Lordy be this is an appalling piece of poltroonery

The Guardian tells us that austerity has meant that we’re seeing the stunting of British children again:

Children raised under UK austerity shorter than European peers, study finds

Average height of boys and girls aged five has slipped due to poor diet and NHS cuts, experts say

The average height of British children has risen slightly.

British children who grew up during the years of austerity are shorter than their peers in Bulgaria, Montenegro and Lithuania, a study has found.

In 1985, British boys and girls ranked 69 out of 200 countries for average height aged five. At the time they were on average 111.4cm and 111cm tall respectively.

Now, British boys are 102nd and girls 96th, with the average five-year-old boy measuring 112.5cm and the average girl, 111.7cm. In Bulgaria, the average height for a five-year-old boy is 121cm and a girl, 118cm.

See? That’s a rise in height. Not a fall, a rise, in the height of British children.

And now the poltroonery.

Experts have said a poor national diet and cuts to the NHS are to blame.

What, cuts to the NHS make kids grow taller? Really?

said Henry Dimbleby, the former government food adviser

Well, at least we have been given the usual sign that the rest of this is nonsense.

The actual paper is here. And so to the truly interesting part:

But they have also pointed out that height is a strong indicator of general living conditions, including illness and infection, stress, poverty and sleep quality.

“They have fallen by 30 places, which is pretty startling,” said Prof Tim Cole, an expert in child growth rates at the Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, University College London. “The question is, why?”

OK, so British children aren’t shorter, they’re taller. But if we rank kiddies by country then British children have fallen 30 places in such a ranking. A ranking of 200 countries by the way.

So, what has happened? The most glorious thing, the greatest reduction in absolute poverty in the history of our entire species. This past 40 and 50 years has indeed been exactly that, as idiot socialism died off and free market capitalism roamed the globe. Meaning that children in formerly poor countries are now in places not so poor. Those children are also now, as ours have for a century, getting three squares and some milk a day and are now growing up big and tall. As the actual paper in Nature points out. And laments isn’t happening in those areas like sub-Saharan Africa where this joy is not, as yet, happening.

Globalisation means kids formerly so poor they were stunned from hunger grow up tall now. And this gets turned into a whine about the NHS? Poltroons, there’s no other explanation for it.

Except Dimbleby, of course. No one’s going to accuse him of understanding this enough to twist it.