Who all the pies?

Fatties are causing problems:

Figures released to the Conservatives under the Freedom of Information Act show that fire services were called out almost every day of the last five years to assist in lifting obese patients. In 1826 days there were 1784 call outs, and more than three quarters of the incidents involved NHS patients.

On one occasion the fire fighters were called to help move a patient from one hospital bed to another.

Fire trucks were also needed to help lift patients from their homes, from baths in which they had become stuck, and from upstairs parts of their houses.

Heh. Hehehehe. Okay, it's childish, but there's something deliciously, wickedly funny about actual fire engines being needed to assist the tubby.

In total the call outs cost fire authorities across the country £4 million over five years.

That's less funny. But luckily I have a simple solution: make the fat fuckers pay themselves. They can obviously afford industrial quantities of cake, chips and cheeseburgers so they can't be that skint.

But wait, there's a greater idiocy on its way...

Mike Penning, the shadow health minister, said: "As a former firefighter, I am concerned at these figures. They show the severe strain that the growing obesity epidemic is putting our emergency services under.

"Labour's complacent attitude to tackling obesity has meant that years have been wasted in our bid to deal with this growing problem. We urgently need action now, but unfortunately this Government's record has been one of obesity targets missed and scrapped, budgets for information campaigns being raided, and dithering over food labelling.

"It is about time that the Labour Government woke up and started to take obesity seriously."

Oh for God's sake. I hate this Government as much as anyone, but it's not their fault stupid people gorge themselves silly on chocolate bars and lard butties. It's individual responsibility - to which, incidentally, I am happy to extend to the NHS charging porkers for treating their self-inflicted condition.

And no, taxing Mars Bars won't work because you won't get a new generation of sleek beautiful people, you'll just get slightly poorer lardbuckets while the rest of us suffer.

Mindlessness, but not through drink...

This absolute sack of shit appears in today's Times, and is so unbearably depressing and stupid that nothing short of an absolute kicking will suffice.

Bars are to be banned from offering free alcohol to women and free wine and beer tastings will be curbed under a new system of government restrictions to cut public drunkenness.

"banned"..."curbed"..."government"..."restrictions" - and all in the first sentence. Not a promising start, is it?

There will also be rules to limit “happy hour” offers that encourage speed drinking and soft drinks will have to be sold at the same discount during promotions. Wine in restaurants will have to be served in glasses with marked measures.

Now that's actually a vaguely sensible - or least inoffensive - idea. Many of us can probably relate the frustration of a driver discovering that his soft drinks are costlier than alcoholic alternatives. Although I'd sooner see this being encouraged rather than legislated into existence.

The proposals, drafted by the Home Office and the Department of Health, seek to transform social attitudes towards drinking by breaking the association between drink and sexual, financial and social success.

Err...what? I drink a lot, but I don't imagine that it makes me alluring to the fairer sex (at least, not much), nor does it have a demonstrably positive impact upon my finances and societal standing. Of course advertisers seek to establish this link, but then they attempt to propogate the idea that selecting a certain brand of shaving gel will have a pouting model wearing nothing but one of your own shirts simperingly stroking your newly smooth chin as a precursor to boundless sex. To the best of my recollection, this is yet to occur.

A code for the drinks industry, leaked to The Sunday Times, marks a hardening in the government’s stance after the failure of a voluntary code to curb binge drinking. Hospital admissions linked to excess alcohol have more than doubled in the past 10 years.

Alcoholism has risen during New Labour's time in power? Really? Fuck me...

Threats by the government over the past four years to crack down on irresponsible behaviour by the drinks industry have foundered under the onslaught of aggressive discounting and promotions.

I like drinking. Alcohol producers like me drinking. And I haven't heard the Government complaining about the extorniate amount of tax they steal from me as a consequence.

The mandatory code of practice has alarmed the drinks industry with an elaborate series of rules including:

— Cigarette-style health warnings will have to be displayed wherever alcoholic drinks are sold. This would include shops, bars and, according to the industry, could force restaurants to place an official “sensible drinking message” on every table.

Oh dear God. A "sensible drinking message on every table" - aye, that's really going to cut down. I'd love to hear how this is going to be worded. "Dear drinker, please don't drink so much, love and kisses, Gordon Brown", perhaps? These people clearly don't know how pub culture works. Can they seriously envisage anyone saying "sorry lads, I'll sit this round out, this sensible drinking message has reminder me about the terrible damage that can be caused by excessive drinking"?

— A curb on promotional free wine, whisky and beer tastings. No samples may exceed 125ml and “care must be taken to ensure that customers do not return for further tastings and run the risk of becoming intoxicated”.

It is already illegal to serve to the intoxicated, so the second part of that is superfluous; and I fail to see what business it is of the government if people want to give away free stuff.

— A ban on drinking games, such as downing a glass in one, and “drink all you like” offers for those paying an entry fee will be abolished.

How the FUCK are they going to legislate on drinking games? Is some clipboard-wielding twat from the Department For Ruining Everyone's Fun going to lurk in every alehouse, looking out for people possibly enjoying themselves with drinking games?

— Wine in restaurants will have to be served in glasses with measures marked on the side.

Groan.

The government intervention represents a belated acknowledgment that hopes that Britain would adopt a civilised “cafe culture” with the introduction of 24-hour drinking have failed.

It uses disdainful language to describe the attitudes spread by Britain’s bar culture, which it blames for equating heavy drinking with personal success.

Britain doesn't have a café culture because on the whole, British people aren't terribly interested in that kind of thing. You can't impose a culture on people, however much these illiberal morons may think to the contrary.

And among my drinking companions, I know of none - NONE - who equate drinking with personal success. It is instead a way of relaxing after a day at work, or a means of increasing the enjoyment of a day at the football, or simply done for the obvious social benefits.

It warns that drinks should not be promoted as a means of boosting one’s “social, sexual, physical, mental, financial or sporting performance”.

The practice of selling cocktails called Sex on the Beach, or more sexually graphic names, will also be scrapped.

Oh for crying out loud. Will the aforementioned government nerd, doubtless sporting a little pencil moustache, also be on the look-out for vulgar drink names? And how the cunting hell can you actually design legislation for such an obviously grey area? Leaving aside the "why" - "HOW?!"

The safe drinking signs will have to include a statement from chief medical officers about safe daily drinking limits; a graphic showing the number of alcohol units contained within each glass or bottle and the address for a website offering information on drinking moderately.

I doubt there is a drinker in the land who doesn't know any of these things. A moderate, responsible drinker will roll his eyes in such pointless nannying; a serious problem drinker will not care. This rubbish has no obvious target.

Casual bar staff may be forced out by the proposed mandatory code, which will require all bar employees to undergo accredited training.

...raising costs for an industry struggling in the present climate. Clever.

It could become an offence to fail to ensure that staff have been trained in checking a customer’s age, turning away underage customers, refusing to serve customers who have overindulged and preventing drunken disorder.

It's already illegal to serve the underage or the drunk, and licencees are already compelled to ensure good behaviour on their premises. I'm not entirely sure what the aim of the above is.

Alcohol Concern has been calling for staff training in preventing excessive and underage drinking to be a requirement of a pub gaining its licence.

The mandatory code, which would be enforced by Trading Standards, was this weekend welcomed by health experts. Professor Ian Gilmore, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said: “The voluntary partnerships of the drinks industry are clearly not working. Mandatory codes at this stage are essential.

Any organisation calling itself "Alcohol Concern" is going to have an obvious and partial agenda, so we can view its utterances through this skewed prism. That's not to wholly dismiss its intentions, merely we require the other side of the argument. Though one supposes the a Government with a mania for imposing rules on us is unlikely to listen anyway.

“I think the next step will be to tackle the heavy discounting through a minimum price for a unit of alcohol.”

Oh, fuck you. It is absolutely NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. If a retailer wishes to sell me a product at a lower price, that transaction is the concern of myself and the producers, and no-one else.

Mark Hastings, communications director of the British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA), said the proposed rules could prevent students doing bar work during the summer holidays and could make it impossible to recruit enough staff for big sporting events, including the 2012 Olympics.

Quite.

“Most of these proposals are disproportionate and some are just plain daft. Every restaurant table and hotel room will need to have a detailed sensible drinking sign. Every document published by a drinks company will need to carry the sensible drinking message,” he said.

Exactly. It's an insane imposition by a deranged government with a psychotic need to boss us about.

This weekend The Sunday Times found bars were continuing to flout the voluntary code. At the Envy nightclub in Notting Hill, west London, groups of women were being offered free bottles of wine as part of the Crazy Sexy Cool Party promotion on Friday night.

So fucking what? People like free stuff, and those giving it away do so in the hope of future custom. That's a surprise because...?

I long for the day these horrible little fascists are swept from power, and yearn to be allowed to live my life how I want to, and not how some awful "experts", "advisers" and assorted cuntpipes want me to live it.

I'm so angry, I think I need a drink...

Fuck EU

Via Mr Eugenides, I see this appeared in yesterday's Telegraph:

Marianne Mikko, an Estonian centre-left MEP, is concerned that growing numbers of blogs are being used by individuals with "malicious intentions or hidden agendas".

"The blogosphere has so far been a haven of good intentions and relatively honest dealing. However, with blogs becoming commonplace, less principled people will want to use them," she said.

Mrs Mikko has proposed that bloggers should be required to identify themselves and that some popular blogs should come with a declaration of interests.

It is, remarkably, still possible to find people who consider the EU to be a good thing. But quite why an Estonian MEP should be given direct influence over my life is something I suspect even the most witless pro-EU sort would struggle to justify.

Now, this isn't a popular blog, nor is it ever intended to be. I find that articulating my anger about the sheer shitness of certain people does wonders for my capacity to remain tranquil as their assaults upon common sense multiply. And that's why I do it.

But just in case...

Here's my identity: someone who absolutely fucking detests Mrs Mikko. That's all you need to know.
Here's my declaration of interests: I can say what I want, because this is a free country, and your frankly fascist attempts to change that will never succeed. This means calling a twat a twat, which I enjoy, and you are in desperate need of being reminded of.

"We do not need to know the exact identity of bloggers. We need some credentials, a quality mark, a certain disclosure of who is writing and why. We need this to be able to trust and rely on the source," she said.

The cream rises to the top. There are lots of excellent and very popular blogs, and invariably they link to their sources, state their reasoning and if enough people like them, they remain popular. The crap ones, like this one, remain little more than a way of channelling the rage. Blogging is much more open than the mainstream media, which invariably lifts stories without accreditation, or simply fabricates them.

Chris Heaton Harris, a British Conservative Euro MP, has rejected any moves to "regulate and restrict independent media sources".

"Mrs Mikko obviously does not understand that blogs have become the life blood of a vibrant democracy," he said.

"I hope these proposals are kicked out.

Quite.

Thursday's vote in the European Parliament is not legally binding but is an indicator of growing EU concern over the influence of blogs on the internet.

A recent internal European Commission report, leaked three weeks ago, found that the EU was losing the battle for hearts and minds online.

This may be directly linked to the fact that the EU is shit, and is being exposed as such. If the EU stopped being shit (or better still, was dismantled altogether), people may stop being so horrid.

"Blog activity remains overwhelmingly negative," it said.

Stop being a set of cunts, then.

Cheerio

Lloyds TSB taking over the stricken HBOS is good news, for two different but equally important reasons:

1. it means that Global Financial Armageddon has been averted, which is generally to be welcomed

2. Lloyds TSB would never, ever have inflicted this upon us:

Seriously, just fuck off

Even his own Ministers want him gone now:

Scotland Office minister David Cairns has resigned from the government, saying the time has come to "allow a leadership debate to run its course".

This has transcended partisan politics now. As a Tory-leaner and devout anti-socialist, there's an obvious appeal to Gordon Brown stumbling on until 2010, and leading Labour to a massacre on such a grand scale that they're kept safely out of power until the 2020s. I'd quite like to live the middle part of my life free from the threat of these stupid bastards running the country.

But no - things have got to change right now. This isn't necessarily an entreaty for Cameron and Osborne to take over, because I'm not convinced they'll be all that great, although they'd have to try their hardest to do worse. What's needed is someone, anyone, to replace this unspeakably dreadful specimen.

For policy is now being devised not for the good of the country, but with the aim of propping up a failing Brown government. The £2.7bn was spent on a doomed by-election in the North-West is the most blatant example - this is government of an unprecedentedly awful dreadful nature.

We all hate you, Gordon. It's too late. It's all over. Just quit, with however much meagre dignity you can scrape together, and stop harming the country in pursuit of your own personal ends, you absolutely fucker.

Shit telly

"Shit telly" is almost a tautology - so much of what is produced is not only shit, but deliberately shit. That's because people are idiots, and they like shit.

Take "Deal or No Deal". I can't watch it without immediately falling into an uncontrollable rage, which is quite unfortunate given the maddening frequency with which it seems to be on. I hate it for two reasons - firstly, it's a pointless game of chance, and secondly, the utter shitstains who go on it.

It's a game of chance that entails morons opening boxes containing sums of money, being offered a sum of money by the "banker" to end their game in case their box contains a hefty sum, which is invariably (tearfully) rejected, only for the greedy halfwit in question to end up settling for a lot less later in the show when whatever passes for their brain fails to alert them to the mathematical likelihood of failure. What the fuck is interesting about people opening boxes? People opening boxes is boring and rubbish, unless those boxes contain something exciting like mustard gas, a naked Charlotte Church, or maybe a velociraptor. Take note, Endemol.

Now, people answering questions, that's okay. You can play along at home, if that is your preference. And answering questions entails a skill, which opening boxes doesn't. Unless you were born with no arms. Which most of us aren't.

Which leads me onto the wretched specimens that invariably populate this dismal cackfest. There are invariably fat women of indeterminate age and hair-colouring, weeping and wailing as they open boxes. There are spanners entrusting with opening these boxes, earnestly offering (unerringly terrible) advice. There's always someone ostentatiously gay. There's a sagely old bloke, a teenager with pink hair, a mumsy housewife. Always.

But worst are the box-deciders, fretting and agonising over which sodding box to choose, as though they can somehow influence a random outcome. YOU CAN'T, you gibbering moron. Just pick a box, STOP CRYING, be grateful if you're offered some decent cash and then fuck the fuck off my screen.

I hate it. Really, really hate it - typical lowest-common-denominator television, idiots on show for consumption by other idiots.

And Noel Edmonds is a smug twat.

Stamp them out

The Government is terribly vexed about house prices. They're falling, you see - and much of the pyramid scheme upon which Gordon Brown built our economy depends on this not happening.

So what do they propose?

Something peculiar called a "stamp duty holiday". This isn't even a proper tax cut, and we all know there's no such thing as a bad tax cut. Rather, it's a temporary cut. Oh, but only if the property in question is £175,000 or less.

This will apparently cost £600m, which has not been accounted for and sounds terribly dramatic, but in a trillion-pound economy, it's tantamount to losing 50p down the back of the sofa.

No; the obvious problem is more mundane - what happens if you're trying to sell a house for about £200,000 today, having been trying to flog it for a year or so? Chances are you've already cut it be 10% to match falling prices. Who on earth will now offer anything over £174,999 for anything? So your £220,000 house is now likely to sell for£175,000, or it won't sell. A drop of around a quarter, hastening the national drop in house prices they're so anxious to avoid.

You stupid, stupid bastards.

As our soggy summer ends...

...here's a fine explanation of how the AGW "consensus" is looking increasingly unwell.

And to think the soppy tarts who run our country still believe devoutly in this fantasy, and would harm our economy in support of it.

Just admit you're wrong, okay? We'll try not to be TOO smug, I promise. Because the longer you leave it, the angrier people will be...

Gordon Brown: doing the right thing

There's a title I wasn't expecting to be composing too often when I started up this repository for ranting. It's inspired by this:

Gordon Brown to reject energy windfall tax

Gordon Brown is set to defy Labour MPs and public opinion by rejecting a multi-billion pound windfall tax on energy firms.

Remarkable - one must have thought the temptation of a left-wing Prime Minister to remove money from Evil Profiteering Companies would be nigh on irresistible. Particularly when we consider this:

Dozens of Labour MPs are backing a big windfall tax and a poll yesterday suggested that the majority of voters agree.

...

The YouGov poll, commissioned by the left-wing Compass pressure group, showed that 67 per cent of voters support a major one-off tax on energy firms' profits.

I'm not all that surprised a majority of people support such a move, however fabulously ill-conceived it is. Big companies are easy to view as an easy target to steal from (sorry, tax) - and with them being both large enough to withstand it and sufficiently Evil as to deserve it, it should therefore be done.

Jon Cruddas, a former Labour deputy leadership candidate and Compass member said the tax would allow Labour to differentiate itself from the Conservatives.

Mr Cruddas is, of course, a dribbling lefty halfwit, and would think that. If he thinks differentiating Labour from the Tories by being even more left-wing is a good thing, one can only assume he desire electoral apocalypse.

However, Mr Brown is understood to have concluded that a multi-billion pound tax on energy firms at a time when the UK economy stands on the brink of recession would be politically and economically risky. John Hutton, the Business Secretary, has also privately opposed the tax.

Indeed he has. By the dismal standards of Labour frontbencher, John Hutton is one of the few who appear remotely acquainted with the real world, and how it works.

Cruddas, and other dimwitted dinosaurs of the Leftism of old, think that money can simply be taken from profitable companies with no downside. But there is, and it's explained quite beautifully here by the excellent Martin Vander Weyer in the Speccie:

We’ve estimated that over the next ten to 12 years the UK will need up to £100 billion of new investment in our energy infrastructure,’ he told me the other day. ‘That investment is mobile - it can go anywhere it will get a decent rate of return. You’ve always got to structure your tax policy against that background. That’s the new reality. We’ve got to show that the tax framework is as competitive as it possibly can be and I know the Chancellor wants to make sure that it is.’

Genuine long-term thinking is quite rare in politics, and turning down a plan down just because it's wrong is depressingly uncommon - particularly when there is a good deal of (misplaced) support for it. Well done John Hutton. Well done (begrudgingly) Gordon Brown. Shut the fuck up, Jon Cruddas.

Brrr....

The BBC, a fully paid up member of the anthropogenic global warming fantasy, sulkily reports:

This year appears set to be the coolest globally this century.

Data from the UK Met Office shows that temperatures in the first half of the year have been more than 0.1 Celsius cooler than any year since 2000.

But...how can this be? Everyone knows that the world is on the very precipice of a fiery death. At some conveniently indeterminate yet IMMINENT point in the future.

"The big thing that's been happening this year is La Nina, which has lowered global temperatures somewhat," said John Kennedy, climate monitoring and research scientist at the Met Office's Hadley Centre.

Aah, I knew there'd be a simple answer. And not an admission of "err, actually it turns out we're a bunch of total fucking idiots who need to do some serious apologising and backtracking" right now." Although these people really need to start considering that now's the best time to fess up, because the longer this goes on the more ugly and embarrassing will be their eventual retraction.

Go read the rest of the article - it reads a bit like a kid being caught red-handed scrumping apples tearfully spluttering "but, but, but, but..."

Two little letters

We've mentioned before the difficulty the EU had in comprehending Ireland's response to their invitation to ratify the Lisbon Constitution.

It appears that stupidity is contagious.

In common with over 26,000 others, I signed a petition asking the Government to take the scarcely contentious decision to respect the decision of the Irish and decline to continue with our own ratification.

They've responded:

In the UK, the Lisbon Treaty has now completed its passage through both Houses of Parliament in the UK following 25 days of debate. The Bill received Royal Assent on 19 June and the UK ratified the treaty on 16 July.

We believe the treaty would be good for the UK and good for the EU. This treaty adjusts existing treaties, in the same way as previous EU amending treaties.

If it's that great, why not set and the case and then ask us? You know, as you promised in your own manifesto?

However, European treaty change rightly requires unanimity across all EU Member States. That is why the ‘no’ vote on the treaty in the Irish referendum on 12 June is important, and needs to be respected.

You don't respect someone's decision by ignoring it. That's so obvious one marvels that it requires pointing out.

The Irish government has made it clear that they need time to analyse the result and its implications, and to consult widely at home and abroad.

The Irish Government, pro-EU, apparently needs time to analyse the word "no".

The British Government is apparently sympathetic to this desire for additional time to decipher a two-letter word.

Further comment seems entirely superfluous.

Don't tell Al Gore...

The Devil's Kitchen flags up this intriguing climate snippet in the Scotsman:

THE last ice age 13,000 years ago took hold in just one year, more than ten times quicker than previously believed, scientists have warned.

Rather than a gradual cooling over a decade, the ice age plunged Europe into the deep freeze, German Research Centre for Geosciences at Potsdam said.

Cold, stormy conditions caused by an abrupt shift in atmospheric circulation froze the continent almost instantly during the Younger Dryas less than 13,000 years ago – a very recent period on a geological scale.

The new findings will add to fears of a serious risk of this happening again in the UK and western Europe – and soon.

Imagine that - the whole continent freezing in a single year. How would we cope with disaster on such a monumental scale? It'd certainly render irrelevant the trivia and froth that occupies us. Even the hugely entertaining sight of Gordon Brown's life's work lying in ruins would be pushed to one side. Though hopefully not completely, as it really IS very entertaining. Anyway...

We already know the earth has been cooling for a few years. Obviously, anyone with any sense (anthropogenic global warming believers are not among such a group, and may leave via the door marked "idiots") will know that a few years of very minor cooling is no more important than the few years of very minor warming we've recently had. A 4,000,000,000 year old planet is very obviously going to have fluctuations of temperature, governed by a series of interconnecting cycles, many of whose timescales are so immense we cannot really hope to wrap our minds around them.

However, the notion of a sudden, catastrophic shift in climate in the "other" direction is quite arresting. The human race is very good at coping, adapting and thriving, and I've no doubt that we'd manage even in such unpromising conditions, although if it were to happen any time soon we'd all probably all spend the rest of our lives struggling to cope.

And yet, it is still possible to find so many fuckwits who believe we should all be obsessing over man-made global warming and knackering up the economy even more in order to "combat it". The mind boggles.

When no doesn't mean no

Q: When does "no" not mean "no"?

A: When you say no to the EU.

In June, Ireland said "no" to the EU. No, we don't want your constitution, whatever you want to call it, whatever you want to pretend it does, and more importantly, whatever you want to pretend it doesn't do. No.

Unfortunately the EU doesn't do democracy - indeed, it is a notable opponent of it. Ireland only voted because its troublesome constitution compelled a plebiscite; elsewhere in Europe, the people were denied the right of consultation about the transfer of power and authority from national capitals to the famously corrupt EU.

That three million Irish voters were able to hobble the "progress" of the EU did not go down well. Nicolas Sarkozy's reaction was particularly contemptible, stating that the Irish would have to vote again. Just what part of "no" don't you understand, you stupid French twat?

There are two reasons this is an appalling idea. Firstly, if it's so important that the Irish should have to vote again, why should everyone else not get a say? The notion of Ireland getting two votes and the rest of us getting none is ridiculous.

Secondly, and most pressingly for M Sarkozy and his loathsome friends in Brussels, it's a vote he'd lose. 71% of the Irish are opposed to a re-vote. The No lobby is certain to vote no again. There must be a portion of the Yes vote that will be embarrassed at what is being done in its name and will either stay away or vote for the original result to be upheld. And the undecideds? Which way are they likely to swing? No-one likes being bullied, and it's hard to imagine anything other than a majority of them lining up to say no.

So while we can rail until the end of time about the EU and its vile tactics, we can at least celebrate the fact that they are likely to backfire horribly. And this, of course, is before the incoming Conservative government is able to gleefully announce its own referendum, the result of which is a foregone conclusion.

The Irish have said no. So too have the French and Dutch in previous referenda. We British are certain to say no. If the EU has any sense of self-preservation, they would learn that no really must mean no.

Nanny knows best

"Fat reports on children to be sent to parents", claims the Telegraph's website.

Not a promising headline, is it?

The subtitle offers little further encouragement:

Parents are to get school "fat reports" detailing their children's weight as part of the fight against childhood obesity.

Actually consider that term: "fat reports". When I went to school - and yes, that hasn't happened for over ten years - we used to get school reports, broken down into subsections for recording one's prowess (or otherwise) in maths, English, history, PE and so on. Nowhere did mine contain a box for my long-suffering teachers to comment upon my tubbiness. Which would have been redundant anyway - when I was at school we had this revolutionary approach to staying in shape by not eating too much and doing some exercise. Amazing, eh? And it worked! Perhaps I should make my fortune marketing this as the latest fad diet to gullible women in the Daily Mail's FeMail section?

On with the article:

Rules to be introduced at the start of the academic year in September will see the parents of all children aged between four and five, and 10 and 11 receive the reports, after Government-commissioned research suggested the weight problem among Britain's children is worse than originally thought.

The most recent figures available show that one in 10 children aged between four and five are obese and 13 per cent are overweight, with the figures rising to 17.5 per cent and 14.2 per cent by age 11.

Children are getting fatter. Now, this is not good. There are plenty of reasons why children shouldn't be fat. This evidently vexes the Government; much more than teaching them to read or write seems to. The difference being that state education is there to impart literacy and numeracy, not engage in this creepy monitoring of pre-pubescent porkiness. Fascinating prioritisation.

The research for the Department of Health reported that despite a well-publicised campaign to tackle childhood obesity and produce a comprehensive picture of the problem, the results "may underestimate the true population prevalence of obesity and overweight at national, regional and local level".

A Department of Health spokesman last night (SUN) said: "If you do not opt out and your child is measured at school you will automatically get feedback."

I am instantly suspicious whenever some bright spark pipes up with "yes, but you can opt out". The presumption should be that you already are opted out, unless you actively choose to opt in. Not the other way around. I am not surprised to hear that the Government is totally oblivious to this.

The British Medical Association is already warning that a quarter of all children in the UK will be obese by 2020, resulting in them having a shorter life expectancy than their parents.

Then perhaps those parents should, I dunno, stop feeding them so many chips and send them off to the park more often? It's called parental responsibility.

Paul Sacher, a paediatric dietician at the Childhood Nutrition Research Centre in London, said many parents needed help in identifying that their children were overweight in the first place.

"If I was a parent I would want to know if my child was overweight or obese, then I could do something about it," he said.

What?! Seriously - what? You'd want to know if your child was overweight or obese? Have you tried using your fucking eyes?

What kind of total moron cannot see that their OWN CHILDREN are overweight? What type of utter blithering idiot is incapable of assessing their own flesh and blood to see if there's a bit too much of the former flopping around? Words (nearly) fail me.

"There is a major problem with parents' perception of their children's weight. As all children are getting bigger, it is becoming more difficult for parents to work out whether their children are overweight by just looking at them and comparing them to other kids. The only way we can work out whether children are getting bigger is to weigh them all."

No it isn't. Being overweight is an absolute condition, not a relative one. If you cannot spot it by the simple process of looking for a few seconds, it's a wonder you ever had children in the first place. I, for instance, can work out that Mr Sacher is a total idiot by looking at what he says. If I placed him alongside lots of other imbeciles this wouldn't somehow cancel out his own stupidity.

The Conservatives have opposed the plan, saying it should be left to parents to regulate the weight of their children.

Quite.

Gordon is a Moron (see what I did there?)

So, after the carnage of Glasgow East, Gordon Brown is finished. Or so runs the convential wisdom, which often tends not to be very wise. On balance, I fancy he'll cling on - a lifetime of scheming and plotting has gone into him becoming Prime Minister, and so obdurate an individual is unlikely to yield his position over something as inconsequential as everyone despising him.

William Hill presently offer just 8/13 on him being out by the end of 2008. I'd like to lay at that price, if only because his Cabinet and backbenchers are afflicted by excessively soggy spinal equipment and, like a gaggle of timid children whose ball has landed in the garden of the neighbourhood ogre, they're all fearfully eyeing each other and silently imploring someone else to go sort it out, please.

A pitiful spectacle - but ironic in its own darkly amusing way: to think that the infamously cowardly Gordon Brown could survive just because his colleagues in the Parliamentary Labour Party are even more cowardly than him should provide comic relief for future generations.

Though not, admittedly, as much as archive footage of his wobbly jaw flapping around in disbelief as the men in white coats gently prise his fingernails from the door of Number 10. will entertain them. And to think we're of the generation that'll get to enjoy it happening live - aren't we lucky!