Steer clear of Manchester to avoid an early grave

Manchester tops the league of premature deaths - with the highest rate of people dying before their time, according to new figures. They show the best place to avoid an early demise is the market town of Wokingham in Berkshire, with the lowest level of avoidable deaths in England.

The north-south divide is laid bare in a national league table published today of premature deaths under the age of 75 over a two-year period. But England also fares badly in a European league table of premature mortality in 17 countries in 2010.

Women in England have the third worst rate - with only Belgium and Denmark doing more badly - and men are seventh for avoidable deaths, according to data released earlier this year.

The new Longer Lives league table website from Public Health England ranks 150 local authorities using a traffic light system, ranging from red for the worst areas to green for the best. There are 103,000 avoidable early deaths in England each year, with four major killers including heart disease and cancer responsible for 75 per cent of those deaths.
In Manchester, there were 455 premature deaths per 100,000 people from 2009 to 2011 - more than twice as many as the best performing area of Wokingham with 200 such deaths in the same period.
Manchester has the highest death rate from cancer in the country, with 152 deaths per 100,000 people recorded, as well as from heart disease and stroke, with 116 deaths per 100,000 people. But Blackpool has the highest rates for liver and lung disease, with 39 and 62 premature deaths per 100,000 in that time.

The new Longer Lives league table website from Public Health England ranks 150 local authorities using a traffic light system, ranging from red for the worst areas to green for the best.

There are 103,000 avoidable early deaths in England each year, with four major killers including heart disease and cancer responsible for 75 per cent of those deaths. England is seventh out of 17 European countries for men and 15th for women.

The peer ranking shows Rotherham, Redcar and Cleveland are doing well among the most deprived areas, while Bracknell in Berkshire and Central Bedfordshire have some of the highest rates of early death in the least deprived areas.

Under the NHS reforms, local councils have been given new responsibilities to enhance public health in their catchment areas. The new website aims to give them information about the current situation in their region so health funding can be spent where it is most needed.

HMV is finally out of administration

I have reacently receaved an e-mail informing customers that HMV is officialy out of administration. The in the email it says:

"As you are no doubt aware, HMV went into administration on 15 January 2013, however we are pleased to inform you that the company is officially out of administration and we're moving forward with the business."

This email was sent to me on 13 April 2013

Original e-mail

In total there was 141 stores in the UK that was saved and here is the full list of stores that was saved.

1. Aberdeen
2. Ayr
3. Banbury
4. Bangor (Wales)
5. Basingstoke
6. Basildon
7. Bath
8. Belfast Donegall Arcade
9. Birmingham Bullring
10. Blackpool
11. Bluewater
12. Bournemouth
13. Bradford
14. Brighton
15. Bristol Broadmead
16. Bristol Cribbs Causeway
17. Bromley
18. Bury
19. Bury St Edmunds
20. Cambridge
21. Canary Wharf
22. Canterbury
23. Cardiff
24. Carlisle
25. Chelmsford
26. Cheltenham
27. Chester
28. Chichester
29. Colchester
30. Coventry
31. Crawley
32. Cwmbran
33. Darlington
34. Derby
35. Doncaster
36. Dudley Merry Hill Centre
37. Dundee
38. Eastbourne
39. East Kilbride
40. Edinburgh Fort
41. Edinburgh Ocean Terminal
42. Edinburgh Princes Street
43. Exeter
44. Gateshead
45. Glasgow Argyle Street
46. Glasgow Buchanan Street
47. Glasgow Fort
48. Gloucester
49. Grimsby
50. Guernsey (St.Peter Port)
51. Guildford
52. Hanley (Stoke-on-Trent)
53. Harlow
54. Harrogate
55. Hastings
56. Hatfield
57. Hereford
58. High Wycombe
59. Horsham
60. Hull
61. Inverness
62. Ipswich
63. Islington
64. Isle of Man (Douglas)
65. Isle of Wight (Newport)
66. Jersey (St.Helier)
67. Kettering
68. King's Lynn
69. Kingston-Upon-Thames
70. Leamington Spa
71. Leeds Headrow
72. Leeds White Rose
73. Leicester
74. Lincoln
75. Liverpool Liverpool One
76. Livingston
77. Llandudno
78. Maidstone
79. Manchester 90 Market Street
80. Manchester Trafford Centre
81. Mansfield
82. Middlesbrough
83. Milton Keynes
84. Newcastle
85. Newport (Wales)
86. Northampton
87. Norwich Chapelfield
88. Norwich Gentlemen's Walk
89. Nottingham Victoria Centre
90. Nuneaton
91. Oxford
92. Oxford Circus 150 Oxford Street, London W1
93. Peterborough
94. Poole
95. Portsmouth Commercial Road
96. Portsmouth Gun Wharf
97. Preston
98. Plymouth
99. Reading Oracle Centre
100. Romford
101. Selfridges Oxford Street, London W1
102. Sheffield High Street
103. Sheffield Meadowhall
104. Shrewsbury
105. Solihull
106. Southampton
107. Southend
108. Southport
109. Speke Park (Liverpool)
110. Staines
111. Stevenage
112. Stirling
113. Stockport
114. Stratford-Upon-Avon
115. Sunderland
116. Sutton
117. Swansea
118. Taunton
119. Thanet
120. Thurrock
121. Truro
122. Tunbridge Wells
123. Uxbridge
124. Westfield London Stratford City
125. Westfield London W12
126. Wimbledon (hmvcurzon)
127. Winchester
128. Wolverhampton
129. Worcester
130. Worthing
131. Yeovil
132. York

Fopp Stores

1. Bristol
2. Cambridge
3. Edinburgh
4. Glasgow, Byres Road
5. Glasgow, Union Street
6. London - Covent Garden
7. London - Gower Street
8. Manchester
9. Nottingham

All for one and one for all

Imagine that you’re a student and you use the local transport to get to school, college, university or workplace. Then you use your ID badge to get in. At lunch you decide to go into town and get your food from a nearby sandwich bar and gain points on your loyalty card.

After a while you start to get confused with all the different badges and cards that you own. Only if there was just one card that you could use for just about anything.

This is not a dream, it has become reality in some countries. In Taiwan they have a "Easycard" and they use it for almost everything. From tracking students' attendance to pay for parking. But Taiwan isn't the only place that has this system. In Hong Kong they have a similar system called the "Octopus".

The Octopus card was first set up to use for MTR and most bus routes in Hong Kong. Once it became widely used, the Octopus card started to be used to pay for goods in shops and vending machines. Many schools started to use them to track there students and there attendance.

There have been failed attempts to have the same system set up here in the UK with the "Oyster" card. Mainly because there wasn't a large enough demand for it and no one was aware that it had happened.

The Easycard is currently in talks with smart-cards providers in other Asian countries, including Octopus in Hong Kong, Ez-link in Singapore and T-Money in South Korea but there have been concerns in Taiwan and Hong Kong that people may feel uneasy to use one card everywhere.

Husband and father of two from Taiwan said "We like our Easycard because it's very convenient," he said.

"But who knows what the other governments think - I'd feel uneasy to use one card everywhere. And how would they manage the conversion rate - if I use my Easycard with Taiwanese dollars on it in Japan, the card will be empty in seconds."

Security is more of an issue when the Easycard is also used as an ID card. Then it shows the owner's name and picture - and it could allow an intruder into your office.

"In that case, losing it would be just like losing your keys, you have to act swiftly and call Easycard to cancel it right away." says Jason Chen, from security company Sophos, in Taipei.

"The money on your card can be stolen, for example by using a dongle to make false transactions - but we can identify whether the card reader was issued by our company. We only accept transactions from our card readers."

Once somebody hacked one of the cards and loaded it with more - fake - money. As soon as the card was used, the company spotted the fraud and alerted police.

100% Beef...or is that Horse

In the recent discoveries of horse meat in the processed beef products. In some cases it was 100% horse.

This time there have been discoveries that some of the horse were not fit for human consumption. For example, the horse might be medicated with medication that will harm the human, even after the proses of cooking it. This has raised concern. The blame is on the supermarkets at the moment. It is said that they should know what is in there product and should properly label it. 

But shouldn't we be pointing the finger at the FSA (Food Standard Agency). They are the people that should be checking the food that enter the UK.

They were the ones that had discovered the horse meat but it's already in the mince and being sold in many major supermarkets. They don't know how long that the horse meat been sold in the supermarkets.

A spokesperson said that the FSA has, is that they pre-warne the company that they are going to visit.

So who is it that we point the finger at? Who do we blame for not finding out whats in the products?

Horse Burger

For the past few weeks there have been a lot in the news about horse meat in products calming that it is beef, mainly in Europe. But is horse meat actually bad for you?

I don't have a problem eating horse meat but I am only 1 person out of the 63 million people that live in the UK. Yet they are emptying all of there own brand meat products in the freezer sections that have any mention of beef.

This I say is wast of good food. Ok there are concerns about health risks because we don't know where the horse has come from and the sort of the things that the horse might of been given before it was made into mince or a burger (e.g. any medication that could harm humans).

That still wouldn't stop me eating these products. There is a problem that some of the products were 100% horse and on the packet it say beef. Which means that it goes against the food labelling regulations in the UK they would face legal action against them.

Medically there is nothing wrong with eating horse it's just us Brits has a moral issue against eating them. Some physiologist's  say that, it's because we used to use them as main sources of transport and work animals and we have bonded closely with them. Other say that its because we call them pets and there is something set in our minds that tells us that it is wrong to eat pets.

If people say that it is morally wrong to eat one thing and it's fine to eat another, you have to ask yourself where do you cross the line?

Dragon's Den Buy's Collapsing Company's

The collapsed High Street camera retailing brand Jessops has been bought by a group including entrepreneur and Dragons' Den star, Peter Jones. This dose not mean that the chain is going to reopen. The part of the deal covering "certain other assets" is understood to mean leftover stock and intellectual property.

There may think that it might be financially possible to reopen the chain but they are not forced to do so. The amount paid to take control of the brand has not been disclosed. When Jessops collapsed earlier this month it closed its 187 branches with the loss of 1,500 jobs. The firm had suffered in recent years due to competition from on line retailers.

There have also been mentions that another Dragons' Den star, Theo Paphitis was considering buying HMV. Earlier this month, Theo Paphitis had suggested that he had no interest in the ailing entertainment retailer, after he claimed on Twitter that it had "no reason to exist anymore".

But according to the Daily Mail, Theo Paphitis is now interested in buying the chain, which went into administration earlier this month. They also claim that HMV has sent out information out to 20 parties potentially interested in investing and expects to receive offers by the end of this week.
Theo Paphitis said: "My interest for HMV harks from an era that thinks, 'What a great brand. Often I have looked at things and thought 'Is there something there?".

UK Leaving the European Union

There have been mentions on if United Kingdom should leave the European Union. This was mentioned by Conservative Party leader, David Cameron. He hasn't mention if we should or shouldn't, which makes you think if he is up to the job if he cannot make these kind of decisions himself. It's like that he has other people make the decisions for him and then he cotes it with sugar with his over educated words that would confuse the average person.

The problem with the UK leaving the EU is that it would decrees the amount of trade that we have with the rest of Europe. This would hit hard on the UK finance.

Personaly I would stay in the EU.