Unhealthiest places to live in London

News Shopper makes a story of explaining an interactive map from the Consumer Data Research Centre (CDRC) which plots how ‘healthy’ different areas and streets of London are.

From: Unhealthiest areas to live in south east London revealed | News Shopper

The article goes on to list Brockley, New Cross and Catford as the worst local areas under this scoring system, though perhaps unsurprisingly most of London is coloured red on this scale - dominated by air quality.

The map also features a slider that allows viewing of each of the scoring factors individually e.g. access to GPs, hospitals, gambling, food hubs and off-licences. It can be seen for example that East of the tracks had poorer access to GPs for example.

To check your own street or area, the map is here:

And???

You can lead a horse to water but if it ain’t thirsty it ain’t interested! (Or something like that).

So what I mean is - do the authors of this report think that just because I’ve got a fast food shop, an off-licence, a tobacconist and a betting shop near where I live that I’m going to be an overweight, chain-smoking alcoholic with a gambling addiction?

The mere fact that those businesses happen to be there doesn’t affect our health - it’s, as with everything in life, how you choose to use them; and, providing you [the author] respect people’s intelligence enough to be able to make the right choice, local off-licences etc, per-se, aren’t unhealthy.

So, lead me to the betting office door and I ain’t going in.

I presume you need to have a variety of these facilities, because at the Perry rise end we have two off licence, two fast food, one gambling establishment and a pub. And a chemist (obviously some closed due to covid and we’ll see what reopens.). I’ve not had problems getting GP appointments or hospital appointments, even during COVID.

And we have the retail park down the road.

Frankly feeling quite grumpy about it!!

It’s all a bit odd to be honest. I’ve looked at a few areas (including towns outside London) and most of the ‘best’ areas in them are places that I really wouldn’t want to live; not because I want to eat or drink out every night but because I’d like more than option to do so on the monthly occasion that I do.