Bradley Wiggins’ high profile accident has brought attention
to cycle safety and the government has used it to publicise the £30 million it
has set aside for improvements to road junctions with cyclists in mind. We now
that the danger of cycling is the major factor putting more people off using
this as a healthier way to get around, or for leisure. In fact, the £30 million
is about the same amount that the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has cut from
the capital’s road safety budget and also amounts to £64,000 per council in the
UK – not enough to improve even one dangerous junction. Last year London alone had a 23% increase in
cycling casualties and there was also an increase in pedestrian casualties
after a decade of seeing reduced numbers.
In the cycling mecca of Holland, the government spends £25 per person
per year on cycling infrastructure. Our government spends £1. The impetus created by the Olympics and the
success of the cycling team did start to get more people on their bikes. Now
though it looks as if people will weigh up the odds and decide that the risks
are too great, so any putative health benefits will go. And it looks as though dedicated cyclists will be at greater
risk of death or injury in the future.
These kinds of cuts are happening in many sectors of public life. However, the austerity measures being endured by the population of
the UK are being disproportionately administered across the country – to the extent
that Hilary Benn, the shadow secretary for local government has said the cuts
are “politically motivated”. He has stated that of the 50 worst hit councils,
43 are Labour and of the 50 least hit, 42 are Tory. The 50 councils least
affected are seeing cuts of £16 per head, many of them in more affluent parts
of the south of England. The 50 worst affected are seeing cuts of £160 per head
and are predominantly northern, in Liverpool, Rochdale, South Tyneside, or in
inner London such as Hackney. Haringey
in London, often cited as a deprived local authority (and is indeed the 11th
most deprived in Britain) has £84 million of budget cuts, amounting to £170 per
head.
Some of the things happening at the moment are not likely to
be captured by the conventional methods of measures of deprivation. The
Carstairs deprivation scores for example, which are based on adult
unemployment, car ownership, social class composition and overcrowding, show
how one area can differ from another in terms of relative deprivation, but does
not take into account aspects of personal behaviour such as drug use, smoking
or poor diet. It’s acknowledged the Carstairs measure no longer captures relative
deprivation as effectively in the 21st century compared to the
1980s.
Whilst academics are clearly extremely concerned about the
effects of austerity and poverty on health, there will be a time lag before
data are collected to demonstrate the effect and also before robust measures are
developed to measure the effect. In the meantime, some journalists are doing an
excellent job in showing the impact of austerity. Amelia Hill for example, in
this weeks’ Guardian newspaper (19/11/12) shows the pernicious rise of food
poverty. She reports research from the Joseph Rowntree Trust which shows that
food price have risen by 32% since 2007, twice the EU average. FareShare, a charity
which feeds 36,500 people every day is seeing people coming for help who are
living on “what were once regarded as reasonable salaries” but who “can no
longer afford to eat enough”. A Save the
Children report shows that of 5,000 families in the UK earning £30,000 a year,
two thirds had to go into debt, avoid paying bills, not replace worn out
clothing and for the parents to skip meals, in order for the children to have
enough to eat. A survey of teachers shows that four out of five teachers see
children who are hungry in the morning.
The government’s own statistics show that eating healthily
has become more expensive, with the price of vegetables rising by 22% since
2007 and fruit by 34%. Between 2007 and 2010, low-income households cut the
amount of food they buy by 11%. If you believe, as many health promoters do,
and as I certainly do, that the food we eat – the stuff we put into our bodies
– is one of the very most important determinants of health, then these effects
of austerity are potentially the most
worrying. Already the UK has the highest rates of obesity after the USA and
rates of liver diseases associated with it are suddenly in the media. The lack
of micronutrients and other essentials in the diet are likely to affect
immunity and store up health problems. What’s as depressing to me is that those
on poverty incomes and poverty diets no longer enjoy food. Food is one of the
great joys of life – there’s a celebration of good food in the UK and we seem
to have caught up with some of our continental neighbours in enjoying good
food, grown and cooked carefully. Amelia Hill’s article though, sadly ends with
one of those she interviewed saying, of the food he’d been forced to buy due to
his low income, “it all looks so cheap and nasty. To be honest, just looking at
it takes my appetite away”.
Austerity not only kills, it also kills quality of life and
takes away any joy.
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