We really are lazy

I suppose I am in danger of always saying that the Finns have the answer to everything but when we look at the current row over the benefits bill, it is worth looking at Finland

The lazy, tired old claim is that the UK’s health crisis, which is extremely regionally based, is down to the industries in such areas which have created a legacy of damaged workers with long term health problems. Really?

The pits shut decades ago, ship building and steel too, heavy engineering has been in decline for decades. All these millions of people would have to be in their 50s minimum to have been worn out by life at the coal face, and worn out very young at that.

If there is a health crisis in this country it is therefore not one of industrial disease. It is, probably one of smoking, drinking, weight, diet, exercise and above all, mental wellbeing, and regional inequality.

This is where the Finns come in because they used to have the worst heart attack record in Europe, drinking, smoking, lack of exercise, bad diets, and long winter nights all took their toll.

So what did they do? They changed virtually everything.

They built cycle paths and walking routes, they made city centres pedestrian only, they moved car parks further from the centre to make people walk, they taxed drink and fags exorbitantly, they opened cheap gyms and built trim trails, they sent attractive young men and women into bars to encourage people to go for a walk rather than have another pint.

They spent a fortune on schools meals, nutritional advice, teaching kids to cook well, increasing sports in schools, the whole gamut of the nanny state. They even go so far as to give every baby a box of essentials for free, and the box turns onto a cot.

The symbolism matters more than the cot, everyone starts with the same life chances.

Since the 1970’s here, we have by contrast spent decades whipping people up to think “Why should I help the ill, they are lazy, I have a job why should I pay for the unemployed, I struggle to bring up children why should those on benefits get my money to breed?”

All backed up with the mad and contradictory hatred of the “nanny state”.

Yet strangely when inflation soared every Tory MPs knew how to feed a family of four on £10 a week, even though they spent the last 30 years telling us the poor knew how to look after themselves and didn’t need any lectures.

The fact is the benefits bill is soaring and something has to be done, but salami slicing benefits for those who cannot exist without them is not the way.

The much slower but surer way is to improve the health of the nation and end regional inequality too.

It will take 20 years, but it works.

Jonty’s Jottings

From Jonty Bloom Media Ltd

Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.