Polly Toynbee On The Apocalypse To Come…

'Our whole way of life" will be affected, "every single person", "perhaps for decades to come", David Cameron warned today yesterday. The message was apocalyptic: everything is "even worse than we thought".

Well, yes. Did you think that the bill would never come due, Polly?

We will need to know exactly where the burden has fallen, and at what social cost into the far future.

Hopefully, a release of the state’s hand on the choke chain around all our necks. Who’d want anything el…

Ah. Of course. You would:

Studying ourselves is something the British do exceptionally well. Social scientists, geneticists, psychologists, demographers, medical researchers and epidemiologists flock to the country from all over the world, seeking answers to fundamental human questions from Britain's unique series of birth cohort studies.

It’s nice to know we give so much to the world, isn’t it Polly?

No one else has anything like them. Thousands of babies born within a few months of each other have been studied throughout their entire lives: the first cohort was in 1946, the next in 1958, then 1970. Their parents, their families, their health, their progress in school, their relationships and their careers – all are still monitored regularly.

Well, so long as they all consented. They did consent, I take it?

The wealth of information is remarkable, now the oldest are in their 60s. But after 1970 there was a 30-year hiatus, leaving a gaping hole in the social and medical histories of a lost generation. The survey planned for the 1980s was cancelled by a Conservative government which despised social science – and perhaps would rather not know the social results of its own policies.

Oh, boo hoo! Those mean Conservatives!

Labour arrived in 1997, keen to gather research on all aspects of policy and eager to commission a new millennium birth cohort to track the progress of Labour's babies.

Well, why not? They knew they'd never have to pay for it, after all...

How seriously will the coalition government take evidence? The next birth cohort study was at the top of the pile for signature on the chief secretary's desk the day parliament was dissolved.

Good! Not too late to cancel this one too, I hope...

Due to survey 93,000 babies born in 2012, this is the most detailed so far, collecting the strongest evidence yet on the first year of life. Mothers will be surveyed six months into pregnancy, then when their baby is four months and 12 months old, trying to find the earliest causes for effects later in life. Saliva samples will be taken, along with umbilical cord and placenta. Parents and children will be videoed. Every possible social, psychological and medical fact will be recorded, looking for the origins of attention deficit disorders, autism and mental illness.

It sounds utterly ghastly.

Where are you going to find 93,000 people across all social strata willing to take part in such an invasive study?

But the survey's fate hangs by a thread, waiting on David Willetts' desk in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, needing £28m to go ahead.

I think there's £28 mil we can save, then...

Not only this study but valuable work in the independent Office for National Statistics also hangs in the balance: the ONS faces a 20% cut and a return to its market role in the Thatcher years – only producing statistics specifically requested and paid for by a department.

Yeah, I had to read that twice too. Polly thinks it's a virtue to have an office of civil servants collecting statistics that no-one has asked for...

Well, for socialists, especially champagne ones, it's always someone else's money, isn't it?