Your family history is quite exotic – you were born on the Pacific coast of what is now north–east China. Can you tell us a little about your background?
The obesity crisis gets ever larger. According to Dame Sally Davies, England's chief medical officer, being overweight is increasingly seen as the norm. Astonishingly, almost two-thirds of adults and one-third of children aged 2 to 15 in Britain are overweight or obese. As Davies points out, this represents “a profound change in the health of the nation over a relatively short period of time”. In 1980, around 7% of adults were clinically obese. Today, it is a quarter. Her report can be read here
This essay first appeared as Chapter 12 in 'The Future of Welfare'
Some 87% of adults think the system is "facing severe problems", rising to 94% among the over-55s, research commissioned by Christian think tank Theos found.
Under 25s have had a rough ride under this government. University fees tripled, despite the graduate job market shrinking (effectively students are paying more for less). Then the EMA (Education Maintenance Allowance), once lauded as an essential tool in keeping people in education, was scrapped. Now there are persistent hints from the Prime Minister and Chancellor that they will start denying the under 25s jobseeker’s allowance and housing benefit. Put that together with a serious youth unemployment problem and you have a cocktail of misery for a whole generation. Increasingly there is a sense of the young poor being placed more and more under strain, and receiving less and less in return. Not all young people will be affected by all these measures, but many will be hit by several. This is in marked contrast to the continued rejection of ideas to means-test winter fuel allowance or the apparent willingness of the government to ring fence pensions. It’s a phenomenon of inter-generational politics even government minister David Willets has criticised in his book The Pinch.
Your average day, in twenty or so years’ time, will begin with you donning the latest designer suit, printed overnight on your 3-D printer. It will continue with a full English breakfast, the ingredients grown laboratories, the health consequences as good for you as a bowl of muesli. You will then slip into your solar-powered, driverless car, which will glide you to work without suffering commuter delays, whilst you immerse yourself in some pre-work preparation with your personal e-assistant, or maybe indulge in a cheeky full-immersion game of Grand Theft Auto before you arrive at the office.
I like a bit of sex in the morning which is why I listen to Radio 4. Today did not disappoint.
Festivals are an anthropologist’s dream. The combination of ancient national and local traditions, religious imagery and practice and modern commercial pressures make for a fascinating cocktail – but also one that can raise enormous difficulties. One such difficulty is what happens when these festivals seem to demonise or otherwise unhelpfully stereotype a particular grouping in society. In the last week or so these difficulties have come to the fore.
At the end of last week the BBC’s head of religion and ethics, Aaqil Ahmed gave a damning appraisal of the current state of religious understanding in Britain. ‘The public has such “poor religious literacy” that a modern audience would be baffled by the Monty Python film The Life of Brian – because it would not understand the Biblical references’.