Fat or obese?

A row has erupted after a minister and prominent physician recommended that patients be called ‘FAT’ and not ‘obese’. Actually I don’t want politicians lecturing me at all on what vocabulary we should use in any context. Are we to call anorexics? Skinbags? Are we to call kids who have learning difficulties ‘stupid’? How about kids who wear glasses? Specky? Would Anne Milton say to Anne Widdicombe’s face that she was a ‘fatty’?

Jamie Oliver has also been attacked for a ‘lecturing’ approach to parents and children. So it’s OK to lecture them on maths, religious education and other subjects, but not on their health? School does much damage to children by feeding them foods with dangerous levels of saturated fats. There’s something deeply duplicitous about a government that wants education to be one long lecture, but eschews advice on nutrition. Andrew Landsley, who made this attack is somewhat ‘obese’ but let’s start calling him ‘fatty’ in public and see how he likes it. Then there’s fatty Tories such as Boris Johnson, Ken Clarke and huge fat f***ks such as Eric Pickles and Nicholas Soames. Let’s use Parliamentary privilege to denounce them as ‘fatties’ in the House of Commons. Cameron himself has a podgy face and Osborne a beer belly. Let’s be clear, they’re fat because they eat too many expensive lunches and dinners. It’s their fault.