Oct 14 2007
The nation’s waistline and the government’s wasteline
Alan Johnson thinks obesity is as large problem as climate change. Prepare yourselves for a government media and advertising bombardment on what we should eat, what we can drink, how much exercise we should take and how we should change our lifestyles. Prepare to be told yet again that the government does not approve of how we live and is out to change it. These politicians just want to meddle in every detail of our lives, with their army of regulators, tax officials, monitors, prying forms and surveillance cameras
Many of us do not approve of how the government lives, and would like to change that. The government may be right that if you become too fat your health deteriorates and your quality of life worsens. They should look in a mirror and understand that it is certainly true that as government expands its own waste the quality of its services deteriorates and the rest of us suffer, paying high tax bills for no good reason. This is the government that has plenty of our money for more politicians, more bureaucrats, more adverts, more spin doctors, more quangoes and more glossy brochures, but is often stumped for the money for drugs and bed spaces in hospitals.
It is a bit rich to get lectures on deaths from obesity from a government which cannot keep the hospitals clean, just a day or so after it has to reveal the sad truth about 90 deaths in Kent from hospital acquired infections. Anyone who read about the disgraceful conditions in a hospital where patients were told to soil their own beds instead of being helped to the bathroom would expect the Health Secretary to have the sense to concentrate on getting his own house in order before reading the riot act to the nation.
I encourage readers to send in their own examples of government waste and bossiness. I will be running occasional features on this government’s own bulging wasteline.
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John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
The food issue really shows us the extent to which government is interfering in our lives. Whatever happened to personal responsibility? I could be a drug addict, but I’m not. I could be an alcoholic, but I’m not. The reason why I don’t have either of those addictions is because I took the pesonal responsibility not to get involved in anything like that. People must really be made to take responsibility for their own actions and not be looking to the state for instruction. People are overweight because they choose to be, it is better that they are slim and have a healthy diet but they must make that choice for themselves. I’ve no objection to controlled healthy diets for children who are unable to exercize personal responsibility, but when it comes to adults, it is the individual who must take the responsibility and not the interfering state.
Here’s a beauty, Northumberland County Councils Procurement Strategy 2007-2010.
http://pscm.northumberland.gov.uk/pls/portal92/docs/7275.PDF
In year 1 they want to:
“Review the supply of food and drinks available in vending machines”
In year 2 they plan:
“To review procurement policies and raise officer awareness around the benefits of Fair Trade”
By year 3 they will:
“Establish a base line of council spend in respect of Fair Trade products, once established, if relevant, we will increase the number of Fair Trade products that we buy and sell.”
and claim:
“We will encourage schools in Northumberland to adopt a Fair Trade approach.”
So they want to tell me what coffee to buy in other words. Will it stop with coffee? Will some silly bureaucrat land us with a multi-million Euro fine for organising an effectve UK government boycott of French, German, Spanish and Portugese wine?
What business is ot of local government to try and brainwash me into drinking ‘Fairtrade’ coffee. All is boycotting every Brazilian cofee producer bar 6 growers ‘fair’ exactly?
When you search for ‘fair trade’ on the website of the International Coffee Organization you get one hit, here is a quote from it:
“…the 330-page guide emphasizes trade practices of relevance to exporters in coffee producing countries. As well as statistics and comments on the trade in coffee for both producing and consuming countries, the guide covers new trends in the coffee trade: electronic commerce, niche markets, organic and fair trade labelling, codes of conduct and environmental issues, and comes with a bookmark listing useful Website addresses for the coffee sector.”
So I read the relevant page of the 330-page guide for people who sell coffee
http://www.thecoffeeguide.org/
and found that:
“Coffee to be sold under a Fairtrade label must be purchased directly from groups certified by FLO. The purchase price must be set in accordance with Fairtrade conditions of which the following are the most significant:
Arabicas: the New York
Excellent idea too link human obesity with government obesity and to attack Labour’s lecturing in the light of their own failures with the health service.
The announcement looks a bit cynical to me, coinciding as it does with public fury at the high incidence of hospital transmitted infections.
I would say that obesity is a considerably greater problem than climate change, since it does actually exist (observe the unanimity with which the media have censored the proof that 1998 is no longer “the warmest year for 1,000 years” but now comes behind 1934)http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2007/08/official-us-cli.html
Much of the problem with opposing obesity laws is that the game has already been given away with the smoking ban. The evidence that passive smoking kills anybody is, to put it politely, well within the limits of statistical error of the reports purporting to prove it. Obesity is somewhat worse, at least in the most severe cases. If the case for forcing people into the snow if they want to smoke has been accepted the moral case for compulsory 5 mile jogging is inescapable, though since it would not primarily affect the working classes, probably politically more difficult.
Anybody who has read 1984 may note that the 2 way TVs, which enabled the state aerobics instructer to tell Winston Smith to touch his toes, are now entirely feasible.
“If the case for forcing people into the snow if they want to smoke has been accepted the moral case for compulsory 5 mile jogging is inescapable, though since it would not primarily affect the working classes, probably politically more difficult.” (Neil Craig)
It’s called ‘cross country’ they made me do it at school in the snow once in 1994. I can’t stand running so I started walking after a mile or so and nearly got hypothermia, the only other time I’ve been so exposed to the elements was on a fishing trip to Sty Head Tarn on Sty Head Pass when I was 12.
It was quite a nice day in Wasdale Head, but 2,000ft or so above sea level was a different story. There were two men there already catching 9 inch long brout trout. I tried for half an hour and my Dad decided it was time to leave.
There was a man in a tent selling hot chocolate for 50p a cup for charity. It was fresh out of the kettle and felt lukewarm in my mouth. My Dad reckons to this day that if the man with the hot chocolate hadn’t been there he would have had a problem on his hands.
In respect of the cross country the games teacher put me under a warm shower and I was allowed to wear my ski jacket throughout the following RE lesson. I was still shivering a bit at the end of RE.
I think the solution to all of our problems is more cricket in schools, including long net sessions and fielding drills in the winter. We spent more time playing basketball and softball than cricket in the ‘good’ state comp I went to.
A compulsory 1 hour nets session once a week and an hour of fielding drills would do untold good to our nation and our chances of beating the Aussie again in my lifetime.
The world we’re building (or rather, having built for us) is rather more Brave New World than 1984, perhaps, though it is definitely a mixture of both.
The problem we have is that while the politicians are the ones imposing this lifestyle socialism (which here in Britain socialism has always been- more of a “reform the peasantry by force” movement than Marxism; which is now the only socialism left, really), the ammunition for it all is coming from academia, the sciences, medicine.
Now I’ve always been a big fan of science, and academic freedom, but we’re left with the problem that academics are effectively “pulling the strings”, along with their buddies in the faux charity/NGO movement, with an endless flurry of dubious studies and pronouncements which support all manner of hysterias from fattism to mobile phones to the infamous passive smoking and, being academia, nobody dares seriously question, let alone attack this, for fear of being seen to be stifling scientists’ freedom of speech and research. As such, the drivers of it all are almost entirely beyond question or scrutiny. Additionally, peer review has become the slogan of our age- “you cannot challenge this, it’s been peer reviewed” and that is that. No argument is allowed.
We must first of all get away from the idea that this is the government’s business *even if true*. If people are dying from being fat, then that’s their lookout. But for the past century the opposite has been the received wisdom- that it is the *job* of government to encourage “good” behaviours and discourage “bad” ones (and nobody dares to discuss what authority government, or indeed academics, have to make moral and lifestyle choices on behalf of the population).
This isn’t just a left-wing thing. I remember during the smoking stitch-up, when Hewitt was prevaricating about how to vote, and Michael Howard (then leader) hit her with a question asking how “the minister responsible for the nation’s health can be undecided” (not exact words, I paraphrase). Well I think that’s the problem. When did we decide that the government should be “responsible” for the health of individuals? Why *is* it that it’s the Health Minister’s fault if I eat deep fried mars bars washed down with 15 pints of strong lager? If we say it’s the minister’s responsibility that a citizen is overweight, then obviously teh minister will be obliged to take action against fatties, smokers, drinkers, and so on.
I think this is unacceptable. But until the received wisdom changes; until politicians stand foursquare and say “it’s not our job to tell people what to eat” the pressure will continue and the odious puritans in the social medicine movement will make our lives ever more miserable.
[...] Al Gore could be seen as one of the most important political campaigners, more so than bloody Alan Johnson. Obesity can’t be compared to the securing of the future of Planet Earth, it really [...]
Obesity is a greater threat than global warming….
Global Warming is a greater threat than terrorism…
therefore obesity is a greater threat than terrorism…
Solution:
scrap ID cards, bring back ration cards
You know it makes sense.
Reply: I like the scrap ID cards bit - you capture the absurdity of these people’s claims.
May I remind you, Mr Redwood, that you are our servant, not our master. So are all MPs. They are there to serve us, not to improve us. I wonder if you would please pass this on.
Reply: I need no reminding of that, but clearly some MPs do.