Tougher food labels urged to tackle rise in obesity
THEY ARE the tragedies that helped define Britain through the centuries – their landscapes scarred by conflict and disaster.
From Marston Moor to the Great Fire of London, they bore witness to wholesale catastrophe and individual grief.
Today, Historic England has added Sheffield’s Hillsborough Stadium to the list.
It said the ground, at which 96 people died as police lost control of an 1989 FA Cup match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, belonged on its register of England’s most important historical sites of loss and destruction.
The list, part of a project to designate 100 places, in 10 categories, that encapsulate the nation’s past, also takes in Whitby Abbey and Sheffield’s Farfield Inn, a lone survivor of a forgotten disaster that washed away hundreds of homes.
The sites were among those chosen by the historian Mary Beard, from a raft of public nominations.
She said: “It has reminded me how important it is to remember and to memorialise tragedy.”
The Hillsborough disaster is the most recent event on the register. It was the worst sporting disaster in British history, and its aftermath was a generation-long campaign for justice that has yet to fully play out.
In 2016 a coroner’s jury ruled that the 96 Liverpool supporters were unlawfully killed – a decision that could still see a charge of manslaughter against police.
Ms Beard said: “This is such a powerful symbol of human tenacity in pursuit of justice after terrible loss of life.” Her list also takes in the
which sank in the Solent in 1545, and London’s Crystal Palace, which burned to the grodisasterund in 1936.
Whitby Abbey is included both for its destruction during the sacking of the monasteries under Henry VIII and for the hit it took from German warships in December 1914.
Ms Beard said the abbey was “one of the most striking instanc- es in the country of the haunting beauty of ruins.”
Sheffield’s second monument to tragedy, the Farfield Inn on Neepsend Lane, on the banks of the Don, is less recognisable.
It was all that remained when, in 1864, the Dale Dyke dam burst and 650m gallons of water engulfed the Loxley and Don valleys. The flood killed at least 250 people and destroyed hundreds of homes, factories, shops, mills and bridges.
Matilda Mason, the pub’s landlady, was trapped upstairs as floodwater swirled around the building.
In the aftermath, many survivors had to move out of the district and the pattern of working life there was permanently altered.
It was one of the biggest manmade disasters in Britain’s history, raising issues of corporate culpability and eventually handing responsibility for the water supply to local authorities.
The Grade II-listed Farfield was flooded again in 2007 and though in poor condition, was sold for £250,000 earlier this year.
Last month, Historic England published its Top 10 of England’s most important historical sites for music and literature, which included the Brontë Parsonage at Haworth alongside the EMI studios at Abbey Road in London, where The Beatles recorded. THE HEAD of NHS England has called on the Government to introduce tougher food labelling to tackle a spiralling obesity crisis.
Simon Stevens said obesity was rising even faster than in the US, with 70 per cent of the millennial generation predicted to be overweight or obese by the time they are aged 35 to 45.
The figure compares to 50 per cent of the baby boom generation.
Speaking at the Diabetes UK Conference in London, Simon Stevens said that after Britain quits the EU, the Government could no longer claim its “hands are tied” by EU regulations.
Mr Stevens said: “We are obviously going through a big debate about what the future of this country will look like after we leave the European Union.
“One of the flexibilities it would be good for the NHS to see being given careful consideration would be whether we can use our post-Brexit regulatory arrangements to take a more assertive stance on food labelling and other interventions that we know are going to help cut obesity.
“Hitherto, the argument had been that our hands are tied on some of these matters but if we are going to take back control of our regulations then let’s take back control of the fight against obesity.
“If we do that we are not only going to see big improvements for diabetes, we are going to see big improvements for other major conditions as well.”
Mr Stevens said much more action would be needed if the Government was going to meet its target of cutting 20 per cent of added sugar in children’s diets by 2020.
New research from Public Health England revealed that 82 per cent of the population thought the Government should do more to ensure manufacturers develop low-calorie products.
Mr Stevens said that clearer calorie labelling could slash the nation’s sugar intake by 12 per cent.
He said that if obesity levels could be cut it would dramatically improve not just the number of diabetes cases, but also cancer levels, as obesity is the second biggest cause of the disease.
Only 15 per cent of people were aware that being obese increases the risk of cancer.
Diabetes and associated problems cost the NHS £6bn each year to treat and one in six patients in hospital has the disease, according to NHS England.