Long life hinges on habits not habitats

One Blair legacy will be traffic lights. I'm not thinking about the ones you stop at or absent-mindedly drive through, but those that decorate government performance tables - green for good, amber for so-so, red for terrible. Health Profile of England, published by the Department of Health earlier this month, has lots of them, but, unfortunately, too many are red. These lights cluster heavily on the left-hand side of the chart where the North of England sits. Living there, it emerges, is bad for you.