Recently ITV’s “Tonight” (23/2/12) and the BBC’s Inside Story –Yorkshire (27/2/12) highlighted the current appalling state of the nation’s health in this, our much trumpeted Olympic year. If we win nothing at all in track and field, we are already assured top spot on the podium as the fattest nation in Europe; that is, of course, always assuming they can make a podium big and strong enough.
Incredibly, over the last fifty years the weight of the average male has increased from 10st to 13st with the corresponding increase in women from 9st to 11st. Taking into account current trends these figures in another 50 years will be respectively 17st and 13st; remember that these are average figures. This is a shocking state of affairs meaning that in 2062 some 60% of the population will be obese. Imagine the furore if this were either the proportion of alcoholics, drug users or smokers?
Some more statistics may further illustrate the problems across society.
- 33.4% of final year primary school children are overweight or obese
- NHS spending last year was £4.2bn – 70% up on 2010
- This is predicted to double by 2050.
Its Not My Fault!
I have an admittedly simplistic view that being over the last 50 years people have been given more choices and personal freedoms than ever before – and they simply cannot cope; this is largely, I believe, because most people are inherently stupid and need choices to be made for them. A nation that chooses The Sun as its most read newspaper and has its most popular television programme a close run contest between the X-Factor and Coronation Street hardly deserves the tag of advanced nation status.
As evidence of my own personal view the Tonight programme presented 17 year old Charlotte weighing in at 18st with probably at best a gramme of that as brain matter. Amongst the various pearls of wisdom trotted out by her – no pun intended – were the following.
“I could go to a salad bar and pay three quid for a salad” she whined “for that I can get three chicken burgers”. Clearly the poor soul has never tasted chicken because for a quid a burger there will be little evidence of chicken here. Or how about this one?
“I get out of breath walking downstairs”. Well roll down you great fat lump I felt like shouting at the screen. She actually seemed bewildered that she got out of breath and could not “do the things I want to” which presumably meant eating more “chicken” burgers. The final offering was a gem though picturing her “at work” sat down at a shop counter demolishing yet another burger and resembling the back end of a council dump truck with jaws mechanically hauling in yet another slug of junk food.
“Energy drinks are the worst though as they are only 35p a can and water is 60p” she blurted although it was lost on me why she would need energy drinks when there was no evidence of her actually moving; certainly not to the tap where the silent mathematician in her may have worked out that water was free here.
In a microcosm she was conclusive evidence of the stupidity of people cosseted by the Nanny State over recent generations and bewildered if anything “real bad” should ever happen to them – presumably because nothing ever happens like that to those role models like Jordan and Peter Andre in the real world of Hello and Ok?
Cheaper Than a Lobotomy?
The cost to society is staggering; the bloated Charlotte was the third member of her family to receive NHS surgery by way of a gastric band – bariatric surgery – at an estimated cost of £50k each time. The Tonight programme made the point that “many studies show that it is in fact more cost effective for the NHS to pay for surgery than to deal with the costs involved in treating people whose weight is seriously affecting their health.”
To back this up a surgeon, interviewed on the Inside Story piece reaffirmed this whilst casually mentioning that he now did over 400 procedures a year; surely a brain transplant cannot be that more expensive? No downturn in slicing fatties then and golf club fees, new Porsche and Caribbean holidays assured.
Even the “experts” almost were hand-wringing claiming that it was all because food was “everywhere” to which I could almost hear Charlotte whining “there, told you it wasn’t my fault!” One or two did make the point that we hardly do any exercise any more a point evidenced no more obviously than in schools where sport or any physical activity has all but vanished for the majority of kids. Then again we are hosting the Olympics so surely we really are a sporting nation…aren’t we?
The Fat Welfare State
Of course the Nanny State has had its attempts to fix the problem, most recently with New Labour blowing £275m – how do they spend this amount of money and on what? – on the Change4Life programme; as somebody who signed up as a junior sports coach this seems to have dome little more than keep a few printing companies busy. Am I being over critical wondering why they spend so much on a useless campaign whilst failing to be able to spell a three letter word?
Another legacy of New Labour’s spending spree was the recent revelation[3] that obese people are being paid £7m a year in sickness handouts; a total of 2,630 people are adjudged too fat to work. Can you believe that you can get a state allowance for being too stupid for words?
And now the wizards at Bangor University have come up with “Food Dudes” making healthy food “trendy” failing to miss the point that Postman Pat, Zebedeee and Scooby Do were all once trendy before the kids grew up and got fed up of being patronized. Claiming that they were making progress in 300 schools – there are almost 30,000 in the country – you can almost hear the printing presses whirring again funded by yet another slug of Nanny State Wonga.
Some European countries – France, Denmark & Hungary amongst others – have started to introduce taxes on fatty or sugary foods a move so far resisted in the UK; but why? Logically we have pursued the same approach to alcohol, tobacco and even fuel – albeit to save the polar bears which are probably a far worthier cause than the likes of fat Charlotte– it is the only thing stupid people understand. Hit them in the pocket, after all are they not hitting the rest of us annually with their idiotic excesses?
Sources:
[1] National Child Measurement Programme 2011
[2] Sunday Times 20/11/11
[3] Daily Express – 6/3/12
Judas says
Hi Steve, were are singing from the same hymn sheet.
I was in a meeting at school yesterday and governors were discussing attendance rates. I need to set the scene here (names have been changed to protect the guilty):
Lazy St in East Oxford is as far from the local school as your house is from Idle Parish Church – it might even be closer.
The head teacher told how she got a call from a parent in Lazy St, when it was snowing, to say she wouldn’t be bringing the kids to school as she didn’t have a 4×4 and her normal car could not cope with slippery conditions…
THERE IS NO HOPE FOR THESE PEOPLE.
When my son was at his last school, there was a council estate just across the river. The river was 50 metres from the school, there was a bridge straight over the river that put you smack into the estate on the other side. Nearly every single parent who lived on that estate drove their kids to school – even though it meant circumnavigating Oxford in the rush hour to avoid a five minute walk. My son and I walked or cycled to school every single day, whatever the weather, for five years. The walk, if we stepped it out, took 45 minutes, we usually allowed an hour. People thought we were mad. My son loved it, it woke him up and he got to feed the ducks on the way to school, what could be better?
YOU CANNOT CHANGE THAT SORT OF MINDSET.
The school he is at now is a mile away. All up hill – it’s like walking up Carr Lane every morning. I walk him there and back, twice a day. Before I head back home I take the dog around the park outside the school, a mile circuit – so we walk six miles a day, every day, just as part of the commute. The number of cars that drive past us heading to the same school is huge. They all try and drive up the steep hill whilst others are trying to drive down. Cars are parked on either side. It drives them all nuts and every morning road rage breaks out and we are treated to a symphony of horns and foul tempers. When they get to the top they have to turn their kids out to waddle and puff to the school gates as quick as they can as they are invariably late due to the traffic. I feel like wearing a sandwich board that says “EVER THOUGHT ABOUT WALKING TO SCHOOL, YOU FAT, LAZY WANKERS?” but I don’t suppose I’d be too popular.
STERILISE THEM, EDUCATION WILL NOT SAVE PEOPLE SO STUPID.
Keep it up my friend, you are not alone.
Nick (Ginger) Gibson says
Just a quick comment from one of the tubbies…my son who is 14 mentioned to me that in what we called PE instead of getting outside in the glorious weather they were doing PE theory work sat in the classroom …and this from a Sports College. The world has gone mad.