Ration Reality

 Freedom is Slavery

Apparently, it’s not just Americans like me that are becoming lardasses. It looks as though merry old England has gotten a little too merry with her bread pudding and spotted dick. The United Kingdom holds the dubious distinction of being the “Fattest Country in the European Union”. I can’t argue with that, really. If I lived in a cold, dreary, rainy climate whose cuisine is wrought with fat, I’d be one of those poor shlubs whom Richard Simmons has to  knock down walls to extricate from their homes. So what to do when you’re a socialistic nanny-state with a societal health problem? Well, you take a page from Orwell’s book–literally.

During an address to the Royal Statistical Society, Professor Julien le Grand, current chair of private well-being think tank Health England (and adviser to former Prime Minister Tony Blair, proposed an “Exercise Hour” for British workers. According to le Grand, employers with a staff of 500 or more should be required to reserve 1 hour per workday for the purpose of exercising its workers. I actually thought it was a great idea. The Japanese have long extolled the virtues of corporate group exercise, especially regarding morale and productivity. (Not that productivity is a principal concern in most industrialized European countries, with their 30-hour work weeks and their 6 weeks of vacation per annum.)

Still, there seemed to be a sinister, paternalistic dynamic to the proposal. Then it hit me:
In George Orwell’s classic novel, 1984, a mandatory worktime exercise period was imposed upon all workers. As I recall, it was even referred to as “exercise hour”! It’s pretty chilling, no? Nothing like a cross-reference to a dystopian masterpiece to kill one’s buzz about a certain social experiment.

Actually, this is but one of le Grand’s proposals. He also called for the total ban of salt from processed foods–which, if I’m not mistaken, constitutes a ban on processed foods. I can seem to recall that salt, the staple from which all deliciousness derives, was not readily available to anyone outside the Inner Party in Orwell’s 1984. Here’s the piece de resistance, Health England wants to create a smoking permit, to be renewed at £200 annually, and would tender the bearer the right to procure cigarettes legally, as well as designate them “registered addicts”. Believing this will work in a place like the UK is right up there with believing those Heaven’s Gate cult members are cruising behind the Hale-Bopp comet right now. You and I both know that the mob families in Britain right now will exploit this to their own black-market advantage. After all, this is the same country where the Mafia violently attempted to dominate the ice cream truck industry, for fuck’s sake!

In other “Fat British” news, Richard Bacon, a member of the British House of Commons (South Norfolk), has addressed concern to the expansion of the collective Parliamentary waistline to his peers. Members of the House proposed a solution: construct a swimming pool in the space within Parliament’s Palace of Westminster that currently houses the legislature’s shooting gallery.

I admit that I am just as shocked as you to learn that the revered governmental body has its own shooting gallery, but I make no personal judgments. I do, however, question the wisdom of replacing it with a pool when the goal is to help members lose weight. After all, how many fat junkies do you know? (Rimshot, please!)

Sources: The Daily Telegraph - The Free Republic - Personnel Today - This is London - WTOP

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