Diet, Fat Bastards, Diet!

I'm sorry, I just can't leave this fat business alone. I've been thinking some more about it, and it occurs to me that if the government is really serious about tackling the obesity problem, it should start by stigmatising fatness. I mean, they seem to think that it works with smoking - lighting up in public these days seems to be considered a capital offence. Indeed, it appears that it is now considered more socially acceptable to fart audibly and ferociously in a crowded lift, than it is to light a cigarette there. So successful has the stigmatisation of smoking been, they've also tried the same trick with car users (ownership of anything with an engine in excess of 1.4 litres gets you stoned in the street for destroying the ozone layer these days) and public drunkenness (although they seem happy to continue to allow the sale of alcohol through pubs, off licences, supermarkets and even garages). And then there's so-called 'anti-social behaviour' (which covers anything middle-England sees the working classes doing and decides it doesn't like), and the rise of the Anti-Social Behaviour Order, which made it illegal for some people to knock on doors or feed pigeons, for instance.

Getting back to the fatties - as trying to identify and address the root causes of social problems now seems to be out of fashion, we really should be making these bastards feel ashamed of being grossly overweight. It should become legal to shout "fatty, fatty, fatty" and make pig noises at any overweight people seen on the street. Moreover, I think it should be made an offence to to be seen unwrapping a chocolate bar in a public place, let alone eating it. Sales of confectionery should be restricted to those under ten stone, with every shop selling sweets equipped with sets of scales which shopkeepers are legally required to weigh customers on. Potatoes should be become Class A drugs, available only to addicts on prescription from a doctor. Sugar sales should likewise be restricted, with the overweight prescribed sweeteners instead and/or rationed to one bag of sugar a month. The main risk, of course, is that some activities we now accept as normal could become criminalised. Potato pushers would start lurking outside schools. 'Speakeasys' illegally selling chips would spring up in every big city and sugar snorting would undoubtedly become the new trendy social activity for the middle classes.

In fact, I think the government should start this process within its own ranks. That John Prescott - he should be kicked out of office, forced to run, naked, a gauntlet of female civil servants, all armed with wet towels to flick at his gargantuan arse. Come to think of it, that Gordon Brown, he's a bit on the podgy side - send him to a health farm, the fat git.