Boris Johnson says British people are too fat, and it’s time for many, including him, to lose weight.
This statement triggered me so badly that I had to have a nice sit-down, then a rant. Extracts from my diatribe are presented here.
First, let’s talk about the problem with Prime Minister Johnson, as an individual and as a concept.
This man presents himself as an affable, scatterbrained toff leading the country through times of crisis into an ill-defined golden age.
I would suggest, however, he is a cynical puppet of a faceless mega-rich class determined to use the British government to reconfirm their supremacy – literally and figuratively – over the nobodies who generate their wealth.
The very idea of taking Boris Johnson’s advice on anything, especially public health matters, makes my skin crawl.
This man has presided over the worst public health disaster in a century, resulting in, at time of writing, almost 46,000 deaths – more than 41,000 of them in England, where health is under the direct control of the Westminster government.
If Johnson told me smoking was bad, I’d Google it first to check if he was lying.
That brings me to the wider issue of trustworthiness. As I will never tire of saying, Boris Johnson won’t even tell us how many children he’s fathered.
His government is comprised of oddballs who somehow manage to be backstabbers and toadies at the same time while focusing on accumulating wealth with no understanding of the value of community.
Their simplistic view of problems is a symptom of their heartlessness.
Obesity is a complicated problem. I’m fat, and there are probably a dozen reasons why: education about nutrition, binge-drinking culture, mental health issues and just plain bad decisions that I need to own.
However, the single most important factor in the health of British individuals is the health of the NHS and related public services, where decades of chronic underfunding have hobbled attempts to address many of the causes of the obesity epidemic. If it wasn’t for the Tories, we’d all be a lot healthier.
Everything Boris Johnson says is undermined by his party’s record, and no amount of jogging can erase that. He can jog on.
