See: calorie count increases across Africa, Asia, South America.
Poverty and global inequality also have been dropping gradually for decades.
Instead of being modern epidemics, these things are former, ancient epidemics that are being eradicated rapidly.
If you are wanting to suggest that this is due political decisions rather than a famine or overall lack of food then yes that is true, but it doesn't change the fact that there are a lot of people in the UK struggling to feed themselves and their children.
What's happening in Asia or Africa isn't particularly relevant to the level of political engagement in the UK, which is what this discussion is about. That fact that things are getting worse in the UK while improving in much poorer countries just makes the situation even less excusable.
[1] http://www.trusselltrust.org/foodbank-projects
[2] http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/oct/28/nhs-hospital-...
But if you are trying to prevent a revolution - setting up the infrastructure for monitoring the populace while creating the conditions that would precipitate a revolution makes good sense.
Don't posit it as a privacy vs law-enforcement thing. At its heart it's game-theory.
Let me get a bit abstract first so we can tighten up the lingo. If we start with Cogito ergo sum - the concept that all we know as an individual is that we think and everything else is up for debate, we can also posit that when it comes to intentions we can only know our own. Some people don't even know what they want...I digress. Back to game theory.
You as an individual have no idea what someone else's intentions are. You can trust them, but you can't be sure exactly what they want or what they will do.
Do you provide all electronic communications; spoken, typed, captured by an imaging sensor, read, downloaded, listened to, purchased etc to a body that has the greatest capacity to control you? If yes...
Do you trust all politicians, bureaucrats, and law-enforcement officers? The answer is probably no but we've gotten nowhere because the majority of people have cognitive dissonance when it comes concepts involving technology and privacy intermingling.
So can we posit it like a game of cards? If you had the choice to show 2 cards from your hand, 1 card or 0 cards, which would you choose - knowing that the other player has put down none?
I'm sure there's a better analogy but I thought I'd put the game-theory idea out there so others can take a stab at creating an effective metaphor.
You can't fight fire with fire - the more loudly you decry these policies the more rapidly you alienate moderates and hard-liners alike. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Rather, I think change has to come from one (or both) of two places.
Firstly, inarguable grass roots initiatives, such as crowd-sourced direct democracy, which alter the fundamental structure (I.e. That nation states and representative governance are the only way to go) upon which arguments rest.
The other is to give your opponents enough rope with which to hang themselves - to which end the snooper charter may eventually play. If this government put forth a statement decrying the UN, moderates may scratch their heads and wonder. Hard-liners will join in, as they have against human rights, but moderates will be turned off.
Either way, this war (for it is war) must be fought in the battlefield of minds, and with subtlety. The most powerful idea is the one that you think is your own.