2013-05-25T07:22:59-04:00 Diane Abbott http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=diane-abbott Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Diane Abbott Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3042310 2013-04-09T03:27:51-04:00 2013-04-09T03:41:36-04:00

Diane Abbott http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-abbott/
It is not frequently remarked on, but the fact that she was a woman gave her an edge in her leadership challenge to Tory party leader Edward Heath, because she was simply underestimated by her peers. Even her mentors like Airey Neave MP and Keith Joseph MP may have thought initially that they had a woman, who reflected their politics, but was biddable. In fact Thatcher was far from a nicely coifed cipher for the Tory right. But they could not have known that in the very beginning.

The man that she removed as leader of her party, Edward Heath, never forgave her. He went on to smoulder, visibly sulking, on the benches of the House of Commons for nearly ten years. One can only speculate that he might not have been quite so bitter if he had not been removed by someone he despised who was also a woman.

But the most striking effect of her gender was how difficult men found her to handle. The Tory politicians of her era would have had little to do with women. They had largely gone to all male private schools, went on to all male universities and moved in an all male world of work. Women were nannies and wives, not professional colleagues. Thatcher used their discomfiture with her to advantage. I first became an MP in 1987 when she was still prime minister. Up to that point I had spent my entire adult life campaigning against her and everything that she represented. But even I had to marvel at this carefully turned out woman with her elegant ankles who sat in the chamber of the House of Commons surrounded by serried ranks of grey male Tories in grey suits, who were all absolutely terrified of her. The Labour leader Neil Kinnock never worked out how to deal with her. However much he hated her politics, he always found it difficult to attack a woman. Foreign leaders were also struck by the fact of her gender. The French president Francois Mitterrand famously described her as having the eyes of Caligula and the lips of Marilyn Monroe. And her relationships with the American president Ronald Reagan and the Russian leader Gorbachev took on a unique quality because of the man/woman dynamic.

But Thatcher was certainly not a feminist either in principle or in practise. She is alleged to have said that feminism was "poison". Far from seeing herself as a role model to female politicians, she actually promoted fewer female MPs than her male predecessors. She was the archetypal successful woman who revelled in being 'one of the boys'. But in a curious way the cult around her, particularly in the later years of her career, was one that could only have been excited by a woman.

Millions of ordinary women had nothing to thank Thatcher for. Her monetarist policies wiped out fully 15% of Britain's industrial base. Her frontal assault on the National Union of Mineworkers destroyed mining communities up and down the country. There are pit villages everywhere that have never recovered from the Thatcher years. Her supporters glorify the fact that she demolished trade union power. But that left Britain a far more unequal society. And woman and communities suffered from that.

I remember the day she resigned, forced out by her own colleagues. The atmosphere in the House of Commons that evening was extraordinary. Tory MPs were giddy with excitement. There was a sort of suppressed excitement but also a palpable guilt. They were like schoolboys who had assassinated matron. They knew they had done something wrong, but they could not help revelling in it.

Whatever you think of her political record, no one can deny Thatcher's historic status. But no one can deny either that, despite her disavowal of feminism, her gender was an essential part of the myth of Thatcher.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2536786 2013-01-23T19:00:00-05:00 2013-03-25T05:12:01-04:00

Diane Abbott http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-abbott/
But the issue here is not the simple naked human form. It is the commodification of sexuality: there is the saturation of the media, advertising and billboards with images of women which, a generation ago, you would only have seen in top-shelf magazines. There are the t-shirts for little girls emblazoned with "future porn star" and there is the pressure on women to achieve an artificial pornified image. It is not just that Britain spends more on plastic surgery than any country in Europe. But it is significant that one of the growth areas for plastic surgery is women who are convinced their vagina and labia are abnormal and want them 'tidied up'. Their idea of a normal vaginal area has been shaped by porn.

Above all, the issue is the easy availability of hardcore porn on the internet. Obviously, for adults, viewing hardcore porn is their choice. But the average age of kids viewing hardcore porn has dropped from 11 to eight. Primary school children can view on their mobile phones material that would not even have been available in a top-shelf magazine a generation ago. Mobile phones are also being used for so-called 'sexting' - the sending of sexually explicit messages and photographs. Quantative research on sexting has found rates between 15% and 40% in school-age children and increasingly young girls are subject to 'slut shaming' and sexual bullying in schools. Of course the behaviour labelled sluttish in school girls is exactly the behaviour school boys boast about amongst themselves. New technology, same old double standards.

The government pays lip service to being concerned about these issues. But the reality is that local authority spending cuts mean that children's sexual health services are being cut back; the government announced a review of personal, social, health and economics (PHSE) education more than a year ago but appears to be sitting on the results and the Department of Health's sexual health document has been delayed for 19 months and counting.

But there are things government, communities and parents can do. We need Statutory Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) education and Sex and Relationships Education (SRE). Sex education should focus on preparing young people to form healthy relationships, and also deal with issues of self-esteem.

Schools should encourage girls to value their bodies in terms of their physical ability. We need more Jessica Ennis, less Paris Hilton.

We need to look at how gender equality issues could be more central on the educational agenda, and throughout the curriculum.

Parents should be given information and support to educate their children about the issues. I do not believe that parents should snoop on their teenagers. Any self-respecting teenager would find a way of getting round that. But parents are a powerful force in shaping their children's attitudes to gender and sexuality, even if children are loathe to admit it.

We must make it easier for parents to block adult and age-restricted material across all media. We also need to help our young people use new technology and media safely.

But perhaps most of all, we need to start a national conversation between parents and their children about sex, pornography and technology.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2050386 2012-10-31T19:00:00-04:00 2012-12-31T05:12:01-05:00

Diane Abbott http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-abbott/ I first vowed to oppose plans for anti-choice abortion counselling, and one year after the plans were heavily defeated in parliament, the government has finally conceded defeat on the issue. Health minister Anna Soubry announced that the government had caved in on the issue of anti-choice abortion counselling, during a debate on reducing the upper limit.

Everyone can agree on the desirability of having fewer abortions. But most abortions are the result of unintended pregnancy. So the way to bring down the abortion rate is to improve to access to contraceptive services and invest in comprehensive, age-appropriate sex and relationships education (SRE) in the national curriculum. This is certainly the view of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and other medical professionals. Instead, the opponents of a woman's right to choose denigrate medical professionals involved in women's reproductive rights issues and are silent on the harassment and intimidation of ordinary women by anti-abortion protests and vigils outside clinics. And the Tory religious right have already given notice of their plan to push on with a campaign to bring down abortion time limits. With so many other pressing social and economic issues facing British women and families, sections of the Tory right are choosing to pour their energies into having a vote on the issue of abortion time limits in the House of Commons by the summer of next year.

It cannot be repeated enough that there has been no new medical evidence to suggest any scientific or medical reason for a reduction in the abortion time limit since this was last debated in the House of Commons in May 2008. This debate isn't being reopened because of any new medical evidence or the current figures on abortion, but because of a toxic, politicisation of the issue by elements within the Conservative Party. It is happening because Jeremy Hunt's gratuitous attack on British women's right to choose has opened the door to parts of the Tory party to begin unwanted and distracting wrangling in parliament to reduce the time limits.

The problem, which many anti-choice campaigners seem hesitant to engage with, is that we're not talking about faceless women here. Real women's lives are at stake. An anonymised case-study audit of abortion requests by BPAS has highlighted some of the examples of the women who have put themselves forward for later abortion. One woman who had an abortion at 22 weeks had two young children. The pregnancy was unplanned but her current partner had persuaded her to continue. She then found out that he was abusing her children and reported him to the police.

Another young women had an abortion at 23 weeks. It was an unplanned pregnancy. She was going to keep the baby. However, she and her partner have just been served with an eviction notice and they have nowhere to live that would be suitable for a baby.

One girl, who had an abortion at 23 weeks, had had sex for the first time to see what it was like. She thought she might be pregnant but "buried [her] head in the sand hoping it would go away". She started to self-harm: punching herself in the stomach and making herself vomit. Her mother took her to GP suspecting bulimia and the pregnancy was detected.

Another younger girl had an abortion at 23 weeks because she felt too young to have a baby. She started her periods a year ago, but they had never been regular, so it didn't register with her that she could be pregnant. She had no idea where she could get help and didn't feel able to tell her parents. Eventually she "plucked up her courage" to see the school nurse.

These are the issues that risk being swept away. British public policy making does not need the hysterical politicised debate in the United States. There, doctors are threatened with violence and male politicians compete with each other arguing against ordinary women's right to choose. Choosing to undergo an abortion can be one of the most difficult and emotional decisions any woman can make. But the key thing is that it should be her choice. The issue must not be made a political football.

]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1972865 2012-10-17T06:48:33-04:00 2012-12-17T05:12:02-05:00

Diane Abbott http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-abbott/ Today programme airing his, now well known, anti-abortion views.

It would be easy to dismiss his recent interventions on abortion as controversy for controversy's sake. But real women's lives are at stake in all this. And, as Mehdi seems to determined not to let the issue rest, is important to nail some of the misapprehensions behind his arguments and those of his new-found friends on the right.

He is, of course, entitled to be personally anti-abortion. There are numbers of women, who whilst they strongly support a right to choose, would not necessarily themselves exercise the choice to have an abortion. At the very least, many women who support a right to choose would find it a personally agonising decision. Nor do I argue that men don't have a right to a view on abortion. Furthermore they are welcome to try and persuade the women in their life on the subject. But Mehdi has gone one step further. As a journalist he has stepped into the public space to support the forces against a woman's right to choose.

Since publishing his column Mehdi has posed as a hapless victim. But, by lining up with anti-abortion forces, he is actually shoulder to shoulder with some of the most powerful forces in Western society. In Britain alone, he is siding with at least two major newspaper groups who campaign ceaselessly to undermine a woman's right to choose. The international anti-abortion group 40 Days for Life is currently praying outside no fewer than nine abortion clinics in Britain seeking to intimidate women from going in and giving out false information. The religious right in the Conservative Party is lavishly funded and on the offensive. And then there is the little matter of the worldwide Roman Catholic Church.

Mehdi argues that, although he supports the arguments of all these people, he is not actually calling for further legal restrictions. This is disingenuous. If your arguments reinforce one side in an important political fight, you cannot dissociate yourself from the practical consequences.

Mehdi insists on describing himself as pro-life. He apologises for using the phrase. But somehow he keeps on using it. So, by inference, the rest of us are death dealers. Or, as described in the quote from Christopher Hitchens he began his original column with, those in favour of a woman's right to choose are happy to: "Still a heartbeat, switch off a developing brain, break some bones and rupture some organs."

Mehdi has now apologised for quoting from Hitchens. But he has not apologised for framing the debate as a conflict between the rights of the unborn child and women's rights. Yet this is the classic right wing position and wholly dishonest. Mehdi doesn't seem to notice that the same people who agonise over the unborn child, often abruptly lose all interest in the child when it is actually born. The truth is that the real issue is women's rights over their own bodies. In the world of Mehdi's new right wing friends, men have absolute rights over their own bodies. But women? Not so much.

In defending his anti-abortion position Mehdi has frequently resorted to patronising putdowns. Often these have been directed at women, who had been offended by his remarks. He accused me of jumping on the right-to-choose bandwagon. Actually, I was marching to defend women's reproductive rights when Mehdi was in nappies. Which is presumably why he doesn't remember. But there is reason why I, and so many other women, feel strongly about a woman's right to choose. It is because any feminist, worth the name, knows that control over own bodies is ground zero for every educational, social and economic advance that women have made in the last century. Millions of women in poor countries around the world rely on the case being made that women are more than their reproductive function. Women's equality is based on the belief that we are more than walking/talking receptacles for the foetus.

But it is time to move our gaze from Mehdi Hasan and to the real threats to women's reproductive rights out there. There is no question, for instance, that by calling for 12 week time limits for abortions Jeremy Hunt has actually softened political opinion up for cuts in abortion time limits that are a little less drastic but equally have no basis in medical opinion. Marie Stopes is opening a new clinic in Belfast, which is already being threatened by anti-abortionists. And the "40 Days for Choice" campaign is trying to raise awareness of increasing intimidation by anti-abortionists.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1947515 2012-10-08T06:09:43-04:00 2012-12-08T05:12:01-05:00

Diane Abbott http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-abbott/
The relief was partly because a delayed result had meant hours of suspense. In Venezuela you have to let everyone who is queuing to vote cast their vote, even after the polls have officially closed. We election monitors had witnessed the unprecedented lines of people queuing patiently to cast their vote. This big turn-out meant many polling stations stayed open hours later than the advertised closing time and consequently delayed the announcement.

But, in the information vacuum, rumours were swirling around the city of Caracas that Chavez had in fact lost and this increased the tension. Nerves were also on edge because, although Chavez was used to facing a lavishly funded opponent with tacit support from the US, his opponents this time were united and the new opposition leader Henrique Capriles was young and dynamic. And Chavez himself had wrestled with cancer for over a year.

The election was not just a big event for Venezuela. It was a vital election for Latin America and the Caribbean. Chavez was the beginning of a wave of democratically elected centre-left leaders in Latin America including Lula in Brazil, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Argentina's Christina Fernandez.He has also helped the region in practical ways making oil available to cash strapped Caribbean countries on favourable terms (including the United States' bête noire Cuba). A defeat for Chavez would have been a disaster for the centre-left in the region and a victory for US neo-conservatives.

So the Venezuelan Electoral Commission flooded the country with independent election monitors like myself, to make sure that the election process was not just free and fair but seen to be so. If Chavez won again they wanted no excuse for a repeat of the 2002 Bush inspired coup. In fact, in a day touring polling stations, I observed that their state-of-the-art voting system is far less susceptible to fraud and impersonation than the system in Britain. There are no postal votes, no proxy votes, you identify yourself with fingerprints and the electronic process offers you a receipt for your vote so that you know that it has been recorded properly and not got lost in the system.

The ballot papers also feature a full colour photograph of every candidate so there is no question of voting for the wrong candidate by mistake. It is worth considering that, if such a system had been in operation in the 2000 Florida presidential election, Gore might have won Florida and recent American political history might have been very different. And far from opposition media being suppressed, virtually every leading paper supported Chavez' opponent. Along with other election observers, I spoke to representatives of the opposition party at every polling station we visited. They agreed the system was indeed free and fair.

Western critics of Chavez often forget his substantial achievements for the poor of Venezuela. Deaths in childbirth have gone down from 20in a 1000 to 13 in a 1000. Unemployment has gone down from 14.5% to 7.6% and the number of Venezuelans in extreme poverty has dropped from 23.4% to 8.5%.

It is those numbers and the big improvements in the life-chances of the poor that explain the undying loyalty of ordinary Venezuelans to Chavez. He is also non-white in a country which, although racially diverse, has traditionally been run by European elites. Poor Venezuelans identify passionately with Chavez.

The Chavez regime has its problems; including crime, corruption and the unremitting hostility of the United States. Perhaps the biggest problem is the health of Chavez himself. If his cancer were to return, there is no succession plan.

But last night in the balmy Venezuelan night air, as the city of Caracas erupted with joy around us, there could be no doubt that the poor of Venezuela saw a victory for Chavez as a victory for themselves.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1944666 2012-10-06T07:30:12-04:00 2012-12-06T05:12:01-05:00

Diane Abbott http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-abbott/
Their opinions on the time limits for abortions obviously have no basis in medical fact. The people best placed to know whether there is any scientific case for lowering time limits are doctors, specifically doctors that specialise in women and childbirth. But their representative body, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, has dismissed the need for lowering time limits out of hand. They argue that there is little sustainable evidence that the survival rates for babies born under 24 weeks have improved in any meaningful way. So there is no medical basis for what these Tories are saying.

We can also dismiss any notion that the Tory politicians, wading into the debate about abortion time limits, are concerned about the life chances of the unborn children. If the Coalition really cared about the life chances of children, unborn or otherwise, they would not be pursuing their current economic policies and welfare cuts. Whether it is cuts in support for breast feeding or slashing the Sure Start program, Coalition policy will make the lives of women and children that much harder.

The timing is the clue. Miller, Hunt, May et al have all chosen to talk about women's reproductive rights on the eve of Tory Party conference. This is about politics not medicine. These statements are a deliberate attempt to appeal to that wing of the Tory right which is obsessed with rolling back women's rights over their own bodies.

Those Tory right wingers like the idea of lowering time limits, because they believe it will bring down the number of abortions. Anti-abortion dogmatists know they can't win a straight fight on a woman's right to choose. So they are choosing to constrain women's rights by a "salami slicing" approach. Whether it is insisting on extra counselling for women seeking abortion (women already get counselling as a matter of course) or bringing down time limits, the idea is to gradually circumscribe women's rights. The Tory Christian right in parliament is persistent and well funded.

They represent a voting bloc that no ambitious Tory minister can afford to ignore. It will not have escaped Jeremy Hunt's attention that by appealing to his own right-wing on an issue like abortion, it buttresses his still shaky position. Despite Cameron's gesture of faith in him by making him health secretary at all, Hunt still needs all the friends he can get. Who knows what Leveson may bring. Hunt must realise that he cannot, in practise, bring the time limit down to 12 weeks. But he must calculate that it all creates pressure to bring down time limits at least as far as 20. He must also know the kudos it will bring him in right wing Tory circles by being seen to lead that fight.

Women's reproductive rights present a range of issues that need to be dealt with calmly, objectively and on the basis of the available medical evidence. Instead leading Tories are jumping into the debate on the basis of their own subjective views. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) has called the Health Secretary's intervention 'insulting to women'. It is more than that.

Leading Tory politicians are intervening in a difficult issue, with no regard for medical opinion, for the crudest of political motives. Britain does not need a toxic American-style politicised debate on abortion with politicians trying to outdo each other in appeals to the religious right. Women deserve better. "]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1183805 2012-01-04T19:00:00-05:00 2012-03-05T05:12:02-05:00

Diane Abbott http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-abbott/
Everybody now wants to claim credit. But I knew the Lawrence campaign from the early days when nobody was interested and they soldiered on by themselves. Stephen had been murdered in 1993. I went on to try and help them in whatever practical ways that I could. And I was the first MP to raise Stephen Lawrence on the floor of the House of Commons. In 1996, when their private prosecution collapsed, they thought all hope was lost.

Another family might have given up. But I, together with the late Bernie Grant, took them to see the then Shadow Home Secretary Jack Straw. He was so impressed by Doreen Lawrence and her quiet determination that he promised her a public inquiry. When Labour was elected the following year, he delivered on his promise and the MacPherson Inquiry took the Stephen Lawrence campaign to another level.

So it is not Paul Dacre, the Daily Mail or even the police who are to be congratulated on the successful prosecutions. It is Neville and Doreen Lawrence themselves and their courage and endurance that brought us to where we are today.

Some people are claiming that the sentencing of Dobson and Norris is a vindication for the British system of criminal justice. But they need to remember that at least of the three of the five killers still remain at large.

Even more important, if the police had done their job properly in the first place, Doreen and Neville would not have had to wait nearly 20 years for justice. In the past 24 hours of television coverage, you only have to look at her face in the photographs of Doreen Lawrence 20 years ago and see her face now, to see the terrible personal price she has paid in 20 years of agony.

The convictions may be a partial vindication of Neville and Doreen's long struggle. But nothing will bring their son back.

It is also important to remember that, although some things have changed since the death of Stephen Lawrence, many things remain the same.

The fundamental reason why the police did such a shoddy job in the first two investigations was that they simply did not take the case seriously. It was just another dead young black man.

Dwayne Brooks was Stephen's friend and was with him when he was killed. He describes how traumatised he was by the dismissive attitude of the police and the way he was treated like a suspect rather than a victim.

Sadly the demonisation of young black men by the police and the wider society continues to this day. Senior policeman now may 'talk the talk' on diversity and racial justice. And police murder investigations in general are more professional than they were 20 years ago. But, at a grassroots level, young black men's experience of the police has not improved much in the 20 years. There has also been a concerted effort by both Labour and Conservative politicians to unpick important Macpherson recommendations designed to make stop and search a less obviously racially biased process.

So this week's convictions are not the end of anything. They should be the beginning of a process where politicians revisit the Macpherson report and the whole society admits that fighting institutional racism in the police force has a long way to go.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.1097639 2011-11-16T18:00:00-05:00 2012-01-16T05:12:02-05:00

Diane Abbott http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-abbott/
Yesterday's figures for youth unemployment were truly shocking. At over a million, youth unemployment is the highest that it has ever been.

In Hackney alone, since January there has been a 80.6% rise in young people on the dole for over six months. These figures are not just a challenge for national politicians, they are a personal tragedy for each and every young person affected.

And although unemployment is difficult at any age, for young people it is particularly problematic.

All the evidence is that, for young men and women who leave college or university and cannot get a job, their future prospects are bleak. For every year they go without a job, their prospects of getting one get worse and they run the risk of long-term unemployment.

A whole generation may be doomed to a lifetime on the fringes of the job market.

The government talks about apprenticeships and mentoring. But the brutal fact is that the jobs are not there. Ministers want older workers to work on past 65. This in itself means there are fewer opportunities for younger people.

But the cuts in the public sector are slashing jobs which the private sector cannot replace. Neo-liberal economic theory says that if you slash the public sector the private sector will grow.

In reality cuts in the public sector also affect private sector jobs in areas like building and construction, that depend on public sector contracts for schools etc.

And public sector cuts also shrink opportunity in private sector service industries like retail and restaurants, that rely on public sector workers with money to spend.

And if the situation is bad for young people in general, it is even worse for young people in the inner city, and for black and minority young men.

This is partly because the public sector cuts are hitting the most multicultural inner city areas in Britain hardest.

BME young people have always had higher unemployment levels than white young people with exactly the same qualifications. Almost half of black people aged between 16 and 24 are unemployed, compared with 20% of white people of the same age.

So a collapse in youth employment, which is tragic for young people in general, is a disaster for BME youth.

These youth employment figures are a particular betrayal, because they largely represent young people with qualifications who are looking for a job.

In areas like Hackney, thousands of disaffected young people with no qualifications do not even bother to register as unemployed. They are another and distinct problem. But it is notably cruel for this government to tell young people who have worked hard and studied (and often piled up considerable debt) that there are no jobs for them.

George Osborne is doggedly pursuing policies designed to appease bankers and the bond markets. But he is ignoring the need to grow the economy and provide jobs for our people. He has to be prepared to rethink his policies. Otherwise the disturbances this summer may be only a foretaste of what is to come from a generation this government seems to have abandoned. ]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.997922 2011-10-06T10:00:00-04:00 2011-12-06T05:12:02-05:00

Diane Abbott http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-abbott/
And the nutrition crisis for Britain's children is partly driven by unaccountable and out-of-control marketing by fast food multinationals, whose only real concern is profit.

So research published today by the Journal of Paediatrics about the influence of advertising on young people's food choices makes for urgent reading for policy makers. The study suggests that even with children as young as three, advertising influences on children's healthy food choices can be considerable. This research also reveals that parental influence has only a small moderating influence on the effect of advertising.

Britain has its fattest ever generation of children. A quarter of children are overweight by the time they start primary school. By the time that they leave, the proportion has risen to a third. Childhood obesity is not "puppy fat" which children can be expected to grow out of. Fat children are likely to become fat adults. There are a range of chronic conditions associated with poor nutrition and obesity ranging from diabetes to cancer. Not only can these health conditions ruin your quality of life, but they are costing the NHS millions to treat. Diabetes drugs alone take up the greater part of the drugs bill in some parts of the UK.

We cannot leave parents to struggle alone against the influence of advertising by food multinationals. The last Labour government took an important first step by banning junk food advertising from programmes aimed at four to nine year olds.

Yet the current Conservative Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, appears to be heading backwards on the issue of public health and nutrition. He has cut funding for the important public health program "Change4Life" and has slashed budgets for public health information campaigns.

There is also alarm at his refusal to ban trans-fats, whilst other countries take bold steps to do this. And he is ever more reliant on working with the food industry. He sets great store by his "responsibility deals" with retailers and manufacturers.

But health groups and organisations like the British Medical Association are walking way from these arrangements. They argue that these deals are tantamount to Lansley allowing drinks companies and fast food outlets to write government policies. The chaos of this government's NHS reorganisation means that progress that may have been made locally by means of innovative programmes on nutrition and health, may be lost as PCTs disappear and a range of private providers come on the scene.

Lansley argues that nutrition is all about people taking personal responsibility. He derides the idea of the "nanny state". In 2008, he even told the country that there is 'no excuse for people to be too fat.' But how can, even the most well intentioned parents take responsibility when research like the report published today shows how powerful the influence of advertising is?

We must take action to stop fast food multinationals driving a wedge between British parents and their children. The government needs to be on British parents' side in the battle to ensure our children's health and well-being. This means much more pro-active policies than Lansley has been prepared to contemplate so far. It took decisive government action to protect children in the last century from the scourge of diseases like rickets. It will take a far-reaching government programme to protect this century's children from the scourge of obesity related disease. ]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.961846 2011-09-14T19:00:00-04:00 2011-11-14T05:12:01-05:00

Diane Abbott http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-abbott/
It was heartbreaking to be out on the streets of Hackney as areas like the Pembury estate in Hackney became engulfed in flames, with years of incremental progress burning grotesquely for an international audience. But Hackney and its people are resilient, and the progress Hackney has made is resolute.

Cuts do not make criminals. Poverty does not make criminals either. Clearly, the causes are long-term, complex and difficult to confront. So we must ask, without fear or hesitation, why and how this happened. Because we must be sure, with people's livelihoods at stake in a fragile economy, unnecessary tensions whipped up and with the Olympics on the horizon, that this does not happen again.

This week, Theresa May, the Home Secretary stated glibly that it is 'not helpful for politicians to speculate' about what went wrong, and that 'I'm absolutely clear that what underlay it was criminality.' David Cameron's analysis also puts the riots down to "criminality" pure and simple. And stops there. It says that to explain is to excuse.

But people in Hackney have invested more thought into the riots. Now is not the time for kneejerk responses, simplistic answers and the blanket condemnation of parts of British society, because it paints a distorted picture.

We must accept and acknowledge, to begin with, that Britain is failing to provide many of our most precious urban communities with meaningful occupations and hope for the future. For many people who were rioting, that week was a rejection of the future that was laid out for them. Economic inequality, consumerism and savage government cuts have given many poorer, urban communities a profound sense of hopelessness for the future.

The availability of media and information exchange has seen immeasurable advances for the lifestyles and opportunities for some of the poorest people in the country. Yet it is mass consumerism and aspects of our media that has eroded and replaced many of the social structures that the communities grew out of - relentless advertising, MTV and instant messaging has often seemingly replaced family networks, educational commitments and community gatherings.

Yet many of these issues are not confined to our urban communities. Far from it. It was an adrenaline-based 'get rich or die trying' culture that was the fuel for both the banking crisis, and for some of the riots on our streets.

Those bankers who dragged the economy into recession made the same misjudgements and miscalculations as those people who took to the streets to drag the country into despair. In many cases, both groups believed that they had found a short cut to wealth in the face of a rapidly changing economy. Tragically, both made the awful miscalculation that there would be no consequences.]]>