03/05/2008 by Andrew John.
You can see Little Bibbling under Flossock from the other side of the M39 if you’re sitting down. It’s a strange place. It has a tyrannical councillor called Beauregard Soup who is tall and angular and thin and given to wearing dark clothes (he’s a right bastard) and a man called Mr Pingblatt, who is two science teachers. Yes, there are two of him. Hard to tell why, or how, but, then, he is the science teachers.
I’ll introduce LBuF in Bill Everatt’s The Underground Edition, which I assume he’ll be putting on the site on Sunday (4 May). If he doesn’t, Councillor Beauregard Soup will want to know why.
In fact, it’s to escape Councillor Beauregard Soup that Bill is recording his programme in an underground bunker in Much Fondling on the Grope, which is a tiny hamlet in North Glamorgan twinned with an unpronounceable town in Utah, where Bill’s other five wives hail from.
I was born in LBuF, and that’s why I have an affection for it. But I’ve done rather well from the inbreeding that tends to go on, in that only two of my relatives are my mother. It gets worses. Oh, it gets worse.
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16/01/2008 by Andrew John.
Hello again. Andrew John here. Hello? Anybody there? Oh, there you are!
I’ve been off the airwaves (should that be linewaves?) for a while, apart from the odd story for Celtica, but I’m rejoining Bill Everatt’s Underground Edition this coming Sunday, 20 January, to talk a bit about crap English. You know the sort: gobbledegook.
It was Bill’s idea. He stumbled (he’s always stumbling – it’s too many wine gums) across a website with some special awards for mangled English – but you’ve got to hear it to believe it.
So somewhere in Bill’s show there’ll be a two-minute (or so) slot while I bring you some of the best (or worst, depending on your point of view) of these, and I’ll be trying to outdo them with a bit of gobbledegook of my own – except that mine isn’t as polite as theirs tries to be.
So, incline your auditory modality organs in the approximate direction of the electro-acoustic transducers attached to your computational device during that specific temporal eventuality, and let’s see if we can take the piss out of the crap (if you see what I mean).
See you there next week.
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01/08/2007 by Andrew John.
Clichés! Blimey, avoiding these things isn’t rocket science. I mean, we didn’t ought to go down that road. I had a go at them, anyway, in the little moan I usually insert into Bill Everatt’s Underground Edition, while he’s not looking. What brought on this particular rant was all this talk of a ‘Brown bounce’ – yet another political cliché. Here’s what I said.
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Oh, dear, here we go again. If it’s not ‘Blair’s babes’ or ‘the Third Way’ or a ‘double whammy’ or a ‘stakeholder’ or whatever other nauseating clichés politicians like to come out with to make us think they’re doing their jobs, now we get the Brown Bounce. Throughout the last two weeks or so, every newspaper has had it: there are Brown bounces all over the place.
It makes you wonder whether, each time it bounces, it leaves a little stain on the floor. Brown bounce, indeed! You can’t help but get a picture of clingfilm stretched tightly over the lavvy pan. But let’s not go down that road.
Now there’s another cliché: let’s not go down that road. You can’t do without them, really. Well, you can, but they’re hard to avoid. They’re all around us.
But it does come up a lot in politics – not just among the politicos themselves, but among the journos who report on the politicos. And there’s another form of cliché: the clichéd single-word bit of shorthand: politico, journo.
But have you noticed how the politicos like to be ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’? They’re all on message, see, but there’s that bit of religious nonsense thrown in, too. Makes us feel good about them. Unless, like me, you’re not exactly sympathetic towards religion. Or politicians.
Then there’s the road map. You can’t just do something these days: there has to be a road map.
However, sources close to the said politicos say all their clichés are in a safe pair of hands and have been ring-fenced to avoid mission creep. We wouldn’t want a Ministry of Defence cliché finding its way into the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, now would we?
That would be a recipe for disaster, after all – and we all know there are no easy answers to that nightmare scenario. So we must be absolutely clear about this, no knee-jerk reactions because lessons must be learned. Provided we stay on message there’s no need to have to think the unthinkable.
OK, that’s enough of those. The sorts of cliché that really get up my nose, though, are those that are plain illogical. One comes to mind, and I’ll bet you’ll never use this one again without thinking about this: and it’s ‘back to back’.
How many times have you heard a DJ say he’s going to play three Kaiser Chiefs singles ‘back to back’, or the BBC is running three episodes of a drama series ‘back to back’? Think about it for a moment. It is possible to have two things back to back (provided one of them is playing backwards, of course), but not three, unless the one in the middle has two backs.
Go on: think about it. It’s impossible. So why do idiots say it?
It comes from the description of back-to-back houses, of course, when the back of one was facing the back of another. That meant the front of one was facing the front of another, too.
Now if you want a DJ to play the latest from the Klaxons or the Spice Boys ‘back to back’, you’ll have to listen to one of them going schlurrp-durrp and sounding like a Klingon speaking Swedish in Russian. Because that one will be playing backwards.
So stop it, do you hear? It’s a silly cliché and I’ll hear no more of it.
‘In fact’ is another one. In fact, I hate it. But why do I need to say ‘in fact’ if what I’m stating is being stated as a fact? And if it ain’t a fact we usually say so, with phrases such as, ‘Well I think . . .’ or ‘In my opinion . . .’
‘In fact’ is used as a bit of reinforcement for something you’ve already made plain. ‘As you can see, he is in fact sitting here with me now.’ Er, yes, I can see that that is, indeed, a fact. ‘You are in fact drinking tea.’ I was rather hoping it was that, and not sulphuric acid. This word is often combined with ‘actual’, to make ‘in actual fact’. If you’re not sure of your facts, it seems, you might be better making them actual facts.
Then there’s ‘of course’, of course. This is often used by news presenters on radio and TV. ‘Cornelius Pingblatt, who of course used to play left-handed croquet as a boy . . .’ Silly me! I should have known. And if you need to say ‘of course’ you obviously think it’s well known, so why say it in the first place? You often hear it said by sports broadcasters: ‘Beckham, whose father Ted was of course a kitchen fitter and Manchester United fan . . .’, for example, or ‘Beckham, whose other given names are Robert Joseph . . .’ Now these happen to be true, but did you know that – unless you’re an extraordinarily devoted fan and sad enough to cram your mind with all the minutiae?
Of course you didn’t. In fact, neither did I – of course.
Bloody clichés. Avoid ’em like the plague, I say.
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26/07/2007 by Andrew John.
Hate to have a go at the BBC. One has a sort of built-in respect for old Auntie, doesn’t one. On the other hand . . . Anyway, in Bill’s Underground Edition last week I couldn’t get off my mind the fact that the dear old girl had been hauled over the coals quite a bit. Nothing like a bit of a gloat, what? So I decided to do a bit of film editing – all in my imagination, of course! Here’s what I said. Oh, I feel a moan about clichés coming on because I can’t get the phrase ‘the Brown bounce’ out of my mind; so tune into The Underground Edition on and after 29 July. The highlight of the show is of course me, but Bill plays some bloody good music before and after me. Come to think of it, you could always skip my bit. Anyway, I digress. This is was I said last week, folks.
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Good old BBC, eh? Good old Auntie. She’s really got her knickers in a twist lately, hasn’t she, what with that faked footage of the Queen and a few faked phone-ins?As for phone-ins, let me say straightaway that anyone who’s been diddled deserves all they get. Yes, I’m being a cantankerous git, because I think they have part of their brain missing – if they ever grew a brain in the first place.No, I don’t think TV companies should get away with tricking people, and they should be brought to book, yes. But, really, who in their right mind is going to spend up to one pound fifty a minute and more to enter some stupid quiz. Oh, I’m not talking about a Blue Peter quiz here – the BBC, to give it credit, doesn’t hype up any charges, or, as far as I know, even make any charges for that kind of thing. I just used that as an excuse for rant.
No, I’m talking about Channel 4 and other independent companies and these things you often accidentally come across if you’re channel hopping on Freeview, with some ditzy young thing chosen because of her curves and her toothpaste smile, as she grins inanely at you and urges you to phone in to answer a question that’s so blindingly easy to answer that it’s no wonder they get thousands of people phoning in. Of course, they don’t have to part with as much in prizes as they make from premium-rate numbers, with thousands of blithering idiots phoning them.
Can’t these viewers see what’s going on? Can’t they see that they’re being shafted right, left and centre?
As for her dear majesty, our gracious lady the Queen. Well, with a bit of mischievous tweaking of the chronology of events in some video footage, she was seen to be storming out of a photoshoot with the famous snapper Annie Leibovitz. What a corker of an opportunity to rearrange footage.I did a bit myself the other day. You know, got the odd thing off YouTube, filmed a few of my friends who’re nightclub bouncers, used a bit of CGI, as they do in Doctor Who. Great fun.Scene one. Her Majesty sits majestically, being photographed. A crown is on her head. Cut to picture of Annie Leibovitz with camera in hand. Liebovitz says something. Indistinct. Voiceover says, ‘And Ms Leibovitz is asking Her Majesty to take something off. It seems to be her crown.’Cut to Her Gracious Majesty, who is seen shaking her head. Use CGI here to disguise the fact that the background is that of last year’s Trooping of the Colour.Cut to back shot of Leibovitz seeming to rage (use stand-in double here). Cut to Her Gracious Majesty, rising from chair. Use CGI to hide the fact that this is from the end of last year’s State Opening of Parliament.
Her Gracious Majesty nods to her left. Cut to two large, gorilla-like, shaven-headed gentlemen wearing evening dress and knuckledusters. Cut to back shot of Leibovitz as shaven-headed gentlemen approach. Again, stunt double will be required, since this shot has not been agreed in Ms Leibovitz’s contract. Gentlemen with shaven heads, evening dress and knuckledusters give her a good nutting.Cut to Her Gracious Majesty nodding with approval and smiling. Use CGI to hide the fact that this was taken during a recent tour of Australia.Yes, I think I might just make it as a cinematographer. I wonder if there are any jobs going at the BBC. Perhaps they’ll organise a phone-in competition for budding filmmakers.
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19/07/2007 by Andrew John.
I hate dumbing down. All it does is lower standards. I had a go at it last week on the occasion of the release of the new Harry Potter movie. Here’s what I had to say in Bill’s Underground Edition.
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I’ve found myself gazing into the youthful eyes of Daniel Radcliffe this week. You can’t help it. He’s all over the Radio Times.
It’s the occasion of the fifth Harry Potter film, and the telly are doing a thing about the costumes, called Harry Potter: The Costume Drama. That’s why Dan the Man is there.
But it reminds me of one of the worst bits of dumbing-down I’ve ever had the misfortune to know about. And I didn’t know about it till recently. That’s the first book: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Now I knew it had been changed to Sorcerer’s Stone for the Americans. And I thought that was bad enough.
I mean, do they not know that the word philosopher means more than a chap who talks epistemology, ontology and eschatology all day? More than your A C Graylings and your Platos and your Socrateses? More than ethics and logical problems?
I mean, haven’t they heard of alchemy, for goodness’ sake?
So they bugger about with the titles of British literature by dumbing it down. I came across a New York Times article from 2000 the other day entitled ‘Harry Potter – minus a certain flavour’, and the word flavour is spelled the British way. Deliberately.
And this was where I learned about more dumbing-down in the world of the young wizard of Hogworts Academy.
The writer bemoans this dumbing down – not only changing philosopher to sorcerer, but mum to mom, apparently, and crumpets to English muffins. I ask you! This is crazy!
‘Why?’ asks the article’s author, Peter H Gleick. ‘Were the editors worried that some people wouldn’t buy the book because they couldn’t understand it in its original language? Were they concerned that some children would be confused by new words for otherwise familiar objects or actions?’
Quite!
He goes on to say, ‘I like to think that our society would not collapse if our children started calling their mothers Mum instead of Mom. And I would hate to think that today’s children would be frightened away from an otherwise thrilling book by reading that the hero is wearing a jumper instead of a sweater.’
Quite!
English muffins are not crumpets. Have American kids not learned about crumpets? Don’t we in Britain read of cookies when we read American novels? Don’t we know what a sidewalk is and a parking lot. Don’t we know they go to a doctor’s office, not a doctor’s surgery? Don’t we know their babies wear diapers, not nappies?
Of course we do! We’ve read their books and seen their movies – I mean films. So why can’t the Yanks look the words up if they don’t know what they mean?
What next? Shakespeare’s Much Fuss About Zilch? Or how about The Two Guys of Verona? How about The Storekeeper of Venice? How about Charles Dickens’s Hard Times? Could change the title to Tough Shit, Dude, I guess.
No. Let’s keep our words in our literature and let the Americans learn them, as we’ve learned some of theirs (and incorporated them into our own speech). What’s wrong with that?
Sorcerer’s Stone. Blimey. Don’t get me started!
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12/07/2007 by Andrew John.
I get a bit tetchy when people don’t think straight. I had a go at a couple of modes of alleged thinking on The Underground Edition on 8 July. This is what I said.
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It’s funny how unreasoned we are as a society. We don’t really think. Joined up, I mean. We don’t think joined-up thoughts.
We’ve got these worldwide concerts called Earth Aid or Save Aid or Lucozade or something. Live Earth, that’s it. (Sounds like instructions for wiring a plug!)
And we have Jon BonBon Jovial or somebody, and other highly paid rock stars – many of whom have several houses dotted here and there – jetting off all over the world, piling on the potential for climate change, and they’re singing to raise our awareness of, yes, climate change.
They don’t get it, do they?
There’s controversy in some circles as to whether climate change is caused by humankind or whether it’s part of the natural cycle of things. However, there’s a huge consensus that says it’s manmade, and it’s that consensus that’s driving this bash. So let’s stick with that explanation for the time being.
Right, why don’t they just stop jetting about the place. Wouldn’t that be the best message of all? Stop jetting and then hold a press conference to say, ‘We’ve stopped jetting.’
And just who am I to say all this? you might ask. Well, I don’t jet; I do recycle – and I’m an inveterate moaner. But, hey, sometimes I get you going. I bet you’ve all written to your MPs after listening to one of these eminently sensible little homilies on The Underground Edition.
Maybe not.
The other example of totally unhinged thinking this last week has been that of a bishop – yes, a highly paid man who lives in a big house known as a bishop’s palace, paid for by his bosses (not the Boss – the big one in the sky, but his earthly bosses), a man who has been to university, probably got a doctorate, has had a high-quality education, paid for by you and me – yes, this bishop, this man who is looked up to, revered, respected by many, gets the ear of governments and politicians and journalists . . . And what does he say? He says that God has sent the floods to the UK because the UK has civil-partnerships legislation, which allows people of the same sex to get married.
Let me just run that one by you again, because I can see through your monitor screen that you’re tutting and shaking your head in disbelief, banging your head on the desk, tearing your tongue out and calling for copious quantities of brandy. This man – the bishop of Carlisle, the so-called ‘Right Reverend’ Graham Dow – says that the Sexual Orientation Regulations, which allow for same-sex marriages, are, and I quote, ‘part of a general scene of permissiveness’. He goes on to say, ‘We are in a situation where we are liable for God’s judgment, which is intended to call us to repentance.’
Right, so God, who is reckoned to be omnipotent and omniscient, who in the Old Testament, sent his Angel of Death on the occasion of the Tenth Plague. Now God in his wisdom could tell the houses of Israel from the houses not of Israel – the people of Israel, that is – and so the Angel didn’t kill those. He skipped over them.
My point is that an all-seeing God has already proved that he can discriminate between one house and another. If Minnie and Mandy have shacked up together, and Phil and Bill have shacked up together, this same god, you would think, would have the nous to flood only their homes. But no: he has flooded, it seems, the homes of good, upstanding, decent, clean-living straight folk, too.
Odd, that.
I read a humanist blog the other day, on which someone said, and I quote, ‘If he thinks these floods are the result of pro-gay laws rather than global warming, then how come far more catastrophic floods afflict homophobic nations such as Bangladesh? And how come ultra-pious nations such as Pakistan suffer catastrophic earthquakes? And the self-proclaimed religiosity of the United States doesn’t protect it from lethal hurricanes either.’
There you go, then. Something to ponder on next time you hear the BBC wheel a bishop into the studio to pontificate on matters of the moment. Especially if it’s Graham Dow.
Still, where would we be without them, eh? I mean, you’ve got to admit: they do brighten up our day from time to time. Good job hardly anybody takes them seriously.
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04/07/2007 by Andrew John.
Ever been beaten up in the cyberworld> No, neither have I. It happens, though, and I had a rant about it in Bill’s Underground Edition last Sunday. Here it is . . .
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Remember the days when, if somebody at school at a grudge against you, they just took you behind the bike sheds and beat seven shades of crap out of you – or, if you were bigger, you turned the tables and beat seven shades of crap out of them? Good, old-fashioned healthy bullying. Don’t argue. It was good for you, and you know it.
It’s a bit different these days, though. There’s this thing called cyberbullying. It’s happening a lot. And there’s just been a report about it that says that, in the USA – where else? – a third of online teenagers have been cyberbullied.
It’s this crazy notion about sharing all your intimate details that does it. You join up to something such as MySpace, and put all your personal stuff on there. Do they put their breast size, their willy size, their bank details, their mobile phone’s entire directory of friends, their mother’s breast size, their dad’s – but you get the gist. I bet they do. The old-fashioned equivalent would have been going round the school with all this written on the back of the fag packet you’ve just emptied by having a crafty ciggy behind those bike sheds, and handing all your information to your friends – friends who will soon become enemies – to hand round.
But we didn’t do that, did we? So why are kids sharing all this stuff about themselves online, where dirty old men in cyber-raincoats lie in wait to do nasty things to them?
When I was a kid – and you, too, I dare gamble, dear listener, no matter how old you are – mothers told their kids not to talk to strangers. It’s harder to know online who’s a stranger, I know, but, blimey, what’s wrong with just keeping your personal stuff off there? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that. Why do they think banks and other online merchants use sophisticated security to protect people’s identities – and even then sometimes get it wrong? But why do they think they use them? For fun?
Now, OK, some of this bullying lark amounts to sending malicious emails about the place. So where’s the difference between that and rumours circulating your entire school, from mouth to ear, where people could actually look at you? The favourite at my school was ‘Andy John’s a poofter’, or ‘Andy John shags sheep’. If both of those were true, it would mean I had an eye for rams, but I don’t. Because they smell. And I don’t like having intimate relations with things that smell.
But that’s by the bye.
Back to cyberbullying. OK, in the days of the cyber world, you can find your photograph or a video passed around so quickly, which you couldn’t before. Yes. I’ll concede that. But why put a video on there in the first place? It’s yampy. A video of you enjoying yourself doing nice dainty things such as having tea with the vicar, yes, but not shagging that bloke or bird on the kitchen table at your mate’s 16th-birthday party.
Or across the freezer cabinet.
In Sainsbury’s.
I’m afraid it’s something we’re going to have to live with. All innovation is a Pandora’s Box. And you open one of those every time you turn on your radio or select an excellent online radio service such as Celtica Radio. I mean, it’s one thing tuning in and getting me in your earhole. Think yourself lucky. You might get Bill Everatt.
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28/06/2007 by Andrew John.
They gave Sir Salman a knightood, and guess who complained about it! Yep. The usual suspects. So I had a rant about this in Bill’s Underground Edition last week. Here it is.
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I have a confession to make: I occasionally abandon books I’ve begun reading because I’m getting bored rigid. I’ve just done it with a Stephen King one. Yes, that master of horror Stephen King. But this one is just crap storytelling, I’m afraid. It’s called Cell, and the premise is silly and the story just one long linear narrative with no tangential intrigue and just three boring characters, and I find myself hoping the crazy people get to them and dispose of them.
I began reading Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses some years ago. I gave up on that, too. I found it boring, tedious, tiresome, making me say life’s too short. I keep meaning to go back to it and try again – especially now that Mr Rushdie is Sir Salman. Not because the book will have improved any, but because I feel I owe it to him.
Once again, this quality writer has come in for death threats because people with an overdose of superstition perceive some sort of offence in what he’s written. Something to do with a historical figure they call a prophet. No one has yet told me what he prophesied, but that’s by the bye.
Now I do believe people should be allowed to believe whatever they wish, and I believe I should be allowed to call it balderdash, piffle and poppycock – or even worse – if I so choose. They can always argue with me, provided they use logic and reason. That’s part of the free speech we have in the UK – although that seems to be diminishing, what with so-called religious-offence legislation and the emergence of what are laughably being called ‘faith crimes’.
Faith crimes? Blimey! You can commit a sort of special crime by attacking somebody because of his choice of superstitions? That’s yampy, that is. You bash him over the head with a stick and, quite rightly, are taken to court for it. You bash him over the head with a stick because he’s a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Jedi Knight or a Scientologist, and it’s something more than assault: it’s something heinous. Oh, wait a minute, the UK doesn’t recognise Scientology as a religion, does it? Sees it as some sort of barmy doctrine, a cult, which of course, the nutty Scientologists deny. But, then, they would, wouldn’t they? Your Tom Cruises and your John Travoltas. Total fruitcakes.
But the other religions. Oh, yes – faith crimes indeed!
I’m just glad that the Racial and Religions Hatred Act or whatever it was called, which creates an offence of inciting hatred against a person on the grounds of their religion, got so watered down in the end that it might as well not be on the statute book. The Act was the New Labour’s third attempt to bring in this nonsense: provisions were originally included as part of the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Bill in 2001, but were dropped after objections in the House of Lords. Good for their lordships, I say. The nonsense was again brought forward as part of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill in 2004–5, but was again dropped in order to get the body of that Bill passed before the 2005 general election.So what’s the message we’re getting? That most legislators just don’t want this nonsense? That seems to be about the size of it.
But you can bet your bottom that those who object to Salman Rushdie’s knightood will bleat and whine, burn books, burn effigies, threaten suicide bombings until the British government make some concession, somewhere, somehow. Fortunately, they won’t take the knightood off Sir Salman, I’m glad to say: that’s irrevocable now unless he does something naughty such as shoot Prime Minister Gordon Brown. (Oops! Was that incitement? I don’t think he heard me!)
I think we live in interesting times. Let’s just wait and see what happens in the free-speech and free-expression departments, shall we? But, once they start stripping us of our hard-won freedoms because fruitcakes burn books, as used to happen in medieval times, then it’s time to protest for a genuine cause. Keep those banners and slogans handy. You never know when you may need them.
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20/06/2007 by Andrew John.
I chewed the fat a bit on Bill’s Underground Edition when, as usual, called on to have a rant about this or that – or the other. You can find a link his programme on the Celtica home page.
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When I was a kid I had a bit of puppy fat. Once I was in my mid-teens, I shook it off. Could be because I took up weightlifting and other exercise or just that it went. Puppy fat does. But not these days. I’ve just read about a 12-year-old lad who had to go to hospital in order to be put on a diet, and his family were caught smuggling one-pound chocolate bars in to him. That’s bigger than one of those one-pound-thirty-pence-or-so Cadbury’s Dairy Milk. But obesity’s been a factor in at least 20 child-protection cases in the last year, according to a survey dear old Auntie BBC has done by contacting 50 consultant paediatricians around the UK to ask if they believe childhood obesity can ever be a child-protection issue. Well of course it can! If I starved a child so she was a bag of bones, it would be a child-protection issue. So if I let a kid get so enormous he can walk only with a walking stick – as in one case was reported – am I not equally guilty of child abuse?
Get real, folks! Stop blaming everybody else. If your kid’s fat for no congenital reason – in other words, because you have fed him too much fat and not encouraged him to exercise – then that’s your fault. Nothing wrong with a bit of puppy fat or a rounded figure. Goodness, but the great masters used to paint beauties who’d look a bit on the plump side to us now, but they were considered gorgeous back then. Bit of something to grab hold of, you know? Or so I’m told. But there’s a difference between enjoying life with the occasional bit of choccy as a treat, and getting enormous! As you’d expect, the touchy-feelies have entered the arena in this one. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health said that obesity is a public-health problem, not a child-protection issue. Oh, yes? Well who’s looking after the child, Mr Paediatrics and Child Health? Not the public, but the parents, you moron. I’m not blaming the kids in this. In fact I feel sorry for them. They’re the ones whose health is at risk, and they’re the ones who get to look like shite and won’t be able to pull members of the opposite sex, the same sex, a sheep, a sexy Welsh yak or whatever. And they’re the ones who, when it does come to crunch time, have to suffer the big changes their lifestyle will need to get them back to a healthy size.
I think people who want to become parents ought to be licensed. One doctor told the Beeb that as a society we’re lily-livered, and he’d seen an obese child taken away from parents actually get back to normal bodyweight in a few months. Another said parents were killing a kid slowly because they were feeding her only chips and high-fat food. No one else was doing that, Mr Paediatrics and Child Health touchy-feely hippie tree-hugging excuse for a human being. Not the public, but the parents. Then you get manufacturers who say they’re being responsible by making some things in smaller portions. But they don’t want to lose a bit of revenue for the sake of ensuring they have healthy kids who’ll live long enough to continue buying their choccy, oh, no. No long-term thinking like that. What they do is sell something that’s in two bits or easily breakable and say, ‘For sharing’ or some such nonsense. Oh, yes, in today’s me, me, me society, kids share all right: ‘I’ll share this with me,’ they say. ‘I’ll give the me of now half of this four-kilo bar of fondant-filled milk mush, and give the other half to the me of ten minutes hence.’ Nah. Manufacturers don’t do responsibility, except to the bottom line. And it’s the bottom lines that are getting bigger. A bit of parent power might make them and their own kids think a bit. Government initiatives don’t seem to cut the mustard. You might say they’re a fat lot of good.
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