Over £40,000 of HealthFit lottery money already tackling childhood obesity in Merseyside

THIS week is National Childhood Obesity Week and it has a range of events across the country focused on the increasing concern around healthy eating and exercise amongst young people. On a local level HealthFit, the Community Interest Company established to raise money through The Health Lottery for health and wellbeing causes in Merseyside, is already supporting a local project that addresses the underlying problems of obesity.

Currently money raised by HealthFit’s Community Health Lottery is supporting a childhood obesity related project in the area.  The Youth Sports Trust has been awarded funding to the extent of £40,000 to support a Healthy Lifestyle Coaching project introducing children to sports such as badminton, boccia, fencing, handball, table tennis, volleyball and wheelchair basketball in a programme aimed at getting them to take 60 minutes of physical activity every day.

HealthFit spokesperson Donald Macrae commented:- ‘Good diet and exercise are the foundations for a long and healthy life. Supporting projects aimed at creating good habits amongst people in their early years is essential to helping the prevention of some of the health issues members of our community are facing as they get older.’

For further details of these projects, and others supported by money raised by HealthFit’s Community Health Lottery, visit:- healthfitcic.org.uk.

When moving to London is bad for your wealth

MIGRATING from the rest of the UK to London is usually associated with ‘upward social mobility' - that is, getting a better and better-paid job. However, for more than 1 in 10 of people who do so, the streets are not paved with gold, experiencing the opposite and instead ending up with a worse paid job or; for 66% of these; no job at all.

These are the findings noted in a presentation that happened on Tuesday, 3 July 2012, at the annual international conference of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) by Professor Tony Champion of Newcastle University, based on analysis of Office of National Statistics data that compares people's situation in 2001 with that in 1991.

Commenting, Professor Champion said:- "Migration to London is normally done to improve one's own welfare, but can come with risks and greater insecurity.  Whilst the odds on these migrants improving their lot have generally been increasing over the last few decades, there is still just as much chance of their becoming worse off as for the population at large."

The research found that the biggest ‘downward' change was the number of people who were in a ‘non-core' white collar job when working outside London who no longer had a job one decade later, when living in the capital.

Further analysis, of changes in salary for those who remained in work, show that nearly 1 in 10 experienced a significant drop in what they were earning, compared with a decade earlier, after moving to London for work. These were more likely to be male, older, born outside the UK, self-employed and/or with below-degree-level qualifications before their move to London.

"It will be interesting to see whether this pattern has continued; or indeed worsened; since 2001, with the big increase in East European migrants taking London jobs that might otherwise have gone to people from elsewhere in the UK, plus the effects of the double-dip recession" said Professor Champion, who is looking forward to the release of the 2011 census data that will make this analysis possible.

Misleading claims lead to High Court closure for magazine publisher

A Liverpool based company that sold business-to-business advertising space in a magazine has been wound up in the High Court following an investigation by Company Investigations (CI) of the Insolvency Service.

Abingdon House Limited used telesales agents to make unsolicited calls to businesses across the country to induce them to advertise in the magazine called:- ‘SafeGuard’. The magazine also contained articles relating to the police, fire and ambulance services and was distributed to doctors surgeries and emergency service stations.

The investigation found the telesales agents misled advertisers by claiming to be serving police officers. Agents further misled advertisers by inferring that a proportion of the cost of the advertisement would be used to support the emergency services. The company also exaggerated the number of magazines distributed and falsely stated that advertisers would be granted advertising exclusivity for their business type.  The magazine was also distributed in such a way as to be of little or no commercial value to the advertisers. The distribution was to a wide geographic area remote from the advertiser’s business location. The company manipulated its cancellation policy to prevent advertisers from getting out of the contract and used aggressive, misleading and inappropriate debt collection methods to persuade businesses to pay up. The investigation also uncovered that advertisers payment card details were not properly protected, leading to unauthorised transactions on their accounts.

The court heard that customers reported being called by someone claiming to be a police officer, or acting directly on behalf of the police force or a police charity, to raise support for various campaigns intended to raise awareness of, for example, drink driving or youth crime.

Other customers reported that they believed that they were paying for an annual advertisement when, in reality, it was for one quarterly edition only. The company’s turnover during the last three years of trading was approximately £4m and dividends paid to shareholders in the same period were approaching £600,000.

Commenting on the case, Investigator Scott Crighton said:- “In winding-up this company, the Court has sent a clear message that it is unacceptable to mislead businesses and to exploit their goodwill towards emergency services. The Insolvency Service will seek to have such companies closed down.”

Abingdon House Limited was incorporated on 26 June 2006. Its current registered office is at Suite 7, Queens Dock Commercial centre, 67-83 Norfolk Street, Liverpool, L1 0BG. It was compulsorily wound up by the court on 26 June 2012.

The director of the company, Abingdon House Limited, was Steven Richards.  All public enquiries concerning the affairs of the company should be made to:- The Official Receiver, Public Interest Unit, 2nd Floor, 3 Piccadilly Place, London Road, Manchester, M1 3BN. or you can also call them on:- 0161 234 8531.