So takeaways are in low rent urban areas. There's a reason for this and it's not fat poor people.

There have been several reports on the findings from a study by the Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR) at Cambridge University. In simple terms this study maps the growth in hot food takeaways in Norfolk using Yellow Pages data from 1990 to 2008 and makes two observations - there has been a significant increase in the number of such takeaways and they are more likely to be located in more deprived communities:

Over the 18 year period, the number of takeaway food outlets rose by 45%, from 265 to 385 outlets. This equated to an increase from 2.6 outlets to 3.8 outlets per 10,000 residents. The highest absolute increase in density of outlets was in areas of highest deprivation, which saw an increase from 4.6 outlets to 6.5 outlets per 10,000 residents (a 43% increase).

This, argue the researchers should be a concern because:

Frequent consumption of takeaway food has been associated with excess weight gain over time.Previous studies have shown that people of low socioeconomic status and living in deprived areas are more likely to be overweight and consume unhealthy diets than other sectors of the population. One possible explanation could be that more unhealthy food environments – for example, a greater density of takeaway food outlets – could be contributing to unhealthy lifestyle choices.

This is a familiar argument - let's call it the 'obesogenic status quo' - that we've looked at before. Essentially the argument is that the presence of such concentrations of fast food increases rates of obesity as the population is confronted with multitudinous 'poor food choices'. We also know that the evidence supporting such an argument is pretty weak:

 ...there was no significant association between increasing takeaway and fast food consumption and obesity as measured by BMI corrected for age and gender. This is not a new finding. For example, French and colleagues found no significant relationship between frequent consumption of fast food and being overweight in their analysis of a cohort of 11-18-year-old boys and girls. Similarly, Simmons et al found no correlation between increasing takeaway consumption and obesity measured by either BMI or waist circumference.

This shouldn't really surprise us since the components of obesity (overeating and lack of exercise) are not exactly driven by relatively expensive takeaway food. Indeed a recent study from Leeds Beckett University's childhood obesity research team provided further evidence rejecting the link between obesity and hot food takeaways:

“This study provides little support for the notion that exposure to fast food and other food outlets in the home, school and commuting neighbourhoods increase the risk of obesity in children. It seems that the evidence is not well placed to support governmental interventions and recommendations currently being proposed including zoning laws around schools and I would urge policy makers to approach policies designed to limit food outlets with caution."

So why is it that these takeaways seem to cluster in more deprived communities if it isn't primarily to cater for the needs of nascently obese deprived people? Now I don't have the CEDAR team's map but a map of deprivation in Norfolk show it to be concentrated in Great Yarmouth, Norwich and King's Lynn plus, less significantly. places like Cromer and Hunstanton.

It strikes me that the demand these hot food takeaways meet is as much driven by visitors as by the needs of the resident population. Great Yarmouth has some of England's most deprived places - but these are right behind the sea front (Nelson Ward is Great Yarmouth's most deprived) and I'm guessing take advantage of cheaper rents slightly away from the town centre.

The reality is - ask anyone in the business - that running a takeaway, whether a Chinese, Indian or fish & chips (the three types looked at in this study), is hard work and pretty low margin. Which means that you set up in places where there's demand and cheap rents - those deprived communities the researchers identify. Their location isn't connected to (or determining - people have choice and the UK doesn't have food deserts) the food choices of residents but rather to a desire to get as close as possible to busy town centres without having to pay higher town centre rents.

This research is interesting but really doesn't provide any further evidence supporting the demand - repeated yet again by the Local Government Association for councils to have more powers:

“Town halls want to put a stop to it and have pleaded that the first Queen’s Speech of the new parliament heralds a law to give them new authority over local licensing decisions. The Norfolk findings are generalisable across the country, particularly in urban areas. Local councils are desperate to limit junk food outlets increase or ban them outright but, like rabbits caught in the headlights, are petrified to do so in the face of face of legal challenges and red tape,”

Added to the aggressive use of egregious planning controls what we have here is an assault on one business type - not because it's remotely the cause of all that supposed obesity but more because such businesses are seen as a bit grubby and down-market selling greasy unappealing food to drunk twentysomethings and portly lorry drivers. As every local councillor knows, takeaways are never popular - people don't like the bad parking, the smells, the litter and (although they seldom say this) the customers. Sometimes they don't like the immigrants running them either. Blaming fast food takeaways for obesity is a convenient cop out from the real reasons for wanting to get rid of them - simple snobbery and prejudice.

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How talk of inequality skews our debate about poverty.

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Through the medium of Twitter, I was directed to this article about 'poverty' - or rather it was about income inequality:

Using figures from the OECD Better Life Index, the report shows that average UK household incomes of $53,785, which makes up the wealthiest 20 percent in the UK, ranked third in EU countries, lagging behind Germany and France.

But that is where the economic similarities between the UK and the EU come to a screeching halt.

The OECD estimates the average income of the bottom 20 percent of UK households at just $9,530, which is significantly lower than the poorest 20 percent in France ($12,653), Germany ($13,381), Belgium ($12,350), the Netherlands ($11,274) and Denmark ($12,183).

The problem here is a simple one. The figures used are figures prior to taxes and benefits - it's true that the bottom 20% of UK earners take home something around the figure quoted (the UK figure in sterling is £5,400). But when taxes and other benefits are accounted for the figure becomes a more acceptable £15,400. This is still just a quarter of the average income for the top 20% of earners (after tax and benefits) which is some £57,300 but suggests that, yet again, the obsession with focusing on inequality glosses over the debate about poverty. It may still be that case that after taxes and benefits the UK's lowest earners still lag behind those of other European countries but the real lesson of the figures is that for most people in that bottom earning bracket the system is working - at least in terms of them getting close to what the Joseph Rowntree Trust folk see as the minimum income needed for a civilised life.

What this number doesn't tell us is how many people are in dire poverty - without the means to provide the absolute basics of food, clothing and shelter. We get a little glimpse of this world from people like the Trussell Trust who support food banks and we know most of the dire need is temporary rather than structural. Nevertheless, we should begin to ask whether the tendency to present ever larger numbers of people "living in poverty" prevents us responding to the central challenge of making a system that doesn't fail and doesn't create real material deprivation.

We also get this fruitless debate about inequality with one set of figures showing inequality has declined and other showing it to have risen. And the focus on inequality leads to an emphasis on taxing the rich rather than on seeking to end poverty. There is lots of shouty accusation about tax dodging and fingers pointed at big businesses but none of this even starts to answer the 'why are some people poor' question. Nor do we look at the decisions of government that make poverty worse - the green levies on energy production, the high taxes on petrol that make food more expensive, the regulation of childcare that raises its costs beyond normal affordability, the planning regulations that make housing expensive and the obscene tax on jobs that is national insurance.

My point in all this isn't to suggest an end to progressive taxation or to reject a degree of redistribution, rather it is to say that the evil in all this is poverty not the fact that one person has more stuff than another person. And if we want to eliminate poverty, we should focus on poverty and on removing the barriers - regulatory, tax, social and economic - that prevent people escaping from real poverty. Inequality isn't one of those barriers and our anti-poverty work needs to start with this fact.

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The sadness of Silvertown

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The journey on the Docklands Light Railway from Bank out past Canary Wharf to West Silvertown and Pontoon Dock gives an insight into the continuing challenge of regeneration. The contrast between the shiny skyscrapers and posh apartments that cluster round the DLR and the old communities are stark. And nowhere shows it more starkly than Victoria Dock, London City Airport and their environs.

Silvertown and North Woolwich are run down, deprived, depressing places – poor quality, badly maintained housing, an almost complete absence of real local facilities and a sense that no-one is doing anything to really change these places. Instead – as if in some science fiction novel – a gleaming bright (well concrete) new trainline slices through. And it’s user look down into the depressing streets beyond – streets full of people who have no use for the new railway since they have little or no money to spend and don’t have jobs in the shiny skyscrapers.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this depressing scene is an argument for not building the DLR, for leaving the docks as a sorry memory of a different age or for building only social housing. In their way these developments – along with the airport and the exhibition centre – are helping to transform the area. But we have missed out on the opportunity to make the strong connections with what is already there – the new roads, rail and apartments are built with their backs to the existing communities.

Those old communities now have no decent shops, no pubs and only the institutions of poverty – SureStart, a “learning centre” and a church-based community building – remain. Institutions that may do good but cannot make a place in the way that shops, pubs, eateries and markets might do. And the dwellers in the posh flats? Their time out is either behind the barriers of their gated world or elsewhere – whisked to a brighter place by the shiny new railway.

Policy-makers, planners, architects and developers have failed these places - reinforcing division and creating new barriers. Above all this is the disaster of our technocracy – which specialists, experts and governments dictating to local people. The new meritocratic Labour Party has failed the new East London just as comprehensively as the patriarchal Labour Party failed the old East London.

In stead of fencing in the poor we should be giving them access to these better places. We should be teaching and training their children better, letting them control their own institutions and promoting real local ownership and control. Above all we should worry less about security and more about community.

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