Brown’s Pogrom Against The Fat

Dictatorial regimes always target minorities – Hitler persecuted gypsies and homosexuals as well as Jews. The latest target of the soft fascists of the Brit regime is fat people.

Targeting minorities helps a repressive regime stabilize the citizenry, in the same way that wars do.

The Blair/Brown socialist government has targeted proponents of “hate” (AKA free) speech, smokers, and now turns its bovine glare onto people of weight – here’s Junkfoodscience:

The obesity news coming from the UK has been a source of international incredulity.

This week, the report commissioned by the UK government’s Foresight Programme of the Office of Science and Technology was released, in support of some of the most massive governmental anti-obesity policies in the history of the world.

The report proposes a range of Orwellian schemes:

[I]t is possible the state could provide tax rebates for healthy lifestyles, and provide free services on demand only for the poorest…

…supermarkets, responding to government regulations similar to those on cigarettes and alcohol, arbitrate on which customers can buy high fat foods…

…‘healthy living agreements’ between people and health providers…

….electronic ‘fat quota’ ration cards may keep a closer eye on obese people’s food purchases and ration specific items; it could even be used to identify overweight teenagers that should attend government-run summer fitness camps…

The scheme’s proponent:

…Dawn Primarolo, Minister of State for Public Health…wrote in the Foresight report’s Preface: “We will therefore jointly be acting on the findings of this project, taking a system-wide approach with Ministers across Government and with professionals and policy makers…”

Primarolo is a typical Blair/Brown creature – her entire adult life experience before full-time politics was as a secretary and “mature student“.

Here’s the truth from Professor Patrick Basham (unusually in the normally lefty London Independent):

…the claim that half of the British population will be clinically obese in 25 years assumes, without any empirical foundation, that every overweight child will become an overweight adult and that every overweight adult will progress to obesity.

Body Mass Index (a figure consisting of height squared divided by weight squared) statistics show a significant increase in overweight adults over the past decade.

But this is an extraordinary case of moving the methodological goalposts: in 1997, the BMI classification of being overweight was changed from 27 to 25. At a stroke, millions of people previously classed as normal suddenly became overweight, with no good reason to explain the change.

This obscures the fact that the average adult weighs only a pound or two more than those of a generation ago. The increase in obesity applies only to the morbidly obese (with a BMI greater than 40), who make up less than 5 per cent of the obese.

Further, there is not a shred of evidence to suggest that childhood obesity is on the increase, let alone accelerating. The Department of Health’s own survey, published in December 2004, shows that for all children aged two to 15 there was actually a slight decline in obesity prevalence from 2004-2005. And in children aged 11-15, there was a 17.5 per cent decline.

…the claim that being overweight or modestly obese is associated with an increased risk of premature death has been discredited by a series of studies. For example, the 2004 US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study claimed that there were nearly 400,000 annual deaths attributable to diet and physical inactivity. Yet this was discredited the following year by a study from researchers at the CDC and the National Institutes of Health, which put the figure of annual deaths from overweight and obesity at just 25,814.

A 2002 cross-cultural review of obesity in the US, France, Australia, Britain and Spain found little evidence that overweight or obese children and adolescents consumed more calories than others. At least one study has found that overweight children consume fewer calories than their thinner peers do.

…several recent studies have shown that adult attempts to control children’s eating patterns lead to children eating more – as well as raising the risk of body-image problems and eating disorders. It’s this unintended, and uninvestigated, outcome of a weight-obsessed society that should be the cause for concern.

This confirms the Brit government and its scientific advisory team as oppressive, incompetent, and ignorant. And the loss of Brit sovereignty means democratic change is unlikely.

Fair disclosure: I have a BMI of 20 and have been the same weight for 35 years, give or take a pound or so. But some of my best friends are fat and happy.