MEDIA portrayals of tiny waistlines and permatans are often blamed for the pressure on young people to strive for the perfect body. But a dedication to the gym, macrobiotic dieting and a bathroom cabinet bursting with beauty products has often been considered the preserve of teenage girls. However, Young People Now (Jan 25) says that young men are getting in on the act and getting serious about the way they look. So serious that health professionals are worried that a significant proportion of young people suffering from eating disorders are male.
Image is also on the agenda for students and lecturers in the United States. In response to the popular internet student forum Rate My Professor, one US academic has created Rate Your Students. Extracts featured in The Times Higher Education Supplement (Jan 27) prove that the academics can give as good as they get. Barbed comments against annonymous students include: “Density: off-scale; skull has its own gravitational field”; and “He wants to be a politician and, if all things are equal, he’ll end up a used-car salesman”. The professor who started the site is keen to point out, however, that the post has a positive effect in that it challenges teachers to try to find ways of getting through to students.
The answers are lost in a cloud of smoke, according to Community Care (Jan 26). The question is whether it is fair that health and social carers are not protected from secondary smoke because they work in someone else’s home? The Government’s Health Bill proposes a ban on people smoking in public places except where those places serve as their homes. On the other hand, MPs say that care workers should have the right to refuse to enter a home or room where a patient is smoking. The issue is further complicated when clients require live-in carers or live in psychiatric institutions. It is likely that the coming ban will exempt these institutions and it will therefore be up to local authorities to negotiate their way through the changes.
Homeless hostels are trying to keep up with changing demands by adapting their services, according to Inside Housing (Jan 27). While there have already been considerable alterations over the past decade with reductions in the number of beds in each hostel (although the total number of beds remains the same) and dedicated drug and alcohol services on site, residents too often return to the streets. A £90 million Government programme will try to address this by giving hostels the role of supporting people out of homelessness.
But large injections of government cash cannot always provide a panacea. Communities Today (Jan 2006) investigates the successes and shortcomings of the £300 million government investment into regenerating coal-mining areas. The programme’s remit covers both environmental and economic regeneration and success varies. And while some well connected areas have been able to attract new businesses, the programme has created only 13,000 jobs and not the 42,000 target originally set. The picture will become clearer when the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister produces a detailed report at the end of this year.