The launch of the Government's obesity strategy today sees all concerned spouting self righteous and sanctimonious waffle. What you stick into your body whether it be Krispy Kreme Donuts, cigarette smoke, vodka or the todger of a bloke you have just met in a lavatory on Clapham Common is your own business. It has nothing to do with the state. It is your body and your choice what to put in it.
Those on the left such as Jamie Oliver and that walking advert for healthy living that is Diane Abbott are today bashing the evil Tories for not doing more to tax sugar and to force companies to cut sugar in in drinks and food. Nanny statist Theresa May will instead challenge companies to cut sugar content.
The fear is that kids today are getting fatter. The answer is for their parents to feed them less crap and encourage the little monsters to go and get some exercise but that would suggest that individuals have to take responsibility for their own actions rather than have the State decide everything for them. We cant be having that can we?
What is most nonsensical about the whole debate is that the State is so incredibly selective about which bad health calls it wishes to discourage. As it happens fat kids will probably not be a long term burden on the health service since a good number of the little porkers will die an early and quick death via heart attack. Equally smokers will get lung cancer which costs sub £5,000 on average to "treat" between diagnosis and death. That would be the taxes earned from the smoker buying a packet a day for just two years. Another bargain for the NHS.
Meanwhile the thin non smoking kids will live to be 98 and will cost the taxpayer an average of c£20,000 as they sink into the nighmate of dementia and Alzheimer's in their final years.
And as for the chaps who have no desire to allow nicotine or sugar to enter their body but crave unprotected anal sex with complete strangers and end up with Aids their lifetime cost to the NHS will be an average of £382,000. If the State really wants to stamp out unhealthy lifestyles might we consider that unprotected anal sex is a greater sin than swallowing a sugary drink or chaining a pack of Marlboro light every day?
Of course we cannot say that because that would be an infringement of the human rights demanded by those gay men who opt to act in an grossly irresponsible manner with society picking up the tab. Such is the world of 2016 Britain. There is no consistency of principle or no financial rationale for the actions of the nanny state.
Meanwhile the idea that what we put into our own bodies should be our choice alone is drowned out by hysterical screams from the liberal elite of the nanny state. Nanny always knows best.