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richie79

Listed below are comments made by richie79 between Thursday, 23rd July 2009 and Saturday, 28th November 2009.

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A balanced approach to climate change 5:25pm on 28 Nov 2009 Not only am I completely unconvinced about the apocalyptic carbon-based predictions of the current cozy consensus of MMCC alarmists, I also think they're doing massive damage to the much more legitimate and demonstrable causes of ecology, responsible use of resources and pollution control. Because every single environmental issue has in recent years been grouped under this 'climate change' umbrella, many people accordingly dismiss anything green-related as being part of the same overall con.

Those who remain skeptical not only about the existence / degree of MMCC are being alienated and made resentful at constant Govt / pressure group demands that Joe Public, particularly those on lower incomes, forfeit many of the comforts of modern living (forced to give up their long-awaited last-minute package holiday by rising 'green' taxes, or get up three hours earlier to use an overpriced and unreliable bus or train to their 60hr/wk minimum wage job instead of the car they've been priced out of. Meanwhile the rich and powerful continue to get a free pass to leave office lights on all night and discard massive quantities of perfectly good unsold food from supermarkets, first sprayed with chemicals to prevent freegans and homeless people benefiting from it. Unsurprisingly it's then all the more difficult to then enlist their support for recycling / reusing, energy-saving measures etc which have other factors in their favour besides the obsession with 'carbon' and cutting it to levels that are unsustainable unless half the population are euthanased and the rest forced to return to feudal-style living standards - all whilst China continue to open a new coal-fired power station each week because no-one dare say 'boo' to them.

But then those who think being a climate change skeptic is like banging one's head against a brick wall of closed ranks and accusations of crass irresponsibility should try coming out in favour of size acceptance and challenging any of the assumptions behind the other current moral panic of the moment - the so-called obesity epidemic. Believe it or not and despite over a decade (since the WHO's 1998 recalibration of the BMI 'obese' and 'overweight' definitions) of it being held as truth that fat is bad and the number of fat, bad people is increasing, there are literally vast quantities of counter-research, in the public domain and awaiting a wider audience, all doing exactly what good scientific research should do and pouring doubt on the all this received wisdom - everything from the reliability of the BMI scale to the link between weight and illnesses (and associated costs; Google 'obesity paradoxes), the effectiveness and long-term safety of weight-loss attempts, the degree to which body size is determined by genes and lifestyle, the extent to which our weight and size should be considered part of our complex identities, and more importantly questioning the legitimacy of recent moves to 'punish' or incentivise fat people through moves such as denial of parenting / adoption rights, healthcare or this week's example of the US university which is witholding the degrees of those over a certain BMI who haven't demonstrated sufficient attempts to lose weight. These sociologists and scientists, nutritionists and social justice advocates reject the idea that weight loss is a simple matter of caloric consumption vs expenditure ('eat less, move more') and many of the simplistic connections being drawn between size, health, lifestyle, personality, corporate exploitation (ie by the food industry) and individual morality.

Even the leading cheerleaders for the exponentially increasing 'timebomb' model have been forced to concede that the catastrophic-sounding figures in which many of the worldwide Government crusades and knee-jerk policies against larger people have been rooted were over-exaggerated by a considerable degree. However you'll rarely hear or read any of these counter-perspectives outside of specialist blogs or journals, because the relevant Establishment have colluded to ensure that only one point of view is ever heard and that their 'case' is not weakened by being exposed to scrutiny (never mind that many of the scientists who would have argued against have either been recruited by the prospects of headlines and grant money or ostracised and subsequnetly ignored for refusing to toe the correct line).

They've also managed to enlist the owners of the mass media to their cause. And in any case it doesn't really matter, for with obesity and MMCC alike they're succeeded in their original purpose of 'raising awareness' and the moral panic which they spawned has now become a terrifying, self-propelling phenomenon outside the control of any one organisation or body. It's also taken on a moral dimension, with thin-ness being equated to virtue, social responsibility and enlightenment, in other words much how the climate change lobby have attempted to first demonise and then legislate against those who don't fall into line.

I've long believed that even if obesity is the claimed world-ending 'biggest single threat we face' (despite every grant-hungry research department on earth, including the climate alarmists, now routinely insisting the same is true of their sphere of interest) the cost to our democratic society and individual freedoms of abolishing, outlawing and obliterating it are likely to be much, much too great and involve the state regulating and policing the individual lifestyle habits of the individual to an as-yet unprecedented degree. Unfortunately we're already seeing the beginning of this 'therapeutic' (ie for our own good) nanny state along with widespread public acceptance of it. Individual freedom and personal autonomy have become dirty words in the new era of 'it's for y/our own good' - and that needs to change.
Changes to BBC Weather site 4:34pm on 28 Nov 2009 @Woody, #19 - because breaking things that work perfectly well only to fix them again (and generating endless reports to justify it, levels of management to oversee it, and contrived, bureaucratic structures to fund and facilitiate it) is what keeps people in jobs in a country that hasn't actually produced or created anything of merit in about thirty years. It's not going to change anytime soon, irrespective of how counter intuitive and counter-productive it may seem, and when it does, expect to see your tax bill skyrocket to fund the additional welfare payments. Bureaucracy is the only thing we're good at.

@Aerospike, #13 - typical liberal arrogance in demanding that because YOU dislike or don't relate to something NO-ONE else should be allowed to use it and if they can't or won't, it's OK because there's some obscure EU thoughtcrime law that can be used to not only force them to adopt the Continental alternative but to jolly well like it too! (My wife is also American and has no idea what Celcius is and how a number on that scale relates to the likelihood of it being hot or cold outside, but then I suspect the fact that 'English' measurements are still preferred by our God-bothering, car-driving, superdupermorbidlyobeese transatlantic cousins count as a major black mark against them by the oh-so-enlightened pro-EU brigade).

For what it's worth, the latest design is of little conseuence to me, since the February rejig prompted me to search for alternate sources - I find Weather.com infinitely preferable on the accuracy stakes (without all the unnecessary resource-hogging graphical tomfoolery), much better on US forecasts, and above all temperatures presented in Fahrenheit (along with isobars on maps, wind speed and direction etc) are readily available.
Census question questions 12:33pm on 29 Oct 2009 In a country where housing market failure has resulted in a return to Dickensian levels of overcrowding in the inner cities (my neighbours, a family of at least seven, crammed into a two-bed terrace are a good example) I can understand the purpose of asking for bedrooms. However as with everything this Government does there's a complete lack of trust that 'function creep' won't see the data being used for other purposes such as hiking council tax or passed to 'child protection' authorities to justify dawn raids on stable families. The number of people planning to risk imprisonment to keep this data out of the wrong hands demonstrates the way in which an excessively controlling administration, which has lost legitimacy in the eyes of the electorate, can actually make the daily business of governing more difficult for itself. I for one am just thankful that there won't be questions on 'excessive' Body Mass Index or smoking / drinking habits - and I suspect that whoever happens to be in in power in 2021 (the BNP?) won't even need to ask as all three will, by then, have been outlawed.
Closing the News Multiscreen 01:18am on 22 Oct 2009 Great, so whilst I'll only have access to one interactive service, that's OK because if I go and shell out several hundred for a new plasma screen and a hundred or so more for a Freeview PVR I'll be able to watch Mr Smug du Beke present 'Strictly Dancing Teen Idols on Ice with the Stars' or 'Help! I'm the World's Fattest Single Mom' in crystal clear 'quality' - a word that whilst possibly applicable to the picture has long since been absent in terms of programme content.

As for the argument about screen size, well believe it or not not everyone feels the need to devote an entire wall of their lounge to ever-bigger screens (which consume three times as much electricity as the old ones); I'm certainly in no hurry to ship my perfectly serviceable 32" CRT off to the landfill. For me one extra interactive channel is about a million times more useful than one of HD - the current offerings in no way justify the enormous outlay - but then I suppose we are all meant to be trying to spend our way out of recession!

As others have said if anything must go it should be BBC3, the Corporation's execrable attempt to get 'down wit' da kidz', an affront to PSB and a complete waste of license money, especially considering most of those at whom it's aimed neither pay a TV license NOR watch BBC3!
Map of the Week: Cheese 12:51pm on 05 Oct 2009 "Britain's cheese makers have been reborn after a century of statutory persecution"

I some how doubt that, what with cheese having been recently demonised as 'junk food' by misguided anti-obesity crusaders who believe anything containing the merest trace of fat is evil and that we should all be picking at nuts and seeds. Try including cheese into a child's packed lunch at one of the growing number of schools with 'fit lunchbox' policies, or advertising it on television - whilst the hysteria is apparently causing real damage to independent cheese makers (not to mention the health of children, who NEED some fat to grow and thrive), the Government have refused to back down even in the face of a Downing St petition demanding cheese be freed of the 'unhealthy' designation.
Hard-core smokers 7:22pm on 14 Aug 2009 Why would I make it up (particularly when that's the job of the likes of Weight Concern, the National Obesity Forum, and the Department of Health)? It never ceases to bemuse me how the very same 'progressive' types who'll interrogate and question pretty much anything else the Government and media sell them unblinkingly buy into half-theories and exaggerations that allow them to justify their aesthetic and moral dislike of fat people. The Beeb itself is a prime example; if I want to consider the other side of the story, I have to look elsewhere, for Auntie has a line to toe.

Here's some BBC links (or more to the point, the same story recycled several times over a period of almost a decade) about the 'obesity adenovirus' theory:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/854584.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6956543.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7851031.stm

And here's a couple about the frankly ridiculous notion that exposure to other fat people (including all those thousands of fat celebrities in the mass media) is making people seek to emulate them by refusing to compliantly strive for thinness:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8123741.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7524944.stm

All these 'theories': the hand-wringing, the guinea pig initiatives of weighing babies and teaching teenagers to declare war on their own bodies, the billions spent on research, point to the likelihood that they haven't actually got a clue what causes some people to be bigger than others. However I personally believe that definition is absolutely everything, and the common measures of both obesity and its most commonly cited risk, diabetes, have been 'revised' downwards in the last ten years. The motives behind this may be even more complex, but I certainly wouldn't rule out the size of the health promotion / research / treatment industry that's thrived on this latest moral panic - an industry that would have otherwise declined with rapid falls in the number of tobacco smokers - being a major factor. Remember we're all still living longer, generally healthier lives, and yet we've somehow allowed ourselves to be convinced of the exact opposite.
Baby Peter and the uncertainty principle 5:25pm on 12 Aug 2009 Unfortunately U14099710 (#31) we don't tend to hear many of the stories of social services 'effective and positive outcomes', but are instead bombarded with enough tales of the way that political dogma seems to increasingly dictate who feels the sharp end of the parenting police to start believing that at least some of them may have a foundation in fact.

A child like Baby P can live for months in a hovel surrounded by flies, faeces and no doubt this will be overlooked as (in another case from a few years back) 'just how working class people live', and yet a disproportionate amount of time seems to be dedicated to harassing smokers, 'the obese' and those with traditional views on religion, homosexuality etc when in reality these are not child protection issues and should be no business of the State. (The day I see an anorexic child removed from the parents who've encouraged her through obsessive dieting and negative body comments is the day I'll possibly countenance the idea that an 'obese' teen in a loving and well-run home is in 'immediate danger' and warrants removal).

Of course it's not about that - the head of the LGA himself stated that the targetting of non-abusive parents under the minutiae of the 'Every Child Matters' framework was more about 'setting an example' - but then as always it's targetted at the wrong people; the likes of Tracey Connelly seem to be too deluded or too indifferent to be fazed by the prospect of losing their children, and given her narcissistic personality type may even see it as an advantage.

The simple truth is that there are too many children being pushed out by the wrong type of people, usually for the wrong reasons (benefits, access to housing, lack of alternative options, the commodification of every aspect of society). Given that these types of people (the slovenly, criminally-minded, abusive, workshy dregs of society) have not only been allowed to thrive unmolested by successive Governments but also statistically produce many more children than those who value education and stability, I fear that it's already much too late and that within a few years the problem will reach nightmarish proportions.
Hard-core smokers 4:57pm on 12 Aug 2009 It's immensely problematic to compare the demonisation of smokers with 'gays, Muslims or Jews' (#4), partly because these are protected classes, and partly because of the concept of behaviour versus characteristic and the choice dynamic. A better similarity might be with the relatively recent reaction to so-called obesity, something which is both a characteristic (some activists, 'radicalised' by exactly the OTT demonisation process Mark Easton discusses, have made their noncomformity to social weight rules a central part of their identity) and - albeit disputed by said activists - a 'behaviour'.

In other words, rather like smoking (maybe we'll eventually see something similar amongst heavy drinkers, as they appear to be next in the line of fire).

Both smoking and obesity are considered negative personal behaviours - and this notion (obligation?) of control is the crux of the matter; the distinction between aspects of a person's identity that are (rightly or wrongly) considered 'changeable' - their weight, smoking / drinking habits etc) and things they either can't alter (skin colour, height) or shouldn't for whatever reason be expected to (ie religion, sexuality).

Whilst I wouldn't want to get drawn into the debate about whether someone can or can't change a stigmatised aspect of their identity; I'm far more interested in the idea of why in certain cases they should be obliged to conform to wider social mores yet in others that same society prides itself on its tolerance.

It's interesting to note how the increased focus on obesity (along with 'binge drinking' has coincided with a drop in the levels of recorded smoking, suggesting that those who spearheaded previous campaigns may be seeking to turn the experience gained to new fronts.

Both are seen as something that is disgusting, uncool (although this was always the case with being fat, smoking was until relatively recently promoted) and generally *wrong* and as such are subject to campaigns and legislation intended at reducing measureable rates. Those opposing both frequently invoke rhetoric relating to lack of willpower, immorality, notions of attractiveness and disgust, not to mention the burden on the 'collective' (via costs to the NHS) in order to stoke social disapproval of their particular target group.

Of course some will argue that the main difference is in passive smoking; ie you can't make another person fat by being fat at them, whereas if you sit around in smoky environments long enough you might develop some of the problems linked to smoking. Similarly binge drinking CAN (though not always does) trigger anti-social and violent behaviour against third parties and their property. Of course the result of this is that some branches of obesity research are now trying to demonstrate (so far without substantive success) that fat is somehow 'contagious' - either literally, through a virus, or through its normalisation by thin people being exposed to increased numbers of fat people in society - in order to justify the same punishment previously meted out to smokers.

As for statistics and reliance on them, people set too much store by peer-review; have you never come across the concept of 'herd mentality' or consider that many researchers have a vested interest in declaring something an 'issue' which then attracts vast sums of Government and other funding, keeping them and the mass media employees that 'report' their findings in work? the threat of professional and peer censure and resultant loss of both income and more importantly standing within the community must act as a powerful motivator for many potential 'dissenters' to toe the line and not challenge the work of other academics? I actually think peer review is a major part of the problem.

Besides, it's always been very simple to conjure up a scientific justification for virtually any point of view or course of action: the inferiority of women / black people / Jews, smoking bans, prohibition, wars on drugs and on obesity, frontal lobotomies on 'uppity' teen girls, 'stolen children', 'straightening' therapy for gay people, etc etc. In most societies, scientists are rich white men and distinctly Establishment; now why I wonder might they might see a threat in those who don't conform for one reason or another?
The NHS: At What Cost? 5:18pm on 25 Jul 2009 Pithywriter (#8) there are many threats to the NHS, but I remain to be convinced that fat people are amongst them. Contrary to what we've all been told weight is not shorthand for health. There are plenty of thin people who live what the medical establishment would consider an unhealthy lifestyle (and are never called on it), and just as many fat people who practice 'Health at Every Size' - the pursuance of healthy habits without prioritising the often elusive goal of significant weight loss - and nevertheless remain 'obese'. You'd be amazed how many of those overweight people you 'suddenly' see (actually they were always there, it's just more recently we've all been conditioned to notice them more) are probably that way as a result of medications for unrelated conditions or injury / disability leading to reduced mobility. Ironically, a not-insignificant number are stuck in a catch-22 where the NHS condemns them for being fat and denies them the procedures, ie knee and hip ops, they need to regain their mobility and improve their health.

I would suggest that before just unquestioningly buying what you're told to think about fat by the BBC and Government, you do your own research into the topic. I did, and it's eye-opening. Did you know that a recent US study found that those in the 'overweight' BMI category live longer than those of 'normal' weight, and that even being 'morbidly obese' (BMI over 40) is no worse in mortality terms than being slightly underweight? Or that weight is as heritable as height (about 75% genes, 25% environment)? Or that the the BMI, the measure on which the statistics that underlie the whole obesity panic are based, was invented by a Belgian in the 19th Century who specifically stated it should not be used as a measure of obesity in individuals - or children? Or that the cut-off for the 'overweight' category was lowered from 27 to 25 in 1998 in Britain and the US, pathologising an additional half-million people overnight (with the same tactic about to be employed in India)? When the BBC gives greater prominence to a study that samples 200 fat children as another that uses the US NHANES data, the biggest longitudinal dataset in the world, just because the former supports its 'line' on the so-called obesity epidemic, the degree to which vested interests and the desire for perpetuation of this massively profitable pseudo-crisis are affecting the propaganda we're receiving becomes clear.

If you're short of places to start reading, I'd recommend Gina Kolata's 'Rethinking Thin', Paul Campos' 'The Obesity Myth' or any of the excellent articles on this topic written by Rob Lyons and Basham & Luik over at Spiked magazine.
Thursday 23 July 2009 7:59pm on 23 Jul 2009 I suspect the age limit on ILR-M visas has less to do with wanting to prevent forced marriages than Phil Woollas' desire to grab a quick headline. 'Look, we're making it even tougher for those 'orrible furriners to come here and steal your benefits'. Unfortunately UK immigration policy seems to be increasingly focused on persecuting easy targets (ie. law-abiding immigrants from Anglophone countries who go through the correct procedure) because frankly it's too difficult and expensive to actually go out there and do the investigative work needed to identify and repatriate those who shouldn't be here, and risks inflaming the wrath of inner-city communities in the process. Apparently Mr. Woollas has previously stated that he believes immigration policy should in itself act as a deterrent due to its expense and complexity; a short-sighted view which will result in many Brits with overseas partners taking their skills abroad whilst lowering the stakes for those thinking of bypassing the correct channels and staying here illegally.

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richie79