Anne Mcelvoy

Politics | 18 May 2006

The Prime Minister launched an initiative this week to promote longevity with the aid of a few well-chosen lifestyle adjustments.

issue 29 April 2006

The Prime Minister launched an initiative this week to promote longevity with the aid of a few well-chosen lifestyle adjustments. Mr Blair will, apparently, consume more water with his one real vice — drinking too much tea and coffee — and walk up stairs instead of taking the lift.

If only his political staying power, as a leader who has expressed the fervent wish to serve a full third term, were so easily guaranteed. Mr Blair co-opted the Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt, fresh from a mauling in Gateshead by the main health union (now there’s a bad day out) as his partner in the Longer Life initiative. Mrs Hewitt might have a thought or two about her own political mortality as she walks up the stairs at her department to another day of hospital trust deficits, nursing staff redundancies and agitating health unions.

Charles Clarke has certainly had his own memento mori as he revealed that the Home Office had managed to lose more than 1,000 convicted foreign criminals who should have been considered for deportation.

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