Yet another report emerges this morning warning that millions of British people will be advised to start taking statins in an attempt to reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease. Today's news also sees the Prime Minister warning of the low aspirations of the young poor. Yesterday's news was dominated by the announcement of plans to address the growing strain on the NHS emergency departments.
Can you see a connection? None of these stories attempt to get to the root of the problem. With education about lifestyle choices, more people would be empowered to make better decisions regarding the amount of exercise they take and the amount and type of food they choose to eat.
The low aspirations of the young poor is more a statement of the obvious than it is news. What we need to do is consider why they have low aspiration. Put simply, they don't currently start life on a level playing field by almost every measure you care to make. In particular, the education system is letting them down badly. As I wrote in a recent piece, even the gifted students from poor households are at a disadvantage as eveidenced by the sobering statistic that nearly 26% of medical students are privately educated whereas only 7% are privately educated nationally. It's not hard to see why the children from poor backgrounds have such low aspiration when we give them so little to aspire to.
The latest proposals to reform the A and E system in the UK once more choose to avoid the real problem. By its own admission, the latest proposal acknowledges that about 40% of A and E patients should never have gone there. To palm these people off on a paramedic or a GP is again missing the point rather. Theses patients are people who very often just need educating about what constitutes an accident and what constitutes an emergency. It's all very well standing in judgement of thier ignorance but that will not change unless we begin the process of educating people. This can be done through Public Information Programmes on the TV and Radio or, in today's imternet dominated world, social media. Either way, this should not be beyond us. To address the root of a problem is always more effective than just fire fighting the problem.
So if social mobility or a lack thereof is disadvantaging large sections of our society, we need to ask ourselves why? Failure to address this question will only exacerbate further the growing divisions between the haves and the have nots. If all children at given the same opportunities through education at early years (1-5), their outcomes in later life will become more equitable. This is why we need to be making the provision of nursey care more accessible to everybody. This is core to the development of our wider society. If we get it right at early years level, we give ourselves a chance of a fairer society. If we don't, we will just have more of the same. Even children from less well off backgrounds will have had access to play through nursery and their parents will have greater opportunity to go out and earn. If such a measure meant raising taxes for a better society, it would be brave politician who would argue against it. Getting early years right will address play, exercise and diet. Numeracy and literacy are not as important at that age - they can come later. As is often cited, such practice is the norm in Scandinavia and they have lives which we can o nly dream of.
Just this morning I was reading about Norway. Granted, it is a wealthy country on account of it's natural reserves of oil and gas. However, unlike Venezuala and the UK it does not squander it's assetts. This explains why the Norwegians are tied in to a rigid cap on working hours. They start at 8 and finish at 4. Working 50 hours a week is frowned upon because the country promotes the concept of family and leisure time. This is something which we all did in the UK not so long ago. We have now become busy fools living to work. The Norwegians work to live and positively welcome leisure and family time. Could this explain why they are so happy despite having less day light than us? One thing which I would vote for would be a ban on Sunday trading.
I would not promote this measure for reasons of faith per se but would rather promote it for reasons of social cohesion. Do we really need to be shopping 7 days per week? We still have the same level of disposable income and there surely comes a time when there is more to life than spending money in a shop? If this measure opened the door for families to spend more time with each other and engage in leisure, fun and enjoyment, I think we'd all be feeling a bit better.
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