General Election: Who the hell am I going to vote for???

I agree that it's sad but this is typical of the media making out that things are worse than they are. Notice I blame the media a lot!

Statistics aren't out yet for 2014 but in 2013 there were something less than 400 cases of rickets in children. Almost all of these were Vit D deficiency due to lack of correct food or of sunlight. The sunlight problem is nothing to do with the weather but to do with kids sitting indoors playing electronic games etc.

The majority of these kids come from 'deprived' families (official terminology). The Labour government brought in a scheme (2006) called Healthy Start and the Tories continued it.
http://www.healthystart.nhs.uk/
This provides free fruit, vegetables and Vit D for the 'deprived' families. It's a complete and utter failure! Most of the people that could benefit from this don't get it. This is a combination of the medical profession not recognising the needy in time (mainly because the parents don't take the kids to the doc) and, particularly, because the parents don't want to bother. There has only been a 10% take up of the benefit!

This was similar to the problem of 'Five a Day'. The people that were already eating correctly (or almost correctly) read and understood the publicity about. so it was preaching to the converted. The ones that needed it weren't being got to. Locally, I got involved in trying to publicise this to those that needed it. It was calculated that, after what we did, the understanding of what it meant got across to about 40% of the local population that needed to know. A big increase over the national average but nowhere near good enough.

So, yes, the incidence of rickets is increasing, totally unnecessarily, but it's miniscule numbers compared to a lot of other things that should be concentrated on. Having said that, much more can be done by concerned people if they did something about it instead of just moaning that nothing is being done!

Just out of interest, the work that was done locally to increase the knowledge of 'Five a Day' was funded totally by the local businesses. It just needed someone to start the initiative and to make sure that the businesses knew about it. In business that's known as CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility). They tend to be blinkered and just look at what their business needs - until someone comes along and points out the local problems. Then, usually, they're quite happy to help.

Before I retired I spent many happy years kicking the businesses up the backside to get things done. I also kicked local government, quangos, unions, nhs and many others up the backside because a lot of them didn't want to work with the businesses

My motto has always been 'Don't moan, Do Something!'

Over the years I've been the friend, and the enemy, of Labour and Tories. Don't stay home on Thursday. go and vote! Don't simply believe everything you hear or read. Make an effort to find out. Then you can be justified in not knowing who to vote for . Too many people are blinkered with regard to political parties and should try and look at the other peoples' point of view and check into it.

I think I'll bow out of this thread as I've said too much already.

Apologies to everyone

 

I'm sorry, Who???

 

You're sooooooooooo subtle, Pete............but I like you