once a week after swimming lessons, because the lesson's time is inconvenient to cook before or after (and my son loves them). We have regular fruit and veg; but not religiously (if we have a naughty day where we miss some, we'll have a good day later). I don't try to cut anything out of my diet, but try not to have too much of anything.
Mental happiness also counts; and I find counting calories and reading ingredients to be absolutely soul-crushing.
UPF is the latest health fad grifters are jumping on. Fill your boots. An infectious diseases Doctor has written a book on it and put in a submission to Parliament.
UPF is a meaningless term at the moment, like Junk Food. Like your last comment there is an anti capitalism element to this. From Tulleken's FAQ
"UPF is industrially produced for profit. This is part of the definition. If you make food because you love someone and you want to nourish them, then you’re not ultra-processing."
Some UPF's are good for you.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/nov/13/some-ultra-processed-foods-are-good-for-your-health-who-backed-study-finds?trk=public_post_comment-text
The definitions are still ambiguous
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/02/truth-about-ultra-processed-foods-upfs?trk=public_post_comment-text
The mentality of the last 14 years.
The MRP polls and tactical voting sites are frustrating with some seats. The big Lab lead and the low LD percentage does distort a lot of seats where the LDs are the challengers. Labour will come through from 3rd to win in some seats, but the confusion could also cause the Tories to hold more seats because of the split opposition in what are typically considered LD/Tory seats.
Meanwhile, the enemy has to go grovelling to Pyongyang, to try and get his hands on a few hundred more museum-piece death-trap T62 tanks and some ammo for them, Kim being pretty much Putin’s last friend on Earth.
I know it’s been said several times before that the corner was being turned, but the last few weeks have been mostly good news for the Ukranian defenders.
6 of the 45 are in NI, the ten largest constituencies are all in Scotland, and there are 16 Scottish seats in total in the 45.
For anyone else interested I found it here: https://pages.mysociety.org/2025-constituencies/datasets/parliament_con_2025/0_1_4
Aside: They had obviously bet on a January election.