The National Health Service is going to go all out to fight obesity in Britain; and the campaign will begin with doctors snitching on their patients if they put on weight ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/11295265/Doctors-told-to-report-patients-who-put-on-weight.html ).
So much for the confidentiality of the doctor-patient relationship. Makes it kind of hard to trust your doctor, if you know he’s going to tattle on you.
The story in The Telegraph does not tell us what the government intends to do after they hear that Joe Blow has gained five pounds.
It’s all for their own good, of course. Socialism has so thoroughly infantalized the Brits that the government must literally guide the spoon into their mouths. Supposedly, Britain is “now the second fattest nation in Europe, with almost 25% of Britons classified as obese–compared with a European average of 16.7%,” according to the news article. The head honcho of the NHS says schools, parents, the NHS and the food industry must all “work in unison” to change “attitudes” and whip up a new “national programme” to make people healthier. Get their employers, the honcho suggested, to give out prizes to employees who lose weight.
And if that doesn’t work… well, again, they aren’t saying.
No one seems to be asking why so many Britons are overeating. Is it just because food of all kinds, including sweets and snack foods, is so easily and abundantly available, and it’s a pleasure to consume it?
Is it not so easy to come by other ways of experiencing pleasure?
Are people in this socialist paradise spiritually starving, and trying to assuage this hunger by gulping down food?
Ah, what the heck–whatever it is, government will fix it.
Just like it fixes everything else.
P.S. Thirty-eight years ago today, Patty and I had our first date. In early February I proposed marriage and she accepted. In August we were married. Our employer said, “Can’t you do that on your vacation?”