Abi Millar

After two years on a lifestyle magazine, and a non-too-scientific English degree, Abi took an unexpected U-turn and wound up here. In her old life she wrote about cupcakes.
Now she's going to take on climate change.

Find Abi's blog at www.psychodabble.wordpress.com

Comment: Action for Happiness

by Abi Millar

May 042011

Action for Happiness focuses on the portion of happiness deemed to be within an individual’s control

Last month saw the launch of Action for Happiness, a movement dedicated to “creating a happier society for everybody”. Based on the pop-song-friendly premise that the best things in life are free, it aims to make everybody happy in non-material ways. Good deeds, relationships and community ties are in; anything you can buy on Amazon is out.

The movement is part of a wider societal drive towards the promotion of wellbeing, independent of wealth. David Cameron’s happiness index – an attempt by the Office of National Statistics to quantify the nation’s joie de vivre – was announced in November, and the project itself is a classic ‘Big Society’ manoeuvre. As one of the founders commented at the launch, Action for Happiness is designed to dam “the rising tide of excessive individualism” as well as cheering us all up. Continue reading »

Are the NHS reforms evidence-based?

by Abi Millar

Apr 072011

Is there an evidence base behind the reforms?

One of the most striking things about the NHS reforms is how quickly the process has got underway. If you haven’t been to the doctors in a while you might well have blinked and missed it.

Amid the flurry of changes, a question lurks uncomfortably in the background: to what extent are the reforms evidence-based? Might swift action have come at the expense of solid analysis? And might political manoeuvring have been more of an impetus than the facts?

Although Andrew Lansley, Shadow Secretary of State for Health, is emphatic that the evidence supports his plan, the evidence of which he speaks is patchy. Without his changes having been piloted, there is no data from which to draw firm conclusions. And with the predictive power of past models open to question, a hard-line empiricist would be pushed to form an opinion either way.

‘Meeting sickness’ and possible cures

by Abi Millar

Mar 302011

Shuttered windows on a sunny day. Does anyone like meetings?

Meetings are the bane of working life. On the list of things most conducive to office cheer, they rank some way lower than the fire drill, which at least has the arguable function of saving lives.

Meetings, however, unlike fire drills, consume around 20 per cent of the average business’s budget. It’s a situation only partially down to overpriced custard creams.

The productivity guru Merlin Mann, whose ‘Broken Meetings’ talk has become an Internet sensation, is emphatic that office meetings can be a time-sap. He tells the anecdote of a company IT officer, who held a four-hour conference call with a 30-strong engineering department. This equates to 120 working hours, which presumably would have been more wisely spent doing 120 hours of work.

Blame it on the buffet: Does going to church make you fat?

by Abi Millar

Mar 292011

Could the sausage rolls be to blame?

Does organised religion make you fat? According to a long-term study, churchgoing adults face a heftier risk of being obese by middle age.

The study, which was conducted by Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, monitored 2,433 participants for 18 years. They were aged between 20 and 32 at the start of the study, an age at which the irreligious tend to indulge in vices other than food.

By the end of the study, a division had become apparent. Adjusting for factors such as race, sex, and starting weight, those who attended at least one religious activity a week were 50 per cent more likely to have become obese than their non-churchgoing peers.

Obesity is medically defined as having a body mass index over 30, with the normal range spanning from 18.5 to 25. It is associated with elevated health risks across a range of conditions, potentially counteracting the health benefits that religious attendance has been shown to bring. Continue reading »