A damning critique of our divided country?

A story that is bound to run and run today is the major review into health inequalities that has found that the poorest can expect 17 fewer years of healthy life, and that health inequalities cost £33bn a year in lost productivity.

Professor Sir Michael Marmot led the Government-commissioned review finding that the equivalent of up to 2.5 million years of life are being lost through people dying prematurely in England each year.

However it is once again the connection between health and being unemployed or poorly educated that is the most worrying.

Life expectancy in Britain is now 77.4 years for men and 81.7 years for women but coming from a deprived background can reduce that by seven years

The report recommends a series of measures including that income tax system should be revised, with possible cuts to encourage more people on low incomes to work.

It also said that action is needed in six key areas, including giving every child the best start in life, creating fair employment and encouraging people into work, and working to prevent people falling ill in the first place.

A shove in LA

Here is an interesting story.Not so much a nudge poliics but push and shove politics

The Los Angeles city council has announced that it will prohibit construction of all fast food resturaunts in a 32 square mile area.The reason,well its nothing to do with blighting the area.It is to do with telling people what they can and can't eat

The 32 sq miles is an area inhabited by 500,000 low income people

Councilwoman Jan Perry, who has pushed for a moratorium for six years, said the initiative would give the city time to craft measures to lure sit-down restaurants serving healthier food to a part of the city that desperately wants more of them.

reports the La times

David Cameron are you listening?