Why Isn't Anybody Measuring The Waistline of Nanny State?

UK Public Enemy No. 1

The British Fat Police gear up for a Waco-style assault on liberty obesity:

Clothes made in larger sizes should carry a tag with an obesity helpline number, health specialists have suggested. Sweets and snacks should not be permitted near checkouts, new roads should not be built unless they include cycle lanes and food likely to make people fat should be taxed, they say in a checklist of what we might “reasonably do” to deal with obesity.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, the team says that “pull yourself together, eat less and exercise more” is an inadequate response to obesity, voiced only by “less perceptive health professionals” and the media. What fat people need is help, advice and sympathy to overcome their addiction to food, says the group of public health professional, which includes Sir George Alberti, the Government’s national director for emergency care.

I love how the whole concept of personal responsibility here is dismissed as the blathering of people who "don't get it." And somebody explain to me how "pull yourself together, eat less and excercise more" does not qualify as "help, advice and sympathy." Certainly sounds like it to me. On the other hand, it strikes me that the actual steps proposed by the "team" are better characterized as "serious infringements of personal liberties."

What's next? A Fat-Detector van that goes about weighing people and performing on-the-spot liposuction on anybody caught above their approved pants size? Pound of flesh, indeed.

Yips! to Rachel.