Wednesday 3 August 2011

Would The Big Boned Please Report For Denormalisation

Having known more than a few porkers who act like appreciative clapping seals when restrictions on smoking and drinking are mentioned, it's difficult not to imagine them munching on a large bucket of popcorn and belly laughing at the recent acceleration of anti-tobacco and alcohol attacks.

All rather silly, really, considering they'll soon be in the same boat - after it has been widened, natch - as I hinted at in a tweet yesterday.


The linked article was from The Economist discussing plans on taxing food ... or even the fat themselves. And boy did the comments from sanctimonious fatty-botherers fly in with suggestions as to how severely they should be restricted (not, you note, whether they should be restricted at all).

If there is one social group who should be acutely worried about threats to personal responsibility in all areas, it is the BMI-challenged.

This isn't an isolated piece, either. The US is a hotbed of anti-obese sentiment right now, perhaps due to a shift in funding from smoker harassment to plump-bashing.

The day after that Econ piece was published, another reported on plans to ban advertising of any food which isn't 100% healthy.

Of the 100 most-consumed products in the country, 88 would have to be reformulated to meet these criteria or simply go unadvertised.
And more recently still, via CCF we can read of the latest exhortations from America's prime advocate of taxes on cakes and fizzy drinks. You see, anti-fat crusaders hold big meetings these days to discuss how best to demonise the overweight, just like other groups we could mention. Beginning with a bare-faced - but increasingly prevalent - lie, he has decided that individuals are simply not doing what they are told and therefore the anti-smoking template must be rolled out.

Kelly Brownell, director of the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, told the crowd that children are now expected to lead shorter lives than their parents, which he linked to a “toxic relationship with food.” Simply educating the general public about healthy choices, he said, is not enough.

Food companies need to be regulated, he said, just as tobacco companies are.
Followed by graphic warnings, denormalisation, price, marketing, availability, yada, yada, yada. Repeat to fade.

I'm sure the concept of the US as a breeding ground for future UK health policy isn't unfamiliar to readers here.

Sorry to be blunt, but if you're an overweight anti-smoker or alcohol puritan, you're either woefully ignorant of the nature of public health steamrollering, wildly hypocritical, or in need of some time on a shrink's couch.


15 comments:

Woodsy42 said...

Wht dhould a carbon tax base be confined to fuel? What do you think fat is made of!

Anonymous said...

Mr P, If I maybe so bold, some top quality posting of late.

Anonymous said...

Why not go the whole socialist hog and demand that everyone is a slim, fit blond, blue-eyed aryan or sent to a "holiday camp"?

I propose a "git tax" or "feeble minded trot/fabian tax" for those that always want to interfere and think they know better...

"The whole problem with the world is that the fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts", Bertrand Russell.

JFC on a bike with knobs on.

Angry Exile said...

The bigots never went away, did they? Some just found new targets when they were told they weren't allowed to hate people of other races anymore.

Anonymous said...

I await the midnight knock on the door and transportation to somewhere grim like Milton Keynes
or Hemel Hempstead.....Why.?
I smoke ,I am overweight,I drink,
I am carniverous,I am caucasoid,
I am heterosexual,I am a Christian,
I am ultra right wing,I am a secret
cream bun eater??????,I hate wine sippers,,,,, this England has
become a most nasty little land
even the pidgeons fly upside down
nowt worth shitting on


Derelict mills and shut pubs

westcoast2 said...

The plan was all set out from the WHO Global Health Strategy (about 2005 I think) to the EU Health Strategy and then onto HMG in 2008 --> Health is Global

It clearly sets out
"Combating injuries and non-communicable diseases (including mental illness) and risk factors such as tobacco, alcohol misuse and obesity are therefore the new priorities in global health."

I am a little behind the times as there have been conferences since 2008. Not sure if the current government is adhering to all this. Anyways its been going on behind the scenes for years.

It is a real shame that many people were so short-sighted and in 'it doesn't affect me' mode that they allowed a series of precedents to be set with tobacco.

Once these precedents were in place then those short-sighted people lose the argument about their particular 'unhealthy' lifestyle choice, before it has even begun.

Little did they realise that, for example tobacco restrictions and the denormalisation of smokers, were just trial runs. How could they? After all they are not smokers and it could never happen to them.

It's still not to late for a change of direction :)

Dick Puddlecote said...

Woodsy: A fart tax, perhaps?

SAoT: Charmed, I'm sure. :)

AE: I've always felt there was a large element of shifting hatred in all of these 'causes'.

Westcoast: Precisely. Alcohol is already on the back foot before it's even begun to defend itself. Panorama illustrated that starkly. The overweight are also toast already as I mentioned here. Their defence has already been rendered inadmissible.

I reckon none of them would be that good at Chess, either. ;)

Budvar said...

What with them going after smokers, drinkers and now us fat bastards, once they start going after the old "misogynistic womanisers", I'm well and truly fucked!!

PT Barnum said...

One little phrase screamed out at me from westcoast2's comment: 'non-communicable diseases (including mental illness)' - at what point did mental illnesses become diseases? And having declared ALL of them to be diseases, the WHO has just given the medical profession and Big Pharma carte blanche to treat all those it elects to regard as mentally diseased with appropriate medical treatment (heavy-duty, inadequately tested drugs, anyone?), forcibly if necessary.

I am now rather scared. I have a disease and I never knew it. Pass the drugs, doctor.

Dangermouse said...

@westcoat2

@DP

I would bet my cat's life that the likes of Monsanto have been "stakeholders" in the WHO strategy.

Approved foodstuff list? Who gets on the list?

You can see it coming like a fat fuck running the 800 - when it eventually gets here, it's not going to be pretty.

Anonymous said...

I often wonder how long it’ll take the Healthists to move from stopping people from doing the things that they want to do to legally obliging them to do things that they don’t want to do. Like compulsory exercise classes (remember Winston Smith’s daily “physical jerks?”), curfews at 11.00 pm to make sure everyone gets enough sleep, mandatory total cut-outs on TV’s to make sure we don’t sit around on our sofas for too long, or drinking eight glasses of water a day whether we’re thirsty or not.

I guess it might be sooner than we all think, because there must surely come a point at which so many things are prohibited from sale or use that there will be a high chance that the economy grinds to a halt or at least slows to a snail’s pace. After all, if the creeping prohibition on tobacco sales and usage can have the disastrous effects on the economy that it has had, what is the effect going to be like when similar tactics are applied to alcohol, sugar, salt, fat, cakes, biscuits, red meat, fast foods, dairy products etc etc? It’d have to stop somewhere, or there’d be no money to pay the Healthists’ big fat salaries. So, then it’ll be time for the next “next logical step” …

Anonymous said...

Lard arses are an easy target, in fact the easiest. Let's face it you would struggle to identify a smoker or drinker passing you.

Paul said...

I know that we're next. I've tried telling people this but they would rather put their head in the sand and put their guts out dieting and have a miserable time of it, just to conform to other people's expectations. Those people will never, ever be happy though because even after fat it'll be something else. You can't win.

I fully expect that a lot of fat people will end up committing suicide when the denormalisation strategy goes into full swing. Hatred of fat people has always been there - people have always aimed taunts at fat people. I suspect we're likely to see street attacks on fat people for being fat in the not-too distant future.

I refuse to lose weight. I am a human being. I am free.

Anonymous said...

Trouble is, going for food on whatever excuse will affect us all.

I would hazard a guess that the demonised foods will be the traditional scapegoats, like sugar, potatoes, bread, double cream.
All the things that have appeared in fad diets in magazines over the years.
I doubt that the agri-chemical, food additive manufacturers will be touched.

I can live without double cream on my breakfast cereal, I can live without sugar in my coffee or butter on my toast.
None of these are essential to a basic puritan existence.

But do I want to?

I certainly don't want to pay punitive taxes on the things I enjoy just because someone, somewhere, is overweight.


Rose

Anonymous said...

They should be worried. From a few yards, a smoker who isn't smoking is a non smoker; but the lardies, they can't run and they can't hide. How does Diane Abbott get away with being Shadow Minister for Public Health?