Chris Worfolk's Blog

Five Star Babies was a two part BBC documentary looking at Portland Hospital, a private maternity hospital in London. No expense is spared. The dining is gourmet, you get your own private consultant, and the birthing suites come with a lounge area for guests.

Having not been through the process myself, it’s hard to judge some aspects. For example, sending your baby off to the nursery for the first few days. If that was an option, I think I might take them up on that. As a new parent, I imagine I am going to want all the help I can get.

Other things just seemed downright strange though. Sending your new-born off for a clean and a nappy before holding it for example. That seems like a weird rich-person thing. In fact one of the most interesting confessions on the show was when one of the nannies admitted that she almost always saw the baby’s first smile, but would never tell the parents that.

There is also something about private healthcare. My dad told about the time my granddad went private for something. He needed pain relief and the doctor, rather than recommended what would be best, just gave them a price list. The quotes for epidurals, which come in at just under £1,000 if you are interested, reminded me of that.

As the show goes on, it just becomes silly. People redecorating entire floors, bringing in their own designers, making secret entrances and spending up to £250,000 reveal a deep problem with the growing income inequality in the UK. Do you need all of that? The answer is almost certainly, no.

Last week it was announced that the new polar research ship Boaty McBoatface would be named RRS Sir David Attenborough instead. True, NERC never promised they would name the ship after the most popular vote, but I think it still raises questions.

NERC is publicly funded, so you would think that they would want to serve the public as best they can. And the public had spoken. 124,109 votes were cast for Boaty McBoatface. The next in line was Poppy-Mai with 39,886 (which was the small child that married her father). David Attenborough collected only 11,203 votes, less than a tenth of what Boaty earned.

However, it was not to be. Jo Johnson said there were “more suitable” names, and that they would be selecting one of them. In the end, they settled on naming it after Sir David Attenborough. Attenborough is a British institution to be sure. However, if I was him, I would have sent a rather grumpy message pointing out that I was in fact not dead yet.

At the same time, we had our local elections. Turnout was around 45%. Most people did not even go out and vote. The situation is more dire in reality because it’s only 45% of those registered to vote: not everyone is registered, and some are even denied the right: prisoners and those under 18 years old for example. Only 69% of the population are registered to vote.

These are not the levels of participation on democracy that we would like to see.

Here is the tradegy: with Boaty McBoatface, people actually became excited about democracy. Young people were voting. People were sharing, and telling their friends to vote. It was worth basically nothing and yet people were engaging, excited and thought they would make a difference. Imagine if we could get that excitement about government elections.

There can be little argument against calling it Boaty McBoatface. Yes, it would be a ‘silly’ name. In what way does that affect the vessel’s ability to do science? The answer, is in no way. Nintendo named their console after taking a literal piss, and the Wii outsells both the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

But then a suit stands up and tells everyone that they have made the wrong choice. Forget what the public wants, we will pick a “more suitable” name for you. The powers that be have spoken, and respecting what the public wants is not on the agenda. No wonder nobody turns out to vote, they’re not even allowed to name a ship.

The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game is a 2007 book by Michael Lewis. I reviewed it in 2014 and in another post discussed my thoughts about the story.

In 2009, it was made into a film, which, after a recommendation from someone, I finally got round to watching. It shares quite a bit in common with the book, while at the same time concentrating exclusively on the relationship between Michael and Leigh Anne.

That is the whole thing. It is not, to Elina’s relief, a film about American football. Nor is it, to my disappointment, a film about economic theory. It is a drama revolving around those two characters, with almost everything else cut out.

I thought having read the book helped me out on a number of occasions during the film. A lot of things made sense to me because I had read the details in the book. You would miss them if you had not, but maybe you just wouldn’t notice.

This is a super-interesting speech if you are interested in technology, business, and the short-term future of our society. In it, Galloway discusses how the “big four”: Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook, are basically claiming all of the growth and all of the talent that the world is producing; redefining industries while at the same time concentrating wealth into even smaller pools.

Well done to all the Loony candidates that stood in the Welsh Assembly elections. The party received 5,743 votes over all, representing 0.6% of the votes. This is a 300% increase compared to 0.2% last time. Extrapolating that trend out…

We should have enough for a majority by 2036 (Labour were just short with 35% this time) and by 2041, which is only 25 years away, the party should have captured over 100% of Welsh voters.

It’s only one week away! Here is a quick round-up of the entries I will be watching out for.

United Kingdom

We have definitely put up a lot worse in our time. I think it would have worked better if it had kicked up into a dance routine with some fancy light show, but we’ll see. We scored 5 points last year, so basically anything would be good.

Sweden

I think this is a poor effort from Sweden. The bookies put them fairly high up, but I feel it lacks the magic of their recent winners.

Russia

Russia are strong favourites to win, at 2/1. It is a pretty good song. Still, I live in hope that the bad guys won’t win. Eurovision was designed as a contest to bring war-torn Europe together. It would be sorely ironic if it were in Russia next year, while Ukraine remains occupied by Russian forces.

Did you know, last year they used anti-booing technology for the first time ever to try and hide the anti-Russian boos. Imagine how loud they would have been without it!

France

France are the only other country with a chance of winning if Paddy Power is to believed. Almost as hot as Russia, leaving everyone else far in the distance. It’s a really upbeat song. It’s probably got my vote.

Finland

Last year, Finland entered a band of punk rockers with learning difficulties. They didn’t make it through the semi-finals. Now, I’m not saying that makes the whole of Europe simple-minded bigots. Clearly Finland have learned their lesson trying to be inclusive though, and dropped it in favour of a pretty typical Eurovision song. I like it, but the bookies don’t. It’s no Hard Rock Hallelujah, but it is a catchy tune.

Last month, I wrote an article calling out companies that had started using the Finnish baby box tradition to sell their wares.

Specifically, my criticism was that the Finnish system lowers infant mortality by acting as a bribe to get people to neuvola, the centres that provide all the antenatal and postnatal care. That is where the evidence-based benefit is. On top of that, giving good quality stuff to poorer parents may also help.

However, the there is no evidence the cardboard boxes themselves do anything (obviously, because it is just a cardboard box) and so selling them from webpages that show infant mortality graphs feels like taking advantage of scared parents to me. In fact, the box matters so little that the Finnish government will just give you cash instead, if you wish. The box is worth more, so most people choose that, but the key to the Finnish success is the adoption of the medical care.

Anyway, recap over.

After the post went up, Jennifer Clary, CEO of US-based Baby Box Co offered to have a chat to fill me on what they are doing. I took her up on the offer.

She said she fully accepted the boxes were not magic, but that they were trying to use them as an engagement tool to get more of the good stuff done. So while they love selling direct to consumers, the real opportunities are selling to healthcare providers and governments so that the boxes can be used in a way that is more Finnish.

In addition to their actual box products, they’re developing what they call “Baby Box University”. The idea is that they can partner with authorities, who get people to complete online courses and come out of the end with a certificate and a free baby box.

This sounds super because it fills in the missing gap in replicating Finland’s success. Infant mortality is lowered by developing educated parents who engage with healthcare programmes, and it sounds like what Baby Box Co are doing supports that.

In 2008 the European EPIC study began to publish their results. The study followed over half a million people and follow-ups continue. However, one factor was clear from the moment that the results started coming in: your lifestyle choices have a big impact on your life expectancy. A paper published in PLoS Med placed the figure at 14 years.

In 2014, BMC Medicine published a paper that broke down the factors into life expectancy years.

What should we take from this? Nobody would contest that smoking is bad for you, so that is an easy one.

According to the data, the next biggest factor is maintaining a healthy body weight. This probably makes sense. In order to maintain a healthy body weight you have to eat sensibly and exercise, so it is not surprising that this correlates with a longer life expectancy.

Heavy drinking reduces your life expectancy. Interesting, this does not mean that you should cut out alcohol. Non-drinkers actually have the lowest life expectancy. It’s not much worse than being a heavy drinker, but nor is it an improvement. The longest life expectancy are those that drink moderately.

Finally, diet plays a factor too. The EPIC study, and other studies around the world are clear that processed meat takes years off your life. Red meat probably does too. Whether you can eat white meat and fish is less clear. Most studies seem to suggest they have little to no impact. However, the Loma Linda University study suggests that there could be measurable health benefits in being vegetarian. The NHS has published a summary. It concludes that vegetarians have a longer life expectancy, and there is some support for this in the EPIC study as well.

At TED2013, Dan Pallotta made the case that we think about charities the wrong way. We judge them by what percentage of our donation goes to the ‘end cause’, and not on results. This prevents them from competing with for-profit business because they cannot spend big on hiring the best people, marketing and fundraising.

A number of these points resonate with me.

First, I choose to work in the private sector, rather than the third sector. I suspect I might enjoy working for a charity more than I enjoy my current job. However, just like Pallotta points out, it is simply far more profitable for me to do it this way round. By earning a good salary in the private sector I am able to feed my family and have enough left over to fund my foundation.

Second, in my time being involved in CWF, I know I have had thoughts, and probably conversations, along the lines of “how will that affect our charitable spending?” This means we have a great spending ratio, 93.8% in our last financial year, but essentially means that we could well have made some bad decisions in order to keep this number high.

This month’s talk at West Yorkshire Humanists was John ‘Compost’ Cossham talking about “The Problem with Methane”.

John gave the same talk at Leeds Skeptics a year ago, and I came away with the same gloomy feeling this time, even though I knew what was coming. We are totally fucked. If we think we have fucked up the climate this far, wait until the feedback loops kick in. Climate change causes methane release, that causes more climate change.

John however, is much more upbeat. He is confident that we can change society, reduce our carbon footprint and continue boldly on as a species. He says the world can support all 7,000,000,000 of us, as long as we live in an ecological way. This was heartwarming because in the back of my mind I always wondered whether our population could actually be sustainable in the long term.

After the talk we held our usual social in The George, which was well attended also.