Why oh why can't I stay away from political hot potatoes such as this?
I try to keep my blog all about the rage. Ok I suppose it does get on my pecs a bit.
The issue that is annoying me is the namby pamby approach taken by governments to tackle obesity. Blair fretting about being thought of as trying to create a nanny state.
We need some sort of structure. Total freedom is anarchy. I quite like the idea that people are not allowed to sell booze and knives to children. I like the idea that eyebrows are raised if someone buys several tons of fertilizer that can be used to make a bomb.
Don't get me wrong I feel the government is wrong in a lot of ways. The libertine side of me wants the right to do whatever I want providing it doesn't hurt anyone else. I have never seen the point of the drug laws for instance.
Oh I know,"you need to see the misery that drugs cause" blah blah. I have seen the misery that alcohol causes but that isn't dealt with. People die of cancer but cigarettes aren't banned. I think a lot of the problem is the legality. Decriminalise drugs, sell them through governement approved chains and tax them. Use the taxes to treat the damage caused.
I think this would have several effects. It would remove dealers from the streets. The government could make unlicenced dealing a serious crime, they could also undercut them and remove the profit and therefore the reason to deal.
This would remove profits from criminal organisations and force them to turn to other avenues or go legit. Once the drugs were government controlled they could be standardised. Avoid the OD's, clean needles to help halt the spread of aids.
I also think prostitution should be legalised and regulated too. As much to protect the sex workers as the public. In fact why not have designated pleasure areas in cities? The red light district in amsterdam could be a model. Or base it on the willow world of feudal japan. A designated area that could be policed,regulated and best of all taxed.
Adults could make the decision to take drugs or visit a prostitute (male or female) or go to church or drink tea blah blah. Perhaps it would bring in enough revenue to pay for treatment for addicts, the extra police officers to keep the area safe. Perhaps it would make the residential areas safer by keeping the majority of this behaviour in one place. Perhaps it would cut the spread of STDs. Maybe it would cut revenue to gangs. Perhaps it's a better idea than the war on drugs and the sex slave trade?
Let's face it the government aren't coping as it is and the police have better things to do than nick people for a bit of personal or for having sex.
Weirdly enough the whole reason I started this was to talk about the obesity problem. Blair talked about avoiding becoming a nanny state telling people what they can and can't eat. Ok fair enough. If you are an adult and you want to eat McDonalds every meal, fine. Just done come crying to me when your arsehole falls out. You are an adult you can make that choice. I think we should tax the fast food industry like we tax other harmful things(tobacco, alcohol etc).
Perhaps the NHS shouldn't be totally free. There should be discounts if you go to the gym and eat healthily (and there are ways to tell). We don't have health care at the moment we have sick care. Wouldn't it be better to work on prevention? If you treat your body like crap, smoking, drinking, eating rubbish then shouldn't you pay more for the larger slice of NHS funds you take? You should pay more than the person who watches what they eat, takes moderate exercise and doesn't cost the country (and in effect each and every tax payer) money to repair.
Ok, back to the subject. A while back the Jamie's school dinners came out and finally schools started listening and stopped giving kids food that was actually harmful. Food has a big effect on kids. Get them eating right and certain behavioural problems disappear. Attention spans that are effected by sugary rubbish like soft drinks can be regained. You don't need to medicate children for ADHD until you are sure they actually have it rather than having a piss poor diet that contains too much sugar (and even then I feel that medication should be a last resort for kids).
The point was that as schools act in loco parentis (apologies if that is misspelled my latin isn't great) then they have a responsibility to ensure that the child not only performs and behaves in an acceptable way but for the childs health while at school. I would say this means making sure they eat sensibly.
Children are the responisibilty of someone until they become adults. Of their parents most of the time but of their teachers when they are at school. Feeding a child badly is just as much child abuse as denying them sleep or giving them alcohol. If you have a kid you are responsible for their well being. Ignorance is no excuse. If you have a kid you ought to know that eating fast food regularly has a detrimental effect. If you don't want the responsibility don't have a kid. In the words of kanye west eighteen years man.
Admittedly this is fairly new information. Ten years ago people laughed at the fitness freaks but now it's common knowledge (I could bring up the parallel situation of global warming but I'd like this blog to end sometime today). There is a lot of television dealing with this issue. It's political big news.
This is why I was so pissed off when I saw on the news that a group of parents were taking chips and fast food to the school fence at lunch times and passing it over to their kids as the school had banned shitty food.
I can picture it now. Come lunch time they would waddle up to the school fence huffing and puffing. Chins quivering in indignation that their kids were being forced to eat healthily. They would pass handfuls of greasy crap to their pasty unhealthy looking brats. Who would then gobble it up to hit that lard/sugar high.
What the fuck is wrong with this picture? Surely the head should be tackling this? I would certainly be taking issue with adults handing food items over a school fence. How do you know they are all parents? Shouldn't s/he be keeping the kids away from the fence?
Also the school had bravely omitted the shit from their school menus. The parents could mistreat their children with all the trans fat they liked at home and on weekends but you would think that they would give enough of a fuck about their spawn to see that they had one meal a day that wouldn't put them at risk of being a blob by the time they are thirteen. Nope these people wanted a splat off the old block of lard.
Adults buying booze for kids are arrested. Adults giving kids food that is detrimental to their health are simply being parents. Can a parent give their kid booze with impunity? How about cigarettes? Does anyone else find this wrong?
It's bad ju ju man. You have to have a licence to own a dog but any cro magnon motherfucker can drag themselves from the shallow end of the genepool and impregnate some wench drunk on lambrini.
We are going in the wrong direction. We don't need a nanny state we need responsibility to be pushed onto people (it'd be better if they took it themselves). You eat McDonalds every day, smoke two packs of fags, drink a bottle of whisky and sit on your ever spreading arse then you should be charged when you have to go to the hospital. Why should people who spend time looking after themselves pay for your bypass?
People need to have the right to choose when it comes to their own health but the rest of us shouldn't suffer for their poor judgement. Their children shouldn't suffer either. What chance have they got if the role model is worthless?
I guess we just have to hope there are more people who actually care than don't. Let's face it, if you do your kid has a better chance.
