Your task is to extract the thesis of an opinionated news article by selecting some of its text segments. The thesis is a summarization of what the author wants to persuade the reader of. Your answer should consist of segments of the given text. Note that you are not allowed to combine different sentences.

Q: My brain tumour will be removed this week, and I can be thankful. On the morning of my diagnosis I rush to get ready for work . It's 6am and I make a cup of black tea . As I carry it across the room , even though I'm being careful, I spill most of the boiling liquid, burning my hand . What's wrong with me, I think . By 10.30am my GP will telephone me at work with the results of a brain scan I had a couple of days before: an acoustic neuroma, sitting behind my right ear, 42mm in size - a brain tumour . The GP says that, so as not to delay things, he's faxing the referral to neurosurgery right away for urgent attention . Faxing? "Any change," he says,"go to A&E  ;". "Change? What does that mean?" I ask , becoming more alarmed with every word he says . "Have you been sick?" he asks . "No." "That's good." I feel sick . Diagnosis is a long, arduous path that is difficult to navigate . People get sick of you being sick and stop listening . To the untrained eye I look fine . But look closer and you'll see that I can't close my right eye , so it doesn't blink . My face is sagging on the right side , I get sores on the right-hand corner of my mouth due to the drool that manages to escape because of facial weakness on that side . Less obvious are the hidden symptoms . Right-sided facial numbness; overwhelming fatigue; tinnitus and reduced hearing in my right ear; a lack of co-ordination leading to an overpowering unsteadiness . All because I have this 42mm tumour that is taking up space in my head, slowly strangling the nerves relating to hearing, balance and facial sensation . I feel stupid for not noticing and not pursuing some of the symptoms when I first experienced them years ago . I listened to others too much when they told me it was normal and didn't listen to myself when I knew it was not . There is a certain amount of relief when you finally get a diagnosis, especially one so definitive . At the end of November, the moment I found out, work sent me home and there I have been ever since . Later that week I get a call from my bank . "Sorry for not calling," I say,"I've had a pretty rough week." I nearly tell them I've just found out I've got a brain tumour , but I catch myself . I realise how powerful that news is . It can get you out of almost anything . I've felt the power every time I've said it , but I still don't believe it's happening to me . My sister had breast cancer three years ago and it's taken all this time to stop the illness dominating her life . She has stopped obsessively searching for lumps, and says:"It's history, old news, like it happened to someone else." Will I ever acknowledge the reality of what's happening to me? I'm a 41-year- old woman, married, with no kids by choice . Children would mess up the vice- like grip my husband and I like to have on our lives . My morning commute takes an hour and a half so I read prolifically . I manage a small IT team at a prominent university . Apart from reading I love to cook . That's who I am: work, reading and cooking . Sounds boring, but I loved it . I haven't finished a book since being sent home from work . And don't ask me what's for dinner . I'll become dithery and confused, and eventually settle on cheese and crackers . After the relief of diagnosis, fear sets in . I know the snail's pace at which the NHS usually moves , so watching it jump into action induces panic in me . Within a couple of days, the hotshot neurosurgeon calls . He tells me it is a slow-growing tumour that I have probably had for years and that a few more weeks while they plan my operation won't make any difference . He tells me that as acoustic neuromas go, this one's big , but the good news is it's benign, it's not cancer , though it must come out and soon . Then the bad news- I will lose all hearing in that ear and one side of my face may be permanently paralysed from the operation . The news that I didn't have cancer didn't register ; I was too busy counting my losses . A few days later I went to a support group for people with brain tumours , where I met people with brain cancer . Their lumps were in places like the memory, speech or personality part of their brains , and for some the prognosis wasn't good . The phone call they got from their doctors was much worse than mine . I came away feeling grateful, devastatingly so . It sounds vain , but facial paralysis bothers me more than deafness . People will be able to see there is something wrong . I worry that they'll stop seeing me and see only a problem with my face . Not satisfied with taking half my hearing, the surgeon may take away my smile, my frown and that weird raised eyebrow look I've inherited from my dad . Not being able to express myself in full feels like I'm losing a big part of who I am . Admittedly, that is a woman who has worked in London for more than 20 years, trained in the art of remaining expressionless and speaking to no one . Now I smile or speak to strangers, luxuriating in my facial movements . I find much more to smile about nowadays . The internet tells me these types of tumours grow at a rate of about 1mm a year . If they have a spurt they might make it to 2mm a year . Has the tumour been growing all of my life? I think back to key moments : did I miss out on promotions due to the fatigue of a growing tumour? I did a degree part-time a few years ago and got a 2:1 . I now think my certificate should say 2:1 (with a brain tumour) . The morning after my diagnosis I was woken up by The Voice . Wake up, it said, there' s lots to do . It has been telling me what to do ever since , and so far it has never been wrong . We all have that voice , but the busyness of our lives causes it to fade into the background . Never has mine been so loud . Do yoga , it will improve your balance . Call your brother who you haven't spoken to in two years . Write a thank-you letter to the doctor who diagnosed you . Tell them you're scared before you have that brain scan . Write a will . My operation, a craniotomy, is planned for this coming Thursday . I have two main worries . The first is the horror of surrendering myself to it . I have to turn up at the hospital at 7.30am . They are trusting me to have eaten or drunk nothing for at least six hours . Like an inmate at a prison, I will have my possessions checked in . They will give me a gown to wear that is not my own . Then I will say goodbye to my husband, not knowing when I will see him again . Depending on the hotshot neurosurgeon's schedule I may have to wait a number of hours, empty-bellied and frightened . Eventually I will have one side of my head shaved before they put me to sleep . Don't make me do this voluntarily . Treat me like a wild animal running through the woods, take me out with a sedative dart when I am cooking or doing my favourite yoga pose . Then let me wake up when it is all over . Don't tell me I am brave . The people who choose to get involved with me are the brave ones . My husband, for picking me up every time I fall over when I lose my balance physically - and metaphorically . My mother, for clearing her schedule for as long as it takes to get me better . People like my yoga teacher , who didn't run a mile when I approached her for help, but instead restored some of my balance and made me feel strong . My second worry is something I've never been good at in my life . Now I must face it head-on - the unknown . The doctors can't tell me how long my hospital stay will be . Will they need to open me up again because my brain is bleeding? Will I have to have a shunt fitted because fluid isn't draining from my head? Will the surgeon sneeze and nick my facial nerve? Most suffering is in the worry . It means I have to live in the lacuna of uncertainty, embracing not knowing and carrying on , a new skill I practise daily . I know that if you take my life as a whole this is an interruption . This will end . I refuse to make it who I am, my identity . Rather ,  it is an experience, one that leaves its imprint on my body . It has brought my life into sharp focus and revealed what I have to be thankful for: people, strangers and intimates for their kindness and well wishing; my tenacity and determination for carrying me through; and as much as I'm trying to shake it off, my plan for creating a freezer-full of food to be eaten post-op . I am ready .

A: Diagnosis is a long, arduous path that is difficult to navigate
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Q: The Observer view on our health and the sugar-peddling food industry. The London Eye, a landmark since the Millennium, welcomed the first day of a new sponsor yesterday . Coca-Cola plans to play "an even greater part in future moments of happiness and celebration in the capital", according to Jon Woods, general manager of Coca-Cola UK and Ireland . It's ironic that the arrival of the red and white trademark colours of a global drink renowned, in its original form, for providing a shocking nine spoonfuls of sugar per 330ml can, comes at the end of a week in which, as in every week, 500 children received hospital treatment for dental decay , and there have been a stream of warnings about the health of the nation . We are swallowing far more sugar, salt and fat than is good for us- or the public purse . One warning came last Thursday when On Rock or Sand: Firm Foundations for Britain's Future was published, edited by John Sentamu, archbishop of York . It tackles a range of issues spawned by a low-wage economy and refers to the current epidemic of obesity that, for the first time in many decades, means that some children may live shorter lives than their parents . On Rock or Sand rightly points out that "choice" in diet is complex . It is influenced by income, class, culture and societal pressure among myriad other drivers, not least the seductive practices of the marketplace in disguising what goes into processed food and employing the hard sell in honeyed words that are particularly effective on children . Low-cost food and medical progress have ensured longer lives but decades with a long-term condition can also bring misery . The book quotes Department of Health figures that show 62% of adults and 28% of children are overweight or obese . The health problems this spawns include type 2 diabetes, cancer and heart disease, between them costing NHS England more than? 5bn a year . Last Wednesday, Andy Burnham, Labour shadow health secretary, launched Labour's public health strategy . It served up even scarier statistics . Unless the rise in obesity is reversed , the cost to the NHS of diabetes alone will rise from ? 10bn a year to an unsustainable ? 17bn a year by 2035 . While the World Health Organisation recommends that 5% of our food energy should come from sugar , children are consuming triple that amount . Further bad news came from the Youth Sport Trust, in its Unlocking Potential report . Only 21% of boys and 16% of girls are exercising sufficiently . Physical education lessons have slumped below the miserly two hours a week set by the previous Labour government . The trust is rightly calling for five hours of physical activity a week in state schools to match that offered by private schools . Eating too much and doing too little may be a personal "choice" for some , but it's one the nation can ill-afford . So what's to be done? The first is to show common sense . It is incredible that Merlin Entertainments should consider Coca-Cola a suitable sponsor for the London Eye . As this paper reports, John Middleton, vice-president of the UK Faculty of Public Health, says:"Coca-Cola is the flagship for sugar marketing and therefore the flagship for rotten teeth and diabetes." The second imperative is for government to wake up to the scale of the health disaster on its doorstep . In February 2010, David Cameron laid out his vision for "a new age of government" . "If you combine this very simple, very conservative thought - go with the grain of human nature- with all the advances in behavioural economics," he said,"I think we can achieve a real increase in wellbeing... without necessarily having to spend a lot of money." Money has certainly been tight even as public health issues, supporting improved wellbeing, have disastrously dropped off the agenda, issues such as plain packages for cigarettes, minimum pricing on alcohol and an end to selling sports fields . In 2013-14, the NHS budget was over ? 95bn, compared with only ? 1.8 bn allocated to Public Health England to promote "wellness" . The lack of investment in prevention, married to politicians' fear of the charge of "uber-interference" and "the nanny state", means that multinationals have too little restraint . We accept the so-called nanny state edicts on seat belts, smoking and drink , so why can't the state take a much greater role in improving the food that is sold to us and marketed to our children? Andy Burnham calls this "finger wagging" . On the contrary ,  it is lifesaving . It is welcome that Burnham has promised that Labour will legislate to reduce the sugar, fat and salt in foods sold to children . Such steps require rigour in the face of food industry claims that it's difficult to differentiate between "family foods" . The "responsibility deal" in which businesses voluntarily take action to improve public health hasn't produced many results . Last week, for instance, Asda promised to reduce 22% of added sugar in some 26 of its own brand drinks, amounting to a reduction of a staggering 3.25bn calories . However ,  Professor Graham MacGregor of Action on Sugar says that only reveals the scale of what remains to be done . Little bits of action are no substitute for sugar reduction mandated by government policy . As Burnham correctly said last week:"For change to work in a market context, all players need to be following the same rules." Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer, has warned that a 20% tax on sugar in fizzy drinks may be required . It makes sense . Advertising to children is another issue requiring intervention . Promoting unhealthy products is restricted on children's television but it is unfettered online in "advergames" and between 8pm and 9pm on television when, according to Malcolm Clark of the lobbying group, the Children's Food Campaign (CFC), ads are a junk food paradise . Burnham intends to ask the committee on advertising practice and the Advertising Standards Authority how children can be better protected . That is a cop-out . The CFC, backed by the British Heart Foundation, has rightly proposed a body independent from the advertising industry to monitor and regulate marketing to children and tougher enforcements . Managing diet, taking exercise and aiming for fitness can't be directly stipulated in law . Parents, government, the community and the commercial sector all play a part in taking responsibility . However ,  the balance of power is skewed against the ordinary citizen, particularly those penalised by profound health inequalities, and towards those with profit in mind . The state has to play a far more dynamic role than Labour envisages or the coalition provides, to ensure that what does us good, at a price we can afford, becomes the established framework for a healthy life .

A: The health problems this spawns include type 2 diabetes, cancer and heart disease, between them costing NHS England more than? 5bn a year
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Q: Chances of a TV election debate? Choose between zilch and nada. At the time of the last election, David Cameron pronounced that TV debates were "here to stay" . It was his confident declaration that:"We will have them in every election in the future and that is a really good thing for democracy." Many others thought so too . More than 20 million people watched some or all of them . They engaged voters in ways that we hadn't seen before in Britain . To many, it was unthinkable that they wouldn't become a permanent feature of the fabric of our elections . It gives me no pleasure to say that I have always had great doubts that this was really the case . For it to be true, you had to trust the Tory leader not to change his mind . TV debates happened in 2010 only because of an unusual set of circumstances . Mr Cameron had demanded them because that is what opposition leaders nearly always do . Nick Clegg wanted to gain exposure that no previous third party leader had enjoyed . In the wake of the expenses scandal, all the parties were anxious to be seen trying to connect with alienated voters . The key was Gordon Brown . Unusually for a prime minister, he agreed to debates . His people thought he had little to lose and, in a typically Gordon Brownish way, he reckoned he would come over as the man of substance while his Tory and Lib Dem rivals would be exposed as lightweights . It didn't work out as Mr Brown expected . But what is most relevant to what is happening now is that it didn't work out as Mr Cameron anticipated either . The Lib Dem leader, an unknown to many voters before the debates, shone in the first one , presenting himself as the true candidate of change to the disadvantage of David Cameron and unleashing the "Cleggmania" that now seems so long ago . On election night, I was aboard the boat in the Thames hired by the BBC . Among those also present to comment on the results was Michael Ashcroft, the Tory donor and pollster . As it became clear that his party had failed to secure a majority , he placed the blame on the TV debates . That view has since become orthodoxy in the Conservative party . Whether it is entirely true or not, it has been engraved into the Tory soul . Two people were very badly burnt: Mr Cameron himself and George Osborne , who ran the last Tory election campaign and was widely castigated by his colleagues for agreeing to the debates . The chancellor long ago told friends that he is not going to make the same mistake twice . Lynton Crosby, the prime minister's Australian strategist, is also dead-set against TV debates . Craig Oliver, the Number 10 communications chief who has been leading the Tory side in the debate negotiations, is another key figure who believes it is all downside for them . The first reason that David Cameron and his advisers are against debates is the traditional one . He doesn't want to concede equality of status to his opponents . The experience of the Clegg-Farage debates during the Euro elections hardened the belief in Number 10 that debates are bad for incumbents and a gift to challengers . The view around Mr Cameron is expressed by one close ally:"If you are the incumbent, debates are heavily weighted in favour of the insurgents. It is a rigged game." It is not, as is often assumed, fear of Nigel Farage coming at him from the right that most worries the prime minister . His biggest concern is giving a boost to Ed Miliband . TV debates are the Labour leader's best remaining opportunity to secure mass exposure to voters sceptical that he is up to being prime minister and get them to reconsider their view . So poor are his personal ratings, Mr Miliband might only have to turn up and string together a few half-decent sentences and more people would think better of him . The hope that their man could benefit by exceeding low expectations is why Labour is desperate for debates to happen . Which makes the Tories equally desperate for them not to happen . The Conservatives, as we saw last week with their "dodgy dossier" about Labour's spending plans, want to revert to an old-fashioned model of election in which the campaign is dominated by staged leaders' tours in which the prime minister wafts around the country looking presidential and morning news conferences designed, with a bit of help from their friends in the press, to shape the campaign to a Tory agenda . So, from the off, the Conservatives have done everything in their power to prevent TV debates from happening at this election . The broadcasters and the other parties wanted to begin negotiations about the format last spring . The Tories stalled , saying they wouldn't start talking until October . When the negotiations finally got under way, I am told, and by a variety of different sources, that the Conservatives were determined to block any progress toward agreement . "At every stage, they sought to put obstacles in the way," says one source . Another confirms:"The Tories kept throwing spanners in the works." According to a third:"All the parties, including Ukip, took part in good faith except the Conservatives." Last time around, "a heads of agreement" about the debates had been written by December . This time around, we have got to mid-January and aren't even close to that . The last meeting was just before Christmas . "We didn't get anywhere because of the Tories," says one source, an account that is again corroborated by others . I have learned that a meeting between the parties and the broadcasters was scheduled for the Thursday just gone . It was cancelled at the last minute by the Conservatives . No new date has been set . The prime minister's latest excuse for nobbling debates is that he won't do it unless the Greens are included . I happen to agree that the Greens ought to be represented in one debate . There is not much logic to Ofcom's recent preliminary recommendation that Ukip and the Lib Dems should be treated as "major" parties for the purposes of allocating airtime during the campaign, but not the Greens . They have been nip and tuck with the Lib Dems in the opinion polls and quite often done better . They have had representation in the House of Commons for longer than Ukip . So I agree that it would be fair to include the Greens - and hoot with laughter to hear that argument coming out of the mouth of David Cameron . When did he become obsessed with championing the rights of minority parties? Who knew he had such a passion to debate with Natalie Bennett? In the history of political excuses, this must go down as one of the most terrible . By running away from debates, the Tories are taking some risk with their leader's reputation and sense of himself . Says one senior government figure:"Cameron doesn't like being called chicken." If the Cameron brand is supposed to be the strong and confident leader , why is he frit of debating Ed Miliband, a man the Tories keep telling us is hopelessly weak? Won't it simply look bad to deny TV debates to the voters? Yes, it will , but the Tories are calculating that any fuss will be short- lived, soon forgotten and, in the end, not that many voters will punish them for it, especially if their spinners can successfully sow confusion about who is responsible . The Tories also bargain that the press won't make that big a deal of it . About that, they may be right . There was resentment among newspapers during the last campaign that their capacity to shape the agenda was reduced by the TV debates . There are journalists and editors who will be secretly happy if they don't happen again . As things stand , I think the chances of TV election debates happening are somewhere between zilch and nada . Could anything change that? Some suggest that the broadcasters should call David Cameron's bluff and threaten to stage debates without him - "empty chair" him in the jargon . Labour and the Lib Dems hope this will happen . Number 10 is assuming that the BBC wouldn't have the nerve , the other broadcasters will follow its lead , and holding a debate without Mr Cameron might anyway be a breach of the laws about election coverage . A debate between everyone but the prime minister could even suit the Tories when they want to project him as the statesman floating above the fray . A more realistic way to flush him out would be to strip him of the Green figleaf he is using as his pretext for not debating . The broadcasters could redraft their proposal to include Natalie Bennett in one of the debates . Labour, the Lib Dems and Ukip could say that they'd be content for her to participate . I think they would . Labour and the Lib Dems aren't keen on including the Greens , who have been taking votes off both of them , but when it comes to the crunch, they'd rather have a debate with the Greens than no debates at all . Even then, the Tories are so determined to avoid TV debates that they'd most likely concoct another pretext for sabotaging them . But at least everyone would then be crystal clear who is to blame .

A:
At the time of the last election, David Cameron pronounced that TV debates were "here to stay" It was his confident declaration that:"We will have them in every election in the future and that is a really good thing for democracy."
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