Remembering the good ol' days of WWII
This article from BBC News on the discussion about whether food rationing would solve the 'obesity crisis' would be laughable if it didn't feel a little too close to an actual possibility. The article is chock full of quotes from yahoos that just don't get it, including this choice gem from Dr. David Haslam, chairman of the National Obesity Forum:
"We have a situation where food is available everywhere, open round the clock - cheaper, poor quality, bigger portions - a situation where food is ubiquitous. It is the first time really in history where food is limitless.
"We haven't developed an instinct that tells us when not to eat. Our strongest instincts tell us to eat."
So, rad. I hope all of the hungry people in the UK and all over the world were relieved to find out that food is now available everywhere. Also, no, it's not that we haven't developed the instinct not to eat. It's that we've destroyed any connection to our natural instincts through this perpetual dieting bullcrap.
Oh, also:
"There is a place for the nanny state, especially when you look at kids."
But the nanny state isn't about children, dammit. It's about treating adults like kids, making decisions for them that they are perfectly able to make for themselves. There's a word for someone who is qualified to make a decision for another human being, and that word is: parent. And only if we're still talking about kids. In terms of adults, another adult isn't allowed to make any kind of decisions for me unless I sign a legal document saying so. So why are we even talking about this?
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Posted by CarrieP on January 11, 2010
Run, people, run.
Whether the 'suggestion' of rationing is something that's actually being seriously considered as policy by any of the major political parties or just another bit of BBC obesity intervention cheerleading on a slow news day is difficult to ascertain - if it's the latter it certainly wouldn't be the first time they've dragged David Haslam or Tam Fry out to add 'expert' credence to their Charter-breaching promotion of the sledgehammer approach. However there's no doubt that the potent combination of climate change hysteria* and anti-obesity extremism can only fuel the current bonfire of our civil liberties and further assist the epidemic of nanny statism in this country.
The UK is due a general election inside of the next six months, which many people are looking forward to as an opportunity to dethrone a complacent and arrogant Labour administration which has in its 13 years in power completely changed the relationship between an increasingly overbearing, interfering 'big Government' and the individual through surveillance and an unhealthy interest in the lifestyle habits / beliefs of individuals, particularly those with children. What the populace don't entirely seem to get, however, is that both of the main alternative parties, ideologically only a few degrees apart, are coming from similar positions of believing that it is the place of Government to interfere in our lives and not only tell us what's best but to use legislation and bully-boy tactics (such as the misuse of social services and healthcare rationing as 'incentives' to slim) to ensure compliance.
As a moderate / social libertarian who's for managed immigration (rather than the current demands for closing the borders) and fat rights (in fact individual autonomy and 'help' only when it's asked for) I have no idea who I'll be voting for in May / June, as none of the parties reflect my views - probably because coming out in favour of either in a country where public opinion is heavily distorted by the frothing of Daily Mail and Murdoch red-top hacks is political suicide. Despite all the centre-right populism and vote-chasing, people have never been more disillusioned with the system and there are predictions that turnout could be so low we end up with a coalition of two or more parties; given how similar they are in their approach that could well spell the end for what little democracy remains in this country and usher in the era of a one-party state, which could then impose fat taxes and food rationing with impunity.
(*I am all for encouraging recycling, conservation of resources / energy, more fuel-efficient technologies, concern for the ecosystem and responsible farming and food distribution methods. What I don't support is the way the topic has been cynically politicised through 'greenwash', lip service, bandwagon-jumping, looking the other way whilst big business and the rich (including politicians and their needless 'climate summits') pollute and whilst using regressive taxation, guilt and fearmongering to justify demanding the working poor give up our basic pleasures such as personal transportation, warm houses and occasional foreign vacations. And the whole marginalisation of climate change skeptics is not only familiar from the world of obesity research but similarly stinks to high heaven - just what are they trying to hide?)
"A waist is a terrible thing to mind" - Tom Wilson
So, let me see if I understand: For once, there is a relatively steady food supply, for most people, in *some* parts of the world, and this is a bad thing???
Only a person who has always lived amid relative plenty and consistent "food security" could even possibly consider espousing something so dumb!
The "nanny state" component of his idea is frightening. It's tantamount to the government *forcing* certain people, based purely on their size and not their actual health, to diet. Even though diets don't work. It's unsolicited handholding, to which I say, HANDS OFF. A fat body is *not* public property, damn it.
I'm straight up with Carrie: "... another adult isn't allowed to make any kind of decisions for me unless I sign a legal document saying so. So why are we even talking about this?"
Amen, sister.
Rebelle, one of the aspects of the whole war on fat people that bugs me most is (despite being allegedly motivated by 'health') how counter-survivalist and counter-evolutionary it is.
Humans have evolved the ability to store excess energy as fat over millennia, and to assume that because as a species we've had relative food security for 150 years or so we'll never need to fall back on that capacity again is the height of folly and symptomatic of the current 'we know everything' arrogance of our so-called experts.
In fact as post-apocalyptic fiction writers have long speculated, peak oil, global pandemic, EMP, nuclear or conventional war, in isolation or combined, could conceivably disrupt our fragile society and with it the complex and highly efficient mechanisms of food production and distribution on which our current population levels depend.
Without these systems we'd be forced to re-learn and re-discover skills not widely used in several generations, and that would take time, during which existing stores would be rapidly depleted. In a modern mass starvation scenario, and just like the folk in those concentration camps everyone is now so damn certain contained no fat people, we'd have a head start, one that could make all the difference.
"A waist is a terrible thing to mind" - Tom Wilson