Do not be fat

The government has a policy to get us to change our lifestyles. Thin is the new green.

Most people must know that if they want to be thinner they need to eat less fatty food and exercise more. Many choose not to take this simple advice.

Is the government now going to employ a new anti fat police? Will you need to give your waist measurement before qualifying for NHS care or certain benefits? The mind boggles at what targets are going to be set to get down the national waistline, and who is going to enforce any necessary measures. At least the ad agencies and media will be thrilled at a new ad campaign to thin us down, at taxpayer expense.

At least their timing is better on this proposal. Many people are going to struggle to pay the bills, so economies on fatty foods could be just what the nationalised bank manager ordered for your overdraft.

21 Comments

  1. Stuart Fairney
    January 2, 2009

    Crazy though your examples sound, they are no more than the logical extension of current policy. The NHS denies certain treatment to smokers (which is more or less a choice, initially anyway) why not the same denial to anyone with a waistline over 34 inches (or 86cm which will no doubt baffle everyone).

    Would the policy apply to members of the current cabinet do you think? Being a gentlemen precludes me from naming one or two of the ladies in government who don’t quite live up to their own lecture…

  2. rugfish
    January 2, 2009

    It may come as a surprise to many, but many on here will know exactly what I mean when I recall my upbringing on tatties, stotties, teacakes, jam and bread, dripping, bacon butties, liver n’ oinion’s and suet pud’s. ( Treacle being my personal favourite although I could never say no to a good Roly Poly or Plum Duff either.

    However ! Despite me being head dinner monitor in my last years of school and eating at least 3 times more roast potatoes and rhubarb crumble then everyone else because of my ‘elite status’, I was one of the skinniest kids you could imagine. In fact I was so skinny I could walk in the rain without getting wet.

    I noticed people starting becoming more round when manual jobs declined.
    Funny how it’s generally not a thing to talk about nowadays but still perfectly true, that if you sit on your arse all day ( and callcentre’s would qualify here ), then you’re likely to become “fatter” and less “fitter” as a result.

    Now add 20 years of eating American fast-food and French Brie, pate and an array of “posh foods”, which previously you thought “only foreigners ate”, and you’ll begin to understand why most of Britain turned into ‘fatties’ instead of ‘fitties’, and shirkers instead of workers.

    I blame the EU for this ( obviously ).

    Also, I’m not going to ask why government should be sticking its nose into whether people are fat or thin because it has no place to do so. Yet it is ! So could we change this please as soon as possible in order to get back to me minding my own business because I have more freedom, knowing that the government has slimmed itself and its lunacy down under a Tory Government.

    Thank you.

    1. Acorn
      January 3, 2009

      rugfish

      If you have a PREZZO restaurant near you, check out the apple crumble with cream. The best non homemade crumble I have had for ages!

      Dear Government

      When I blogged the “licence to eat chips Balls 2008″, I didn’t mean it. It was a joke OK. This blog site may be essential reading for you to gets some workable ideas but the chip licence was a bit of fun, please understand that, please do not use it as another bloody useless government”initiative”.

  3. rugfish
    January 2, 2009

    Oh, bye the way, politics aside I defy anyone to find me a picture of a fat miner, fat steel worker, fat car maker, fat ship builder, and could lay odds on of 50/1 that if you can, he’ll have either been a director within those industries or a union shop steward.

    Incidentally I noticed there used to be many rotund politicians when I was a kid but they seem to have slimmed down a lot these last 20 years or so.

    Maybe we should have a committee to research the reasons for this and report back to the people about the heavy weight MP’s who are becoming a pain in the working persons back to carry any longer?

    1. alan jutson
      January 2, 2009

      Perhaps Jammie Oliver was right.

      We are told that some research has been done that informs us that the financially better off tend to eat a more varied and healthy diet, which has always been the case.

      Those on a lower income (in more modern times) we are told tend to eat a less varied and less healthy diet.

      I exclude pensioners over 70 years here, as they were probably bought up and educated during their formative years in the ration book age, where history seems to accept that this was the best period for a healthy diet.

      Perhaps the younger generation should all learn to cook (the accepted) proper basioc food at school. Just as they should also be taught mathematics which relate to everyday problems like financial responsibility.

      When I was in a Secondary Modern School, many, many years ago we were given a good basic education which was far more relevent to everyday life, than what appears to be the case now.

      Very few people then were overwieght, let alone obese, not many living on benfits either, most people got a job because they had to, you simply could not survive with any sort of a life on benefits.

      Benefits then were a safety net for the unfortunate who could not work due to illness, or found themselves out of work due to no fault of their own. It was not a choice of a way of life, as seems to be the case now for many.

  4. Alfred T Mahan
    January 2, 2009

    I heard Ben Bradshaw on the Today Programme this morning. His holier-than-thou condescension was infuriating and made me want to go out and guzzle a dozen bags of crisps and five cheeseburgers just to spite him, and I would hazard a guess that many others felt the same way.

    It’s none of the government’s business what I eat and they shouldn’t spend my money lecturing me.

  5. Lord Elvis of Paisley
    January 2, 2009

    Just more smoke and mirrors to to grab headlines which will cost a lot of money, but deliver little in the way of tangible results. The plain fact of the matter is in a recession people tend to cut back and buy the economy goods which all shops tend to stock, and it is well known that most of these cut-price own brand goods tend to be cheaper because they contain more fat, more sugar and more additives, so the timing of this campaign is extremely poor, but nothing more than we have come to expect from this increasingly authoritarian and malignant Government.

  6. Donitz
    January 2, 2009

    Lets face it, Bloaters are dreadful.

    They are just another example of “It’s someone else’s fault, I’m a victim”. You’re not a victim your FAT!!!

    You eat too much, you don’t exercise and your too lazy to get off your fat rear and learn to cook.

    Ordering a diet coke with your Go Large Big Mc Meal won’t help.

    1. Stuart Fairney
      January 2, 2009

      Well said sir. Being for example, bald, whilst sometimes socially crippling is more or less a genetic phenomena, where as being a bloater is a choice.

      Then again bloaters can always diet, if however you are “la slap du tete” …

      (Hint for bald men: if you scuba dive, resist at all costs having your photo taken underwater, it can be very unforgiving).

  7. chris southern
    January 2, 2009

    i think the goverment should stop telling people how to live.

    you will find it’s the poorer people that tend towards obesity due to diets (somebody already mentioned the lowr cost food types having the effect as well as work being less physicly demanding)

    people pay into the system and should be entitled to get out of it the same as others.
    this is nothing but nulabour fascism, where they attack groups of people and turn others against said people in a brainwashed manner no different from how hitler operated initialy.

    it’s time people stood up to this goverment instead of jumping through the hoops placed before them, otherwise you will wake up with armed police and an identity tag/card before you realize what is going on.

    bring back the UK that we once loved.

    1. Stuart Fairney
      January 2, 2009

      Well said indeed.

  8. StevenL
    January 2, 2009

    They’re going to have an uphill struggle if they want me to eat less fat this year. If I’m splashing out it might be on some recession busting pork belly strips, making an economy minced beef bolognese, or a Sunday roast of breast of lamb.

    However sausages are going to form the staple of my diet this year I think. If you go to the supermarket at the right time you’re highly likely to pick up some bargain sausages on their use-by date. Just take them home and freeze them in little bags of three and hey presto (or should that be hey Tesco these days) cheap tasty food on demand.

    In fact I often eat fatty foods, but I’m still 32 waist, I just skip breakfast.

  9. no one
    January 2, 2009

    if they opened the publicly funded sports facilities when your actual working person could access them that would help

    swimming pools are forever shut or laned off with 6 foot square available to the “public”

    school galas, women only, kids lessons, and a million and one other reasons to keep the hard working average person out

    shut for 2 weeks over xmas, closed for the full week of easter, etc

    this i am afraid in not an exageration

  10. Blank Xavier
    January 2, 2009

    This new policy is profoundly unfree.

    If that individual wants to be fat, *it’s their private business*.

    They’ve had a health insurance contract forced upon them (NHS being effectively a monopoly provider), which they’ve therefore had to accept, and so they are paying their premiums for health insurance.

    It’s profoundly wrong that the contract is forced upon them, but now, worse than that, *IT IS BEING UNILATERIALLY MODIFIED*.

    Now what we find is the monopoly provider (the State) taking MORE money from all individuals (through the tax to pay for this programme) to convince fat individuals to behave differently.

    This is of course properly tantamount to modifying the terms of the contract; where the cost of health care is simply raised, without any option to cancel the contract.

    It instantly leads to the question; why am I paying more for health care because *other people value the pleasure of eating more than the cost of being fat?*

    The State could instead say; we will charge fat people more, since fat people cost more and we need to cover that cost.

    Of course, if it’s going to do that, doesn’t the idea of an equal-access health care system go out the window, in which case exactly WHY do we have a State monopoly?

    So instead we have the State charging *everyone* more and using that money to try to ameilorate the higher costs of fat people by reducing the number of fat people.

    Here in Holland, I pay about 3000 euros a year in tax to provide health care for others (which I cannot use), while I myself pay 1020 euros a year for my personal health care.

    I estimate I pay about the same in the UK for the NHS cover I receive. The difference is, I don’t have the Government taking more of my money to try to convince me how I should behave, so that their costs are reduced. I can also change provider when I damn well feel like it; and if they do a bad job, I shall.

    You guys in the UK don’t have a damn choice. Hope you like that centralized Government running your life for you. Maybe one day they’ll let you make your own decisions about how to spend your own money?

  11. Lola
    January 2, 2009

    Charity, as is often said, begins at home. The first diet they should start on is one which works on combatting fatheadedness. Who needs this treatment? Look in the mirror Dawn.

  12. mikestallard
    January 2, 2009

    If you have 80% of your legislation dictated by Brussels, a Prime Minister who is a total fraud and some very angry (Labour) constituents, how do you prove that you are the active, energetic MP that they thought they elected?
    How about a nice soundbite in favour of the sacred NHS?
    Remember us eating less costs the (broke) government nothing.
    Mind how you go! You know it makes sense.

  13. DiscoveredJoys
    January 2, 2009

    50 years ago (where does the time go?) I was a primary school pupil, and as thin as a rake. I and a few similar build kids were issued cod liver oil capsules at the start of the school day to ‘fatten us up’.

    50 years on and those small red gelatine capsules have finally worked… can I now sue the Government for interfering with my health?

    No, I didn’t think so.

  14. FatBigot
    January 3, 2009

    Advice on diet and exercise has been advertised widely for as long as I can remember. Over the last 20 years or so we would have to have lived in a cave not to have read, heard or seen many dozens of healthy recipes and countless scores of people advising us on the steps that can be taken to be thin and live to the age of 140.

    Ask a very fat person to define a healthy diet and he or she will almost certainly be able to do so. The advice has been given and absorbed. It hasn’t been followed because people eat what they feel comfortable eating. And we drink what we feel comfortable drinking. There is no further work for advice to do.

    It is a big mistake for government to ignore the fact that the people have the right not to follow their advice. In many fields the current government has shown its inability to accept that fact and has turned from advice to compulsion. The more they do this the more they will distance themselves from the people they are meant to serve.

    By all means advise, but when your advice is ignored you have to have the humility to say “fair enough, it’s your choice”. I am concerned that the current government simply does not believe it is our choice.

    (Yes, I declare an interest, I am a fat boy.)

  15. adam
    January 3, 2009

    Whatever the problem i am sure we will be told the Europeans do it much better. A mediterranean lifestyle necessary perhaps, like the continental approach to alcohol.
    Why do we do it to ourselves, elect a xenophobic, europhile government that acts like a parent being shown up by a naughty child, trying to get us to behave properly and be good Europeans.

  16. Bazman
    January 3, 2009

    The only politician to be taken seriously on this subject would be that great trencherman Sir Cyril Smith MBE.

  17. Bazman
    January 3, 2009

    I assume that all you quality alcoholic beverage drinkers will be of the same liberal opinions on drinking?
    Frosty Jacks white cider anyone? You don’t know Jack. Huge displays of brightly coloured bottles to catch the eye looking like it is a soft drink of some kind in high street discount shops, but turns out to be 2.5 litres that’s 5.283 pints of strong white cider for less than ÂŁ2.50p. Unbelievable. That’s less than 50p a pint, that works out cheaper than some leading brand soft drinks. And at 7.5 percent alcohol, getting fighting drunk for less than ÂŁ2. 50p would be child’s play. Looking at the packaging and advertising logos it’s hard not to get the impression that that’s the market the stuff is aimed at. With spoof profiles’ advertising the stuff on the social networking site Bebo. This site is mainly used by school kids, and going by the language and style of the pages this is just the target audience they are aiming for. This just seems to be a cheap cynical way of getting round the ban on advertising alcohol to kids.

    http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MID=367137231&MemberId=3795457807

    http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=2594580152

    http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=2933394883

    http://www.visit4info.com/advert/Frosty-Jacks-White-Cider-You-Dont-Know-Jack-Frosty-Jacks-White-Cider/23527

    All this marketing must surely must be a waste of time for these drink companies and the effects of drunken teenagers is nothing to do with them right? It’s all the parents and societies?
    Uncork and sip that expensive one or crack open and glug your lager. It’s another world.

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