20% More People Die Early In The North

Around 37,000 more people a year go to their graves early in the North compared with the South.
Those living in places such as Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Tyne & Wear are 20% more likely to die before their time.
Every age group in the North is affected by a higher chance of a premature death.
And the difference in the numbers dying under 75 is at a 40 year high.
The report warns: “The North is being decimated at the rate of a major city every decade”.
The study, published in the British Medical Journal, says the biggest rise has been in the 20 to 34 age group, which has leapt to a 22% difference between North and South from level rates in 1965.
The study collated data from 1965 to 2008 which showed a persistent life expectancy gap of 14% over four decades, with men suffering more at 15% compared with women at 13%.
But the key figure was the current 20% gap in overall deaths under 75.

High Suicide Rate Due To Unemployment

Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
(Thomas Edison)

Life expectancy on the Gurnos estate in Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales, is 20 years below the UK average – the same as it was for British men in the 1930s depression.
Men here can expect to live only 58.8 years.
The grim statistics are blamed on poor diet, heavy smoking and a high suicide rate due to unemployment.

‘They almost earn nothing but if I put them next to my hedge-fund friends, I know who is happier’.
(Actor Hugh Grant on the nurses who cared for his mother in her last days).

Gum Disease Can Cause Stroke

Stroke is caused by a disturbance of blood supply to the brain.

The most common type is an ischemic stroke, which occurs when a blood vessel that normally delivers oxygen and nutrients to the brain is blocked.

An haemorrhagic stroke is when a blood vessel bursts, causing bleeding into the brain.

In any stroke the nerve cells in the affected area of the brain may die within minutes of being denied oxygen, leading to impairment of bodily functions.

An estimated 150,000 people have a stroke in Britain each year, leading to about 53,000 deaths annually.

Some studies have suggested a link between Periodontal disease and heart disease.

Periodontal diseases range from gum inflammation to diseases that damage the tissue and bone that support the teeth.

Gum disease is one of the main causes of tooth loss after the age of 40.

Research into heart disease has shown that micro-organisms associated with gum disease have been found in atheromas – accumulation of calcified material – in the arteries of patients.

It has been suggested that toxins in these micro-organisms damage cells in the lining of the arteries.

One theory is that periodontal disease may cause inflammation in the arteries and brain tissues, and cause greater amounts of compounds involved in clotting, and could result in a stroke.

Did God Once Have A Wife?

You might know him as Yahweh, Allah or God.
But on this fact, Jews, Muslims and Christians, the people of the great Abrahamic religions, are agreed: there is only one of Him.
He is a solitary figure, a single, universal creator, not one God among many.
Or so we like to believe.
Archaeological evidence including inscriptions, figurines and ancient texts as well as details in the Bible, indicate not just that he was one of several worshipped in ancient Israel, but that he was also coupled with a goddess.
She was worshipped alongside him in his temple in Jerusalem.
Yahweh, the God we have come to know, had to see off a number of competitors to achieve his position as the one and only God of the ancient Israelites.
The biblical texts name many of them: El, Baal, Molek, Asherah.
Despite Yahweh’s assertion in the Ten Commandments that ‘you shall have no other gods before me’, it appears these gods were worshipped alongside him, and the Bible acknowledges this.
Far more significant is the Bible’s admission that the goddess Asherah was worshipped in Yahweh’s temple in Jerusalem.
In the Book of Kings, we’re told that a statue of Asherah was housed in the temple and that female temple personnel wove ritual textiles for her.
In fact, although the Bible condemns all of these practices, the biblical texts suggest that goddess worship was a thriving feature of high-status religion in Jerusalem.
What, then, was her relationship to Yahweh?
Yahweh is often called ‘El’ in the Bible and he performs many of the same roles.
Despite numerous references to Asherah worship in the Bible, there wasn’t enough evidence to link her explicitly with the high god of ancient Israel, Yahweh.
Until, that is, the discovery of a remarkable ceramic inscription in the Sinai Desert.
Dating to about the 8th Century BC, the inscription is a petition for a blessing.
Crucially, the inscription asks for a blessing from ‘Yahweh and his Asherah’.
Here was evidence that presented Yahweh and Asherah as a divine pair.
Similar inscriptions have since been found, all of which help to strengthen the case that the God of the Bible once had a wife.

What We Call Crime They Call ‘Anti-Social Behaviour’

“Drunken aggressive behaviour has no place in Scotland”.
(Les Gray, Scottish Police federation Chairman).

Twenty boxes of human hair have been stolen from a wig factory.
Police said they are combing the area.

The huge amounts of anti-social behaviour revealed by the new police website, and previously unknown, solve the mystery of why official crime figures have been going down.
What we call crime, they call ‘anti-social behaviour’.
(Peter Hitchens).

‘Controversial’ Home Office Publication

Who said these words?
‘Approximately 20 to 33 per cent of child sexual abuse is homosexual in nature’.
I will tell you. It was the Home Office, on Page 14 of Sex Offending Against Children: Understanding The Risk, published by the Policing and Reducing Crime Unit in 1998.
I have a copy.
For saying roughly the same thing, Dr Hans-Christian Raabe has been sacked – by the Home Office – from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD).
That’s right. He has been sacked from a body to do with drugs, for having unfashionable views about sex, views that the Home Office has itself espoused.
This is the first known instance of anyone being fired from a Government post under the provisions of the Equality Act 2010, Section 149, though I don’t think it will be the last.
Dr Raabe is accused of having expressed ‘controversial’ views on homosexuality and of having ‘failed to declare them’, though they are traceable in seconds on the internet and he had no good reason to think they had anything to do with his appointment.
I have spent several days trying to discover exactly what the Home Office means by ‘controversial’ in this case, or who defines this word. No reply.
I think we should also wonder why it is a sacking offence, in a free society, to be controversial.
When I asked them if their own publication’s words on the subject were ‘controversial’, they wouldn’t say.
(Peter Hitchens)

One Day Your Life Will Change For Eternity

You sit there in your favourite chair,
Unconcerned of the suffering in the world,
Smugly enclosed between four walls.
You feel safe from life’s harsh realities
As you watch the latest news on television
And see pictures of death, famine and destruction.
You’re pleased the suffering is thousands of miles away
And has no effect on your daily life.
You pick up the remote control and quickly flick to another channel.
You find the news too depressing and cannot believe there is so much suffering in the world.
You spend the rest of the evening watching a film
And are too absorbed to think about other’s suffering.
You live your life in a world of familiarity and wallowing in the depths of complacency.
But one day your life will change for eternity.

Time Is Fleeting

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may
Old time is still a-flying
And the same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.

Art is long, and time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

An Offensive Package Of Pay And Bonuses

Defence Secretary Liam Fox revealed that a businessman was hired in December by the Government to tackle the waste and inefficiency at the Ministry of Defence.
Bernard Gray has been given the title Chief of Defence Material and is paid £220,000 a year in salary and as much as £30,000 in bonuses.
It is outrageous that the Ministry of Defence have hired a civil servant on such an offensive and obscene package of pay and bonuses, especially at a time when the Government is making massive cuts to our Armed Forces.
Is there nobody already employed by the Government, one of the Eton boys perhaps, that is capable or intelligent enough to do this job?

No One Sees The Emptiness

A silent grief that’s in my heart,
No human eye can trace.
For many a broken heart is hid,
Beneath a smiling face.
No one sees the heartbreak
That lies beneath my smile,
No one sees the emptiness
That’s with me all the while.
God bless you Mum. God bless you Dad.
I will always love and miss you
Until the day I die.