Considering that ultra processed foods make up about 60% of calories consumed in this country and that percentage increases for children and people in poorer areas, the UK government has to do something to make the population aware that their food choices are killing them. The "food" industry bears full responsibility for the obesity epidemic, and are as evil as the tobacco companies. Sadly, we're too far down the hole to make healthy eating affordable for the masses, so we're fucked.
Individuals bear responsibility for their actions as well - the industry doesn’t have “full” responsibility
Has Starmer really removed Thatcher's portrait from the Thatcher room at No. 10 because he found it 'unsettling' ?
Aw, bless. We cant have his little feelings hurtied, can we? I wonder what else he'll find 'unsettling'?
He really is going to be a poor PM.
He might turn out to be a poor PM but fuck me you need something more than him slightly adjusting his work environment to suit himself. Get a fucking grip.
I'm laughing at him. It's hilarious.
He is PM. He will, sadly, have to make really important decisions; sometimes life-and-death decisions. He needs to be tough, as do all PMs. Yet he finds a portrait of a massively successful (although controversial) predecessor 'unsettling'.
He needs to get a grip.
Cameron held an EU referendum to satisfy his right-wing; Starmer has removed a portrait of a PM from 30 years ago to satisfy his equivalent.
Cameron held an EU referendum because the public wanted one; and it could easily be argued that politics needed one. The fact that leave won shows that there was a massive demand; and as Corbyn showed, the demand was not just on the Conservative Party's right wing.
IMV if we had not had an EU referendum in 2016 we would have either had one by now, or have a very right-wing government that would make Sunak's look like Corbyn's.
The issue of EU membership was a can that could only be kicked down the road so far.
Oh don't get me wrong, I think holding the referendum was the right thing to do precisely for the reasons you give.
But Cameron did it to head off the right-wing given his small majority. And I don't think there is any evidence that the country would suddenly swing to the right on the back of not having one, simply because we've had absolutely massive non-EU migration since then and just elected Labour.
I think asking the public to tick a box Yes/No because you aren't willing to make the case for what you think is the right policy is a completely inappropriate use of a referendum, and an abdication of responsibility. Referendums should only be used as a final endorsement or rejection from the public for an agreed and substantially worked out major constitutional change. Which is what they are in serious countries that have referendums in their constitutional toolkit. Which is what the word referendum means.
In 2016 there was no sane way out. A referendum was used to ask us (yes or no) whether the central plank of policy of the last 40 years had actually been a mistake. This was because we hadn't been asked at the key moments over that 40 year period.
As it turned out the real killer was extending FOM to countries with very different levels of development from the UK. Lincolnshire did not riot over French and German accountants. The SM, as guided by the UK veto as it developed, should never have got to that point, especially without our referendum consent.
Still don't think it was an appropriate use of a referendum. Either Cameron should have made the case for membership or if he thinks the UK would be better outside the EU, develop a proposition for that and take it to the public. The important thing in this case is both options are clear - the status quo or the proposed alternative.
The Times headline seems to imply its forced on workers and that they’ll be fat shamed in front of their colleagues.
It’s voluntary . The Times I’ve found over the last year seems to do a lot headlines which seek to mislead .
"Employers to have signed up include Jaguar Land Rover, where 4,500 staff from the boardroom to the factory floor will get the checks within months at its Solihull base."
I read that as voluntary at the employer level. Kid Starver teams up with the head capitalists to fat shame The Workers. He really is hilariously useless.
"More than 16 million people are eligible for an NHS health check, but data shows that only about 40% of those invited complete one."
Reaching people via their workplace - inviting them to complete a voluntary health questionnaire on company time - might be a way of improving that sort of response rate, and help to head off health problems at an earlier stage.
It's not going to be forcing people up on stage to face the calipers in front of all their colleagues. Some of the reactions to this very modest trial scheme are completely unhinged.
In my experience, people who are fat know they are fat, and being told yet again that they need to lose weight won't help.
If I were to get a letter inviting me for "an NHS health check", I'd probably just bin it because it strikes me as a waste of time when I know it takes literally months to get an appointment when I want one.
I would just say that it could be the most important thing you do
I had my dvt in October last year and was admitted to hospital as a medical emergency and underwent an immediate ultra sound
That ultrasound found a massive dvt in my left thigh but also an undetected aneurysm that can often be fatal
As a result my aneurysm is monitored yearly and if necessary the surgeon will operate
Blood pressure, pulse and oxygen tests can be lifesavers and to be honest there is no need to fat shame anyone
But that last is all that will happen - people will be told to lose weight/drink less/give up smoking, as appropriate, and not a jot more.
That is not how it works
If high blood pressure is detected or further tests diagnosed diabetes, then treatment will commence and monitored including year on year reviews
Prevention is better than a funeral
It's pretty cheap and easy to monitor your own blood pressure, but I never did until a checkup a year or so back. Probably saved me some serious long term health consequences, and with a bit of will power it was quite easy to get down within a month or two.
Some years ago I monitored my blood pressure and eventually with the medics help I now have a good rate and even through all my recent health issues
Considering that ultra processed foods make up about 60% of calories consumed in this country and that percentage increases for children and people in poorer areas, the UK government has to do something to make the population aware that their food choices are killing them. The "food" industry bears full responsibility for the obesity epidemic, and are as evil as the tobacco companies. Sadly, we're too far down the hole to make healthy eating affordable for the masses, so we're fucked.
I understand the book about UPF is very good, but I think oversimplifying the concept misses the point. It is not the case that the less processing you do to something the better it is for you. Vegetables' goodness is often better absorbed when the vegetable is cooked. The fat soluble vitamins in many vegetables needs to be accompanied by fat - hence we put butter on our carrots and dressing on our salad. Cabbage is better for you when fermented. These are all food processes.
I absolutely agree with you. Processed food is more than acceptable. Humans have Processed food for thousands of years and without it, humans wouldn't be at the top of the tree now. All food is Processed in some way. What I'm arguing against is the industrial manufacture of food using unheard of and often poorly regulated chemicals and fats, gums and sweeteners. Those are the ones that suppress and overide the body's natural systems.
I saw an interesting map recently: the UK consumption of sugar is on the low side compared to European averages. Clearly this is just one measure, but I'd always thought this quite a good proxy for quality of diet.
My guess is that a big part of our problem is lifestyle, and car-dependency. You don't see many fatties in Denmark or the Netherlands. But it's only a guess, and no doubt the answer is complex.
Active travel has been described, fairly convincingly, as a miracle pill for a range of physical and mental health problems. Social connection and all that.
As so often, we know roughly what to do- plan new communities by the maps of what communities looked like before mass car use. What's harder is selling that to electorates in advance, or getting commercial entities to deliver something a bit more expensive and complex than a standard new build estate. You need some kind of benevolent despot with a masterplan. And we don't like them. Even when they are called Charles Windsor, it's not always an easy sell.
The problem with that is, before mass car use families and social groups were geographically much tighter than they are today.
I live on the south coast but still travel to London regularly to meet up with friends, and my mum lives in Kent and I visit her there at least once a year. Along with occasional other social trips around the country, I need a car - doing all that by train would cost far too much both monetarily and in terms of time.
And once you have to have a car, it's the rare trip that using the car isn't the best option. Even when the two of us go into town for a meal or to the cinema, the car park cost is less than two return bus tickets.
This is the crux of the problem. You either have to make active travel relatively more attractive, or increase the marginal cost of car journeys.
Not sure how, but the socially optimal outcome would be to make car ownership cheaper but car use more expensive.
It isn't the 'crux' of a 'problem' - it is a wonderful privilege to have the freedom to own and run a wonderful, safe, dry conveyance that gives us the freedom to see loved ones or have adventures at will. It is a perverse stockholm syndrome mind state that thinks otherwise, right up there with being angry about 'cheap food', and 'cheap energy'. People who believe these things really need to look at the media they're consuming.
That's exactly what I'm arguing for. I'd increase car ownership/access so that more people can enjoy those things. For example, 40% of households in Liverpool have no car access at all.
By reducing the number of short and urban journeys made by car, it opens up more space for people to visit their friends in other parts of the country.
Considering that ultra processed foods make up about 60% of calories consumed in this country and that percentage increases for children and people in poorer areas, the UK government has to do something to make the population aware that their food choices are killing them. The "food" industry bears full responsibility for the obesity epidemic, and are as evil as the tobacco companies. Sadly, we're too far down the hole to make healthy eating affordable for the masses, so we're fucked.
I understand the book about UPF is very good, but I think oversimplifying the concept misses the point. It is not the case that the less processing you do to something the better it is for you. Vegetables' goodness is often better absorbed when the vegetable is cooked. The fat soluble vitamins in many vegetables needs to be accompanied by fat - hence we put butter on our carrots and dressing on our salad. Cabbage is better for you when fermented. These are all food processes.
I absolutely agree with you. Processed food is more than acceptable. Humans have Processed food for thousands of years and without it, humans wouldn't be at the top of the tree now. All food is Processed in some way. What I'm arguing against is the industrial manufacture of food using unheard of and often poorly regulated chemicals and fats, gums and sweeteners. Those are the ones that suppress and overide the body's natural systems.
I saw an interesting map recently: the UK consumption of sugar is on the low side compared to European averages. Clearly this is just one measure, but I'd always thought this quite a good proxy for quality of diet.
My guess is that a big part of our problem is lifestyle, and car-dependency. You don't see many fatties in Denmark or the Netherlands. But it's only a guess, and no doubt the answer is complex.
Active travel has been described, fairly convincingly, as a miracle pill for a range of physical and mental health problems. Social connection and all that.
As so often, we know roughly what to do- plan new communities by the maps of what communities looked like before mass car use. What's harder is selling that to electorates in advance, or getting commercial entities to deliver something a bit more expensive and complex than a standard new build estate. You need some kind of benevolent despot with a masterplan. And we don't like them. Even when they are called Charles Windsor, it's not always an easy sell.
The problem with that is, before mass car use families and social groups were geographically much tighter than they are today.
I live on the south coast but still travel to London regularly to meet up with friends, and my mum lives in Kent and I visit her there at least once a year. Along with occasional other social trips around the country, I need a car - doing all that by train would cost far too much both monetarily and in terms of time.
And once you have to have a car, it's the rare trip that using the car isn't the best option. Even when the two of us go into town for a meal or to the cinema, the car park cost is less than two return bus tickets.
This is the crux of the problem. You either have to make active travel relatively more attractive, or increase the marginal cost of car journeys.
Not sure how, but the socially optimal outcome would be to make car ownership cheaper but car use more expensive.
It isn't the 'crux' of a 'problem' - it is a wonderful privilege to have the freedom to own and run a wonderful, safe, dry conveyance that gives us the freedom to see loved ones or have adventures at will. It is a perverse stockholm syndrome mind state that thinks otherwise, right up there with being angry about 'cheap food', and 'cheap energy'. People who believe these things really need to look at the media they're consuming.
I don't think you and Eabhal are necessarily disagreeing here. He's not saying that owning a car is bad - just that owning a car is so expensive that once you have one it makes sense to use it for EVERYTHING, including what would otherwise be a seven minute walk to the shop for a loaf of bread. Ideally car ownership would be very very cheap, but driving them for journeys which could just as easily be walked would be more expensive.
The Times headline seems to imply its forced on workers and that they’ll be fat shamed in front of their colleagues.
It’s voluntary . The Times I’ve found over the last year seems to do a lot headlines which seek to mislead .
"Employers to have signed up include Jaguar Land Rover, where 4,500 staff from the boardroom to the factory floor will get the checks within months at its Solihull base."
I read that as voluntary at the employer level. Kid Starver teams up with the head capitalists to fat shame The Workers. He really is hilariously useless.
"More than 16 million people are eligible for an NHS health check, but data shows that only about 40% of those invited complete one."
Reaching people via their workplace - inviting them to complete a voluntary health questionnaire on company time - might be a way of improving that sort of response rate, and help to head off health problems at an earlier stage.
It's not going to be forcing people up on stage to face the calipers in front of all their colleagues. Some of the reactions to this very modest trial scheme are completely unhinged.
In my experience, people who are fat know they are fat, and being told yet again that they need to lose weight won't help.
If I were to get a letter inviting me for "an NHS health check", I'd probably just bin it because it strikes me as a waste of time when I know it takes literally months to get an appointment when I want one.
Some people who have gotten a bit overweight don't realise, but, more importantly, the focus here is on blood pressure. Most people don't know their blood pressure. Lots of people are hypertensive without knowing it.
There has been very extensive public health research on these issues, which I put slightly more faith in than random online anecdotes.
Considering that ultra processed foods make up about 60% of calories consumed in this country and that percentage increases for children and people in poorer areas, the UK government has to do something to make the population aware that their food choices are killing them. The "food" industry bears full responsibility for the obesity epidemic, and are as evil as the tobacco companies. Sadly, we're too far down the hole to make healthy eating affordable for the masses, so we're fucked.
I understand the book about UPF is very good, but I think oversimplifying the concept misses the point. It is not the case that the less processing you do to something the better it is for you. Vegetables' goodness is often better absorbed when the vegetable is cooked. The fat soluble vitamins in many vegetables needs to be accompanied by fat - hence we put butter on our carrots and dressing on our salad. Cabbage is better for you when fermented. These are all food processes.
I absolutely agree with you. Processed food is more than acceptable. Humans have Processed food for thousands of years and without it, humans wouldn't be at the top of the tree now. All food is Processed in some way. What I'm arguing against is the industrial manufacture of food using unheard of and often poorly regulated chemicals and fats, gums and sweeteners. Those are the ones that suppress and overide the body's natural systems.
I saw an interesting map recently: the UK consumption of sugar is on the low side compared to European averages. Clearly this is just one measure, but I'd always thought this quite a good proxy for quality of diet.
My guess is that a big part of our problem is lifestyle, and car-dependency. You don't see many fatties in Denmark or the Netherlands. But it's only a guess, and no doubt the answer is complex.
NHS guidelines are 30 grams per day of sugar. Thats about 10.5kg per year. As the Poles consume over 4 times that amount and the Belgians nearly 5 times, it would be good to know if their populations are all dropping down dead at 40 etc so that we can evaluate the wisdom of the NHS guidance.
Belgian life expectantancy is just over the EU average at nearly 82 years, and about a year ahead of the UK. Could it be that Belgian chocolate has life extending powers, and should we not be told. 'Eat lots of Belgian (and Swiss) Cholcolate and Live for Ever' would be an extremely attactive slogan for me.
Are we to believe Belgium's sugar consumption is nearly 5x Luxembourg's? Or double the UK's for that matter?
I suspect that the simplest explanation is the numbers in the map are just wrong.
Or maybe an artefact from food manufacturing, all that chocolate etc.
The map does show that sugar isn't the only concern, and of course lots of other countries are also struggling with obesity pandemics too, even middle income countries and urban areas in low income countries. There are a few exceptions like Vietnam, but I think even there the move to Uas style fried fast food is becoming an issue.
Considering that ultra processed foods make up about 60% of calories consumed in this country and that percentage increases for children and people in poorer areas, the UK government has to do something to make the population aware that their food choices are killing them. The "food" industry bears full responsibility for the obesity epidemic, and are as evil as the tobacco companies. Sadly, we're too far down the hole to make healthy eating affordable for the masses, so we're fucked.
I understand the book about UPF is very good, but I think oversimplifying the concept misses the point. It is not the case that the less processing you do to something the better it is for you. Vegetables' goodness is often better absorbed when the vegetable is cooked. The fat soluble vitamins in many vegetables needs to be accompanied by fat - hence we put butter on our carrots and dressing on our salad. Cabbage is better for you when fermented. These are all food processes.
I absolutely agree with you. Processed food is more than acceptable. Humans have Processed food for thousands of years and without it, humans wouldn't be at the top of the tree now. All food is Processed in some way. What I'm arguing against is the industrial manufacture of food using unheard of and often poorly regulated chemicals and fats, gums and sweeteners. Those are the ones that suppress and overide the body's natural systems.
I saw an interesting map recently: the UK consumption of sugar is on the low side compared to European averages. Clearly this is just one measure, but I'd always thought this quite a good proxy for quality of diet.
My guess is that a big part of our problem is lifestyle, and car-dependency. You don't see many fatties in Denmark or the Netherlands. But it's only a guess, and no doubt the answer is complex.
NHS guidelines are 30 grams per day of sugar. Thats about 10.5kg per year. As the Poles consume over 4 times that amount and the Belgians nearly 5 times, it would be good to know if their populations are all dropping down dead at 40 etc so that we can evaluate the wisdom of the NHS guidance.
Belgian life expectantancy is just over the EU average at nearly 82 years, and about a year ahead of the UK. Could it be that Belgian chocolate has life extending powers, and should we not be told. 'Eat lots of Belgian (and Swiss) Cholcolate and Live for Ever' would be an extremely attactive slogan for me.
Are we to believe Belgium's sugar consumption is nearly 5x Luxembourg's? Or double the UK's for that matter?
I suspect that the simplest explanation is the numbers in the map are just wrong.
Belgium is particularly high for consumption of sugary soft drinks. I don't know about Luxembourg.
Considering that ultra processed foods make up about 60% of calories consumed in this country and that percentage increases for children and people in poorer areas, the UK government has to do something to make the population aware that their food choices are killing them. The "food" industry bears full responsibility for the obesity epidemic, and are as evil as the tobacco companies. Sadly, we're too far down the hole to make healthy eating affordable for the masses, so we're fucked.
I understand the book about UPF is very good, but I think oversimplifying the concept misses the point. It is not the case that the less processing you do to something the better it is for you. Vegetables' goodness is often better absorbed when the vegetable is cooked. The fat soluble vitamins in many vegetables needs to be accompanied by fat - hence we put butter on our carrots and dressing on our salad. Cabbage is better for you when fermented. These are all food processes.
I absolutely agree with you. Processed food is more than acceptable. Humans have Processed food for thousands of years and without it, humans wouldn't be at the top of the tree now. All food is Processed in some way. What I'm arguing against is the industrial manufacture of food using unheard of and often poorly regulated chemicals and fats, gums and sweeteners. Those are the ones that suppress and overide the body's natural systems.
I saw an interesting map recently: the UK consumption of sugar is on the low side compared to European averages. Clearly this is just one measure, but I'd always thought this quite a good proxy for quality of diet.
My guess is that a big part of our problem is lifestyle, and car-dependency. You don't see many fatties in Denmark or the Netherlands. But it's only a guess, and no doubt the answer is complex.
The Dutch are particularly interesting, as one of the few countries that rival us in terms of unhealthy traditional diet.
You can get away with it if you do enough cycling.
Dutch cycling culture is quite interesting. It is quite different from ours. It is almost all on knackered old bikes at speeds barely more than running pace. Which, in generalised journey cost terms - taking into account the cost of time, the cost of your bike, the faff time in getting it out and securing it (which is much lower in a bike which costs £100 than £1000, because you care about it less), the time taken to shower after cycling really fast, etc - works out rather better.
Old maids, mist, holy communion, isn't it? Quite a lot of cycling is like that, even in the UK. But it doesn't help the debate that the more visible manifestations are clad in lycra and aggressively going fast. (Because in too many places, aggression is the only way to survive.)
Huge numbers of people in the UK do not cycle or walk because they perceive the roads to be a dangerous environment, where they will be threatened, bullied and abused. The figures are startling.
Has Starmer really removed Thatcher's portrait from the Thatcher room at No. 10 because he found it 'unsettling' ?
Aw, bless. We cant have his little feelings hurtied, can we? I wonder what else he'll find 'unsettling'?
He really is going to be a poor PM.
He might turn out to be a poor PM but fuck me you need something more than him slightly adjusting his work environment to suit himself. Get a fucking grip.
I'm laughing at him. It's hilarious.
He is PM. He will, sadly, have to make really important decisions; sometimes life-and-death decisions. He needs to be tough, as do all PMs. Yet he finds a portrait of a massively successful (although controversial) predecessor 'unsettling'.
He needs to get a grip.
Cameron held an EU referendum to satisfy his right-wing; Starmer has removed a portrait of a PM from 30 years ago to satisfy his equivalent.
Cameron held an EU referendum because the public wanted one; and it could easily be argued that politics needed one. The fact that leave won shows that there was a massive demand; and as Corbyn showed, the demand was not just on the Conservative Party's right wing.
IMV if we had not had an EU referendum in 2016 we would have either had one by now, or have a very right-wing government that would make Sunak's look like Corbyn's.
The issue of EU membership was a can that could only be kicked down the road so far.
Oh don't get me wrong, I think holding the referendum was the right thing to do precisely for the reasons you give.
But Cameron did it to head off the right-wing given his small majority. And I don't think there is any evidence that the country would suddenly swing to the right on the back of not having one, simply because we've had absolutely massive non-EU migration since then and just elected Labour.
There wasn't a right thing to do. That was and is the problem. Successive governments since the war had ended up in a particular and special situation, as we are now discovering. The population of the UK as a whole has no settled will to be in the EU and no settled will to be out of it. The referendum has created no permanent settlement, nor could it, and another referendum won't either.
The UK policy failure was not 2016, 2020 or now. It was in allowing an unbalanced FOM under Blair.
SKS's rhetoric abundantly confirms that there still is no right thing to do, though EFTA/EEA remains, as it has since 2016 easily the best and highly imperfect option.
The issue is the EEA allows for the “unbalanced FOM”.
The best outcome for all is some kind of associate membership with full FOM. But none of the politicians on any side (UK or EU) are adept enough to get there
Has Starmer really removed Thatcher's portrait from the Thatcher room at No. 10 because he found it 'unsettling' ?
Aw, bless. We cant have his little feelings hurtied, can we? I wonder what else he'll find 'unsettling'?
He really is going to be a poor PM.
I feel Starmer's dilemma. I used to have a large antique portrait of Gladstone above my bed until a guy I brought back pointed out that it didn't exactly create an amorous mood. I reluctantly relegated him to the stairs after that.
I think this post needs some unpacking.
Yes I failed on grammar there. I used to hang around local auctions and bid on old Victorian pictures that no-one seemed to want. I amassed quite a collection of 19th Century worthies that I used to dedicate my bedroom with. When I started bringing guys back I cleared the more unsettling pictures out of my room. This is why I totally understand Starmer's dillema. It must be hard to get hot and bothered about social democracy with Mrs Thatcher glowering at you
So the guy isn't still down in your cellar is the big takeaway.
Has Starmer really removed Thatcher's portrait from the Thatcher room at No. 10 because he found it 'unsettling' ?
Aw, bless. We cant have his little feelings hurtied, can we? I wonder what else he'll find 'unsettling'?
He really is going to be a poor PM.
He might turn out to be a poor PM but fuck me you need something more than him slightly adjusting his work environment to suit himself. Get a fucking grip.
I'm laughing at him. It's hilarious.
He is PM. He will, sadly, have to make really important decisions; sometimes life-and-death decisions. He needs to be tough, as do all PMs. Yet he finds a portrait of a massively successful (although controversial) predecessor 'unsettling'.
He needs to get a grip.
If I had to make life and death decisions I'd probably want to do it in an environment that I found conducive.
It's definitely you that needs to get a grip, he's only taken a picture off a wall in a room that none of us will ever see, he's not thrown the statue of Churchill into the Thames.
"If I had to make life and death decisions I'd probably want to do it in an environment that I found conducive."
He doesn't get that choice. He might have to make the decision whilst on holiday; or on a foreign visit, or at three o'clock in the morning. Or whilst on the toilet, if it is urgent enough.
It's fairly pathetic of him. Although I do wonder if it is an utterly deliberate move on his part, as an easy piece of red meat thrown to the left.
What the hell are you jibbering on about? I think everybody realises he isn't going to go to the Study in no 10 every time he has to make a decision.
OK he's just started a job as head of government. A job that he will probably be doing for the next 4 or 5 years. If I started a job like that I would also want to make a couple of changes to the offices I moved into, rather than keeping everything exactly the same as my predecessor. He's taken down a picture of Thatcher that he didn't like, who gives a shit? He could take down a picture of Nelson Mandela or the Dalai Lama, put a framed photo of his mum on his desk, whatever, if it makes him feel more at ease.
Sure, but he didn't need to make it public that he found the picture "unsettling".
Reminds him that he is a Pygmy on the shoulders of a giant
Considering that ultra processed foods make up about 60% of calories consumed in this country and that percentage increases for children and people in poorer areas, the UK government has to do something to make the population aware that their food choices are killing them. The "food" industry bears full responsibility for the obesity epidemic, and are as evil as the tobacco companies. Sadly, we're too far down the hole to make healthy eating affordable for the masses, so we're fucked.
I understand the book about UPF is very good, but I think oversimplifying the concept misses the point. It is not the case that the less processing you do to something the better it is for you. Vegetables' goodness is often better absorbed when the vegetable is cooked. The fat soluble vitamins in many vegetables needs to be accompanied by fat - hence we put butter on our carrots and dressing on our salad. Cabbage is better for you when fermented. These are all food processes.
I absolutely agree with you. Processed food is more than acceptable. Humans have Processed food for thousands of years and without it, humans wouldn't be at the top of the tree now. All food is Processed in some way. What I'm arguing against is the industrial manufacture of food using unheard of and often poorly regulated chemicals and fats, gums and sweeteners. Those are the ones that suppress and overide the body's natural systems.
I saw an interesting map recently: the UK consumption of sugar is on the low side compared to European averages. Clearly this is just one measure, but I'd always thought this quite a good proxy for quality of diet.
My guess is that a big part of our problem is lifestyle, and car-dependency. You don't see many fatties in Denmark or the Netherlands. But it's only a guess, and no doubt the answer is complex.
Active travel has been described, fairly convincingly, as a miracle pill for a range of physical and mental health problems. Social connection and all that.
As so often, we know roughly what to do- plan new communities by the maps of what communities looked like before mass car use. What's harder is selling that to electorates in advance, or getting commercial entities to deliver something a bit more expensive and complex than a standard new build estate. You need some kind of benevolent despot with a masterplan. And we don't like them. Even when they are called Charles Windsor, it's not always an easy sell.
The problem with that is, before mass car use families and social groups were geographically much tighter than they are today.
I live on the south coast but still travel to London regularly to meet up with friends, and my mum lives in Kent and I visit her there at least once a year. Along with occasional other social trips around the country, I need a car - doing all that by train would cost far too much both monetarily and in terms of time.
And once you have to have a car, it's the rare trip that using the car isn't the best option. Even when the two of us go into town for a meal or to the cinema, the car park cost is less than two return bus tickets.
This is the crux of the problem. You either have to make active travel relatively more attractive, or increase the marginal cost of car journeys.
Not sure how, but the socially optimal outcome would be to make car ownership cheaper but car use more expensive.
It isn't the 'crux' of a 'problem' - it is a wonderful privilege to have the freedom to own and run a wonderful, safe, dry conveyance that gives us the freedom to see loved ones or have adventures at will. It is a perverse stockholm syndrome mind state that thinks otherwise, right up there with being angry about 'cheap food', and 'cheap energy'. People who believe these things really need to look at the media they're consuming.
I don't think you and Eabhal are necessarily disagreeing here. He's not saying that owning a car is bad - just that owning a car is so expensive that once you have one it makes sense to use it for EVERYTHING, including what would otherwise be a seven minute walk to the shop for a loaf of bread. Ideally car ownership would be very very cheap, but driving them for journeys which could just as easily be walked would be more expensive.
There is also a kind of "access poverty" with some households with very high mileage and multiple cars, and others with none at all. In Edinburgh, there are as many cars as there are households, but only 60% have access to a car at all.
Even in N.Wales/Northumberland/Cumbria etc, only 80% of households have access to a car. Given the lack of public transport provision, that is really is a problem for those areas.
The Times headline seems to imply its forced on workers and that they’ll be fat shamed in front of their colleagues.
It’s voluntary . The Times I’ve found over the last year seems to do a lot headlines which seek to mislead .
"Employers to have signed up include Jaguar Land Rover, where 4,500 staff from the boardroom to the factory floor will get the checks within months at its Solihull base."
I read that as voluntary at the employer level. Kid Starver teams up with the head capitalists to fat shame The Workers. He really is hilariously useless.
"More than 16 million people are eligible for an NHS health check, but data shows that only about 40% of those invited complete one."
Reaching people via their workplace - inviting them to complete a voluntary health questionnaire on company time - might be a way of improving that sort of response rate, and help to head off health problems at an earlier stage.
It's not going to be forcing people up on stage to face the calipers in front of all their colleagues. Some of the reactions to this very modest trial scheme are completely unhinged.
In my experience, people who are fat know they are fat, and being told yet again that they need to lose weight won't help.
If I were to get a letter inviting me for "an NHS health check", I'd probably just bin it because it strikes me as a waste of time when I know it takes literally months to get an appointment when I want one.
Which is precisely why this outreach programme is being trialled. People ignore the health MOT with only a 40% take up. Even if someone knows they are obese and unable to lose weight they may well benefit from having the consequential diabetes, blood pressure and cholesterol treated.
Every week I see new patient with established complications of diabetes due to late diagnosis, often because of no symptoms. Some of them will be permanently disabled as a result.
Then make it so that when someone does need to see a doctor they don't have to wait months because they're all working part time.
Yes, improving retention of NHS staff would help. How could we possibly encourage that?
Allow them free access to the prescription medicine drawer?
You mean the bit of the NHS that has been privatised? Surely they would object to that on principle.
A staple complaint on pb.com has been that Johnson missed an opportunity during the pandemic to encourage the country to get into shape, and that a bit of money spent on prevention would be a lot cheaper than a fortune spent later on treatment.
I've no idea if what is proposed is the right way to go about things (sounds like it is a screening questionnaire, rather than physical appointments) but it's evidence that someone is asking the right questions and trying something new.
It's one of the better signs in the early days of Keir.
We have a major problem with obesity in Britain, diabetes, and blood pressure. Going out casefinding is a way of getting people to engage, particularly groups like midfle aged men in deprived areas rather shy of health issues.
We have a real problem with reducing healthy life expectancy in this country:
"For the three aggregated years 2020–22, although male life expectancy was 78.8 years, average healthy male life expectancy was only 62.4 years – ie, 16.4 of those years (21%) would have been spent in poor health. Female life expectancy was 82.8 years, of which 20.1 years (24%) would have been spent in poor health. Although females live an average of four years longer than males, they spend a higher proportion and more years of their lives in poor health.
Moreover, healthy life expectancy in England in 2020–22 was lower than in 2011–13, when the data series began, falling by 0.8 years in males and 1.2 years in females during that time. So not only has life expectancy stalled, but males and females spend more years in poor health. "
I raise an eyebrow concerning the Definition of "poor health". What does it mean? Are all ~18-19% of people defined as being "disabled" in "poor health", for example?
I think there is an opportunity for a degree of fudge here, just as happens with definitions of disability, especially on PB as we have a strong Captain Kirk tendency who sometimes say "LET THEM DIE !" or something similar.
On the Life Expectancy numbers, how much of that is down purely to Covid? So many having died due to Covid, is it going to bounce straight back?
Yes, life expectancy is bouncing back, but healthy life expectancy isn't.
Healthy life expectancy has a definition that hasn't changed. It doesn't mean that life is not worth having, but it is more limited. There is a massive gradient by SE status in that article, and while being moderately limited in retirement isn't great, from the economic perspective it is much worse in the working age range. This is particularly an issue (along with poor education) in post-industrial areas. It's quite hard to get low skilled moderately impaired people into work and off benefits.
The erstwhile minister for common sense and digging holes. How dare people suggest that (mis)quoting arguably the best known poem about the genesis of the Holocaust in response to a suggested smoking ban is in any way equating the Holocaust to suggesting a smoking ban. Ridiculous!
No, partly because one of my diminishing pleasures is a cigar and a drink on a warm summer evening, but also because I think it’s the worst kind of virtual signalling, ie fcking pointless.
However when the original smoking ban in pubs came in I was initially in favour of some sort of opt-in licence for landlords but the incessant whining of the smoking lobby put me right off. The efforts of the fragrantly thick Esther might have a similar effect.
Thatcher is properly scary in the portrait. I wouldn't want her in my study either.
Starmer is a pretty vindictive person.
This is already becoming quite clear.
If you became CEO of an organisation that had previously had Blair as Chairman of the Board, would you want his ugly mug looking over your shoulder or would you replace his picture with a nice movie still of James Bond and Vesper Lind to relax you and focus your mind on the job in hand?
See, it's not petty and it's not vindictive.
It’s not in his study. It’s in a meeting room. Which is an entirely normal place to have a picture of a former chairman
Thatcher is properly scary in the portrait. I wouldn't want her in my study either.
Starmer is a pretty vindictive person.
This is already becoming quite clear.
If you became CEO of an organisation that had previously had Blair as Chairman of the Board, would you want his ugly mug looking over your shoulder or would you replace his picture with a nice movie still of James Bond and Vesper Lind to relax you and focus your mind on the job in hand?
See, it's not petty and it's not vindictive.
It’s not in his study. It’s in a meeting room. Which is an entirely normal place to have a picture of a former chairman
The Times headline seems to imply its forced on workers and that they’ll be fat shamed in front of their colleagues.
It’s voluntary . The Times I’ve found over the last year seems to do a lot headlines which seek to mislead .
"Employers to have signed up include Jaguar Land Rover, where 4,500 staff from the boardroom to the factory floor will get the checks within months at its Solihull base."
I read that as voluntary at the employer level. Kid Starver teams up with the head capitalists to fat shame The Workers. He really is hilariously useless.
"More than 16 million people are eligible for an NHS health check, but data shows that only about 40% of those invited complete one."
Reaching people via their workplace - inviting them to complete a voluntary health questionnaire on company time - might be a way of improving that sort of response rate, and help to head off health problems at an earlier stage.
It's not going to be forcing people up on stage to face the calipers in front of all their colleagues. Some of the reactions to this very modest trial scheme are completely unhinged.
In my experience, people who are fat know they are fat, and being told yet again that they need to lose weight won't help.
If I were to get a letter inviting me for "an NHS health check", I'd probably just bin it because it strikes me as a waste of time when I know it takes literally months to get an appointment when I want one.
Which is precisely why this outreach programme is being trialled. People ignore the health MOT with only a 40% take up. Even if someone knows they are obese and unable to lose weight they may well benefit from having the consequential diabetes, blood pressure and cholesterol treated.
Every week I see new patient with established complications of diabetes due to late diagnosis, often because of no symptoms. Some of them will be permanently disabled as a result.
Then make it so that when someone does need to see a doctor they don't have to wait months because they're all working part time.
Yes, improving retention of NHS staff would help. How could we possibly encourage that?
Allow them free access to the prescription medicine drawer?
Oh and btw on Trump/Jan 6th (soz) - I agree absolutely with your comment on his behaviour over fake electors which as I believe you said should have resulted in a felony charge. Why it didn't I have no idea but that is again the democratic state doing, or being able to do if not this time, its democratic state thing.
Considering that ultra processed foods make up about 60% of calories consumed in this country and that percentage increases for children and people in poorer areas, the UK government has to do something to make the population aware that their food choices are killing them. The "food" industry bears full responsibility for the obesity epidemic, and are as evil as the tobacco companies. Sadly, we're too far down the hole to make healthy eating affordable for the masses, so we're fucked.
I understand the book about UPF is very good, but I think oversimplifying the concept misses the point. It is not the case that the less processing you do to something the better it is for you. Vegetables' goodness is often better absorbed when the vegetable is cooked. The fat soluble vitamins in many vegetables needs to be accompanied by fat - hence we put butter on our carrots and dressing on our salad. Cabbage is better for you when fermented. These are all food processes.
I absolutely agree with you. Processed food is more than acceptable. Humans have Processed food for thousands of years and without it, humans wouldn't be at the top of the tree now. All food is Processed in some way. What I'm arguing against is the industrial manufacture of food using unheard of and often poorly regulated chemicals and fats, gums and sweeteners. Those are the ones that suppress and overide the body's natural systems.
I saw an interesting map recently: the UK consumption of sugar is on the low side compared to European averages. Clearly this is just one measure, but I'd always thought this quite a good proxy for quality of diet.
My guess is that a big part of our problem is lifestyle, and car-dependency. You don't see many fatties in Denmark or the Netherlands. But it's only a guess, and no doubt the answer is complex.
The Dutch are particularly interesting, as one of the few countries that rival us in terms of unhealthy traditional diet.
You can get away with it if you do enough cycling.
Dutch cycling culture is quite interesting. It is quite different from ours. It is almost all on knackered old bikes at speeds barely more than running pace. Which, in generalised journey cost terms - taking into account the cost of time, the cost of your bike, the faff time in getting it out and securing it (which is much lower in a bike which costs £100 than £1000, because you care about it less), the time taken to shower after cycling really fast, etc - works out rather better.
Old maids, mist, holy communion, isn't it? Quite a lot of cycling is like that, even in the UK. But it doesn't help the debate that the more visible manifestations are clad in lycra and aggressively going fast. (Because in too many places, aggression is the only way to survive.)
Huge numbers of people in the UK do not cycle or walk because they perceive the roads to be a dangerous environment, where they will be threatened, bullied and abused. The figures are startling.
In urban areas I think storage is at least as big an issue too. There are only 2,400 secure cycle storage spots in Edinburgh, for about 300,000 people living in flats.
Has Starmer really removed Thatcher's portrait from the Thatcher room at No. 10 because he found it 'unsettling' ?
Aw, bless. We cant have his little feelings hurtied, can we? I wonder what else he'll find 'unsettling'?
He really is going to be a poor PM.
He might turn out to be a poor PM but fuck me you need something more than him slightly adjusting his work environment to suit himself. Get a fucking grip.
I'm laughing at him. It's hilarious.
He is PM. He will, sadly, have to make really important decisions; sometimes life-and-death decisions. He needs to be tough, as do all PMs. Yet he finds a portrait of a massively successful (although controversial) predecessor 'unsettling'.
He needs to get a grip.
Cameron held an EU referendum to satisfy his right-wing; Starmer has removed a portrait of a PM from 30 years ago to satisfy his equivalent.
Cameron held an EU referendum because the public wanted one; and it could easily be argued that politics needed one. The fact that leave won shows that there was a massive demand; and as Corbyn showed, the demand was not just on the Conservative Party's right wing.
IMV if we had not had an EU referendum in 2016 we would have either had one by now, or have a very right-wing government that would make Sunak's look like Corbyn's.
The issue of EU membership was a can that could only be kicked down the road so far.
So by that logic we should soon have either a Rejoin referendum of a massively pro-remain government.
You really think the public wants to re-open that debate?
I think it will be a growing issue.
Brexit will be blamed for our turgid economy, and the red tape with Europe will be increasingly frustrating.
Cutting those barriers by rejoining the SM would be the quickest spur to growth. The surviving Brexiteers could even get their WFA back as a result.
Pretty optimistic that that is Starmer being a Proven Lawyer and only asking questions when he is sure of the answer.
Pretty much all the polling on Brexit is bad and moving away from the idea (even Euro membership isn't a complete deal-breaker any more.)
So no, the public doesn't want to reopen that debate, in part because it will reinvigorate some of the worst people and techniques in British politics. The art of government is actively waiting and preparing conditions where there wouldn't really need to be much of a debate. Probably when the Conservatives realise that being the Part of Brexit is a decomposing albatross that keeps them in opposition.
It is sub-optimal statecraft to be in the situation where: We don't want to be in the EU We don't want to be out of the EU and We don't want to reopen the debate.
I'd suggest that the best option would have been for a referendum on the Euro to have been held in, say, 2003. It would have been lost and thus a signal sent out that the British people weren't happy with the direction of movement. That would have changed the circumstances of the discussions on the constitution.
Lisbon would have been better
That created the “broken promise” narrative that did so much to drive ukip
Considering that ultra processed foods make up about 60% of calories consumed in this country and that percentage increases for children and people in poorer areas, the UK government has to do something to make the population aware that their food choices are killing them. The "food" industry bears full responsibility for the obesity epidemic, and are as evil as the tobacco companies. Sadly, we're too far down the hole to make healthy eating affordable for the masses, so we're fucked.
I understand the book about UPF is very good, but I think oversimplifying the concept misses the point. It is not the case that the less processing you do to something the better it is for you. Vegetables' goodness is often better absorbed when the vegetable is cooked. The fat soluble vitamins in many vegetables needs to be accompanied by fat - hence we put butter on our carrots and dressing on our salad. Cabbage is better for you when fermented. These are all food processes.
I absolutely agree with you. Processed food is more than acceptable. Humans have Processed food for thousands of years and without it, humans wouldn't be at the top of the tree now. All food is Processed in some way. What I'm arguing against is the industrial manufacture of food using unheard of and often poorly regulated chemicals and fats, gums and sweeteners. Those are the ones that suppress and overide the body's natural systems.
I saw an interesting map recently: the UK consumption of sugar is on the low side compared to European averages. Clearly this is just one measure, but I'd always thought this quite a good proxy for quality of diet.
My guess is that a big part of our problem is lifestyle, and car-dependency. You don't see many fatties in Denmark or the Netherlands. But it's only a guess, and no doubt the answer is complex.
Active travel has been described, fairly convincingly, as a miracle pill for a range of physical and mental health problems. Social connection and all that.
As so often, we know roughly what to do- plan new communities by the maps of what communities looked like before mass car use. What's harder is selling that to electorates in advance, or getting commercial entities to deliver something a bit more expensive and complex than a standard new build estate. You need some kind of benevolent despot with a masterplan. And we don't like them. Even when they are called Charles Windsor, it's not always an easy sell.
The problem with that is, before mass car use families and social groups were geographically much tighter than they are today.
I live on the south coast but still travel to London regularly to meet up with friends, and my mum lives in Kent and I visit her there at least once a year. Along with occasional other social trips around the country, I need a car - doing all that by train would cost far too much both monetarily and in terms of time.
And once you have to have a car, it's the rare trip that using the car isn't the best option. Even when the two of us go into town for a meal or to the cinema, the car park cost is less than two return bus tickets.
This is the crux of the problem. You either have to make active travel relatively more attractive, or increase the marginal cost of car journeys. .
And the latter option is much easier than the former, which is why councils go for it, and which is why motorists hate the concept.
Going back to the Netherlands again - it is a bit of a myth that the Netherlands is anti-car. In fact, @BartholomewRoberts would love it. It's disconcertingly like being in a massive new town - the whole country is plastered in dual carriageways and motorways and grade separated interchanges - from my limited experience, traffic works brilliantly. If you want to drive, you can. But once you come off the big roads, urban streets are narrower and just that bit less amenable to driving quickly - their natural speed is much closer to 25mph than 35mph. On-street parking is less available; public car parks are generally plentiful, but more expensive. Still, the 'natural' car journeys - e.g. for a family of five with a load of stuff; or to somewhere rural, or with a big load of luggage - are probably more easily done than here. Not least because all the 'unnatural' car journeys - like the seven minute walk to the shops, or the trip to the nearest town, or to the big city - are done by other modes, because to do so is deliriously easy.
e.g. I stayed in a small trainless town called Wassenaar, and we planned a trip to Amsterdam, about 35 miles away. We are a family of five, the youngest of whom's cycling ability is slightly suspect, so we drove - 2 and a half miles or so in 12 minutes or so - to the closest station (Verschoten) - which had a free car park, from where there is a train every ten minutes or so to Amsterdam (changing in Leiden, but changing trains is straight off one and on to the next, because frequencies are so high) - which dropped us in the middle of Amsterdam. As an individual, I would have probably cycled the first bit in roughly the same time.
Has Starmer really removed Thatcher's portrait from the Thatcher room at No. 10 because he found it 'unsettling' ?
Aw, bless. We cant have his little feelings hurtied, can we? I wonder what else he'll find 'unsettling'?
He really is going to be a poor PM.
He might turn out to be a poor PM but fuck me you need something more than him slightly adjusting his work environment to suit himself. Get a fucking grip.
I'm laughing at him. It's hilarious.
He is PM. He will, sadly, have to make really important decisions; sometimes life-and-death decisions. He needs to be tough, as do all PMs. Yet he finds a portrait of a massively successful (although controversial) predecessor 'unsettling'.
He needs to get a grip.
Cameron held an EU referendum to satisfy his right-wing; Starmer has removed a portrait of a PM from 30 years ago to satisfy his equivalent.
Cameron held an EU referendum because the public wanted one; and it could easily be argued that politics needed one. The fact that leave won shows that there was a massive demand; and as Corbyn showed, the demand was not just on the Conservative Party's right wing.
IMV if we had not had an EU referendum in 2016 we would have either had one by now, or have a very right-wing government that would make Sunak's look like Corbyn's.
The issue of EU membership was a can that could only be kicked down the road so far.
Oh don't get me wrong, I think holding the referendum was the right thing to do precisely for the reasons you give.
But Cameron did it to head off the right-wing given his small majority. And I don't think there is any evidence that the country would suddenly swing to the right on the back of not having one, simply because we've had absolutely massive non-EU migration since then and just elected Labour.
I think asking the public to tick a box Yes/No because you aren't willing to make the case for what you think is the right policy is a completely inappropriate use of a referendum, and an abdication of responsibility. Referendums should only be used as a final endorsement or rejection from the public for an agreed and substantially worked out major constitutional change. Which is what they are in serious countries that have referendums in their constitutional toolkit. Which is what the word referendum means.
In 2016 there was no sane way out. A referendum was used to ask us (yes or no) whether the central plank of policy of the last 40 years had actually been a mistake. This was because we hadn't been asked at the key moments over that 40 year period.
As it turned out the real killer was extending FOM to countries with very different levels of development from the UK. Lincolnshire did not riot over French and German accountants. The SM, as guided by the UK veto as it developed, should never have got to that point, especially without our referendum consent.
Still don't think it was an appropriate use of a referendum. Either Cameron should have made the case for membership or if he thinks the UK would be better outside the EU, develop a proposition for that and take it to the public. The important thing in this case is both options are clear - the status quo or the proposed alternative.
Agree. By 2016 the options had been self-limited by previous decisions and it was too late for a sensible and incremental aproach.
However the 'developed options' approach had real limitations. A 2016 referendum could have put forward alternative wish lists, but crucially could not say in advance what relationship we would have with the EU if voting to leave. The EU was not going to discuss this at all until Art 50 had been invoked. They held the cards.
As usual, some obsess on the political minutiae or issues of only symbolic import such as Mrs Thatcher's portrait. I suppose if there is any symbolism it's not only that her time is gone but the Conservative time in office is over for now.
I make no apologies for re-linking this piece from the BBC which is more symbolic of the failure of previous administrations (both Conservative and Labour):
It's an aspect of the multi-layered "housing" crisis which doesn't get the coverage or discussion it deserves. It's not just about a lack of houses but about the absence of a public rental sector as a last resort for those who cannot get accommodation. Homelessness isn't just about those who sleep rough (and that's a whole other subject) but about those evicted from private rental accommodation for whom there is no alternative but temporary and often completely inadequate rooms.
It angers me - it's a waste of lives and a waste of public money especially for councils who are already under severe financial pressure.
My solution, bluntly, would be for more homes to be built and these homes to be provided by the developers at much less than cost (ideally nothing) to councils who would use them to house families (the priority) at nominal rent. It's going to be financially painful for someone but there are times when the profit motive is less important than providing a roof and stability for a struggling family.
I'd like to see the Government talking about this rather than banning smoking in outdoor places - when we've got the important and urgent stuff done then we can talk about smoking in beer gardens. It worries me this Government, like its many Conservative predecessors, looks at some issues, sees how complex they are and resolves to do nothing which is political cowardice of the first order.
Has Starmer really removed Thatcher's portrait from the Thatcher room at No. 10 because he found it 'unsettling' ?
Aw, bless. We cant have his little feelings hurtied, can we? I wonder what else he'll find 'unsettling'?
He really is going to be a poor PM.
He might turn out to be a poor PM but fuck me you need something more than him slightly adjusting his work environment to suit himself. Get a fucking grip.
I'm laughing at him. It's hilarious.
He is PM. He will, sadly, have to make really important decisions; sometimes life-and-death decisions. He needs to be tough, as do all PMs. Yet he finds a portrait of a massively successful (although controversial) predecessor 'unsettling'.
He needs to get a grip.
Cameron held an EU referendum to satisfy his right-wing; Starmer has removed a portrait of a PM from 30 years ago to satisfy his equivalent.
Cameron held an EU referendum because the public wanted one; and it could easily be argued that politics needed one. The fact that leave won shows that there was a massive demand; and as Corbyn showed, the demand was not just on the Conservative Party's right wing.
IMV if we had not had an EU referendum in 2016 we would have either had one by now, or have a very right-wing government that would make Sunak's look like Corbyn's.
The issue of EU membership was a can that could only be kicked down the road so far.
Oh don't get me wrong, I think holding the referendum was the right thing to do precisely for the reasons you give.
But Cameron did it to head off the right-wing given his small majority. And I don't think there is any evidence that the country would suddenly swing to the right on the back of not having one, simply because we've had absolutely massive non-EU migration since then and just elected Labour.
I think asking the public to tick a box Yes/No because you aren't willing to make the case for what you think is the right policy is a completely inappropriate use of a referendum, and an abdication of responsibility. Referendums should only be used as a final endorsement or rejection from the public for an agreed and substantially worked out major constitutional change. Which is what they are in serious countries that have referendums in their constitutional toolkit. Which is what the word referendum means.
The erstwhile minister for common sense and digging holes. How dare people suggest that (mis)quoting arguably the best known poem about the genesis of the Holocaust in response to a suggested smoking ban is in any way equating the Holocaust to suggesting a smoking ban. Ridiculous!
No, partly because one of my diminishing pleasures is a cigar and a drink on a warm summer evening, but also because I think it’s the worst kind of virtual signalling, ie fcking pointless.
However when the original smoking ban in pubs came in I was initially in favour of some sort of opt-in licence for landlords but the incessant whining of the smoking lobby put me right off. The efforts of the fragrantly thick Esther might have a similar effect.
Typical anti-vaxxer rhetoric. It would save lives, like seatbelts, but no - you don't want the government interfering.
The erstwhile minister for common sense and digging holes. How dare people suggest that (mis)quoting arguably the best known poem about the genesis of the Holocaust in response to a suggested smoking ban is in any way equating the Holocaust to suggesting a smoking ban. Ridiculous!
Considering that ultra processed foods make up about 60% of calories consumed in this country and that percentage increases for children and people in poorer areas, the UK government has to do something to make the population aware that their food choices are killing them. The "food" industry bears full responsibility for the obesity epidemic, and are as evil as the tobacco companies. Sadly, we're too far down the hole to make healthy eating affordable for the masses, so we're fucked.
Individuals bear responsibility for their actions as well - the industry doesn’t have “full” responsibility
My mistake. The food corporations only exist to nourish the population.
Considering that ultra processed foods make up about 60% of calories consumed in this country and that percentage increases for children and people in poorer areas, the UK government has to do something to make the population aware that their food choices are killing them. The "food" industry bears full responsibility for the obesity epidemic, and are as evil as the tobacco companies. Sadly, we're too far down the hole to make healthy eating affordable for the masses, so we're fucked.
I understand the book about UPF is very good, but I think oversimplifying the concept misses the point. It is not the case that the less processing you do to something the better it is for you. Vegetables' goodness is often better absorbed when the vegetable is cooked. The fat soluble vitamins in many vegetables needs to be accompanied by fat - hence we put butter on our carrots and dressing on our salad. Cabbage is better for you when fermented. These are all food processes.
I absolutely agree with you. Processed food is more than acceptable. Humans have Processed food for thousands of years and without it, humans wouldn't be at the top of the tree now. All food is Processed in some way. What I'm arguing against is the industrial manufacture of food using unheard of and often poorly regulated chemicals and fats, gums and sweeteners. Those are the ones that suppress and overide the body's natural systems.
I saw an interesting map recently: the UK consumption of sugar is on the low side compared to European averages. Clearly this is just one measure, but I'd always thought this quite a good proxy for quality of diet.
My guess is that a big part of our problem is lifestyle, and car-dependency. You don't see many fatties in Denmark or the Netherlands. But it's only a guess, and no doubt the answer is complex.
Active travel has been described, fairly convincingly, as a miracle pill for a range of physical and mental health problems. Social connection and all that.
As so often, we know roughly what to do- plan new communities by the maps of what communities looked like before mass car use. What's harder is selling that to electorates in advance, or getting commercial entities to deliver something a bit more expensive and complex than a standard new build estate. You need some kind of benevolent despot with a masterplan. And we don't like them. Even when they are called Charles Windsor, it's not always an easy sell.
The problem with that is, before mass car use families and social groups were geographically much tighter than they are today.
I live on the south coast but still travel to London regularly to meet up with friends, and my mum lives in Kent and I visit her there at least once a year. Along with occasional other social trips around the country, I need a car - doing all that by train would cost far too much both monetarily and in terms of time.
And once you have to have a car, it's the rare trip that using the car isn't the best option. Even when the two of us go into town for a meal or to the cinema, the car park cost is less than two return bus tickets.
This is the crux of the problem. You either have to make active travel relatively more attractive, or increase the marginal cost of car journeys.
Not sure how, but the socially optimal outcome would be to make car ownership cheaper but car use more expensive.
It isn't the 'crux' of a 'problem' - it is a wonderful privilege to have the freedom to own and run a wonderful, safe, dry conveyance that gives us the freedom to see loved ones or have adventures at will. It is a perverse stockholm syndrome mind state that thinks otherwise, right up there with being angry about 'cheap food', and 'cheap energy'. People who believe these things really need to look at the media they're consuming.
I don't think you and Eabhal are necessarily disagreeing here. He's not saying that owning a car is bad - just that owning a car is so expensive that once you have one it makes sense to use it for EVERYTHING, including what would otherwise be a seven minute walk to the shop for a loaf of bread. Ideally car ownership would be very very cheap, but driving them for journeys which could just as easily be walked would be more expensive.
There is also a kind of "access poverty" with some households with very high mileage and multiple cars, and others with none at all. In Edinburgh, there are as many cars as there are households, but only 60% have access to a car at all.
Even in N.Wales/Northumberland/Cumbria etc, only 80% of households have access to a car. Given the lack of public transport provision, that is really is a problem for those areas.
Yes, it's very easy as a healthy 40 something able to afford a car to overlook the significant number of people who either can't afford a car or can't drive one even if they could.
The erstwhile minister for common sense and digging holes. How dare people suggest that (mis)quoting arguably the best known poem about the genesis of the Holocaust in response to a suggested smoking ban is in any way equating the Holocaust to suggesting a smoking ban. Ridiculous!
On my travels this year, I see that the Italians and Greeks eat a lot of sugary snacks, too, these days. However, they also still live longer than the UK, because of stronger communities and much healthier food in other parts of their diet, I think, largely.
Considering that ultra processed foods make up about 60% of calories consumed in this country and that percentage increases for children and people in poorer areas, the UK government has to do something to make the population aware that their food choices are killing them. The "food" industry bears full responsibility for the obesity epidemic, and are as evil as the tobacco companies. Sadly, we're too far down the hole to make healthy eating affordable for the masses, so we're fucked.
I understand the book about UPF is very good, but I think oversimplifying the concept misses the point. It is not the case that the less processing you do to something the better it is for you. Vegetables' goodness is often better absorbed when the vegetable is cooked. The fat soluble vitamins in many vegetables needs to be accompanied by fat - hence we put butter on our carrots and dressing on our salad. Cabbage is better for you when fermented. These are all food processes.
I absolutely agree with you. Processed food is more than acceptable. Humans have Processed food for thousands of years and without it, humans wouldn't be at the top of the tree now. All food is Processed in some way. What I'm arguing against is the industrial manufacture of food using unheard of and often poorly regulated chemicals and fats, gums and sweeteners. Those are the ones that suppress and overide the body's natural systems.
I saw an interesting map recently: the UK consumption of sugar is on the low side compared to European averages. Clearly this is just one measure, but I'd always thought this quite a good proxy for quality of diet.
My guess is that a big part of our problem is lifestyle, and car-dependency. You don't see many fatties in Denmark or the Netherlands. But it's only a guess, and no doubt the answer is complex.
Active travel has been described, fairly convincingly, as a miracle pill for a range of physical and mental health problems. Social connection and all that.
As so often, we know roughly what to do- plan new communities by the maps of what communities looked like before mass car use. What's harder is selling that to electorates in advance, or getting commercial entities to deliver something a bit more expensive and complex than a standard new build estate. You need some kind of benevolent despot with a masterplan. And we don't like them. Even when they are called Charles Windsor, it's not always an easy sell.
The problem with that is, before mass car use families and social groups were geographically much tighter than they are today.
I live on the south coast but still travel to London regularly to meet up with friends, and my mum lives in Kent and I visit her there at least once a year. Along with occasional other social trips around the country, I need a car - doing all that by train would cost far too much both monetarily and in terms of time.
And once you have to have a car, it's the rare trip that using the car isn't the best option. Even when the two of us go into town for a meal or to the cinema, the car park cost is less than two return bus tickets.
This is the crux of the problem. You either have to make active travel relatively more attractive, or increase the marginal cost of car journeys. .
And the latter option is much easier than the former, which is why councils go for it, and which is why motorists hate the concept.
Going back to the Netherlands again - it is a bit of a myth that the Netherlands is anti-car. In fact, @BartholomewRoberts would love it. It's disconcertingly like being in a massive new town - the whole country is plastered in dual carriageways and motorways and grade separated interchanges - from my limited experience, traffic works brilliantly. If you want to drive, you can. But once you come off the big roads, urban streets are narrower and just that bit less amenable to driving quickly - their natural speed is much closer to 25mph than 35mph. On-street parking is less available; public car parks are generally plentiful, but more expensive. Still, the 'natural' car journeys - e.g. for a family of five with a load of stuff; or to somewhere rural, or with a big load of luggage - are probably more easily done than here. Not least because all the 'unnatural' car journeys - like the seven minute walk to the shops, or the trip to the nearest town, or to the big city - are done by other modes, because to do so is deliriously easy.
e.g. I stayed in a small trainless town called Wassenaar, and we planned a trip to Amsterdam, about 35 miles away. We are a family of five, the youngest of whom's cycling ability is slightly suspect, so we drove - 2 and a half miles or so in 12 minutes or so - to the closest station (Verschoten) - which had a free car park, from where there is a train every ten minutes or so to Amsterdam (changing in Leiden, but changing trains is straight off one and on to the next, because frequencies are so high) - which dropped us in the middle of Amsterdam. As an individual, I would have probably cycled the first bit in roughly the same time.
Right tool, right job.
But also, recognising that thoughtful planning to reduce marginal car use makes life healthier and nicer for everyone. And that a town where everyone can use cars as much as they want tends towards a place where everyone has to use cars to do anything.
Has Starmer really removed Thatcher's portrait from the Thatcher room at No. 10 because he found it 'unsettling' ?
Aw, bless. We cant have his little feelings hurtied, can we? I wonder what else he'll find 'unsettling'?
He really is going to be a poor PM.
He might turn out to be a poor PM but fuck me you need something more than him slightly adjusting his work environment to suit himself. Get a fucking grip.
I'm laughing at him. It's hilarious.
He is PM. He will, sadly, have to make really important decisions; sometimes life-and-death decisions. He needs to be tough, as do all PMs. Yet he finds a portrait of a massively successful (although controversial) predecessor 'unsettling'.
He needs to get a grip.
Cameron held an EU referendum to satisfy his right-wing; Starmer has removed a portrait of a PM from 30 years ago to satisfy his equivalent.
Cameron held an EU referendum because the public wanted one; and it could easily be argued that politics needed one. The fact that leave won shows that there was a massive demand; and as Corbyn showed, the demand was not just on the Conservative Party's right wing.
IMV if we had not had an EU referendum in 2016 we would have either had one by now, or have a very right-wing government that would make Sunak's look like Corbyn's.
The issue of EU membership was a can that could only be kicked down the road so far.
Oh don't get me wrong, I think holding the referendum was the right thing to do precisely for the reasons you give.
But Cameron did it to head off the right-wing given his small majority. And I don't think there is any evidence that the country would suddenly swing to the right on the back of not having one, simply because we've had absolutely massive non-EU migration since then and just elected Labour.
There wasn't a right thing to do. That was and is the problem. Successive governments since the war had ended up in a particular and special situation, as we are now discovering. The population of the UK as a whole has no settled will to be in the EU and no settled will to be out of it. The referendum has created no permanent settlement, nor could it, and another referendum won't either.
The UK policy failure was not 2016, 2020 or now. It was in allowing an unbalanced FOM under Blair.
SKS's rhetoric abundantly confirms that there still is no right thing to do, though EFTA/EEA remains, as it has since 2016 easily the best and highly imperfect option.
The issue is the EEA allows for the “unbalanced FOM”.
The best outcome for all is some kind of associate membership with full FOM. But none of the politicians on any side (UK or EU) are adept enough to get there
We couldn't go on as we were in the EU with our half-hearted, rebate-obsessed membership sitting in the corner complaining about anything and everything and pointing out (which nobody ever likes) the double standards applied to rules by other members.
We signed up to the Single European Act which was ostensibly a Thatcherite document - free movement of capital was all well and good. The problem came with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the sudden "arrival" of a bloc of countries who lagged far behind most of western Europe economically but had two good things going for them - plenty of cheap and often quite skilled labour and opportunities for investment.
That was all too good to miss and as we know people go where the money is so inevitably the cheap labour went to the richest parts of the richest countries be it London or the Rhineland. The big mistake was the assumption in Britain no one from Poland or the Czech Republic would want to come here when Freedom of Movement came in - the numbers projected and the actuals stand as the biggest Government blunder of the last three decades yet if anyone had looked at what had happened in Germany after reunification, the truth was, as someone once said, out there.
The Times headline seems to imply its forced on workers and that they’ll be fat shamed in front of their colleagues.
It’s voluntary . The Times I’ve found over the last year seems to do a lot headlines which seek to mislead .
"Employers to have signed up include Jaguar Land Rover, where 4,500 staff from the boardroom to the factory floor will get the checks within months at its Solihull base."
I read that as voluntary at the employer level. Kid Starver teams up with the head capitalists to fat shame The Workers. He really is hilariously useless.
"More than 16 million people are eligible for an NHS health check, but data shows that only about 40% of those invited complete one."
Reaching people via their workplace - inviting them to complete a voluntary health questionnaire on company time - might be a way of improving that sort of response rate, and help to head off health problems at an earlier stage.
It's not going to be forcing people up on stage to face the calipers in front of all their colleagues. Some of the reactions to this very modest trial scheme are completely unhinged.
In my experience, people who are fat know they are fat, and being told yet again that they need to lose weight won't help.
If I were to get a letter inviting me for "an NHS health check", I'd probably just bin it because it strikes me as a waste of time when I know it takes literally months to get an appointment when I want one.
I would just say that it could be the most important thing you do
I had my dvt in October last year and was admitted to hospital as a medical emergency and underwent an immediate ultra sound
That ultrasound found a massive dvt in my left thigh but also an undetected aneurysm that can often be fatal
As a result my aneurysm is monitored yearly and if necessary the surgeon will operate
Blood pressure, pulse and oxygen tests can be lifesavers and to be honest there is no need to fat shame anyone
But that last is all that will happen - people will be told to lose weight/drink less/give up smoking, as appropriate, and not a jot more.
Fatness has become such a ridiculous taboo in this country. Mentioning it is almost up there with racial slurs.
The fact is the country is way too obese and it’s making the population unhealthy and unproductive.
There are fat fucks everywhere and it must be costing the country a fortune. I doubt anything Starmer does will change that but at least he's having a go.
I have to say I'm enjoying the new atmos of steely, buttoned-down efficiency. Not a joke in sight, everything clipped to size, nothing lax or loose or (oh god) 'quirky', no self-indulgence, no straining for adulation, no 'look at me' neediness, no attempt to amuse or excite or entertain, no flaky ideology, no pretentious intellectual fetishes. A complete absence of the shit we've become accustomed to in recent years. Instead what we have is what we see. A serious white collar professional with a nice big parliamentary majority looking to fix some problems.
As a fully paid-up member of The Left, I greet Starmer's removal of Thatcher's portrait not as welcome 'red meat', but with absolute indifference: I couldn't give a flying fuck what the PM chooses to have on his walls.
However, Starmer must be delighted that this opponents are dwelling on such ephemera rather than matters of substance.
This 'Thatcher Room' thing: wasn't it created during the early days of Gordon's premiership, when his advisors were trying to liken Gordon to Ronald Reagan and create a 'Brown Tories' narrative as a way of undermining Dave?
Has Starmer really removed Thatcher's portrait from the Thatcher room at No. 10 because he found it 'unsettling' ?
Aw, bless. We cant have his little feelings hurtied, can we? I wonder what else he'll find 'unsettling'?
He really is going to be a poor PM.
He might turn out to be a poor PM but fuck me you need something more than him slightly adjusting his work environment to suit himself. Get a fucking grip.
I'm laughing at him. It's hilarious.
He is PM. He will, sadly, have to make really important decisions; sometimes life-and-death decisions. He needs to be tough, as do all PMs. Yet he finds a portrait of a massively successful (although controversial) predecessor 'unsettling'.
He needs to get a grip.
Cameron held an EU referendum to satisfy his right-wing; Starmer has removed a portrait of a PM from 30 years ago to satisfy his equivalent.
Cameron held an EU referendum because the public wanted one; and it could easily be argued that politics needed one. The fact that leave won shows that there was a massive demand; and as Corbyn showed, the demand was not just on the Conservative Party's right wing.
IMV if we had not had an EU referendum in 2016 we would have either had one by now, or have a very right-wing government that would make Sunak's look like Corbyn's.
The issue of EU membership was a can that could only be kicked down the road so far.
Oh don't get me wrong, I think holding the referendum was the right thing to do precisely for the reasons you give.
But Cameron did it to head off the right-wing given his small majority. And I don't think there is any evidence that the country would suddenly swing to the right on the back of not having one, simply because we've had absolutely massive non-EU migration since then and just elected Labour.
I think asking the public to tick a box Yes/No because you aren't willing to make the case for what you think is the right policy is a completely inappropriate use of a referendum, and an abdication of responsibility. Referendums should only be used as a final endorsement or rejection from the public for an agreed and substantially worked out major constitutional change. Which is what they are in serious countries that have referendums in their constitutional toolkit. Which is what the word referendum means.
In 2016 there was no sane way out. A referendum was used to ask us (yes or no) whether the central plank of policy of the last 40 years had actually been a mistake. This was because we hadn't been asked at the key moments over that 40 year period.
As it turned out the real killer was extending FOM to countries with very different levels of development from the UK. Lincolnshire did not riot over French and German accountants. The SM, as guided by the UK veto as it developed, should never have got to that point, especially without our referendum consent.
Still don't think it was an appropriate use of a referendum. Either Cameron should have made the case for membership or if he thinks the UK would be better outside the EU, develop a proposition for that and take it to the public. The important thing in this case is both options are clear - the status quo or the proposed alternative.
Agree. By 2016 the options had been self-limited by previous decisions and it was too late for a sensible and incremental aproach.
However the 'developed options' approach had real limitations. A 2016 referendum could have put forward alternative wish lists, but crucially could not say in advance what relationship we would have with the EU if voting to leave. The EU was not going to discuss this at all until Art 50 had been invoked. They held the cards.
We could, however, read the menu of options, because it was there on the wall for all to see.
The core mistake/dishonesty of Brexit backers was to believe and say that there was some "better deal" that Brussels kept under the counter for its special customers.
The Times headline seems to imply its forced on workers and that they’ll be fat shamed in front of their colleagues.
It’s voluntary . The Times I’ve found over the last year seems to do a lot headlines which seek to mislead .
"Employers to have signed up include Jaguar Land Rover, where 4,500 staff from the boardroom to the factory floor will get the checks within months at its Solihull base."
I read that as voluntary at the employer level. Kid Starver teams up with the head capitalists to fat shame The Workers. He really is hilariously useless.
"More than 16 million people are eligible for an NHS health check, but data shows that only about 40% of those invited complete one."
Reaching people via their workplace - inviting them to complete a voluntary health questionnaire on company time - might be a way of improving that sort of response rate, and help to head off health problems at an earlier stage.
It's not going to be forcing people up on stage to face the calipers in front of all their colleagues. Some of the reactions to this very modest trial scheme are completely unhinged.
In my experience, people who are fat know they are fat, and being told yet again that they need to lose weight won't help.
If I were to get a letter inviting me for "an NHS health check", I'd probably just bin it because it strikes me as a waste of time when I know it takes literally months to get an appointment when I want one.
I would just say that it could be the most important thing you do
I had my dvt in October last year and was admitted to hospital as a medical emergency and underwent an immediate ultra sound
That ultrasound found a massive dvt in my left thigh but also an undetected aneurysm that can often be fatal
As a result my aneurysm is monitored yearly and if necessary the surgeon will operate
Blood pressure, pulse and oxygen tests can be lifesavers and to be honest there is no need to fat shame anyone
But that last is all that will happen - people will be told to lose weight/drink less/give up smoking, as appropriate, and not a jot more.
Fatness has become such a ridiculous taboo in this country. Mentioning it is almost up there with racial slurs.
The fact is the country is way too obese and it’s making the population unhealthy and unproductive.
There are fat fucks everywhere and it must be costing the country a fortune. I doubt anything Starmer does will change that but at least he's having a go.
I have to say I'm enjoying the new atmos of steely, buttoned-down efficiency. Not a joke in sight, everything clipped to size, nothing lax or loose or (oh god) 'quirky', no self-indulgence, no straining for adulation, no 'look at me' neediness, no attempt to amuse or excite or entertain, no flaky ideology, no pretentious intellectual fetishes. A complete absence of the shit we've become accustomed to in recent years. Instead what we have is what we see. A serious white collar professional with a nice big parliamentary majority looking to fix some problems.
Quite. Starmer is surprising me on the upside so far.
On my travels this year, I see that the Italians and Greeks eat a lot of sugary snacks, too, these days. However, they also still live longer than the UK, because of stronger communities and much healthier food in other parts of their diet, I think, largely.
The overall diet and lifestyle is the key. The "Blue Zones" have got the balance right, although some of them are slipping down into the average western lifestyle.
Considering that ultra processed foods make up about 60% of calories consumed in this country and that percentage increases for children and people in poorer areas, the UK government has to do something to make the population aware that their food choices are killing them. The "food" industry bears full responsibility for the obesity epidemic, and are as evil as the tobacco companies. Sadly, we're too far down the hole to make healthy eating affordable for the masses, so we're fucked.
I understand the book about UPF is very good, but I think oversimplifying the concept misses the point. It is not the case that the less processing you do to something the better it is for you. Vegetables' goodness is often better absorbed when the vegetable is cooked. The fat soluble vitamins in many vegetables needs to be accompanied by fat - hence we put butter on our carrots and dressing on our salad. Cabbage is better for you when fermented. These are all food processes.
I absolutely agree with you. Processed food is more than acceptable. Humans have Processed food for thousands of years and without it, humans wouldn't be at the top of the tree now. All food is Processed in some way. What I'm arguing against is the industrial manufacture of food using unheard of and often poorly regulated chemicals and fats, gums and sweeteners. Those are the ones that suppress and overide the body's natural systems.
I saw an interesting map recently: the UK consumption of sugar is on the low side compared to European averages. Clearly this is just one measure, but I'd always thought this quite a good proxy for quality of diet.
My guess is that a big part of our problem is lifestyle, and car-dependency. You don't see many fatties in Denmark or the Netherlands. But it's only a guess, and no doubt the answer is complex.
Active travel has been described, fairly convincingly, as a miracle pill for a range of physical and mental health problems. Social connection and all that.
As so often, we know roughly what to do- plan new communities by the maps of what communities looked like before mass car use. What's harder is selling that to electorates in advance, or getting commercial entities to deliver something a bit more expensive and complex than a standard new build estate. You need some kind of benevolent despot with a masterplan. And we don't like them. Even when they are called Charles Windsor, it's not always an easy sell.
The problem with that is, before mass car use families and social groups were geographically much tighter than they are today.
I live on the south coast but still travel to London regularly to meet up with friends, and my mum lives in Kent and I visit her there at least once a year. Along with occasional other social trips around the country, I need a car - doing all that by train would cost far too much both monetarily and in terms of time.
And once you have to have a car, it's the rare trip that using the car isn't the best option. Even when the two of us go into town for a meal or to the cinema, the car park cost is less than two return bus tickets.
This is the crux of the problem. You either have to make active travel relatively more attractive, or increase the marginal cost of car journeys.
Not sure how, but the socially optimal outcome would be to make car ownership cheaper but car use more expensive.
It isn't the 'crux' of a 'problem' - it is a wonderful privilege to have the freedom to own and run a wonderful, safe, dry conveyance that gives us the freedom to see loved ones or have adventures at will. It is a perverse stockholm syndrome mind state that thinks otherwise, right up there with being angry about 'cheap food', and 'cheap energy'. People who believe these things really need to look at the media they're consuming.
I don't think you and Eabhal are necessarily disagreeing here. He's not saying that owning a car is bad - just that owning a car is so expensive that once you have one it makes sense to use it for EVERYTHING, including what would otherwise be a seven minute walk to the shop for a loaf of bread. Ideally car ownership would be very very cheap, but driving them for journeys which could just as easily be walked would be more expensive.
There is also a kind of "access poverty" with some households with very high mileage and multiple cars, and others with none at all. In Edinburgh, there are as many cars as there are households, but only 60% have access to a car at all.
Even in N.Wales/Northumberland/Cumbria etc, only 80% of households have access to a car. Given the lack of public transport provision, that is really is a problem for those areas.
Yes, it's very easy as a healthy 40 something able to afford a car to overlook the significant number of people who either can't afford a car or can't drive one even if they could.
There are also quite a few "reluctant" drivers around. That is, people who don't like driving or don't want to drive, but feel forced into doing so because of the lack of suitable alternatives. This is rife in my family. I'm the only one who actually likes driving (while also acknowledging the drawbacks of car use).
On my travels this year, I see that the Italians and Greeks eat a lot of sugary snacks, too, these days. However, they also still live longer than the UK, because of stronger communities and much healthier food in other parts of their diet, I think, largely.
A slice of cake from a Greek baker is about twice the size of ours. So there must be some other place they are skimping, on calories alone.
Thatcher is properly scary in the portrait. I wouldn't want her in my study either.
Starmer is a pretty vindictive person.
This is already becoming quite clear.
Another one obsessed with Thatcher. Is it some kind of national religion ?
Was Gordon Brown when he commissioned the portrait?
Pretty well, yes.
As I noted upthread, Blair and Brown failed to address, let alone reverse, the hollowing out of government; the rejection of industrial strategy; the long term structural problems of the housing market; the economic neglect of the regions.
Good job we've got the strategic visionary genius Starmer then, eh?
If he gets house building restarted, benefitting local government in the process, he'll be the first PM in three decades actually to do something about one of Thatcher's great failures.
Meanwhile you're moaning about a picture.
That 'if' is doing a heck of a lot of heavy lifting.
And I have to repeat myself: it's not just about building houses; it's about building communities. And also note that build quality also needs to be addressed: something I've been harping on about on here for years.
It's not doing any heavy lifting; it's a straightforward conditional.
Also, can we place 'is doing a lot of heavy lifting' on the banned PB cliche list, please.
Can we put 'banned PB cliche list' on the banned list, please? The concept of banning cliches is fairly pathetic.
I'll explain why the 'if' is doing heavy lifting. Firstly, that entire sentence was wrong. Its not a case of getting house building restarted, as f-loads of houses are being built, as I can see after a few minutes of walking. It is a case of building *more* houses. Secondly, I have my doubts that he will be able to increase the rate of build so that it is *enough*, given the massive demand. Are houses like roads; the more we build, the more we need? Thirdly, we want good houses, not shite poorly-built ones that barely qualify as 'houses'.
Perhaps the reason why the PM's over the last three decades have not been able to tackle the problem is that the problem is fairly intractable, especially given the demand?
One of the interesting questions we should be asking is why we need such massive increases in housing. There are on average 2.36 residents per household in the UK. There were 192k homes built in 2022, and looking at the number of buildings sites everywhere, that number has probably gone up since. That's enough homes for ~450k people at current household sizes.
Why are we adding enough room for 450k people a year without remotely making a dent in house prices? It doesn't take a genius to answer this, when immigration is running at 750k/year.
Looking at it like this, the entire cost of the residental constitution sector is actually the costs of importing those ~70% of net migrants for whom we are actually building houses.
If we did the only longtime sensible thing and went to net zero immigration, in ten years time we would barely need a residential construction sector, as there would be enough houses to go round and the population would be stable.
Almost all the economic problems the country has boil down to the continued attempts to inflate GDP via the means of mass immigration run as a Ponzi scheme.
Is the "massive" increase in housebuilding that massive? A much smaller UK population was building 350000 homes a year in the mid 1930s and 400000 a year in the mid 1960s.
Sustained lack of building since the 1980s and changing lifestyles is much more of an issue than the increased demand from immigration.
Then in the 70s and 80s growth slowed and stopped, and housebuilding slowed too.
Then in the 90s and 00s there was an even bigger growth in population due to immigration, but without housebuilding to meet the demand. I don't think any of these points can be reasonably denied...
Has Starmer really removed Thatcher's portrait from the Thatcher room at No. 10 because he found it 'unsettling' ?
Aw, bless. We cant have his little feelings hurtied, can we? I wonder what else he'll find 'unsettling'?
He really is going to be a poor PM.
He might turn out to be a poor PM but fuck me you need something more than him slightly adjusting his work environment to suit himself. Get a fucking grip.
I'm laughing at him. It's hilarious.
He is PM. He will, sadly, have to make really important decisions; sometimes life-and-death decisions. He needs to be tough, as do all PMs. Yet he finds a portrait of a massively successful (although controversial) predecessor 'unsettling'.
He needs to get a grip.
Cameron held an EU referendum to satisfy his right-wing; Starmer has removed a portrait of a PM from 30 years ago to satisfy his equivalent.
Cameron held an EU referendum because the public wanted one; and it could easily be argued that politics needed one. The fact that leave won shows that there was a massive demand; and as Corbyn showed, the demand was not just on the Conservative Party's right wing.
IMV if we had not had an EU referendum in 2016 we would have either had one by now, or have a very right-wing government that would make Sunak's look like Corbyn's.
The issue of EU membership was a can that could only be kicked down the road so far.
Oh don't get me wrong, I think holding the referendum was the right thing to do precisely for the reasons you give.
But Cameron did it to head off the right-wing given his small majority. And I don't think there is any evidence that the country would suddenly swing to the right on the back of not having one, simply because we've had absolutely massive non-EU migration since then and just elected Labour.
I think asking the public to tick a box Yes/No because you aren't willing to make the case for what you think is the right policy is a completely inappropriate use of a referendum, and an abdication of responsibility. Referendums should only be used as a final endorsement or rejection from the public for an agreed and substantially worked out major constitutional change. Which is what they are in serious countries that have referendums in their constitutional toolkit. Which is what the word referendum means.
In 2016 there was no sane way out. A referendum was used to ask us (yes or no) whether the central plank of policy of the last 40 years had actually been a mistake. This was because we hadn't been asked at the key moments over that 40 year period.
As it turned out the real killer was extending FOM to countries with very different levels of development from the UK. Lincolnshire did not riot over French and German accountants. The SM, as guided by the UK veto as it developed, should never have got to that point, especially without our referendum consent.
Still don't think it was an appropriate use of a referendum. Either Cameron should have made the case for membership or if he thinks the UK would be better outside the EU, develop a proposition for that and take it to the public. The important thing in this case is both options are clear - the status quo or the proposed alternative.
Agree. By 2016 the options had been self-limited by previous decisions and it was too late for a sensible and incremental aproach.
However the 'developed options' approach had real limitations. A 2016 referendum could have put forward alternative wish lists, but crucially could not say in advance what relationship we would have with the EU if voting to leave. The EU was not going to discuss this at all until Art 50 had been invoked. They held the cards.
Accept there would be uncertainty but that's life. Cameron would say, this is how we will approach leaving the EU and these are the wins we are looking for. Voters might decide, I like what I'm hearing about best case, but I don't think it's worth the risk of not getting it. Which is fine. Many good decisions are made on this basis.
Has Starmer really removed Thatcher's portrait from the Thatcher room at No. 10 because he found it 'unsettling' ?
Aw, bless. We cant have his little feelings hurtied, can we? I wonder what else he'll find 'unsettling'?
He really is going to be a poor PM.
I feel Starmer's dilemma. I used to have a large antique portrait of Gladstone above my bed until a guy I brought back pointed out that it didn't exactly create an amorous mood. I reluctantly relegated him to the stairs after that.
Considering that ultra processed foods make up about 60% of calories consumed in this country and that percentage increases for children and people in poorer areas, the UK government has to do something to make the population aware that their food choices are killing them. The "food" industry bears full responsibility for the obesity epidemic, and are as evil as the tobacco companies. Sadly, we're too far down the hole to make healthy eating affordable for the masses, so we're fucked.
What measure would you take to make 'healthy eating' (*) affordable for the masses?
From my own non-expert perspective, healthy eating is about three main things: knowledge, skill, and time. You need to know what food is healthy and in what amounts; you need the skill to cook healthily, and the time to do it. (**)
What could the government do to help these in the short and long terms?
(*) However that is defined... (**) I did not say 'money', as it is, given the three above, possible to eat healthily and cheaply.
Better food education in schools would help in the long term.
Regarding affordability, we could take a look at what government did in WWII. With far fewer resources, and with massive import restrictions, they still managed to create the healthiest generation compared to those which preceded, and which followed the war.
The simplest quick intervention would be to legislate to cut the amount of salt in processed food.
A good point. It'd be interesting to see how activity levels have changed between then and now: I vaguely recall there are figures, and they're not as I expected. (*) Ditto calorific intake.
(*) IIRC, that we're about as active now as we were then. Could be wrong though.
Has Starmer really removed Thatcher's portrait from the Thatcher room at No. 10 because he found it 'unsettling' ?
Aw, bless. We cant have his little feelings hurtied, can we? I wonder what else he'll find 'unsettling'?
He really is going to be a poor PM.
He might turn out to be a poor PM but fuck me you need something more than him slightly adjusting his work environment to suit himself. Get a fucking grip.
I'm laughing at him. It's hilarious.
He is PM. He will, sadly, have to make really important decisions; sometimes life-and-death decisions. He needs to be tough, as do all PMs. Yet he finds a portrait of a massively successful (although controversial) predecessor 'unsettling'.
He needs to get a grip.
If I had to make life and death decisions I'd probably want to do it in an environment that I found conducive.
It's definitely you that needs to get a grip, he's only taken a picture off a wall in a room that none of us will ever see, he's not thrown the statue of Churchill into the Thames.
"If I had to make life and death decisions I'd probably want to do it in an environment that I found conducive."
He doesn't get that choice. He might have to make the decision whilst on holiday; or on a foreign visit, or at three o'clock in the morning. Or whilst on the toilet, if it is urgent enough.
It's fairly pathetic of him. Although I do wonder if it is an utterly deliberate move on his part, as an easy piece of red meat thrown to the left.
What the hell are you jibbering on about? I think everybody realises he isn't going to go to the Study in no 10 every time he has to make a decision.
OK he's just started a job as head of government. A job that he will probably be doing for the next 4 or 5 years. If I started a job like that I would also want to make a couple of changes to the offices I moved into, rather than keeping everything exactly the same as my predecessor. He's taken down a picture of Thatcher that he didn't like, who gives a shit? He could take down a picture of Nelson Mandela or the Dalai Lama, put a framed photo of his mum on his desk, whatever, if it makes him feel more at ease.
Sure, but he didn't need to make it public that he found the picture "unsettling".
Reminds him that he is a Pygmy on the shoulders of a giant
Yes I suspect Tory MPs will put Tugendhat in the final 2 to members with either Badenoch or Jenrick.
Tugendhat is the most One Nation and centrist and liberal of the candidates on the whole, Stride is also fishing in a similar pool but has less support. David Miliband was similarly the centrist candidate in the Labour leadership race after they lost power in 2010 and Ken Clarke for the Tories when they last lost office in 1997. Neither won although they got respectable results.
So the odds are Jenrick or Badenoch will play the Hague or Ed Miliband role and become Leader of the Opposition. Miliband though had more luck than Hague and had early poll leads against Cameron that Hague could not against Blair
Don't see it. TT would have had more luck with the Ellwoods and Mordaunts of this world.
Jenrick, Cleverly, Badenoch and TT to last four, Jenrick and Cleverly (coming from third with TT's transfers) to last two I reckon....
No, Cleverly is too rightwing for the One Nation Liberal lane and backed Brexit too unlike Remainers Tugendhat and Stride but not rightwing enough for the hard right ERG backed lane which Jenrick, Patel and Badenoch are competing for. So like Mordaunt Cleverly comes third at best
Considering that ultra processed foods make up about 60% of calories consumed in this country and that percentage increases for children and people in poorer areas, the UK government has to do something to make the population aware that their food choices are killing them. The "food" industry bears full responsibility for the obesity epidemic, and are as evil as the tobacco companies. Sadly, we're too far down the hole to make healthy eating affordable for the masses, so we're fucked.
I understand the book about UPF is very good, but I think oversimplifying the concept misses the point. It is not the case that the less processing you do to something the better it is for you. Vegetables' goodness is often better absorbed when the vegetable is cooked. The fat soluble vitamins in many vegetables needs to be accompanied by fat - hence we put butter on our carrots and dressing on our salad. Cabbage is better for you when fermented. These are all food processes.
I absolutely agree with you. Processed food is more than acceptable. Humans have Processed food for thousands of years and without it, humans wouldn't be at the top of the tree now. All food is Processed in some way. What I'm arguing against is the industrial manufacture of food using unheard of and often poorly regulated chemicals and fats, gums and sweeteners. Those are the ones that suppress and overide the body's natural systems.
I saw an interesting map recently: the UK consumption of sugar is on the low side compared to European averages. Clearly this is just one measure, but I'd always thought this quite a good proxy for quality of diet.
My guess is that a big part of our problem is lifestyle, and car-dependency. You don't see many fatties in Denmark or the Netherlands. But it's only a guess, and no doubt the answer is complex.
Active travel has been described, fairly convincingly, as a miracle pill for a range of physical and mental health problems. Social connection and all that.
As so often, we know roughly what to do- plan new communities by the maps of what communities looked like before mass car use. What's harder is selling that to electorates in advance, or getting commercial entities to deliver something a bit more expensive and complex than a standard new build estate. You need some kind of benevolent despot with a masterplan. And we don't like them. Even when they are called Charles Windsor, it's not always an easy sell.
The problem with that is, before mass car use families and social groups were geographically much tighter than they are today.
I live on the south coast but still travel to London regularly to meet up with friends, and my mum lives in Kent and I visit her there at least once a year. Along with occasional other social trips around the country, I need a car - doing all that by train would cost far too much both monetarily and in terms of time.
And once you have to have a car, it's the rare trip that using the car isn't the best option. Even when the two of us go into town for a meal or to the cinema, the car park cost is less than two return bus tickets.
This is the crux of the problem. You either have to make active travel relatively more attractive, or increase the marginal cost of car journeys.
Not sure how, but the socially optimal outcome would be to make car ownership cheaper but car use more expensive.
It isn't the 'crux' of a 'problem' - it is a wonderful privilege to have the freedom to own and run a wonderful, safe, dry conveyance that gives us the freedom to see loved ones or have adventures at will. It is a perverse stockholm syndrome mind state that thinks otherwise, right up there with being angry about 'cheap food', and 'cheap energy'. People who believe these things really need to look at the media they're consuming.
I don't think you and Eabhal are necessarily disagreeing here. He's not saying that owning a car is bad - just that owning a car is so expensive that once you have one it makes sense to use it for EVERYTHING, including what would otherwise be a seven minute walk to the shop for a loaf of bread. Ideally car ownership would be very very cheap, but driving them for journeys which could just as easily be walked would be more expensive.
There is also a kind of "access poverty" with some households with very high mileage and multiple cars, and others with none at all. In Edinburgh, there are as many cars as there are households, but only 60% have access to a car at all.
Even in N.Wales/Northumberland/Cumbria etc, only 80% of households have access to a car. Given the lack of public transport provision, that is really is a problem for those areas.
Yes, it's very easy as a healthy 40 something able to afford a car to overlook the significant number of people who either can't afford a car or can't drive one even if they could.
Indeed, and particularly where I live in Hampshire, if people don't/can't drive or have a car, public transport is so poor as to be unusable. You can't get to work. You can't get a job. You can't go shopping. You should move house, but social housing rules don't let you do that. In the private rental sector, people can't afford to move due to the initial costs. (And some people are knobs, and won't move somewhere new but more practical. Just as many "poor" pensioners with paid-off houses won't move somewhere smaller and cheaper and realise their assets). If you live in Bordon, for example, you can't get to Alton on a Sunday, as there are no buses, so you can't work retail. Many lone parents are put in social housing in villages near there, back in the day there would have been frequent buses at least to the nearest town centre, now there are none. You are therefore isolated. Bus headways are so poor you cannot contemplate a journey that would involve two buses.
A shocking statistic our local health thingy published was that life outcomes for people with poor mental health in the local area (Blackwater Valley) is worse than most places in the country. Not comparatively - you might imagine that is the case, as everyone else is richer - but in absolute terms. It is just so difficult to live in the SE with no/limited income. Even if you have a bus pass, there aren't any (and a lot of public transport is trains geared towards London commuters). Local authorities have been hollowed out, so there are no public/communal facilities you can use. Local Tory voters don't care, they have two SUVs on the drive, wouldn't get on a bus if you paid them, or visit a local library etc, as the social norm is becoming hunkering down with your family.
The Times headline seems to imply its forced on workers and that they’ll be fat shamed in front of their colleagues.
It’s voluntary . The Times I’ve found over the last year seems to do a lot headlines which seek to mislead .
"Employers to have signed up include Jaguar Land Rover, where 4,500 staff from the boardroom to the factory floor will get the checks within months at its Solihull base."
I read that as voluntary at the employer level. Kid Starver teams up with the head capitalists to fat shame The Workers. He really is hilariously useless.
"More than 16 million people are eligible for an NHS health check, but data shows that only about 40% of those invited complete one."
Reaching people via their workplace - inviting them to complete a voluntary health questionnaire on company time - might be a way of improving that sort of response rate, and help to head off health problems at an earlier stage.
It's not going to be forcing people up on stage to face the calipers in front of all their colleagues. Some of the reactions to this very modest trial scheme are completely unhinged.
In my experience, people who are fat know they are fat, and being told yet again that they need to lose weight won't help.
If I were to get a letter inviting me for "an NHS health check", I'd probably just bin it because it strikes me as a waste of time when I know it takes literally months to get an appointment when I want one.
I would just say that it could be the most important thing you do
I had my dvt in October last year and was admitted to hospital as a medical emergency and underwent an immediate ultra sound
That ultrasound found a massive dvt in my left thigh but also an undetected aneurysm that can often be fatal
As a result my aneurysm is monitored yearly and if necessary the surgeon will operate
Blood pressure, pulse and oxygen tests can be lifesavers and to be honest there is no need to fat shame anyone
But that last is all that will happen - people will be told to lose weight/drink less/give up smoking, as appropriate, and not a jot more.
Fatness has become such a ridiculous taboo in this country. Mentioning it is almost up there with racial slurs.
The fact is the country is way too obese and it’s making the population unhealthy and unproductive.
There are fat fucks everywhere and it must be costing the country a fortune. I doubt anything Starmer does will change that but at least he's having a go.
I have to say I'm enjoying the new atmos of steely, buttoned-down efficiency. Not a joke in sight, everything clipped to size, nothing lax or loose or (oh god) 'quirky', no self-indulgence, no straining for adulation, no 'look at me' neediness, no attempt to amuse or excite or entertain, no flaky ideology, no pretentious intellectual fetishes. A complete absence of the shit we've become accustomed to in recent years. Instead what we have is what we see. A serious white collar professional with a nice big parliamentary majority looking to fix some problems.
He is pretty boring.
The jury is out as to whether he'll be at all effective.
As a fully paid-up member of The Left, I greet Starmer's removal of Thatcher's portrait not as welcome 'red meat', but with absolute indifference: I couldn't give a flying fuck what the PM chooses to have on his walls.
However, Starmer must be delighted that this opponents are dwelling on such ephemera rather than matters of substance.
He needs to concentrate and it was putting him off. Perfectly understandable. It would me.
On my travels this year, I see that the Italians and Greeks eat a lot of sugary snacks, too, these days. However, they also still live longer than the UK, because of stronger communities and much healthier food in other parts of their diet, I think, largely.
More that the impact hasn't hit yet. An 80 year old Italian has years of healthy Mediterranean lifestyle under their belt, a 30 something hasn't.
We see the same here. When you go to a place with lots of spritly elderly people (like Rutland) you see people who have always lived healthily. It's a different story on Saffron Lane estate.
I think it is underappreciated how metabolism slows down when we age. A diet and drinking habit sustainable at 25 is just no longer possible at fifty without ballooning weight and BP.
As usual, some obsess on the political minutiae or issues of only symbolic import such as Mrs Thatcher's portrait. I suppose if there is any symbolism it's not only that her time is gone but the Conservative time in office is over for now.
I make no apologies for re-linking this piece from the BBC which is more symbolic of the failure of previous administrations (both Conservative and Labour):
It's an aspect of the multi-layered "housing" crisis which doesn't get the coverage or discussion it deserves. It's not just about a lack of houses but about the absence of a public rental sector as a last resort for those who cannot get accommodation. Homelessness isn't just about those who sleep rough (and that's a whole other subject) but about those evicted from private rental accommodation for whom there is no alternative but temporary and often completely inadequate rooms.
It angers me - it's a waste of lives and a waste of public money especially for councils who are already under severe financial pressure.
My solution, bluntly, would be for more homes to be built and these homes to be provided by the developers at much less than cost (ideally nothing) to councils who would use them to house families (the priority) at nominal rent. It's going to be financially painful for someone but there are times when the profit motive is less important than providing a roof and stability for a struggling family.
I'd like to see the Government talking about this rather than banning smoking in outdoor places - when we've got the important and urgent stuff done then we can talk about smoking in beer gardens. It worries me this Government, like its many Conservative predecessors, looks at some issues, sees how complex they are and resolves to do nothing which is political cowardice of the first order.
The upshot of that is that the other houses that the developers build which they aren't providing for free are much more expensive. If 20% of an estate has to be provided for free, the other 80% will all have to be 25% more expensive. Which essentially leaves us broadly neutral on 'can people afford a decent home'?
Considering that ultra processed foods make up about 60% of calories consumed in this country and that percentage increases for children and people in poorer areas, the UK government has to do something to make the population aware that their food choices are killing them. The "food" industry bears full responsibility for the obesity epidemic, and are as evil as the tobacco companies. Sadly, we're too far down the hole to make healthy eating affordable for the masses, so we're fucked.
I understand the book about UPF is very good, but I think oversimplifying the concept misses the point. It is not the case that the less processing you do to something the better it is for you. Vegetables' goodness is often better absorbed when the vegetable is cooked. The fat soluble vitamins in many vegetables needs to be accompanied by fat - hence we put butter on our carrots and dressing on our salad. Cabbage is better for you when fermented. These are all food processes.
I absolutely agree with you. Processed food is more than acceptable. Humans have Processed food for thousands of years and without it, humans wouldn't be at the top of the tree now. All food is Processed in some way. What I'm arguing against is the industrial manufacture of food using unheard of and often poorly regulated chemicals and fats, gums and sweeteners. Those are the ones that suppress and overide the body's natural systems.
I saw an interesting map recently: the UK consumption of sugar is on the low side compared to European averages. Clearly this is just one measure, but I'd always thought this quite a good proxy for quality of diet.
My guess is that a big part of our problem is lifestyle, and car-dependency. You don't see many fatties in Denmark or the Netherlands. But it's only a guess, and no doubt the answer is complex.
Active travel has been described, fairly convincingly, as a miracle pill for a range of physical and mental health problems. Social connection and all that.
As so often, we know roughly what to do- plan new communities by the maps of what communities looked like before mass car use. What's harder is selling that to electorates in advance, or getting commercial entities to deliver something a bit more expensive and complex than a standard new build estate. You need some kind of benevolent despot with a masterplan. And we don't like them. Even when they are called Charles Windsor, it's not always an easy sell.
The problem with that is, before mass car use families and social groups were geographically much tighter than they are today.
I live on the south coast but still travel to London regularly to meet up with friends, and my mum lives in Kent and I visit her there at least once a year. Along with occasional other social trips around the country, I need a car - doing all that by train would cost far too much both monetarily and in terms of time.
And once you have to have a car, it's the rare trip that using the car isn't the best option. Even when the two of us go into town for a meal or to the cinema, the car park cost is less than two return bus tickets.
This is the crux of the problem. You either have to make active travel relatively more attractive, or increase the marginal cost of car journeys. .
And the latter option is much easier than the former, which is why councils go for it, and which is why motorists hate the concept.
Going back to the Netherlands again - it is a bit of a myth that the Netherlands is anti-car. In fact, @BartholomewRoberts would love it. It's disconcertingly like being in a massive new town - the whole country is plastered in dual carriageways and motorways and grade separated interchanges - from my limited experience, traffic works brilliantly. If you want to drive, you can. But once you come off the big roads, urban streets are narrower and just that bit less amenable to driving quickly - their natural speed is much closer to 25mph than 35mph. On-street parking is less available; public car parks are generally plentiful, but more expensive. Still, the 'natural' car journeys - e.g. for a family of five with a load of stuff; or to somewhere rural, or with a big load of luggage - are probably more easily done than here. Not least because all the 'unnatural' car journeys - like the seven minute walk to the shops, or the trip to the nearest town, or to the big city - are done by other modes, because to do so is deliriously easy.
e.g. I stayed in a small trainless town called Wassenaar, and we planned a trip to Amsterdam, about 35 miles away. We are a family of five, the youngest of whom's cycling ability is slightly suspect, so we drove - 2 and a half miles or so in 12 minutes or so - to the closest station (Verschoten) - which had a free car park, from where there is a train every ten minutes or so to Amsterdam (changing in Leiden, but changing trains is straight off one and on to the next, because frequencies are so high) - which dropped us in the middle of Amsterdam. As an individual, I would have probably cycled the first bit in roughly the same time.
Right tool, right job.
But also, recognising that thoughtful planning to reduce marginal car use makes life healthier and nicer for everyone. And that a town where everyone can use cars as much as they want tends towards a place where everyone has to use cars to do anything.
Well put. However, public sector planning is quite a blunt tool - the scope the public sector has to actually design rather than just approve or not is limited. Which is why I'd like to see us have a go at the public-sector-as-private-developer model I mentioned earlier.
The Times headline seems to imply its forced on workers and that they’ll be fat shamed in front of their colleagues.
It’s voluntary . The Times I’ve found over the last year seems to do a lot headlines which seek to mislead .
"Employers to have signed up include Jaguar Land Rover, where 4,500 staff from the boardroom to the factory floor will get the checks within months at its Solihull base."
I read that as voluntary at the employer level. Kid Starver teams up with the head capitalists to fat shame The Workers. He really is hilariously useless.
"More than 16 million people are eligible for an NHS health check, but data shows that only about 40% of those invited complete one."
Reaching people via their workplace - inviting them to complete a voluntary health questionnaire on company time - might be a way of improving that sort of response rate, and help to head off health problems at an earlier stage.
It's not going to be forcing people up on stage to face the calipers in front of all their colleagues. Some of the reactions to this very modest trial scheme are completely unhinged.
In my experience, people who are fat know they are fat, and being told yet again that they need to lose weight won't help.
If I were to get a letter inviting me for "an NHS health check", I'd probably just bin it because it strikes me as a waste of time when I know it takes literally months to get an appointment when I want one.
I would just say that it could be the most important thing you do
I had my dvt in October last year and was admitted to hospital as a medical emergency and underwent an immediate ultra sound
That ultrasound found a massive dvt in my left thigh but also an undetected aneurysm that can often be fatal
As a result my aneurysm is monitored yearly and if necessary the surgeon will operate
Blood pressure, pulse and oxygen tests can be lifesavers and to be honest there is no need to fat shame anyone
But that last is all that will happen - people will be told to lose weight/drink less/give up smoking, as appropriate, and not a jot more.
Fatness has become such a ridiculous taboo in this country. Mentioning it is almost up there with racial slurs.
The fact is the country is way too obese and it’s making the population unhealthy and unproductive.
There are fat fucks everywhere and it must be costing the country a fortune. I doubt anything Starmer does will change that but at least he's having a go.
I have to say I'm enjoying the new atmos of steely, buttoned-down efficiency. Not a joke in sight, everything clipped to size, nothing lax or loose or (oh god) 'quirky', no self-indulgence, no straining for adulation, no 'look at me' neediness, no attempt to amuse or excite or entertain, no flaky ideology, no pretentious intellectual fetishes. A complete absence of the shit we've become accustomed to in recent years. Instead what we have is what we see. A serious white collar professional with a nice big parliamentary majority looking to fix some problems.
I can see that, and it is welcome.
But a PM involves many roles, which is why it's such a difficult job. He also needs to be a salesman; and whilst he won the GE by a landslide, I'd argue that was mainly due to the Conservative Party's implosion rather than Starmer selling a great vision for the future.
I'd argue that Blair in 1996-7 did a much better job of selling a vision, and that helped him out massively once he was in power. There will come a time, perhaps soon, perhaps in a few years, where Starmer faces difficult decisions that he needs to sell to the electorate. And I don't think that's something he's skillful at, and I doubt he can learn it.
He might be better off picking someone off his front bench who is a good communicator to the public as a whole to sell the vision. With the knowledge that that person will be at the front of his queue of successors.
The erstwhile minister for common sense and digging holes. How dare people suggest that (mis)quoting arguably the best known poem about the genesis of the Holocaust in response to a suggested smoking ban is in any way equating the Holocaust to suggesting a smoking ban. Ridiculous!
Thatcher is properly scary in the portrait. I wouldn't want her in my study either.
Starmer is a pretty vindictive person.
This is already becoming quite clear.
If you became CEO of an organisation that had previously had Blair as Chairman of the Board, would you want his ugly mug looking over your shoulder or would you replace his picture with a nice movie still of James Bond and Vesper Lind to relax you and focus your mind on the job in hand?
See, it's not petty and it's not vindictive.
It’s not in his study. It’s in a meeting room. Which is an entirely normal place to have a picture of a former chairman
Replace it with Attlee or Blair then.
Bit odd in the Thatcher room though.
He didn’t need to do this. He’s done it for a reason. I don’t think the message it sends is positive for him, but no doubt, he thinks it is a “cheap win” with his left flank
Considering that ultra processed foods make up about 60% of calories consumed in this country and that percentage increases for children and people in poorer areas, the UK government has to do something to make the population aware that their food choices are killing them. The "food" industry bears full responsibility for the obesity epidemic, and are as evil as the tobacco companies. Sadly, we're too far down the hole to make healthy eating affordable for the masses, so we're fucked.
I understand the book about UPF is very good, but I think oversimplifying the concept misses the point. It is not the case that the less processing you do to something the better it is for you. Vegetables' goodness is often better absorbed when the vegetable is cooked. The fat soluble vitamins in many vegetables needs to be accompanied by fat - hence we put butter on our carrots and dressing on our salad. Cabbage is better for you when fermented. These are all food processes.
I absolutely agree with you. Processed food is more than acceptable. Humans have Processed food for thousands of years and without it, humans wouldn't be at the top of the tree now. All food is Processed in some way. What I'm arguing against is the industrial manufacture of food using unheard of and often poorly regulated chemicals and fats, gums and sweeteners. Those are the ones that suppress and overide the body's natural systems.
I saw an interesting map recently: the UK consumption of sugar is on the low side compared to European averages. Clearly this is just one measure, but I'd always thought this quite a good proxy for quality of diet.
My guess is that a big part of our problem is lifestyle, and car-dependency. You don't see many fatties in Denmark or the Netherlands. But it's only a guess, and no doubt the answer is complex.
Active travel has been described, fairly convincingly, as a miracle pill for a range of physical and mental health problems. Social connection and all that.
As so often, we know roughly what to do- plan new communities by the maps of what communities looked like before mass car use. What's harder is selling that to electorates in advance, or getting commercial entities to deliver something a bit more expensive and complex than a standard new build estate. You need some kind of benevolent despot with a masterplan. And we don't like them. Even when they are called Charles Windsor, it's not always an easy sell.
The problem with that is, before mass car use families and social groups were geographically much tighter than they are today.
I live on the south coast but still travel to London regularly to meet up with friends, and my mum lives in Kent and I visit her there at least once a year. Along with occasional other social trips around the country, I need a car - doing all that by train would cost far too much both monetarily and in terms of time.
And once you have to have a car, it's the rare trip that using the car isn't the best option. Even when the two of us go into town for a meal or to the cinema, the car park cost is less than two return bus tickets.
This is the crux of the problem. You either have to make active travel relatively more attractive, or increase the marginal cost of car journeys.
Not sure how, but the socially optimal outcome would be to make car ownership cheaper but car use more expensive.
It isn't the 'crux' of a 'problem' - it is a wonderful privilege to have the freedom to own and run a wonderful, safe, dry conveyance that gives us the freedom to see loved ones or have adventures at will. It is a perverse stockholm syndrome mind state that thinks otherwise, right up there with being angry about 'cheap food', and 'cheap energy'. People who believe these things really need to look at the media they're consuming.
I don't think you and Eabhal are necessarily disagreeing here. He's not saying that owning a car is bad - just that owning a car is so expensive that once you have one it makes sense to use it for EVERYTHING, including what would otherwise be a seven minute walk to the shop for a loaf of bread. Ideally car ownership would be very very cheap, but driving them for journeys which could just as easily be walked would be more expensive.
There is also a kind of "access poverty" with some households with very high mileage and multiple cars, and others with none at all. In Edinburgh, there are as many cars as there are households, but only 60% have access to a car at all.
Even in N.Wales/Northumberland/Cumbria etc, only 80% of households have access to a car. Given the lack of public transport provision, that is really is a problem for those areas.
Yes, it's very easy as a healthy 40 something able to afford a car to overlook the significant number of people who either can't afford a car or can't drive one even if they could.
Indeed, and particularly where I live in Hampshire, if people don't/can't drive or have a car, public transport is so poor as to be unusable. You can't get to work. You can't get a job. You can't go shopping. You should move house, but social housing rules don't let you do that. In the private rental sector, people can't afford to move due to the initial costs. (And some people are knobs, and won't move somewhere new but more practical. Just as many "poor" pensioners with paid-off houses won't move somewhere smaller and cheaper and realise their assets). If you live in Bordon, for example, you can't get to Alton on a Sunday, as there are no buses, so you can't work retail. Many lone parents are put in social housing in villages near there, back in the day there would have been frequent buses at least to the nearest town centre, now there are none. You are therefore isolated. Bus headways are so poor you cannot contemplate a journey that would involve two buses.
A shocking statistic our local health thingy published was that life outcomes for people with poor mental health in the local area (Blackwater Valley) is worse than most places in the country. Not comparatively - you might imagine that is the case, as everyone else is richer - but in absolute terms. It is just so difficult to live in the SE with no/limited income. Even if you have a bus pass, there aren't any (and a lot of public transport is trains geared towards London commuters). Local authorities have been hollowed out, so there are no public/communal facilities you can use. Local Tory voters don't care, they have two SUVs on the drive, wouldn't get on a bus if you paid them, or visit a local library etc, as the social norm is becoming hunkering down with your family.
People don't realise that the people doing the hard work on minimum wage jobs often don't have access to a car, so their employment opportunities are limited to those they can reach by bus. With services cut by 50%, no wonder people are struggling to find workers and vice versa.
It's part of the reason why cities are doing so much better than towns and rural areas. Even if someone on low pay I'm a rural area can afford a car, such a large proportion of their income goes on it they have less to spend in the rest of the economy.
Thatcher is properly scary in the portrait. I wouldn't want her in my study either.
Starmer is a pretty vindictive person.
This is already becoming quite clear.
If you became CEO of an organisation that had previously had Blair as Chairman of the Board, would you want his ugly mug looking over your shoulder or would you replace his picture with a nice movie still of James Bond and Vesper Lind to relax you and focus your mind on the job in hand?
See, it's not petty and it's not vindictive.
It’s not in his study. It’s in a meeting room. Which is an entirely normal place to have a picture of a former chairman
Replace it with Attlee or Blair then.
Bit odd in the Thatcher room though.
He didn’t need to do this. He’s done it for a reason. I don’t think the message it sends is positive for him, but no doubt, he thinks it is a “cheap win” with his left flank
As a fully paid-up member of The Left, I greet Starmer's removal of Thatcher's portrait not as welcome 'red meat', but with absolute indifference: I couldn't give a flying fuck what the PM chooses to have on his walls.
However, Starmer must be delighted that this opponents are dwelling on such ephemera rather than matters of substance.
Absolutely. Sir Keir has played a blinder here. Getting his enemies to froth about some faded old portrait of, for many, a long-forgotten politician makes them look like stuffy old irrelevancies while he, Sir Keir, soars towards the future. Is there nothing this man can do wrong?
Considering that ultra processed foods make up about 60% of calories consumed in this country and that percentage increases for children and people in poorer areas, the UK government has to do something to make the population aware that their food choices are killing them. The "food" industry bears full responsibility for the obesity epidemic, and are as evil as the tobacco companies. Sadly, we're too far down the hole to make healthy eating affordable for the masses, so we're fucked.
Individuals bear responsibility for their actions as well - the industry doesn’t have “full” responsibility
My mistake. The food corporations only exist to nourish the population.
They are trying to maximise their profits, of course they are.
My criticism was the use of the word “full”.
Humans have agency. They make choices. Choices have consequences. Saying “the big bad food company did it to me” infantilises the population.
The erstwhile minister for common sense and digging holes. How dare people suggest that (mis)quoting arguably the best known poem about the genesis of the Holocaust in response to a suggested smoking ban is in any way equating the Holocaust to suggesting a smoking ban. Ridiculous!
The Times headline seems to imply its forced on workers and that they’ll be fat shamed in front of their colleagues.
It’s voluntary . The Times I’ve found over the last year seems to do a lot headlines which seek to mislead .
"Employers to have signed up include Jaguar Land Rover, where 4,500 staff from the boardroom to the factory floor will get the checks within months at its Solihull base."
I read that as voluntary at the employer level. Kid Starver teams up with the head capitalists to fat shame The Workers. He really is hilariously useless.
"More than 16 million people are eligible for an NHS health check, but data shows that only about 40% of those invited complete one."
Reaching people via their workplace - inviting them to complete a voluntary health questionnaire on company time - might be a way of improving that sort of response rate, and help to head off health problems at an earlier stage.
It's not going to be forcing people up on stage to face the calipers in front of all their colleagues. Some of the reactions to this very modest trial scheme are completely unhinged.
In my experience, people who are fat know they are fat, and being told yet again that they need to lose weight won't help.
If I were to get a letter inviting me for "an NHS health check", I'd probably just bin it because it strikes me as a waste of time when I know it takes literally months to get an appointment when I want one.
Which is precisely why this outreach programme is being trialled. People ignore the health MOT with only a 40% take up. Even if someone knows they are obese and unable to lose weight they may well benefit from having the consequential diabetes, blood pressure and cholesterol treated.
Every week I see new patient with established complications of diabetes due to late diagnosis, often because of no symptoms. Some of them will be permanently disabled as a result.
Then make it so that when someone does need to see a doctor they don't have to wait months because they're all working part time.
Yes, improving retention of NHS staff would help. How could we possibly encourage that?
Allow them free access to the prescription medicine drawer?
Oh and btw on Trump/Jan 6th (soz) - I agree absolutely with your comment on his behaviour over fake electors which as I believe you said should have resulted in a felony charge. Why it didn't I have no idea but that is again the democratic state doing, or being able to do if not this time, its democratic state thing.
Is has result in felony charges: the federal case and the Georgia state case are largely over the fake electors scheme.
On my travels this year, I see that the Italians and Greeks eat a lot of sugary snacks, too, these days. However, they also still live longer than the UK, because of stronger communities and much healthier food in other parts of their diet, I think, largely.
More that the impact hasn't hit yet. An 80 year old Italian has years of healthy Mediterranean lifestyle under their belt, a 30 something hasn't.
We see the same here. When you go to a place with lots of sprites elderly people (like Rutland) you see people who have always lived healthily. It's a different story on Saffron Lane estate.
I think it is underappreciated how metabolism slows down when we age. A diet and drinking habit sustainable at 25 is just no longer possible at fifty without ballooning weight and BP.
It is very difficult. I'm 59, run 25 or so miles a week on average, eat low carb (no doubt you disapprove Foxy but it stops me both overeating and snacking) and have a BMI of 21. Got a sub-4 marathon last year and I'm in training for Amsterdam in October. I will keep it up as long as I can - but when I started running I still put on weight on a fairly healthy "standard" diet. And poor people can't afford to eat low carb, or even low GI
Thatcher is properly scary in the portrait. I wouldn't want her in my study either.
Starmer is a pretty vindictive person.
This is already becoming quite clear.
If you became CEO of an organisation that had previously had Blair as Chairman of the Board, would you want his ugly mug looking over your shoulder or would you replace his picture with a nice movie still of James Bond and Vesper Lind to relax you and focus your mind on the job in hand?
See, it's not petty and it's not vindictive.
It’s not in his study. It’s in a meeting room. Which is an entirely normal place to have a picture of a former chairman
Replace it with Attlee or Blair then.
Bit odd in the Thatcher room though.
He didn’t need to do this. He’s done it for a reason. I don’t think the message it sends is positive for him, but no doubt, he thinks it is a “cheap win” with his left flank
Can I believe that I agree with Owen Jones on the smoking ban:
"My main comment on the new proposed smoking ban is I really cannot be bothered with the protracted culture war this entails."
Yes, that is a good point.
I think it'll be a disaster for the pub trade which is already in dire straits. That's if this ban is enforceable which I also doubt.
Who thinks this shit up? Either smokers will drink more and more at home or they'll stand at the edge of the pub garden and smoke.
The number of people who smoke continues to fall. Most people in pubs aren't smokers and will be unaffected. Most people in pub gardens aren't smoking.
As usual, some obsess on the political minutiae or issues of only symbolic import such as Mrs Thatcher's portrait. I suppose if there is any symbolism it's not only that her time is gone but the Conservative time in office is over for now.
I make no apologies for re-linking this piece from the BBC which is more symbolic of the failure of previous administrations (both Conservative and Labour):
It's an aspect of the multi-layered "housing" crisis which doesn't get the coverage or discussion it deserves. It's not just about a lack of houses but about the absence of a public rental sector as a last resort for those who cannot get accommodation. Homelessness isn't just about those who sleep rough (and that's a whole other subject) but about those evicted from private rental accommodation for whom there is no alternative but temporary and often completely inadequate rooms.
It angers me - it's a waste of lives and a waste of public money especially for councils who are already under severe financial pressure.
My solution, bluntly, would be for more homes to be built and these homes to be provided by the developers at much less than cost (ideally nothing) to councils who would use them to house families (the priority) at nominal rent. It's going to be financially painful for someone but there are times when the profit motive is less important than providing a roof and stability for a struggling family.
I'd like to see the Government talking about this rather than banning smoking in outdoor places - when we've got the important and urgent stuff done then we can talk about smoking in beer gardens. It worries me this Government, like its many Conservative predecessors, looks at some issues, sees how complex they are and resolves to do nothing which is political cowardice of the first order.
The upshot of that is that the other houses that the developers build which they aren't providing for free are much more expensive. If 20% of an estate has to be provided for free, the other 80% will all have to be 25% more expensive. Which essentially leaves us broadly neutral on 'can people afford a decent home'?
It doesn't work like that now. Many developments are approved on the basis a certain percentage are deemed as "affordable". That means the properties are purchased by a rental company as a bloc (so probably getting a better deal than a private buyer) and then leased to those who prefer to rent rather than buy.
Making a bloc of properties available to councils for emergency accommodation (it wouldn't be 20%) shouldn't be too difficult to organise. Perhaps an enhanced approval process might be on offer were any application to offer say 5% of properties for council use to house those requiring emergency accommodation. Central Government could perhaps provide incentives for developers to offer some form of public rental accommodation again where and to the quantity required in each area (in many areas it will be negligible).
On my travels this year, I see that the Italians and Greeks eat a lot of sugary snacks, too, these days. However, they also still live longer than the UK, because of stronger communities and much healthier food in other parts of their diet, I think, largely.
More that the impact hasn't hit yet. An 80 year old Italian has years of healthy Mediterranean lifestyle under their belt, a 30 something hasn't.
We see the same here. When you go to a place with lots of sprites elderly people (like Rutland) you see people who have always lived healthily. It's a different story on Saffron Lane estate.
I think it is underappreciated how metabolism slows down when we age. A diet and drinking habit sustainable at 25 is just no longer possible at fifty without ballooning weight and BP.
It is very difficult. I'm 59, run 25 or so miles a week on average, eat low carb (no doubt you disapprove Foxy but it stops me both overeating and snacking) and have a BMI of 21. Got a sub-4 marathon last year and I'm in training for Amsterdam in October. I will keep it up as long as I can - but when I started running I still put on weight on a fairly healthy "standard" diet. And poor people can't afford to eat low carb, or even low GI
No, I don't disapprove of a low carbohydrate diet. Indeed my own diet is fairly low carb. Where I think the danger lies is in excessive saturated fat as a substitute, particularly red and cured meats.
The erstwhile minister for common sense and digging holes. How dare people suggest that (mis)quoting arguably the best known poem about the genesis of the Holocaust in response to a suggested smoking ban is in any way equating the Holocaust to suggesting a smoking ban. Ridiculous!
No, partly because one of my diminishing pleasures is a cigar and a drink on a warm summer evening, but also because I think it’s the worst kind of virtual signalling, ie fcking pointless.
However when the original smoking ban in pubs came in I was initially in favour of some sort of opt-in licence for landlords but the incessant whining of the smoking lobby put me right off. The efforts of the fragrantly thick Esther might have a similar effect.
Typical anti-vaxxer rhetoric. It would save lives, like seatbelts, but no - you don't want the government interfering.
Jeez
There is a difference between the government cajoling and enforcing.
I'm all for the government persuading people to have vaccinations and to stop smoking altogether. But I'm suspicious of legal enforcement of taking soft drugs, lock down, seatbelts etc and wouldn't want it extended to legal enforcement of vaccination. I'm totally in favour of hard persuasion. But it is up to individual adults what they do with their bodies as long as their actions don't materially harm others.
Thatcher is properly scary in the portrait. I wouldn't want her in my study either.
Starmer is a pretty vindictive person.
This is already becoming quite clear.
If you became CEO of an organisation that had previously had Blair as Chairman of the Board, would you want his ugly mug looking over your shoulder or would you replace his picture with a nice movie still of James Bond and Vesper Lind to relax you and focus your mind on the job in hand?
See, it's not petty and it's not vindictive.
It’s not in his study. It’s in a meeting room. Which is an entirely normal place to have a picture of a former chairman
Replace it with Attlee or Blair then.
Bit odd in the Thatcher room though.
He didn’t need to do this. He’s done it for a reason. I don’t think the message it sends is positive for him, but no doubt, he thinks it is a “cheap win” with his left flank
Why do you care so much?
It's part of the grief response. Tories cannot accept that they got their worst electoral result in terms of seats and vote share in over a century. They think that this is all a bad dream and Tory hegemony will restart shortly.
They haven't come close to understanding why the electorate threw them out.
The Times headline seems to imply its forced on workers and that they’ll be fat shamed in front of their colleagues.
It’s voluntary . The Times I’ve found over the last year seems to do a lot headlines which seek to mislead .
"Employers to have signed up include Jaguar Land Rover, where 4,500 staff from the boardroom to the factory floor will get the checks within months at its Solihull base."
I read that as voluntary at the employer level. Kid Starver teams up with the head capitalists to fat shame The Workers. He really is hilariously useless.
"More than 16 million people are eligible for an NHS health check, but data shows that only about 40% of those invited complete one."
Reaching people via their workplace - inviting them to complete a voluntary health questionnaire on company time - might be a way of improving that sort of response rate, and help to head off health problems at an earlier stage.
It's not going to be forcing people up on stage to face the calipers in front of all their colleagues. Some of the reactions to this very modest trial scheme are completely unhinged.
In my experience, people who are fat know they are fat, and being told yet again that they need to lose weight won't help.
If I were to get a letter inviting me for "an NHS health check", I'd probably just bin it because it strikes me as a waste of time when I know it takes literally months to get an appointment when I want one.
I would just say that it could be the most important thing you do
I had my dvt in October last year and was admitted to hospital as a medical emergency and underwent an immediate ultra sound
That ultrasound found a massive dvt in my left thigh but also an undetected aneurysm that can often be fatal
As a result my aneurysm is monitored yearly and if necessary the surgeon will operate
Blood pressure, pulse and oxygen tests can be lifesavers and to be honest there is no need to fat shame anyone
But that last is all that will happen - people will be told to lose weight/drink less/give up smoking, as appropriate, and not a jot more.
Fatness has become such a ridiculous taboo in this country. Mentioning it is almost up there with racial slurs.
The fact is the country is way too obese and it’s making the population unhealthy and unproductive.
There are fat fucks everywhere and it must be costing the country a fortune. I doubt anything Starmer does will change that but at least he's having a go.
I have to say I'm enjoying the new atmos of steely, buttoned-down efficiency. Not a joke in sight, everything clipped to size, nothing lax or loose or (oh god) 'quirky', no self-indulgence, no straining for adulation, no 'look at me' neediness, no attempt to amuse or excite or entertain, no flaky ideology, no pretentious intellectual fetishes. A complete absence of the shit we've become accustomed to in recent years. Instead what we have is what we see. A serious white collar professional with a nice big parliamentary majority looking to fix some problems.
He is pretty boring.
The jury is out as to whether he'll be at all effective.
I'd more say he's Roundhead not Cavalier. For me the style bodes well but I'm not about to go further than that - as you say it's too early to make calls on effectiveness.
Can I believe that I agree with Owen Jones on the smoking ban:
"My main comment on the new proposed smoking ban is I really cannot be bothered with the protracted culture war this entails."
Yes, that is a good point.
I think it'll be a disaster for the pub trade which is already in dire straits. That's if this ban is enforceable which I also doubt.
Who thinks this shit up? Either smokers will drink more and more at home or they'll stand at the edge of the pub garden and smoke.
Racecourses have also kicked off about the impacts let alone the policing of any ban. They have their own problems with people bringing in their own drink and snorting cocaine in the toilets.
It's just not a hill on which I or anyone sensible would choose to die. Dealing with the epidemic of drugs such as opioids would be a more practical and better use of Government time and effort. I go racing quite often - people smoking outside is of little consequence and nobody smokes indoors (that battle has been won).
The drugs are more of an issue especially at weekend meetings when you get a group of young men (all seem to be extras from Peaky Blinders) turning up.
The erstwhile minister for common sense and digging holes. How dare people suggest that (mis)quoting arguably the best known poem about the genesis of the Holocaust in response to a suggested smoking ban is in any way equating the Holocaust to suggesting a smoking ban. Ridiculous!
It’s a fair trite argument but a reasonable one to make. Not equating it to the Holocaust.
So get off your high horse and leave the outrage bus
I wish you’d leave the cliché bus, but no danger of that I guess.
So no engagement with the argument then.
You took a fairly nasty person swipe at McVey and now a silly one at me.
Put it this way, though.
Suppose that, earlier this year, someone on the left had done a viral starting
"First they came for the people with rainbow lanyards..."
I hope I would have responded "Ugh, that's a revolting attempt to co-opt one of the worst events in history to a trivial campaign. Is Starmer really serious about dealing with antisemitism?"
The Times headline seems to imply its forced on workers and that they’ll be fat shamed in front of their colleagues.
It’s voluntary . The Times I’ve found over the last year seems to do a lot headlines which seek to mislead .
"Employers to have signed up include Jaguar Land Rover, where 4,500 staff from the boardroom to the factory floor will get the checks within months at its Solihull base."
I read that as voluntary at the employer level. Kid Starver teams up with the head capitalists to fat shame The Workers. He really is hilariously useless.
"More than 16 million people are eligible for an NHS health check, but data shows that only about 40% of those invited complete one."
Reaching people via their workplace - inviting them to complete a voluntary health questionnaire on company time - might be a way of improving that sort of response rate, and help to head off health problems at an earlier stage.
It's not going to be forcing people up on stage to face the calipers in front of all their colleagues. Some of the reactions to this very modest trial scheme are completely unhinged.
In my experience, people who are fat know they are fat, and being told yet again that they need to lose weight won't help.
If I were to get a letter inviting me for "an NHS health check", I'd probably just bin it because it strikes me as a waste of time when I know it takes literally months to get an appointment when I want one.
I would just say that it could be the most important thing you do
I had my dvt in October last year and was admitted to hospital as a medical emergency and underwent an immediate ultra sound
That ultrasound found a massive dvt in my left thigh but also an undetected aneurysm that can often be fatal
As a result my aneurysm is monitored yearly and if necessary the surgeon will operate
Blood pressure, pulse and oxygen tests can be lifesavers and to be honest there is no need to fat shame anyone
But that last is all that will happen - people will be told to lose weight/drink less/give up smoking, as appropriate, and not a jot more.
Fatness has become such a ridiculous taboo in this country. Mentioning it is almost up there with racial slurs.
The fact is the country is way too obese and it’s making the population unhealthy and unproductive.
There are fat fucks everywhere and it must be costing the country a fortune. I doubt anything Starmer does will change that but at least he's having a go.
I have to say I'm enjoying the new atmos of steely, buttoned-down efficiency. Not a joke in sight, everything clipped to size, nothing lax or loose or (oh god) 'quirky', no self-indulgence, no straining for adulation, no 'look at me' neediness, no attempt to amuse or excite or entertain, no flaky ideology, no pretentious intellectual fetishes. A complete absence of the shit we've become accustomed to in recent years. Instead what we have is what we see. A serious white collar professional with a nice big parliamentary majority looking to fix some problems.
I can see that, and it is welcome.
But a PM involves many roles, which is why it's such a difficult job. He also needs to be a salesman; and whilst he won the GE by a landslide, I'd argue that was mainly due to the Conservative Party's implosion rather than Starmer selling a great vision for the future.
I'd argue that Blair in 1996-7 did a much better job of selling a vision, and that helped him out massively once he was in power. There will come a time, perhaps soon, perhaps in a few years, where Starmer faces difficult decisions that he needs to sell to the electorate. And I don't think that's something he's skillful at, and I doubt he can learn it.
He might be better off picking someone off his front bench who is a good communicator to the public as a whole to sell the vision. With the knowledge that that person will be at the front of his queue of successors.
Fair point. These are different times though. Starmer's Vision is a country improved not transformed and I like that - I like it because with a bit of luck and a lot of thought and application it might be possible to deliver.
As usual, some obsess on the political minutiae or issues of only symbolic import such as Mrs Thatcher's portrait. I suppose if there is any symbolism it's not only that her time is gone but the Conservative time in office is over for now.
I make no apologies for re-linking this piece from the BBC which is more symbolic of the failure of previous administrations (both Conservative and Labour):
It's an aspect of the multi-layered "housing" crisis which doesn't get the coverage or discussion it deserves. It's not just about a lack of houses but about the absence of a public rental sector as a last resort for those who cannot get accommodation. Homelessness isn't just about those who sleep rough (and that's a whole other subject) but about those evicted from private rental accommodation for whom there is no alternative but temporary and often completely inadequate rooms.
It angers me - it's a waste of lives and a waste of public money especially for councils who are already under severe financial pressure.
My solution, bluntly, would be for more homes to be built and these homes to be provided by the developers at much less than cost (ideally nothing) to councils who would use them to house families (the priority) at nominal rent. It's going to be financially painful for someone but there are times when the profit motive is less important than providing a roof and stability for a struggling family.
I'd like to see the Government talking about this rather than banning smoking in outdoor places - when we've got the important and urgent stuff done then we can talk about smoking in beer gardens. It worries me this Government, like its many Conservative predecessors, looks at some issues, sees how complex they are and resolves to do nothing which is political cowardice of the first order.
The upshot of that is that the other houses that the developers build which they aren't providing for free are much more expensive. If 20% of an estate has to be provided for free, the other 80% will all have to be 25% more expensive. Which essentially leaves us broadly neutral on 'can people afford a decent home'?
It doesn't work like that now. Many developments are approved on the basis a certain percentage are deemed as "affordable". That means the properties are purchased by a rental company as a bloc (so probably getting a better deal than a private buyer) and then leased to those who prefer to rent rather than buy.
Making a bloc of properties available to councils for emergency accommodation (it wouldn't be 20%) shouldn't be too difficult to organise. Perhaps an enhanced approval process might be on offer were any application to offer say 5% of properties for council use to house those requiring emergency accommodation. Central Government could perhaps provide incentives for developers to offer some form of public rental accommodation again where and to the quantity required in each area (in many areas it will be negligible).
I was thinking you meant instead of the affordable contribution. But the affordable contribution is already a cost to developers that they would rather not bear. And the more you increase developers costs, the more expensive open market housing becomes. I appreciate the need for safety net housing. But funding it through increasing housing costs seems to me to be loaðing the costs exactly where we are agreed we don't want them to be - i.e. on general housing affordability.
The Times headline seems to imply its forced on workers and that they’ll be fat shamed in front of their colleagues.
It’s voluntary . The Times I’ve found over the last year seems to do a lot headlines which seek to mislead .
"Employers to have signed up include Jaguar Land Rover, where 4,500 staff from the boardroom to the factory floor will get the checks within months at its Solihull base."
I read that as voluntary at the employer level. Kid Starver teams up with the head capitalists to fat shame The Workers. He really is hilariously useless.
"More than 16 million people are eligible for an NHS health check, but data shows that only about 40% of those invited complete one."
Reaching people via their workplace - inviting them to complete a voluntary health questionnaire on company time - might be a way of improving that sort of response rate, and help to head off health problems at an earlier stage.
It's not going to be forcing people up on stage to face the calipers in front of all their colleagues. Some of the reactions to this very modest trial scheme are completely unhinged.
In my experience, people who are fat know they are fat, and being told yet again that they need to lose weight won't help.
If I were to get a letter inviting me for "an NHS health check", I'd probably just bin it because it strikes me as a waste of time when I know it takes literally months to get an appointment when I want one.
Which is precisely why this outreach programme is being trialled. People ignore the health MOT with only a 40% take up. Even if someone knows they are obese and unable to lose weight they may well benefit from having the consequential diabetes, blood pressure and cholesterol treated.
Every week I see new patient with established complications of diabetes due to late diagnosis, often because of no symptoms. Some of them will be permanently disabled as a result.
Then make it so that when someone does need to see a doctor they don't have to wait months because they're all working part time.
Yes, improving retention of NHS staff would help. How could we possibly encourage that?
Allow them free access to the prescription medicine drawer?
Oh and btw on Trump/Jan 6th (soz) - I agree absolutely with your comment on his behaviour over fake electors which as I believe you said should have resulted in a felony charge. Why it didn't I have no idea but that is again the democratic state doing, or being able to do if not this time, its democratic state thing.
Is has result in felony charges: the federal case and the Georgia state case are largely over the fake electors scheme.
Excellent. Just what happens in a democratic state.
Can I believe that I agree with Owen Jones on the smoking ban:
"My main comment on the new proposed smoking ban is I really cannot be bothered with the protracted culture war this entails."
Yes, that is a good point.
I think it'll be a disaster for the pub trade which is already in dire straits. That's if this ban is enforceable which I also doubt.
Who thinks this shit up? Either smokers will drink more and more at home or they'll stand at the edge of the pub garden and smoke.
Racecourses have also kicked off about the impacts let alone the policing of any ban. They have their own problems with people bringing in their own drink and snorting cocaine in the toilets.
It's just not a hill on which I or anyone sensible would choose to die. Dealing with the epidemic of drugs such as opioids would be a more practical and better use of Government time and effort. I go racing quite often - people smoking outside is of little consequence and nobody smokes indoors (that battle has been won).
The drugs are more of an issue especially at weekend meetings when you get a group of young men (all seem to be extras from Peaky Blinders) turning up.
I wouldn't think cocaine combines well with successful betting. A large number of those nicked in the recent riots had a cocaine history too.
Yet another way that we have had our eye off the ball this last decade, entrenching failure into our country.
On my travels this year, I see that the Italians and Greeks eat a lot of sugary snacks, too, these days. However, they also still live longer than the UK, because of stronger communities and much healthier food in other parts of their diet, I think, largely.
More that the impact hasn't hit yet. An 80 year old Italian has years of healthy Mediterranean lifestyle under their belt, a 30 something hasn't.
We see the same here. When you go to a place with lots of sprites elderly people (like Rutland) you see people who have always lived healthily. It's a different story on Saffron Lane estate.
I think it is underappreciated how metabolism slows down when we age. A diet and drinking habit sustainable at 25 is just no longer possible at fifty without ballooning weight and BP.
It is very difficult. I'm 59, run 25 or so miles a week on average, eat low carb (no doubt you disapprove Foxy but it stops me both overeating and snacking) and have a BMI of 21. Got a sub-4 marathon last year and I'm in training for Amsterdam in October. I will keep it up as long as I can - but when I started running I still put on weight on a fairly healthy "standard" diet. And poor people can't afford to eat low carb, or even low GI
No, I don't disapprove of a low carbohydrate diet. Indeed my own diet is fairly low carb. Where I think the danger lies is in excessive saturated fat as a substitute, particularly red and cured meats.
There's an increasing amount of decent research showing the benefits of high vegetable diets, too. You can eat quite a lot of cheap veg without taking in much carbohydrate.
Loads of studies like this, alongside the mass observational ones.
The erstwhile minister for common sense and digging holes. How dare people suggest that (mis)quoting arguably the best known poem about the genesis of the Holocaust in response to a suggested smoking ban is in any way equating the Holocaust to suggesting a smoking ban. Ridiculous!
No, partly because one of my diminishing pleasures is a cigar and a drink on a warm summer evening, but also because I think it’s the worst kind of virtual signalling, ie fcking pointless.
However when the original smoking ban in pubs came in I was initially in favour of some sort of opt-in licence for landlords but the incessant whining of the smoking lobby put me right off. The efforts of the fragrantly thick Esther might have a similar effect.
Typical anti-vaxxer rhetoric. It would save lives, like seatbelts, but no - you don't want the government interfering.
Jeez
There is a difference between the government cajoling and enforcing.
I'm all for the government persuading people to have vaccinations and to stop smoking altogether. But I'm suspicious of legal enforcement of taking soft drugs, lock down, seatbelts etc and wouldn't want it extended to legal enforcement of vaccination. I'm totally in favour of hard persuasion. But it is up to individual adults what they do with their bodies as long as their actions don't materially harm others.
Vaccination was de facto a legal requirement if you wanted to take part in normal social activity outside your home. And don't get me started on what they told us we could or couldn't do inside our home - I only received approval last week to take down the mandated picture of Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Has Starmer really removed Thatcher's portrait from the Thatcher room at No. 10 because he found it 'unsettling' ?
Aw, bless. We cant have his little feelings hurtied, can we? I wonder what else he'll find 'unsettling'?
He really is going to be a poor PM.
He might turn out to be a poor PM but fuck me you need something more than him slightly adjusting his work environment to suit himself. Get a fucking grip.
I'm laughing at him. It's hilarious.
He is PM. He will, sadly, have to make really important decisions; sometimes life-and-death decisions. He needs to be tough, as do all PMs. Yet he finds a portrait of a massively successful (although controversial) predecessor 'unsettling'.
He needs to get a grip.
If I had to make life and death decisions I'd probably want to do it in an environment that I found conducive.
It's definitely you that needs to get a grip, he's only taken a picture off a wall in a room that none of us will ever see, he's not thrown the statue of Churchill into the Thames.
"If I had to make life and death decisions I'd probably want to do it in an environment that I found conducive."
He doesn't get that choice. He might have to make the decision whilst on holiday; or on a foreign visit, or at three o'clock in the morning. Or whilst on the toilet, if it is urgent enough.
It's fairly pathetic of him. Although I do wonder if it is an utterly deliberate move on his part, as an easy piece of red meat thrown to the left.
What the hell are you jibbering on about? I think everybody realises he isn't going to go to the Study in no 10 every time he has to make a decision.
OK he's just started a job as head of government. A job that he will probably be doing for the next 4 or 5 years. If I started a job like that I would also want to make a couple of changes to the offices I moved into, rather than keeping everything exactly the same as my predecessor. He's taken down a picture of Thatcher that he didn't like, who gives a shit? He could take down a picture of Nelson Mandela or the Dalai Lama, put a framed photo of his mum on his desk, whatever, if it makes him feel more at ease.
Sure, but he didn't need to make it public that he found the picture "unsettling".
Reminds him that he is a Pygmy on the shoulders of a giant
Another worshipper at the shrine of Thatcher.
Whatever you think of her politics, Margaret Thatcher was one of the most important politicians of the 20th Century. The first female PM (perhaps Labour still not having had one is the real embarrassment she causes Starmer?), the winner of three consecutive elections, the vanquisher of an invading army over British territory, the negotiator of various EU opt-outs, visionary on climate change - and the person who slayed the UK's "sick man of Europe" tag. Perhaps Churchill has more to offer, but further back in time. It would still be massively disrespectful to move his portrait though.
Can you imagine if the Tories had moved a portrait of Clement Attlee - because, I don't know - the NHS?
Thatcher is properly scary in the portrait. I wouldn't want her in my study either.
Starmer is a pretty vindictive person.
This is already becoming quite clear.
If you became CEO of an organisation that had previously had Blair as Chairman of the Board, would you want his ugly mug looking over your shoulder or would you replace his picture with a nice movie still of James Bond and Vesper Lind to relax you and focus your mind on the job in hand?
See, it's not petty and it's not vindictive.
It’s not in his study. It’s in a meeting room. Which is an entirely normal place to have a picture of a former chairman
Replace it with Attlee or Blair then.
Bit odd in the Thatcher room though.
He didn’t need to do this. He’s done it for a reason. I don’t think the message it sends is positive for him, but no doubt, he thinks it is a “cheap win” with his left flank
Why do you care so much?
It's part of the grief response. Tories cannot accept that they got their worst electoral result in terms of seats and vote share in over a century. They think that this is all a bad dream and Tory hegemony will restart shortly.
They haven't come close to understanding why the electorate threw them out.
At the moment, even the more grounded Conservatives are hoping for fairly rapid vindication- hence swooping on any problems like a seagull swooping on chips.
In a way, the falls of Johnson and Truss make it harder, because there's a "we dealt with the problem, why aren't you b#&?+£#!s grateful?" dynamic going on. The idea that Sunak and Hunt and the rest of them were also pretty poor hasn't got onto the radar yet.
Has Starmer really removed Thatcher's portrait from the Thatcher room at No. 10 because he found it 'unsettling' ?
Aw, bless. We cant have his little feelings hurtied, can we? I wonder what else he'll find 'unsettling'?
He really is going to be a poor PM.
He might turn out to be a poor PM but fuck me you need something more than him slightly adjusting his work environment to suit himself. Get a fucking grip.
I'm laughing at him. It's hilarious.
He is PM. He will, sadly, have to make really important decisions; sometimes life-and-death decisions. He needs to be tough, as do all PMs. Yet he finds a portrait of a massively successful (although controversial) predecessor 'unsettling'.
He needs to get a grip.
If I had to make life and death decisions I'd probably want to do it in an environment that I found conducive.
It's definitely you that needs to get a grip, he's only taken a picture off a wall in a room that none of us will ever see, he's not thrown the statue of Churchill into the Thames.
"If I had to make life and death decisions I'd probably want to do it in an environment that I found conducive."
He doesn't get that choice. He might have to make the decision whilst on holiday; or on a foreign visit, or at three o'clock in the morning. Or whilst on the toilet, if it is urgent enough.
It's fairly pathetic of him. Although I do wonder if it is an utterly deliberate move on his part, as an easy piece of red meat thrown to the left.
What the hell are you jibbering on about? I think everybody realises he isn't going to go to the Study in no 10 every time he has to make a decision.
OK he's just started a job as head of government. A job that he will probably be doing for the next 4 or 5 years. If I started a job like that I would also want to make a couple of changes to the offices I moved into, rather than keeping everything exactly the same as my predecessor. He's taken down a picture of Thatcher that he didn't like, who gives a shit? He could take down a picture of Nelson Mandela or the Dalai Lama, put a framed photo of his mum on his desk, whatever, if it makes him feel more at ease.
Sure, but he didn't need to make it public that he found the picture "unsettling".
Reminds him that he is a Pygmy on the shoulders of a giant
Another worshipper at the shrine of Thatcher.
Whatever you think of her politics, Margaret Thatcher was one of the most important politicians of the 20th Century. The first female PM (perhaps Labour still not having had one is the real embarrassment she causes Starmer?), the winner of three consecutive elections, the vanquisher of an invading army over British territory, the negotiator of various EU opt-outs, visionary on climate change - and the person who slayed the UK's "sick man of Europe" tag. Perhaps Churchill has more to offer, but further back in time. It would still be massively disrespectful to move his portrait though.
Can you imagine if the Tories had moved a portrait of Clement Attlee - because, I don't know - the NHS?
I wouldn't really care. Attlee had a similarly mixed legacy.
I don't despise Thatcher - I voted for her in '83, and would have done so in '79 had I been a year older - but she left behind a long enduring and quite damaging consensus on a number of things, which we're only just starting to move on from.
Many of the failures of the Blair/Brown administrations, for example, can be understood as a failure to address or challenge some of that legacy.
Can I believe that I agree with Owen Jones on the smoking ban:
"My main comment on the new proposed smoking ban is I really cannot be bothered with the protracted culture war this entails."
Yes, that is a good point.
I think it'll be a disaster for the pub trade which is already in dire straits. That's if this ban is enforceable which I also doubt.
Who thinks this shit up? Either smokers will drink more and more at home or they'll stand at the edge of the pub garden and smoke.
The number of people who smoke continues to fall. Most people in pubs aren't smokers and will be unaffected. Most people in pub gardens aren't smoking.
But they are pissing off the non-smokers in the garden. Tim Martin of Wetherspoons said it probably wouldn't make much difference. It is probably true that the majority of 'Spoons don't have gardens. My local one does, and there is a smoking and a non-smoking area, however the smokers like to move the ash trays around and in practice the staff don't enforce it. And of course the smoke moves about due to wind. All that would happen if smoking was banned is that we would go back to everyone hanging around the front of the pub smoking, as I expect it would just be banned in the licensed area
The Times headline seems to imply its forced on workers and that they’ll be fat shamed in front of their colleagues.
It’s voluntary . The Times I’ve found over the last year seems to do a lot headlines which seek to mislead .
"Employers to have signed up include Jaguar Land Rover, where 4,500 staff from the boardroom to the factory floor will get the checks within months at its Solihull base."
I read that as voluntary at the employer level. Kid Starver teams up with the head capitalists to fat shame The Workers. He really is hilariously useless.
"More than 16 million people are eligible for an NHS health check, but data shows that only about 40% of those invited complete one."
Reaching people via their workplace - inviting them to complete a voluntary health questionnaire on company time - might be a way of improving that sort of response rate, and help to head off health problems at an earlier stage.
It's not going to be forcing people up on stage to face the calipers in front of all their colleagues. Some of the reactions to this very modest trial scheme are completely unhinged.
In my experience, people who are fat know they are fat, and being told yet again that they need to lose weight won't help.
If I were to get a letter inviting me for "an NHS health check", I'd probably just bin it because it strikes me as a waste of time when I know it takes literally months to get an appointment when I want one.
I would just say that it could be the most important thing you do
I had my dvt in October last year and was admitted to hospital as a medical emergency and underwent an immediate ultra sound
That ultrasound found a massive dvt in my left thigh but also an undetected aneurysm that can often be fatal
As a result my aneurysm is monitored yearly and if necessary the surgeon will operate
Blood pressure, pulse and oxygen tests can be lifesavers and to be honest there is no need to fat shame anyone
But that last is all that will happen - people will be told to lose weight/drink less/give up smoking, as appropriate, and not a jot more.
Fatness has become such a ridiculous taboo in this country. Mentioning it is almost up there with racial slurs.
The fact is the country is way too obese and it’s making the population unhealthy and unproductive.
There are fat fucks everywhere and it must be costing the country a fortune. I doubt anything Starmer does will change that but at least he's having a go.
I have to say I'm enjoying the new atmos of steely, buttoned-down efficiency. Not a joke in sight, everything clipped to size, nothing lax or loose or (oh god) 'quirky', no self-indulgence, no straining for adulation, no 'look at me' neediness, no attempt to amuse or excite or entertain, no flaky ideology, no pretentious intellectual fetishes. A complete absence of the shit we've become accustomed to in recent years. Instead what we have is what we see. A serious white collar professional with a nice big parliamentary majority looking to fix some problems.
Except the things we'ŕe talking about are gimmicks, not attempts to fix serious problems. Smoking in beer gardens? Tax on private schools? No doubt there is serious stuff going on too. Most of the business of government of any stripe is dull un-headline-worthy grind and chat.
Has Starmer really removed Thatcher's portrait from the Thatcher room at No. 10 because he found it 'unsettling' ?
Aw, bless. We cant have his little feelings hurtied, can we? I wonder what else he'll find 'unsettling'?
He really is going to be a poor PM.
He might turn out to be a poor PM but fuck me you need something more than him slightly adjusting his work environment to suit himself. Get a fucking grip.
I'm laughing at him. It's hilarious.
He is PM. He will, sadly, have to make really important decisions; sometimes life-and-death decisions. He needs to be tough, as do all PMs. Yet he finds a portrait of a massively successful (although controversial) predecessor 'unsettling'.
He needs to get a grip.
If I had to make life and death decisions I'd probably want to do it in an environment that I found conducive.
It's definitely you that needs to get a grip, he's only taken a picture off a wall in a room that none of us will ever see, he's not thrown the statue of Churchill into the Thames.
"If I had to make life and death decisions I'd probably want to do it in an environment that I found conducive."
He doesn't get that choice. He might have to make the decision whilst on holiday; or on a foreign visit, or at three o'clock in the morning. Or whilst on the toilet, if it is urgent enough.
It's fairly pathetic of him. Although I do wonder if it is an utterly deliberate move on his part, as an easy piece of red meat thrown to the left.
What the hell are you jibbering on about? I think everybody realises he isn't going to go to the Study in no 10 every time he has to make a decision.
OK he's just started a job as head of government. A job that he will probably be doing for the next 4 or 5 years. If I started a job like that I would also want to make a couple of changes to the offices I moved into, rather than keeping everything exactly the same as my predecessor. He's taken down a picture of Thatcher that he didn't like, who gives a shit? He could take down a picture of Nelson Mandela or the Dalai Lama, put a framed photo of his mum on his desk, whatever, if it makes him feel more at ease.
Sure, but he didn't need to make it public that he found the picture "unsettling".
Reminds him that he is a Pygmy on the shoulders of a giant
Another worshipper at the shrine of Thatcher.
Whatever you think of her politics, Margaret Thatcher was one of the most important politicians of the 20th Century. The first female PM (perhaps Labour still not having had one is the real embarrassment she causes Starmer?), the winner of three consecutive elections, the vanquisher of an invading army over British territory, the negotiator of various EU opt-outs, visionary on climate change - and the person who slayed the UK's "sick man of Europe" tag. Perhaps Churchill has more to offer, but further back in time. It would still be massively disrespectful to move his portrait though.
Can you imagine if the Tories had moved a portrait of Clement Attlee - because, I don't know - the NHS?
That's as may be, but the portraits in Downing Street getting so much attention from the main opposition party is a silly season story, and an indicator that they have little substantive to say.
Which will not change until at least New Year, imo.
The Times headline seems to imply its forced on workers and that they’ll be fat shamed in front of their colleagues.
It’s voluntary . The Times I’ve found over the last year seems to do a lot headlines which seek to mislead .
"Employers to have signed up include Jaguar Land Rover, where 4,500 staff from the boardroom to the factory floor will get the checks within months at its Solihull base."
I read that as voluntary at the employer level. Kid Starver teams up with the head capitalists to fat shame The Workers. He really is hilariously useless.
"More than 16 million people are eligible for an NHS health check, but data shows that only about 40% of those invited complete one."
Reaching people via their workplace - inviting them to complete a voluntary health questionnaire on company time - might be a way of improving that sort of response rate, and help to head off health problems at an earlier stage.
It's not going to be forcing people up on stage to face the calipers in front of all their colleagues. Some of the reactions to this very modest trial scheme are completely unhinged.
In my experience, people who are fat know they are fat, and being told yet again that they need to lose weight won't help.
If I were to get a letter inviting me for "an NHS health check", I'd probably just bin it because it strikes me as a waste of time when I know it takes literally months to get an appointment when I want one.
I would just say that it could be the most important thing you do
I had my dvt in October last year and was admitted to hospital as a medical emergency and underwent an immediate ultra sound
That ultrasound found a massive dvt in my left thigh but also an undetected aneurysm that can often be fatal
As a result my aneurysm is monitored yearly and if necessary the surgeon will operate
Blood pressure, pulse and oxygen tests can be lifesavers and to be honest there is no need to fat shame anyone
But that last is all that will happen - people will be told to lose weight/drink less/give up smoking, as appropriate, and not a jot more.
Fatness has become such a ridiculous taboo in this country. Mentioning it is almost up there with racial slurs.
The fact is the country is way too obese and it’s making the population unhealthy and unproductive.
There are fat fucks everywhere and it must be costing the country a fortune. I doubt anything Starmer does will change that but at least he's having a go.
I have to say I'm enjoying the new atmos of steely, buttoned-down efficiency. Not a joke in sight, everything clipped to size, nothing lax or loose or (oh god) 'quirky', no self-indulgence, no straining for adulation, no 'look at me' neediness, no attempt to amuse or excite or entertain, no flaky ideology, no pretentious intellectual fetishes. A complete absence of the shit we've become accustomed to in recent years. Instead what we have is what we see. A serious white collar professional with a nice big parliamentary majority looking to fix some problems.
I can see that, and it is welcome.
But a PM involves many roles, which is why it's such a difficult job. He also needs to be a salesman; and whilst he won the GE by a landslide, I'd argue that was mainly due to the Conservative Party's implosion rather than Starmer selling a great vision for the future.
I'd argue that Blair in 1996-7 did a much better job of selling a vision, and that helped him out massively once he was in power. There will come a time, perhaps soon, perhaps in a few years, where Starmer faces difficult decisions that he needs to sell to the electorate. And I don't think that's something he's skillful at, and I doubt he can learn it.
He might be better off picking someone off his front bench who is a good communicator to the public as a whole to sell the vision. With the knowledge that that person will be at the front of his queue of successors.
Fair point. These are different times though. Starmer's Vision is a country improved not transformed and I like that - I like it because with a bit of luck and a lot of thought and application it might be possible to deliver.
I really haven't seen that from Starmer as a 'vision'. I've heard a lot of bureaucratese and waffle, and a lot of accurate finger-pointing at the Conservatives. But any central 'vision' has utterly escaped me - and I follow politics fairly closely.
Has Starmer really removed Thatcher's portrait from the Thatcher room at No. 10 because he found it 'unsettling' ?
Aw, bless. We cant have his little feelings hurtied, can we? I wonder what else he'll find 'unsettling'?
He really is going to be a poor PM.
He might turn out to be a poor PM but fuck me you need something more than him slightly adjusting his work environment to suit himself. Get a fucking grip.
I'm laughing at him. It's hilarious.
He is PM. He will, sadly, have to make really important decisions; sometimes life-and-death decisions. He needs to be tough, as do all PMs. Yet he finds a portrait of a massively successful (although controversial) predecessor 'unsettling'.
He needs to get a grip.
If I had to make life and death decisions I'd probably want to do it in an environment that I found conducive.
It's definitely you that needs to get a grip, he's only taken a picture off a wall in a room that none of us will ever see, he's not thrown the statue of Churchill into the Thames.
"If I had to make life and death decisions I'd probably want to do it in an environment that I found conducive."
He doesn't get that choice. He might have to make the decision whilst on holiday; or on a foreign visit, or at three o'clock in the morning. Or whilst on the toilet, if it is urgent enough.
It's fairly pathetic of him. Although I do wonder if it is an utterly deliberate move on his part, as an easy piece of red meat thrown to the left.
What the hell are you jibbering on about? I think everybody realises he isn't going to go to the Study in no 10 every time he has to make a decision.
OK he's just started a job as head of government. A job that he will probably be doing for the next 4 or 5 years. If I started a job like that I would also want to make a couple of changes to the offices I moved into, rather than keeping everything exactly the same as my predecessor. He's taken down a picture of Thatcher that he didn't like, who gives a shit? He could take down a picture of Nelson Mandela or the Dalai Lama, put a framed photo of his mum on his desk, whatever, if it makes him feel more at ease.
Sure, but he didn't need to make it public that he found the picture "unsettling".
Reminds him that he is a Pygmy on the shoulders of a giant
Another worshipper at the shrine of Thatcher.
Whatever you think of her politics, Margaret Thatcher was one of the most important politicians of the 20th Century. The first female PM (perhaps Labour still not having had one is the real embarrassment she causes Starmer?), the winner of three consecutive elections, the vanquisher of an invading army over British territory, the negotiator of various EU opt-outs, visionary on climate change - and the person who slayed the UK's "sick man of Europe" tag. Perhaps Churchill has more to offer, but further back in time. It would still be massively disrespectful to move his portrait though.
Can you imagine if the Tories had moved a portrait of Clement Attlee - because, I don't know - the NHS?
Presumably the Study* had another name 40 years ago, before the cult of personality went out of control. Why not revert to that name?
*it seems to have been informally named the Thatcher Room because of the portrait.
The erstwhile minister for common sense and digging holes. How dare people suggest that (mis)quoting arguably the best known poem about the genesis of the Holocaust in response to a suggested smoking ban is in any way equating the Holocaust to suggesting a smoking ban. Ridiculous!
No, partly because one of my diminishing pleasures is a cigar and a drink on a warm summer evening, but also because I think it’s the worst kind of virtual signalling, ie fcking pointless.
However when the original smoking ban in pubs came in I was initially in favour of some sort of opt-in licence for landlords but the incessant whining of the smoking lobby put me right off. The efforts of the fragrantly thick Esther might have a similar effect.
Typical anti-vaxxer rhetoric. It would save lives, like seatbelts, but no - you don't want the government interfering.
Jeez
There is a difference between the government cajoling and enforcing.
I'm all for the government persuading people to have vaccinations and to stop smoking altogether. But I'm suspicious of legal enforcement of taking soft drugs, lock down, seatbelts etc and wouldn't want it extended to legal enforcement of vaccination. I'm totally in favour of hard persuasion. But it is up to individual adults what they do with their bodies as long as their actions don't materially harm others.
Vaccination was de facto a legal requirement if you wanted to take part in normal social activity outside your home. And don't get me started on what they told us we could or couldn't do inside our home - I only received approval last week to take down the mandated picture of Jacob Rees-Mogg.
But non-vaccination does affect others, as we remember from the pandemic with talk of herd immunity. The other debate during Covid is whether children should have been vaccinated, because there the calculus is slightly different, with the risk of side effects for young people too young to be in much danger from the disease itself. And these debates are at least half a century old.
On my travels this year, I see that the Italians and Greeks eat a lot of sugary snacks, too, these days. However, they also still live longer than the UK, because of stronger communities and much healthier food in other parts of their diet, I think, largely.
More that the impact hasn't hit yet. An 80 year old Italian has years of healthy Mediterranean lifestyle under their belt, a 30 something hasn't.
We see the same here. When you go to a place with lots of sprites elderly people (like Rutland) you see people who have always lived healthily. It's a different story on Saffron Lane estate.
I think it is underappreciated how metabolism slows down when we age. A diet and drinking habit sustainable at 25 is just no longer possible at fifty without ballooning weight and BP.
It is very difficult. I'm 59, run 25 or so miles a week on average, eat low carb (no doubt you disapprove Foxy but it stops me both overeating and snacking) and have a BMI of 21. Got a sub-4 marathon last year and I'm in training for Amsterdam in October. I will keep it up as long as I can - but when I started running I still put on weight on a fairly healthy "standard" diet. And poor people can't afford to eat low carb, or even low GI
No, I don't disapprove of a low carbohydrate diet. Indeed my own diet is fairly low carb. Where I think the danger lies is in excessive saturated fat as a substitute, particularly red and cured meats.
Well I cook almost entirely in saturated fat. Plus some olive oil. I don't eat too much beef and lamb as it is expensive, but I do eat quite a bit of pork. Cured meat is bacon a couple of times a week and charcuterie about once a week as I sometimes have a Continental breakfast. I do try to eat oily fish a couple of times a week, especially in the winter, for the Vitamin D. I do eat a fair bit of green veg and salad. My main failing is probably too much protein - but I tell myself that as a runner I need it, especially when I am in training. It would be interesting to have a cholesterol test. I am fairly moderate though - when I cook for myself I aim for 10g per meal, but a couple of times a week I eat out and don't always avoid a moderate amount of carbs, and I do still drink beer (but wine or spirits at home). It seems to work for me without being too restrictive. I wouldn't do Keto - far too restrictive, and some of it seems too much like a religion (surely a few grams of wheat or pulses or rapeseed oil in mayo can't do me any harm?) unless of course I had a few stone to shift, which I don't. But it does seem to keep blood sugar fairly consistent and avoid the need to snack, my midweek bacon and egg breakfast is three rashers of streaky, a tomato and a fried egg, and I don't feel the need to eat before 1pm (and 150g of smoked mackerel will do the same job).
The Times headline seems to imply its forced on workers and that they’ll be fat shamed in front of their colleagues.
It’s voluntary . The Times I’ve found over the last year seems to do a lot headlines which seek to mislead .
"Employers to have signed up include Jaguar Land Rover, where 4,500 staff from the boardroom to the factory floor will get the checks within months at its Solihull base."
I read that as voluntary at the employer level. Kid Starver teams up with the head capitalists to fat shame The Workers. He really is hilariously useless.
"More than 16 million people are eligible for an NHS health check, but data shows that only about 40% of those invited complete one."
Reaching people via their workplace - inviting them to complete a voluntary health questionnaire on company time - might be a way of improving that sort of response rate, and help to head off health problems at an earlier stage.
It's not going to be forcing people up on stage to face the calipers in front of all their colleagues. Some of the reactions to this very modest trial scheme are completely unhinged.
In my experience, people who are fat know they are fat, and being told yet again that they need to lose weight won't help.
If I were to get a letter inviting me for "an NHS health check", I'd probably just bin it because it strikes me as a waste of time when I know it takes literally months to get an appointment when I want one.
Which is precisely why this outreach programme is being trialled. People ignore the health MOT with only a 40% take up. Even if someone knows they are obese and unable to lose weight they may well benefit from having the consequential diabetes, blood pressure and cholesterol treated.
Every week I see new patient with established complications of diabetes due to late diagnosis, often because of no symptoms. Some of them will be permanently disabled as a result.
Then make it so that when someone does need to see a doctor they don't have to wait months because they're all working part time.
Yes, improving retention of NHS staff would help. How could we possibly encourage that?
Allow them free access to the prescription medicine drawer?
Sadly, self prescription is no longer permitted by the GMC.
It used to be quite handy for anti-malarials etc when I was working abroad. Now I have to buy from dodgy online pharmacies like everyone else.
Can't you just pair up with another doctor, and prescribe each other what you need?
Has Starmer really removed Thatcher's portrait from the Thatcher room at No. 10 because he found it 'unsettling' ?
Aw, bless. We cant have his little feelings hurtied, can we? I wonder what else he'll find 'unsettling'?
He really is going to be a poor PM.
He might turn out to be a poor PM but fuck me you need something more than him slightly adjusting his work environment to suit himself. Get a fucking grip.
I'm laughing at him. It's hilarious.
He is PM. He will, sadly, have to make really important decisions; sometimes life-and-death decisions. He needs to be tough, as do all PMs. Yet he finds a portrait of a massively successful (although controversial) predecessor 'unsettling'.
He needs to get a grip.
If I had to make life and death decisions I'd probably want to do it in an environment that I found conducive.
It's definitely you that needs to get a grip, he's only taken a picture off a wall in a room that none of us will ever see, he's not thrown the statue of Churchill into the Thames.
"If I had to make life and death decisions I'd probably want to do it in an environment that I found conducive."
He doesn't get that choice. He might have to make the decision whilst on holiday; or on a foreign visit, or at three o'clock in the morning. Or whilst on the toilet, if it is urgent enough.
It's fairly pathetic of him. Although I do wonder if it is an utterly deliberate move on his part, as an easy piece of red meat thrown to the left.
What the hell are you jibbering on about? I think everybody realises he isn't going to go to the Study in no 10 every time he has to make a decision.
OK he's just started a job as head of government. A job that he will probably be doing for the next 4 or 5 years. If I started a job like that I would also want to make a couple of changes to the offices I moved into, rather than keeping everything exactly the same as my predecessor. He's taken down a picture of Thatcher that he didn't like, who gives a shit? He could take down a picture of Nelson Mandela or the Dalai Lama, put a framed photo of his mum on his desk, whatever, if it makes him feel more at ease.
Sure, but he didn't need to make it public that he found the picture "unsettling".
Reminds him that he is a Pygmy on the shoulders of a giant
Another worshipper at the shrine of Thatcher.
Whatever you think of her politics, Margaret Thatcher was one of the most important politicians of the 20th Century. The first female PM (perhaps Labour still not having had one is the real embarrassment she causes Starmer?), the winner of three consecutive elections, the vanquisher of an invading army over British territory, the negotiator of various EU opt-outs, visionary on climate change - and the person who slayed the UK's "sick man of Europe" tag. Perhaps Churchill has more to offer, but further back in time. It would still be massively disrespectful to move his portrait though.
Can you imagine if the Tories had moved a portrait of Clement Attlee - because, I don't know - the NHS?
I wouldn't really care. Attlee had a similarly mixed legacy.
I don't despise Thatcher - I voted for her in '83, and would have done so in '79 had I been a year older - but she left behind a long enduring and quite damaging consensus on a number of things, which we're only just starting to move on from.
Many of the failures of the Blair/Brown administrations, for example, can be understood as a failure to address or challenge some of that legacy.
The problem is, that takes 1979 and Thatcher as Year Zero. You could easily change your last paragraph to say: "Many of the failures of the Thatcher administrations, for example, can be understood as a failure to address or challenge some of the legacy she inherited from previous PMs."
Britain in 1979 faced some massive issues. The existing approach was not working, and had led to many of those problems. Thatcher had some new approaches that, to an extent, helped 'fix' those issues, but created new long-term issues. Some of the things she got right, she got very right - and Starmer may even agree with some of them.
In the same way, Blair/Brown's governments fixed some issues, but left a massive financial mess, a country divided over the EU due to their fudges, and made immigration a large issue.
Comments
By reducing the number of short and urban journeys made by car, it opens up more space for people to visit their friends in other parts of the country.
There has been very extensive public health research on these issues, which I put slightly more faith in than random online anecdotes.
The map does show that sugar isn't the only concern, and of course lots of other countries are also struggling with obesity pandemics too, even middle income countries and urban areas in low income countries. There are a few exceptions like Vietnam, but I think even there the move to Uas style fried fast food is becoming an issue.
The best outcome for all is some kind of associate membership with full FOM. But none of the politicians on any side (UK or EU) are adept enough to get there
Even in N.Wales/Northumberland/Cumbria etc, only 80% of households have access to a car. Given the lack of public transport provision, that is really is a problem for those areas.
Healthy life expectancy has a definition that hasn't changed. It doesn't mean that life is not worth having, but it is more limited. There is a massive gradient by SE status in that article, and while being moderately limited in retirement isn't great, from the economic perspective it is much worse in the working age range. This is particularly an issue (along with poor education) in post-industrial areas. It's quite hard to get low skilled moderately impaired people into work and off benefits.
However when the original smoking ban in pubs came in I was initially in favour of some sort of opt-in licence for landlords but the incessant whining of the smoking lobby put me right off. The efforts of the fragrantly thick Esther might have a similar effect.
That created the “broken promise” narrative that did so much to drive ukip
Why would people want two pictures of her in their homes.
e.g. I stayed in a small trainless town called Wassenaar, and we planned a trip to Amsterdam, about 35 miles away. We are a family of five, the youngest of whom's cycling ability is slightly suspect, so we drove - 2 and a half miles or so in 12 minutes or so - to the closest station (Verschoten) - which had a free car park, from where there is a train every ten minutes or so to Amsterdam (changing in Leiden, but changing trains is straight off one and on to the next, because frequencies are so high) - which dropped us in the middle of Amsterdam. As an individual, I would have probably cycled the first bit in roughly the same time.
However the 'developed options' approach had real limitations. A 2016 referendum could have put forward alternative wish lists, but crucially could not say in advance what relationship we would have with the EU if voting to leave. The EU was not going to discuss this at all until Art 50 had been invoked. They held the cards.
As usual, some obsess on the political minutiae or issues of only symbolic import such as Mrs Thatcher's portrait. I suppose if there is any symbolism it's not only that her time is gone but the Conservative time in office is over for now.
I make no apologies for re-linking this piece from the BBC which is more symbolic of the failure of previous administrations (both Conservative and Labour):
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj9l8njg2rzo
It's an aspect of the multi-layered "housing" crisis which doesn't get the coverage or discussion it deserves. It's not just about a lack of houses but about the absence of a public rental sector as a last resort for those who cannot get accommodation. Homelessness isn't just about those who sleep rough (and that's a whole other subject) but about those evicted from private rental accommodation for whom there is no alternative but temporary and often completely inadequate rooms.
It angers me - it's a waste of lives and a waste of public money especially for councils who are already under severe financial pressure.
My solution, bluntly, would be for more homes to be built and these homes to be provided by the developers at much less than cost (ideally nothing) to councils who would use them to house families (the priority) at nominal rent. It's going to be financially painful for someone but there are times when the profit motive is less important than providing a roof and stability for a struggling family.
I'd like to see the Government talking about this rather than banning smoking in outdoor places - when we've got the important and urgent stuff done then we can talk about smoking in beer gardens. It worries me this Government, like its many Conservative predecessors, looks at some issues, sees how complex they are and resolves to do nothing which is political cowardice of the first order.
To the great surprise of the French at the time.
Jeez
It’s about the “slippery slope”.
It’s a fair trite argument but a reasonable one to make. Not equating it to the Holocaust.
So get off your high horse and leave the outrage bus
"My main comment on the new proposed smoking ban is I really cannot be bothered with the protracted culture war this entails."
However, they also still live longer than the UK, because of stronger communities and much healthier food in other parts of their diet, I think,
largely.
But also, recognising that thoughtful planning to reduce marginal car use makes life healthier and nicer for everyone. And that a town where everyone can use cars as much as they want tends towards a place where everyone has to use cars to do anything.
We signed up to the Single European Act which was ostensibly a Thatcherite document - free movement of capital was all well and good. The problem came with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the sudden "arrival" of a bloc of countries who lagged far behind most of western Europe economically but had two good things going for them - plenty of cheap and often quite skilled labour and opportunities for investment.
That was all too good to miss and as we know people go where the money is so inevitably the cheap labour went to the richest parts of the richest countries be it London or the Rhineland. The big mistake was the assumption in Britain no one from Poland or the Czech Republic would want to come here when Freedom of Movement came in - the numbers projected and the actuals stand as the biggest Government blunder of the last three decades yet if anyone had looked at what had happened in Germany after reunification, the truth was, as someone once said, out there.
However, Starmer must be delighted that this opponents are dwelling on such ephemera rather than matters of substance.
The core mistake/dishonesty of Brexit backers was to believe and say that there was some "better deal" that Brussels kept under the counter for its special customers.
Starmer is surprising me on the upside so far.
The "Blue Zones" have got the balance right, although some of them are slipping down into the average western lifestyle.
I think it'll be a disaster for the pub trade which is already in dire straits. That's if this ban is enforceable which I also doubt.
Who thinks this shit up? Either smokers will drink more and more at home or they'll stand at the edge of the pub garden and smoke.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/746101/completion-of-new-dwellings-uk/
The numbers for private sector completions didn't change very much.
Council house sales represented a massive withdrawal of capital from the sector, as almost all the receipts were used to pay for government spending.
https://www.prints-online.com/mr-mrs-w-e-gladstone-4404113.html
(*) IIRC, that we're about as active now as we were then. Could be wrong though.
A shocking statistic our local health thingy published was that life outcomes for people with poor mental health in the local area (Blackwater Valley) is worse than most places in the country. Not comparatively - you might imagine that is the case, as everyone else is richer - but in absolute terms. It is just so difficult to live in the SE with no/limited income. Even if you have a bus pass, there aren't any (and a lot of public transport is trains geared towards London commuters). Local authorities have been hollowed out, so there are no public/communal facilities you can use. Local Tory voters don't care, they have two SUVs on the drive, wouldn't get on a bus if you paid them, or visit a local library etc, as the social norm is becoming hunkering down with your family.
The jury is out as to whether he'll be at all effective.
We see the same here. When you go to a place with lots of spritly elderly people (like Rutland) you see people who have always lived healthily. It's a different story on Saffron Lane estate.
I think it is underappreciated how metabolism slows down when we age. A diet and drinking habit sustainable at 25 is just no longer possible at fifty without ballooning weight and BP.
However, public sector planning is quite a blunt tool - the scope the public sector has to actually design rather than just approve or not is limited. Which is why I'd like to see us have a go at the public-sector-as-private-developer model I mentioned earlier.
But a PM involves many roles, which is why it's such a difficult job. He also needs to be a salesman; and whilst he won the GE by a landslide, I'd argue that was mainly due to the Conservative Party's implosion rather than Starmer selling a great vision for the future.
I'd argue that Blair in 1996-7 did a much better job of selling a vision, and that helped him out massively once he was in power. There will come a time, perhaps soon, perhaps in a few years, where Starmer faces difficult decisions that he needs to sell to the electorate. And I don't think that's something he's skillful at, and I doubt he can learn it.
He might be better off picking someone off his front bench who is a good communicator to the public as a whole to sell the vision. With the knowledge that that person will be at the front of his queue of successors.
He didn’t need to do this. He’s done it for a reason. I don’t think the message it sends is positive for him, but no doubt, he thinks it is a “cheap win” with his left flank
It's part of the reason why cities are doing so much better than towns and rural areas. Even if someone on low pay I'm a rural area can afford a car, such a large proportion of their income goes on it they have less to spend in the rest of the economy.
My criticism was the use of the word “full”.
Humans have agency. They make choices. Choices have consequences. Saying “the big bad food company did it to me” infantilises the population.
You took a fairly nasty person swipe at McVey and now a silly one at me.
Making a bloc of properties available to councils for emergency accommodation (it wouldn't be 20%) shouldn't be too difficult to organise. Perhaps an enhanced approval process might be on offer were any application to offer say 5% of properties for council use to house those requiring emergency accommodation. Central Government could perhaps provide incentives for developers to offer some form of public rental accommodation again where and to the quantity required in each area (in many areas it will be negligible).
I'm all for the government persuading people to have vaccinations and to stop smoking altogether. But I'm suspicious of legal enforcement of taking soft drugs, lock down, seatbelts etc and wouldn't want it extended to legal enforcement of vaccination. I'm totally in favour of hard persuasion. But it is up to individual adults what they do with their bodies as long as their actions don't materially harm others.
They haven't come close to understanding why the electorate threw them out.
https://www.racingpost.com/news/britain/racecourse-bosses-criticise-the-british-governments-plan-for-mad-idiotic-outdoor-smoking-ban-aR9mq6I9zOyM/
It's just not a hill on which I or anyone sensible would choose to die. Dealing with the epidemic of drugs such as opioids would be a more practical and better use of Government time and effort. I go racing quite often - people smoking outside is of little consequence and nobody smokes indoors (that battle has been won).
The drugs are more of an issue especially at weekend meetings when you get a group of young men (all seem to be extras from Peaky Blinders) turning up.
Suppose that, earlier this year, someone on the left had done a viral starting
"First they came for the people with rainbow lanyards..."
I hope I would have responded "Ugh, that's a revolting attempt to co-opt one of the worst events in history to a trivial campaign. Is Starmer really serious about dealing with antisemitism?"
What would you have said?
I appreciate the need for safety net housing. But funding it through increasing housing costs seems to me to be loaðing the costs exactly where we are agreed we don't want them to be - i.e. on general housing affordability.
Which is the idea.
Yet another way that we have had our eye off the ball this last decade, entrenching failure into our country.
Loads of studies like this, alongside the mass observational ones.
Kidney and Cardiovascular Protection Using Dietary Acid Reduction in Primary Hypertension: A Five-Year, Interventional, Randomized, Control Trial
https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(24)00357-7/fulltext
BBC News - Highland Council to fight legal block to street revamp
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yd447d1peo
Can you imagine if the Tories had moved a portrait of Clement Attlee - because, I don't know - the NHS?
In a way, the falls of Johnson and Truss make it harder, because there's a "we dealt with the problem, why aren't you b#&?+£#!s grateful?" dynamic going on. The idea that Sunak and Hunt and the rest of them were also pretty poor hasn't got onto the radar yet.
Attlee had a similarly mixed legacy.
I don't despise Thatcher - I voted for her in '83, and would have done so in '79 had I been a year older - but she left behind a long enduring and quite damaging consensus on a number of things, which we're only just starting to move on from.
Many of the failures of the Blair/Brown administrations, for example, can be understood as a failure to address or challenge some of that legacy.
No doubt there is serious stuff going on too. Most of the business of government of any stripe is dull un-headline-worthy grind and chat.
Which will not change until at least New Year, imo.
*it seems to have been informally named the Thatcher Room because of the portrait.
Britain in 1979 faced some massive issues. The existing approach was not working, and had led to many of those problems. Thatcher had some new approaches that, to an extent, helped 'fix' those issues, but created new long-term issues. Some of the things she got right, she got very right - and Starmer may even agree with some of them.
In the same way, Blair/Brown's governments fixed some issues, but left a massive financial mess, a country divided over the EU due to their fudges, and made immigration a large issue.