Our Obesogenic Society

The reporting on obesity does annoy me. First we're told it's an epidemic, when quite clearly nobody can catch the condition from anybody else. Then we're warned it's a threat "deadlier than smoking" and "worse than climate change" (which is not necessarily saying very much, of course). Now we're informed that it's "an inevitable consequence of a society in which energy-dense, cheap foods, labour-saving devices, motorised transport and sedentary work are rife" and that "individuals can no longer be held responsible for obesity."

Despite admitting there is absolutely no proof that any anti-obesity policy works, the Government-commissioned "Foresight" report claims that dramatic and comprehensive action is required to stop the majority of us becoming obese by 2050 — no doubt at a substantial cost to us tax-payers. What next from this interfering, predeterministic Government? That criminals are genetically predisposed to commit their crimes so should be locked up before they offend but absolved after the event? Oh yes, we have already had that line from them (here and here).

No, as we learnt earlier this year, the issue of obesity is linked to others such as race and class that have got worse over the past decade: just 9% of Indian children are overweight or obese compared with 23% of White and 33% of Black Caribbean children, while children in more advantaged areas of England and Scotland are less likely to be overweight or obese than those living in less advantaged areas. While there clearly is a wider cultural question to address in the West — namely, why we overfeed and underexercise ourselves and our children, despite knowing the obvious health risks — it is clear from the above graph that the problem has become increasingly serious as the nanny-state has grown increasingly strong. Therefore part of the remedy must surely involve returning a sense of personal and social responsibility to individuals and their communities.

Brain Scans Predict Voting Behaviour

Thought you might find this New Scientist report interesting:

Political affiliation could be all in the brain

A brain scan might one day predict your voting patterns. That is the implication of a study that found different brain activity among liberals and conservatives asked to carry out a simple button-pushing test. The study implies that our political diversity may be the result of neurological differences.

Researchers have long known that conservatives and liberals score differently in psychological profiling tests. Now they are beginning to gather evidence about why this might be...

Brain recordings taken using electroencephalogram (EEG) technology showed that liberals had twice as much activity in a deep region called the anterior cingulate cortex. This area of the brain is thought to act as a mental brake by helping the mind recognize "no-go" situations where it must refrain from the usual course of action.

The new findings are "interesting and provocative" because they could perhaps help enable researchers to predict a person's voting behaviour based on brain scans.

If you think that's just an irrelevant bit of fun, check out Tony Blair's Minority Report!

Blair's Self-Defence

"I got it wrong on problem families, admits Blair" declares the Telegraph. In actual fact his supposed admission of error was a self-righteous projection of blame onto unnamed advisors who "misguided us to the wrong policy conclusion" and an attack on David Cameron's recent call for a revolution in responsibility.

The outgoing prime minister is of course right no longer to agree with "the Blair of 1992" who believed that investment alone would deal with the "small and unrepresentative minority" of trouble-makers. However, he still fails to understand "the Cameron of 2007" and also seems not to recognise that the decisions he has been responsible for taking during his ten years in power have exacerbated the general social malaise through his consistent and deliberate destruction of our country's historic local and national institutions, from the family, through local councils, to Parliament itself.

He appears self-deluded when he maintains:

"I don't believe this is an issue to do with society as a whole. Obviously it impacts on society as a whole. But it is not part of a general breakdown in society, a tearing of our social fabric or a descent into a 'decivilised' culture. ... The reality is that we are dealing with a very small number of highly dysfunctional families and children whose defining characteristic is that they do not represent society as a whole. They are the exception, not the rule."

The reality is that five out of every six police officers have been assaulted in the line of duty during the last five years.

The reality is that almost three teachers a week are subject to serious assaults at work, 17 per cent of pupils have Special Educational Needs, and truancy is up by almost a quarter since 1997.

The reality is that more than 60,000 NHS staff are physically assaulted by patients and relatives of patients each year.

Those responsible for such widespread disorder are not merely a "small and unrepresentative minority" to be dismissed as easily as Mr Blair would have us believe.

As I have already said, he clearly fails to understand "the Cameron of 2007" for Mr Blair still thinks that the answer is to increase the powers of the state:

"I now think that the proper answer is to add to the ASB laws measures that target failing and dysfunctional families early, and place those families within a proper, structured, disciplined framework of help and insistence on proper behaviour.

"I know this is difficult and controversial, because it involves intervening before the child is committing criminal offences, at least serious ones, and when the families have not yet become a menace."

We have heard this predeterministic line from him before. However, in this regard, David Cameron's answer is the complete reverse of what Mr Blair is suggesting – and the reverse of what Mr Blair appears to be portraying as Mr Cameron's position. Unlike Labour, who would support Mr Blair's belief that "a nanny state is what we need," the Conservative leader wishes to decrease the role of the state or, as he puts it, "to roll forward the frontiers of society."

On one point, however, Mr Blair is right: We need to "Concentrate on the facts. The right analysis will bring a better answer."

Minority Report 2

One intent of the government's Mental Health Bill was to ensure that individuals such as Michael Stone, convicted in 1998 for murdering Lin and Megan Russell, could be confined against their will simply because they suffer from a mental illness, even though they are innocent of any crime and even though their condition is untreatable.

Well done, then, to the Lords for rejecting this ill-considered piece of deterministic legislation.

The Government might have more success at keeping dangerous criminals off our streets if it focused on improving the rehabilitation and education of those already incarcerated in our overcrowded prisons.

Tony Blair's Minority Report

Last Wednesday I noticed a Scientific American report on neuroethics. It began:

"Neuroscientists are making such rapid progress in unlocking the brain's secrets that some are urging colleagues to debate the ethics of their work before it can be misused by governments, lawyers or advertisers.
"The news that brain scanners can now read a person's intentions before they are expressed or acted upon has given a new boost to the fledgling field of neuroethics that hopes to help researchers separate good uses of their work from bad."

When I heard Tony Blair discussing gun crime and the UNICEF report with Andrew Marr on Sunday AM this morning, I realised that the neuroscientists are probably right to fear. His words reminded me of statements the PM made last summer that he believes we need to predict and intervene far more early in the lives of those who are going to become a menace to society, "pre-birth even". In case you missed it, this is what he said today: "My view increasingly is that if you analyse this problem it is a problem of families who need to be put in, with very early intervention, in a structured framework where you are making sure that the children in those situations get looked after from a very, very early age."

As Nigel Cameron says on his blog: The movie Minority Report keeps tugging at today from tomorrow.