Sally Davies, a former chief medical officer for England, echoes the fears of so many experts and commentators, informed by the research of Michael Marmot, among others (Last time Britain was this sick, drastic action was taken. This time, politicians don’t seem to care, 18 August). Low productivity, stagnant wages, austerity and the steady dismantling of public institutions leads vast swathes of the UK population down the road of poverty, poor diet, ill health, educational failure, menial employment, substandard housing and state dependency.
The links between gross inequality, overwhelmed healthcare and our rapidly declining status as a western economy are plain to every politician, business leader and media mogul in the land, yet we collectively limp along, wallowing in our misery, in the naive belief that an election will put it to rights.
We need a radical redesign of taxation and wealth distribution to have any hope of creating a productive nation. Our current leaders need not apply for the job.
Rob Perrin
Andover, Hampshire
• The UK is sick, but to say politicians don’t care misses the point. The problem is a lack of vision and the entrenched belief on both sides of the political divide that the nation needs to be “productive” to pay for public services.
The paradigm needs reversing, so we invest in public services to make ourselves productive. The triad of inactivity, obesity and misery blights our society, with the barometer being the 7.5 million people on NHS waiting lists in England. Add to that stress and debt, and it is easy to see why the UK is not a happy place for many.
Rich people live nearly a decade longer than their poor counterparts and have up to 17 years extra free from chronic disease.
The solution is straightforward. First, create safe, clean, green environments, particularly in urban areas, where people can be physically and socially active; and second, give those who are disadvantaged in society exactly the same opportunities, via quality public services, that rich folk take for granted.
Ewan Hamnett
Birmingham
• One of the omissions in Sally Davies’s article is how poverty impacts on people’s health and mental wellbeing, and whether they will develop serious illness in later life. The reference to “better diets, more physical activity, less smoking and drinking, quality housing, good jobs, and healthcare as focused on prevention as it is on cure” is all subject to money, and whether you have it or not.
Better health is not fundamental to a fairer, more secure and more prosperous UK – it is the other way round: achieving a fairer, more secure, and more prosperous UK is fundamental to achieving better health.
Angela Vnoucek
Shrewsbury, Shropshire
• The last time Britain was “the sick man of Europe”, Margaret Thatcher’s diagnosis of the cause was the lazy, unionised, working class, for which she prescribed rampant capitalism. More than 40 years of this brutal regime seems to have caused us to become sick again. We have witnessed the easily predicted outcomes of laissez-faire economics, widening inequality being the central cause of our declining health. It sows despair in too many of us. Piecemeal social engineering will not cure a disease that needs major surgery.
Dr James Andrade
St Albans, Hertfordshire
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