Thursday, 22 December 2011
Homeless people in the UK revealed to have life expectancy of just 47
Homeless people can expect their lives to be about 30 years shorter than average, with a likelihood of dying at around 47, a life expectancy comparable to that in the Congo, according to a report by the charity Crisis.
Homelessness: A Silent Killer reports that homeless people in the UK who suffer the stresses and strains of alcoholism and substance abuse live only a little longer than those in the poorest countries, with the average age of death at 47 for men and 43 for women. This compares with 77 for the general population. The research, by Sheffield University, calculated that drug and alcohol abuse were responsible for just over a third of deaths among the homeless. They were also nine times more likely to kill themselves than the general public, and twice as likely to die of infections.
Leslie Morphy, chief executive of Crisis, said: "It is shocking … homeless people are dying much younger than the general population. Life on the streets is harsh and the stress of being homeless is clearly taking its toll. This report paints a bleak picture of the consequences homelessness has on people's health and wellbeing. Ultimately, it shows that homelessness is killing people." Crisis warned that current NHS services do not meet the needs of homeless people and are at risk under the government's reorganisation of the NHS.
The charity was concerned that even while the health service was seeing rising budgets, the homeless were not considered a priority and that in a time of flat funding it was "clear that more needs to be done to tackle the health inequalities that persist for homeless people".
Morphy added: "Homeless people are amongst the most vulnerable in our society and it is clear that despite significant investment in the NHS they are not getting the help they need to address their health issues. Government must do more to improve the health of single homeless people and ensure they can access mainstream and specialist services.
Alex Bax, chief executive of London Pathway, a specialist homeless charity that works closely with University College Hospital, said services would only improve if the health outcomes of homeless people were made an explicit priority for all of the NHS. A separate report reveals almost 70,000 children will wake up on Christmas Day in temporary accommodation, without a permanent home to call their own.
According to government figures highlighted by Shelter, the housing and homelessness charity, there are currently 69,846 children in England living in temporary accommodation such as hostels, bed and breakfasts and refuges. With waiting lists lengthening and the government's cuts to housing benefit, there are worries that swelling numbers living in temporary shelter will become a permanent feature.
Kay Boycott, Shelter's policy director, said: "It's simply not right that in an affluent nation like ours, thousands of children will wake up on Christmas day wanting nothing more than a permanent roof over their head. We cannot underestimate the damage homelessness has on children's lives. They often miss out on vital schooling, because they are shunted from place to place and many become ill by the poor conditions they are forced to live in."
Wednesday, 21 December 2011
fieldproducer Neal Mann
RT @anguswalkeritv #northkorea the excellent Ben Lim from Reuters reports Kim Jung Un will rule alongside his uncle Jang Song Thaek
RT @anguswalkeritv #northkorea the excellent Ben Lim from Reuters reports Kim Jung Un will rule alongside his uncle Jang Song Thaek
The wisdom of crowds
The answer is almost certainly to the right. Replay the same scene in many parts of Asia, however, and you would probably move to the left. It is not obvious why. There is no instruction to head in a specific direction (South Korea, where there is a campaign to get people to walk on the right, is an exception). There is no simple correlation with the side of the road on which people drive: Londoners funnel to the right on pavements, for example.
Instead, says Mehdi Moussaid of the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, this is a behaviour brought about by probabilities. If two opposing people guess each other’s intentions correctly, each moving to one side and allowing the other past, then they are likely to choose to move the same way the next time they need to avoid a collision. The probability of a successful manoeuvre increases as more and more people adopt a bias in one direction, until the tendency sticks. Whether it’s right or left does not matter; what does is that it is the unspoken will of the majority.
That is at odds with most people’s idea of being a pedestrian. More than any other way of getting around—such as being crushed into a train or stuck in a traffic jam—walking appears to offer freedom of choice. Reality is more complicated. Whether stepping aside to avoid a collision, following the person in front through a crowd or navigating busy streets, pedestrians are autonomous yet constrained by others. They are both highly mobile and very predictable. “These are particles with a will,” says Dirk Helbing of ETH Zurich, a technology-focused university.
Messrs Helbing and Moussaid are at the cutting edge of a youngish field: understanding and modelling how pedestrians behave. Its purpose is not mere curiosity. Understanding pedestrian flows makes crowd events safer: knowing about the propensity of different nationalities to step in different directions could, for instance, matter to organisers of an event such as a football World Cup, where fans from various countries mingle. The odds of collisions go up if they do not share a reflex to move to one side. In a packed crowd, that could slow down lots of people...
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