Obesity in childhood

No, don't panic, I haven't gone all Guardian and started wringing my hands about the fact that apparently 99% of all British children are now morbidly obese. No, I was struck by this entry over at Julia's blog.

Of course it is an outrage, but one point I wanted to add - doesn't this absolutely epitomise how the Western state infantilises people to the point where adults are incapable of realising that their behaviour is going to kill them, and have to be induced instead with extra pocket money? Childhood now lasts from birth until (early) death.

One small, cynical part of me believes that nearly all public spending is deliberately designed to piss off taxpayers, a sort of abuse of power by the state. Stories like this tend to reinforce that idea. The idea that in the beginnings of this century's own Great Depression the state is taxing people already in financial trouble to get other fat greedy bastards to stop cramming their face is enough to make your average tax payer drop dead from apoplexy.

The carbon footprint of handwringing

The BBC promotes some obscure academic to turn the ratchet of global warming induced hysteria one further notch.

This article has 'dodgy' written all over it, I just know it instinctively. One of the lines which suggest this is this one:

Mr Wissner-Gross's study found a typical Google search on a desktop computer produces about 7g (0.25oz) of carbon dioxide.

If you enter another request you obviously end up with double that amount.

Why 'obviously'? When people use the word 'obviously', and it is not completely and demonstrably obvious, and they aren't experts in their field I start to think 'agenda' or 'laziness'. Do Google cache search results? A cached result will return far quicker, and use less energy, than the original. 'Obvious'? Hardly.

This is quibbling while our culture burns, however. A culture and society which obsesses and agonises to this level of detail about perfectly normal things being done by billions of other people around the planet is a doomed one. What's next - the carbon footprint of breathing?

I'd like to see a study done on the energy produced through liberal handwringing. We could line 'em up in rows, attach them to generators and show them statistics about education, or photos from Africa or something. At times of peak demand we can bus in a load of Church of England bishops. It's win-win - energy crisis solved and liberals, at last, doing something useful.

Strictly Come Blathering

The insane hysteria over "Strictly" (spit) gathers apace. Obviously HMG's ministers are snowed under at the moment with the recession an'all, only the Scottish Secretary was available to pronounce from on high on this national emergency.

This story has been bubbling amongst the top three headlines on the BBC World News (!!) page for days now. Could it be something to do with John Sergeant being an ex-employee? Surely not! I thought the cappuchinatti's world view ended at the M25; clearly it doesn't get much beyond Shepherd's Bush.

More from our fascist overlords

A hat tip to Devil's Kitchen for this one:

Shoppers buying alcohol at the supermarket face a 'walk of shame' to a dedicated checkout counter. The plan is being drawn up by ministers to extend their control over people's lives still furter.

Actually, I edited the second sentence, but as the Left would say in other circumstances, it is "fake but true".

Personally, I don't think these proposals go far enough. Here are some more exciting proposals, well in keeping with the 'Progressive Liberal' cultural march:

• People who want to buy a bottle of wine at the supermarket should have the word 'paedo' tattooed on their forehead.
  
• People who want to buy a couple of bottles of Old Arsewipe to enjoy on the patio on a warm summer's evening should be pelted with manure by specially trained wankers employed by the state.
  
• Cider should be permitted for sale in only one supermarket in the UK, one specially built at the north end of North Uist (residents of Scotland will only be permitted to travel here via Basingstoke).
  
• Alcohol consumption should be further encouraged in bars in the Houses of Parliament by more enormous public subsidy (How did this one get in, shurely shome mishtake?)
  

Then, only then, will this country become what it truly can be - a joyless, socialist state full of people spying on each other. Oh yes.

Well, at least it wasn't Barbados

A striking indication of the contempt public 'servants' have for the captive mich-cows who feed them. Not quite the "fact-finding trip to Barbados" so loved by Private Eye and Yes, Minister but not far off. No doubt any day now they will be complaining once again about how short of resources they are.

I blogged earlier about how astonished I was at UK councils not just losing a colossal amount of money in dodgy Icelandic banks, but how they had such huge amounts of spare cash in the first place. Hertfordshire council lost £28m in the debacle, but the really astonishing fact is that the local council has £300m invested, on average, in a number of UK and foreign banks. £300fuckingmillion!

Painting each other's nails for a living

Laban has a post on the decline of Britain's economic power. He quotes some interesting passages:

The loss of manufacturing expertise will compromise our military strength. History repeatedly shows the correlation between a nation's wealth and its diplomatic and military powers.

A valid point, though perhaps an old-fashioned one. Not to say that it doesn't apply now, of course it does, but the main reason for Britain's decline is not economic decline but the collapse (no other word for it) in the will of our political class to defend Britain's national interests above all else. You can have twenty carrier groups, but if your collective mind is obsessed with internationalism and 'soft power', you will never use them, and your threats to use them have no credibility.

we now produce only 3,000 physics graduates a year. Compare that to an astonishing 15,000 psychologists

Every now again some harmless looking statement just jumps out of the internet and punches you flat. Does the work of a psychologist increase GDP? It's arguable either way, I would say it doesn't. And when the economy is growing due to the efforts of others, the effect is obscured. When we nosedive into recession, as we are now, what then?

Driven to Create a blog

Finally, after all of the crap we have had to put up with for the last ten years, this has finally driven me over the edge and into blog land. I am interested in who commissioned this report - our government, or another stuffed-full-of-public-cash organisation like the EU or UN?

Anyway, it's the usual boiler plate green authoritarianism, which fifteen years ago would have been laughed at but is rapidly and disturbingly becoming mainstream, but the killer quote is below:

'it concedes that this approach "raises enormous questions and accusations of nannystate misery-guts spoilsportism".'


Or Fascism, as I'd rather call it, because it is (a) snappier and (b) more accurate. When the State uses its power to decide what you eat, could it be described as anything else?

I believe you are meant to 'hat-tip' your source, in this case 'Chapeau!' to Devil's Kitchen

Update:

I've been thinking a bit more about this. In order to meet their demand that we consume far less meat and dairy produce, they have two options:

• The hands-on, skull smashing variety of Fascism. That is, the use of force to impose rationing. There is no way such an extreme level of rationing could be imposed in peacetime and at a time of unparalleled prosperity without the indiscriminate and massive use of State force.
• The abuse of the market to price such goods out of the reach of all but metropolitan socialists.

The second option is mentioned in the article. But fixing the price at an artificially high level is a weapon almost as blunt and indiscriminate as the truncheons used to impose rationing. The limit on such foods they say we should consume are

one quarter-pound burger, two sausages, three rashers of bacon and one chicken breast, along with a litre of milk and 100g of cheese.

Now, at what price should these goods be set so that I am limited by my income to no more than this? My income is a lot more than many, and a lot less than those who own sumptious properties in Hampstead and vote Labour. How should the price be set? Will we have punitive taxation to steal money from the 'rich' (those able to afford two chicken breasts per week) to the 'poor' (those who spend their money on fags instead)? Are we going to have black-booted bacon inspectors turning over pubs to smash the flourishing black market in illicit pork products?

Like previous scares, e.g. about health, this report and others like it are produced for one reason, and it isn't to combat global warming. It is to prepare for the increase of State power.