Chris Boardman calls for free bikes on the NHS

Chris_boardman wrote:

Hi Folks,

I'm afraid my comments weren't as radical as portrayed.

If you look at the original article, remove the headline and everything not in "" marks, you'll see what I actually said.

37000 people die each year from obesity related conditions at a cost of 5 billion to the NHS and rising. I said cycling could be a part of the solution. Which it could.

I might have had my words twisted but in Birmingham they do plan to make 5000 bikes freely available as part of their Cycling Revolution plans.....

Chris B

Maybe you should be saying 'free bikes on the NHS' - absolutely correct that transportation cycling has a much better chance of 'sticking' as exercise than almost anything else we've tried funding in the past 10 years for this problem.

Chris_boardman wrote:

I'm afraid my comments weren't as radical as portrayed.

If you look at the original article, remove the headline and everything not in "" marks, you'll see what I actually said.

Thanks for the clarification, Chris. Thought it was rather out of character.

Sidi 700c wrote:

This country is hostile to cyclists and we are treated as second class citizens on the road. We all know it.

Really?
There are lots of knob-heads on the road, we all know that. They come in/on all types of transport, we all know that. The idea that 'the country' is hostile to cyclists is stretching things... a lot

oozaveared wrote:

The trouble in the UK is that the NHS is seen as being a magical money tree. And yes you can say that spending this or that will save this or that amount of money sometime possibly in the future. But you still have to spend the money.

But its seen as a bottomless money pit for treating obesity, smoking, alcohol issues, and their related illnesses.

Yes, you still have to spend the money but you dont have to keep spending it on repeat treatments.

I'm not taking what CB has said as a final definitive solution but as more of a "it would be better spending the money on this than on that".

A better solution would be to massively increase tax on processed foods and reduce it on fresh produce. Make it ridiculously cheap to eat healthily. Use the revenue raised on processed food tax to fund obesity treatments. You want to eat shit? Then pay 'fat tax'.

oozaveared wrote:

And frankly this is also not going to work on the obese. All evidence of succesful weight reduction shows that the first thing necessary is that people need to be motivated.

Really? I'm sure that for people to accomplish ANYTHING in life they first need motivation (or is it as Roy Castle said "dedication"?)

oozaveared wrote:

The fact that they aren't in weight watchers, or don't exercise, have a gym membership, ride a bike, walk to the shops or to work is because they don't want to. They don't want to because they aren't motivated to.

Most people I know wont cycle because they perceive it to be too dangerous. They wont walk because its too convenient to drive.

Remove/Change those obstacles and you alter the culture

oozaveared wrote:

Buying them stuff or funding opportunities is unnecessary in most cases. if people are motivated to lose weight they will probably be motivated to do some exercise, buy a gym membership of a bike or just go walking. And if they aren't motovated to lose weight then providing those things is pointless because they won't use them. Either way it's a waste of public money.

Being overweight is not an access to exercise, issue. It's a mental issue along the lines of addiction and compulsion and the cure is not buying them a bike. It's sorting out their head so they want to lose weight and if you do that some of them may want to go buy their own bike because they want to ride it.

So it's a no on this one for me Chris.

A simple thing to do is close down the centre of London (and other towns & cities) every Sunday (or huge swathes of them) in a "Ciclovia" style event and run dance and exercise classes. Make it a weekly sociable event to exercise and have fun, while changing the face of where we live.

Stumps wrote:

As for smokers, ban it completely. A report by the Policy Exchange in 2010 estimated the total cost of smoking to be £13.74 billion, whereas in 2010 the govt brought in approx £11 billion in tax revenue. There's 2.7 billion saved already.

Prohibition does not work. We are far beyond that one to try that in any shape or form.

Instead, raise taxes on tobacco products to pay for the cost to the NHS of smoking related illnesses. Make it illegal to smoke walking down the street. Only allow smoking in fully enclosed bus stop style booths in public. Create huge FPNs for cigarette littering. Make it such a PITA to smoke that people will give up because of it.

surreyxc wrote:

no tax on sporting equipment would be a start.

So what like shotguns, archery equipment, and fishing rods and dartboards, and high protein shakes, energy drinks, what about towels, sunglasses, shower gel, stop watches, GPSs, trainers, flip flops. And that's not even getting into motorsport gear.

Your problem there is the definition of sporting equipment and why some rich fellah buying a new drive shaft for their Ginetta race car should get a tax break because a fat bloke somewhere has made excuses that he can't afford a pair of trainers whist eating enough food for 4 people.

felixcat wrote:

I have recently had a health problem involving stays in three hospitals. They were all well supplied with vending machines in the corridors, selling sweets, chocolates and coke drinks.

Oi, they're for the nurses.

cw42 wrote:

What chance have we got as cyclist to get more people on bikes when my local hospital has no provision for me to go to regular appointments on my bike, because I've nowhere safe to lock it up! My wife works at the same hospital and there is no provision for nurses to cycle in and store their bike securely and shower & change before starting shifts. Useless!

My local hospital's website has a page on how to get there, with options including travel by car, bus and train (the local train station is 3 miles away), but no mention of arriving by bike, or where to park your bike if you do. Hardly surprising given that the hospital is on the far edge from town of a multi-lane dual carriageway interchange that is a real barrier to cycling and walking.

Earlier this week a documentary on telly showed how another local hospital is struggling to cope with the numbers of patients. Not only were most of the patients quite obviously affected by weight problems, the staff were also all very tubby. I suspect it's a problem in many of our local hospitals.

cw42 wrote:

What chance have we got as cyclist to get more people on bikes when my local hospital has no provision for me to go to regular appointments on my bike, because I've nowhere safe to lock it up! My wife works at the same hospital and there is no provision for nurses to cycle in and store their bike securely and shower & change before starting shifts. Useless!

That really highlights how far we have fallen.

At one time the use of bikes by nurses was so prevalent that they even had a type of bike lock named after them.

Ah, progress.

ambrosio2 wrote:

Funnily enough my wife has just started riding to lose weight. On the turbo and road . Still hates it. And therein lies the problem. To get fit from when unfit is very difficult.

The real problem is trying to introduce exercise into a sedentary lifestyle that has languished for so long without it. Initially it's a challenge - and some people quite enjoy and rise to that - but for others it can very quickly become a burden and therefore all too easy to quit.

Across most of the UK we have successfully removed active transport from our lives, and now we're reaping the results of that in terms of widespread obesity and related ill-health (not to mention environmental pollution and damage).

In some circumstances and places reintroducing active transport can be done relatively easily. Years ago in London for instance I switched from using public transport to cycling for most of my transport needs.

The benefits were obvious and immediate - savings of £1,500 a year on public transport, savings of 1-2 hours a day commuting time, and an extra 60 minutes a day of relatively gentle exercise that also meant I didn't need to compensate for a sedentary lifestyle with gym fees and the extra time that requires.

OK - most of my London friends wouldn't dream of cycling around London, and I had a couple of relatively minor spills that would have put many others off, but the current swell in demand for safe paths on which to cycle could be the start of a wider incentive toward active transport and better levels of health. Currently, outside of some cities, active transport between UK towns or villages is not catered for at all. Few people cycle regularly to school, to work or for everyday needs because it just doesn't feel safe. A network of roadside paths for cycling on would go a long way to change that.

The Netherlands, which has far lower levels of childhood and adult obesity than the UK, recognised this years ago and has made active transport possible for everyone aged 8-80. Half of schoolchildren there cycle to their classrooms. Here's it's less than 2 per cent. That's something we need to address, and if we don't want our kids to become the fatties of the future we need to start immediately.

ambrosio2 wrote:

Funnily enough my wife has just started riding to lose weight. On the turbo and road . Still hates it. And therein lies the problem. To get fit from when unfit is very difficult. The first few weeks of any return or start to exercise is the hardest thing for anyone. Anything to make that easier should be applauded. The gym is great as is swimming etc but they require more than getting on a bike so is sometimes more difficult. I think it is a great idea but it still requires the motivation etc of the individual. Still worth a try.

I know what you mean, it's taken ages to get my wife to where she is now. We pay membership for the most expensive gym in the area, because it's the only one where she didn't feel looked down on by the gym bunnies and footballers wives. The others just turned out to be a slightly less expensive mistake - at least she uses this one. She would still complain that she didn't want to be there though. I've been trying to find something that she *wanted* to do, in order to distract from the fact that it's still exercise, but to no avail. However, we *might* have found the solution. She needed some medication that meant she finally had to eliminate the small remaining dose of antidepressants due to a conflict. This in turn could make her a little fragile, but she realised recently that this only happens if we have a really busy week where she doesn't get to the gym - another session and whoosh- her endorphins are back up and she feels great. She's halfway-ish to her target weight, only another stone to go. Try and encourage her to keep at it.

james123 wrote:

Guys I understand the ticking time bomb thing and that the bikes side may be cheaper in the long run than later treatment but why should this responsibility fall onto tax payers. The next stage will be to buy smokers games consoles to distract them from smoking. There has to be a line.

No, bikes would not be the equivalent of consoles, they would be equal to (but much more useful than) smoking patches.

We fund & treat obesity & inactivity now, even with free gym or exercise sessions. This though would be about earlier intervention & integration of exercise INTO an existing daily routine though replacing cars for shopping & school runs etc rather than as an add-on.