EVER come across a publication called Archives of Disease in Childhood? Me neither. I must look out for it next time I’m in the newsagents.

I became aware of it this week as it carried a report about the link between exercise and obesity in children which reached the mainstream media. Researchers studied 200 children over 11 years and concluded that lack of exercise didn’t make them fat, but that the heavier they got, the less exercise they took.

The study has divided experts. Perhaps after another 11-year study, we’ll get them to agree, but don’t hold your breath. This probably sounds to you – as it did to me – like a highly intellectual version of the old question about the chicken and the egg. So let’s trim away the fat and get down to basics.

Young people today are bombarded morning, noon and night with adverts encouraging them to base their diet on sugar-filled drinks and fat-soaked food. At the same time, the opportunities for them to enjoy outdoor activities have diminished, due in no small measure to ludicrously overhyped worries about their personal safety.

The result is a generation of young people many of whom will have worse health and shorter life expectancy than their parents.

We need to embed physical activity in the school curriculum and treat advertising and marketing for fatty foods much in the same way as alcohol and tobacco.

And we shouldn’t wait 11 years to do it.

THE last government had its good points.

But I think even its biggest supporters would have to agree that its need to control and micro-manage things best left to local organisations – councils, health trusts and schools – was not its finest feature.

Generally speaking, the nearer you are to an issue, the clearer your vision. A council working with and listening to residents, business people and voluntary groups is better placed to look after their quality of life and solve problems than a remote civil servant whose existence revolves around targets and outputs.

But we have to accept that there are times when councils and other public service providers seem to their citizens just as remote and insensitive as central government appeared to us. This has to stop if we are to deliver acceptable levels of service at a time when public money is in short supply.

This week in Middlesbrough we began the Citizens’ Suggestion Scheme where we are asking people to help us find ways of improving council services, saving council tax payers’ money and making the town a better place.

I can’t claim credit for the idea. It came from a local resident – proof in itself that no organisation has a monopoly on good ideas.

But it will be my job to make sure it works.

David Cameron’s claim that we “are all in this together” has provoked a fair bit of cynicism.

But I happen to believe it’s true and want every citizen of Middlesbrough who shares our aspirations for a better town – or even city – to know we value their input.

WE all have our opinion about who will win, but I think everyone would agree that the best two teams in the World Cup competition have made it to the final.

Refreshingly too, there will be a new name on the roll of honour after Sunday’s match.

Would it be too much to ask that the dreary duopoly of the Premiership might be broken this coming season? Yes, you’re right, it probably would.