Compulsory smoking for the obese and other government wheezes.

A guest blog from Jan Nieupjur. As usual Jan's views do not necessarily reflect my own. He is completely senile now but that do say that  insanity often spawns the truth.


MY mole in Whitehall recently disclosed to me (over a pink gin or two in the Wheeltappers Arms) a number of proposals being considered by David Cameron to deal with the growing problem of obesity in Great Britain. They include:

1. Compulsory smoking for the obese. This works on many levels; one of the benefits of smoking is loss of appetite so a pre-prandial gasper whenever hunger sets in should reduce food consumption, the tax on their cigarettes could offset the current vast drain on NHS resources caused by obesity, the Government endorsement of smoking would be an enormous fillip to the often criticised 'healthy smokers' and finally an outlet would be created for the millions of packets of Capstan Full Strength currently stockpiled in Kineton Warwickshire.

2. All branches of Greggs and other purveyors of donuts should be forced to reduce the width of their door openings in order to exclude those with an unhealthy BMI.

3. Supermarkets should be instructed to Narrow the width of ailses in which buns, cakes, sweets, sugar and other fattening stuff is sold to a width that would only allow access to the healthy. Obviously parents with buggies would be inconvenienced but in view of the child obesity situation this would be no bad thing..

4. supermarkets should introduce scales at checkouts whereby customers could be weighed and those found to be obese and buying unsuitable products would be charged an extra tax on those items which would go directly to the NHS. This would both encourage the purchase of healthy items as well as bolster up the beleagured health service.