Wednesday 27 February 2013

Why the nannying fussbuckets are wrong...

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I wonder why those public health folk don't ever mention this?

The life expectancy of the UK population is increasing by five hours a day,

This is despite:

The obesity epidemic
Smoking
Binge drinking
Salt
Fat
Sugar

Not going to the gym
Processed food
Fizzy drinks

Or for that matter the best efforts of the NHS to kill us with incompetence and neglect.

So shut up will you and let us live our lives. We're doing OK!

....


3 comments:

Emil said...

You are so sweet, and optimistic, and full of the green shoots of positive outlook. I wonder if in 10 years, say, you'll doing the same song. What ia missing from your outlook is that these tables and predictions are projections derived from past data - the baby boomers - and you might be one of them, in which case you should indeed be happy. The binge drinking, obesity and the rest had not make it in the predictions...

Jonathan Bagley said...

Life expectancy is calculated from current mortality, so in fact these figures are derived from current, not past, data. For example, they assume that the probability of me dying in my eightyfirst year is that of a current eighty year old. They are a projection and a prediction but describing them as such will mislead most people (including, up until recently, myself) who imagine a straight line drawn through past life expectancies and extended into the future. This is not the case. Smoking prevalence has been falling for decades, as has death from heart attacks. Per capita alcohol consumption has fallen steeply in recent years. It is now back to 1990 levels and will soon reach 1970 levels, when it was mainly concentrated among men. I'll bet my house that in ten years, life expectancy is higher than now.

SadButMadLad said...

Emil, even if we took your reasoning to be true (which it isn't) you'd still be wrong. Smoking and drinking was a lot more prevalent for the baby boomers and still they are living longer. So you're doubly wrong.

And I like the comment the original article attracted. Even thought it proves the nannying fussbuckets wrong, one of them still uses it as an excuse for their particular style of fussbucketing.

"Life expectancy increasing by 5 hours a day! Incredible! OK, so we are longer in older age and longer in working age. Are we longer in childhood? No! Children have to grow up quickly in under developed countries. However, even in Europe we are in danger of losing much of childhood and play. It is imperative to ensure childhood is protected by investing in play opportunities to provide a developmental foundation for the future of each child."
Nicholas Hall, Trustee, London Play, Added: Wednesday, 27 February 2013 02:12 PM