More nonsense reporting from the BBC. A generous portion of the BBC’s bias lies in giving credence to outlandish leftist notions- such as that the cause of food shortages is obesity.
Why exactly the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine is calculating the costs of John Prescott’s sad “condition” is one of many unanswered questions from this report.
Let’s just consider some real news shall we? How about Alistair Darling’s attack on EU grain tariffs, which actually do keep food prices high? I couldn’t find a BBC story on it or the backlash. Or how about the story mentioned in this report of how the UK Treasury is dealing with its debt problems by raking in from the high fuel prices which make food so expensive?
How about a bit more on the impact of biofuels on food production? Some number crunching there would be more than welcome.
The war on fatties is pure diversion from the machinations of politicians. The BBC is entirely complicit in these. Politics, statism, and the manipulation of the populace is the BBC’s stock in trade.
It was instructive to learn that The Lancet was also implicated in this absurd story.
Now there’s another once august body whose credibility lies in broken shards, thanks to a Leftist takeover.
GC- I think that’s an underlying theme in this type of story. It’s the way a statist/leftist mentality has come to prevail at so many institutions- spreading out from leftist universities to all kinds of places.
In the US this is phenomenon is well understood- even though it is less advanced. In the UK we cling to the notion that there is some objectivity in our institutions/traditional outlets. In fact it went a long time ago.
I absolutely agree, Ed. The more closely you look at these stories, the more you can trace the way they rise, gather momentum and eventually break in the liberal mass media.
Sometimes it looks so well orchestrated that it ls hard to believe it isn’t simply the propagation of a meme, but is actually being orchestrated.
And, sometimes, I think it is.
For isn’t read is. Sorry.
Hi Ed,
Sorry that I do not get your drift, but if people like me eat more than they should do to sustain a normal life, than for sure I inrease demand, or not?
Are you saying, that increased demand leads to lower prices in general? This would mean, that supply could always exceed demand in every geographical region, i.e. my demand for pork pies could be supplied by a farmer living near to me. If my demand goes through the roof local supply could easily cope with it and would not need to get the pies from the village nearby, hence increases the price to me (you know, cost of transport, insurance, etc.).
Is this your point?
This is indeed the promotion of left wing statist philosophy of the most odious, evil and sinister kind.
If “obese people” are to blame for food shortages, then a logical extension of this idea is that couples who procreate above and beyond an “acceptable” number of times are also responsible for food shortages.
Who is “more” responsible? An obese couple who has one kid, or a slim couple who has three kids? These are the things the horrible, detestable neo-fascist left wing scum of today want us to think about. They want nothing less than a society of finger pointing and suspicion, to pit neighbor against neighbor in a game of blame in which the only way to win is to commit suicide and have no more “impact” on the planet.
Climate change and food shortages are now the two main rallying calls being used by the left to gently lead populations and societies into global Marxism. The tactic is to slowly but surely bombard us with guilt until we succumb to a system of full state control in which every aspect of our lives are regulated, from how many kids we are allowed to have to how many calories we are permitted to eat in the space of 24 hours.
The more populations are persuaded to believe that global warming and food shortages are the new standard of value (to the exclusion of all other standards), the more likely they are to accept official regulation designed to tackle them, even if it means a complete end to the individual freedom we’ve spent centuries fighting for.
I’ve had arguments with leftists recently in which they’ve actually come out and said “China has the right idea” when the subject of population control comes up. You try and explain to them the importance – the inalienable necessity – of individual freedom and liberty and the dangers inherent in their absence, and they blank out…because they’ve been taught to believe that planet Earth is the standard of value, more important than the human life upon it.
In the midst of whatever Marxist hell we’re destined for in the future, we’re going to look back upon stories like this as the seeds which gave birth to it. That’s if the tyrants who rule us haven’t banned internet news archives by then.
Hi Jason,
Are you writing out of North Korea?
For my part, I am writing out of western Europe. The Marxist are not in power right now at this part of the globe.
Unless I have missed something spectacular.
Hi Gunnar –
Where in my post did I say that Marxists were in power? Just curious.
gunnar: The Marxist are not in power right now at this part of the globe.
In Britain at least, Trotskiist and Gramscian Marxists have been practicing entryism since the 1960s and now control most of the public and voluntary sector, from education to local government, from the subsidised arts to the NHS, from Civil Rights charities to prison reform charities, and so on.
gunnar: Hi Ed, Sorry that I do not get your drift…
It’s fairly simple, isn’t it? If obesity is the cause of the food crisis, why is it only now an issue? Is obesity a new phenomenon?
The question is whether you give more creditability on these issues to researchers from The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine or economists who are suggesting slightly different causes.
Does anyone really believe that a significant solution to the food crisis is “urban transport policies that promote walking and cycling”? Outside the Lancet, that is…
If fat people have such a bad effect should they not all be killed? And of course non-fat people are contributing to global warming through consuming. Perhaps they should be killed too. I nominate Hitler and Stalin as the two greatest people of the last century who did the most to protect us from global warming – er sorry, I mean climate change.
Interesting also that both Sky and Channel 4 News include this: “Increasing oil prices and the use of land for growing biofuels instead of edible crops are said to be two major factors driving up the cost of food.
But, according to two experts from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, obesity is also to blame.”
And on the BBC? No, it’s all the fatties’ fault.
Rob:now control most of the public and voluntary sector, from education to local government, from the subsidised arts to the NHS, from Civil Rights charities to prison reform charities, and so on.
——————————————–
Going to have to stop you there re. the NHS. Trust me, there are very few, if any, Marxists running the NHS at management levels. What we DO have is career incompetants who will impliment any shitty idea (ie the NHS IT “scheme”)without question, regardless of the political orientation of their masters. And then dump all over those beneath them when they point out just how shitty those schemes are. Which in some ways is worse.
As a former consultant colleague of mine said of NHS management (whilst foaming at the mouth) “they’re all failed and bloody useless doctors, nurses and technicians…”.
He was right too.
“A generous portion of the BBC’s bias lies in giving credence to outlandish leftist notions- such as that the cause of food shortages is obesity.”
Misrepresenting your opponents position as usual. Nobody believes the cause of food shortages is obesity. The report says it is a cause. And if you actually look at the article, the first line says they are ‘contributing to’, not ‘single-handedly bringing about’, and the title, “Obese blamed for the world’s ills”, is hardly a positive spin.
And they have also mentioned biofuels’ responsibility on occasion:
here http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5369284.stm
here http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7065061.stm
and here http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7359880.stm
But to be honest, when two hot news topics – global warming and fat people – merge, you can hardly be surprised that some of the media jumps on it.
Errrr, sorry not encoutered many (if any at all) leftists who claim that the food shortage is down to obesity!! Most left-wing commentators have been banging on about biofuels and the damage that they will do for many months (if not years). George Monbiot was writing on this as far back as 2004:
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/11/23/feeding-cars-not-people/
He even does some number crunching for you. Such comments about biofuel have been repeated by Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace. Fascinating to see that you agree with such ‘outlandish leftist notions’.
How remarkably perceptive of them, korova.
Particularly as it was their incessant fantasising about ‘global warming’ that caused the biofuels debacle in the first place.
Hi Jason
What about this?
“Climate change and food shortages are now the two main rallying calls being used by the left to gently lead populations and societies into global Marxism. The tactic is to slowly but surely bombard us with guilt until we succumb to a system of full state control in which every aspect of our lives are regulated, from how many kids we are allowed to have to how many calories we are permitted to eat in the space of 24 hours.”
How would the Marxists orchestrate the media campaign to convince the population if they were not in control?
And who would want a Marxist society apart from Marxists themselves? I mean, they are all around us in all key positions, like the pinky commie media, the CBI, the Bank of England, the Water companies, and the bloody government is even to the left of the leftest Marxist dream. Why did I not notice this earlier? Oh, yes, it is the propaganda and them dressing up in a sheeps skin …
I like the reaction of Dr. Tim Church at Louisiana State University, quoted in the Telegraph:
“Does having 50 extra pounds in a Chevy Tahoe really affect gas mileage? I do not think so.”
New Scientist,
The Lancet,
Now wash your hands please.
“In the UK, nearly a quarter of adults are classed obese, twice as many as there were in the 1980s.”
Probably for the same reason as here in the US:
In 1985 a consensus conference convened by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) recommended that men and women be considered “overweight” at BMIs of 27.8 and 27.3, respectively. In 1996 an NIH-sponsored review of the literature found that “increased mortality typically was not evident until well beyond a BMI level of 30.” Yet two years later [1998], the NIH yielded to a World Health Organization recommendation that “overweight” be defined downward to a BMI of 25, with 30 or more qualifying as “obese.”
————-
Note by me: the so-called “childhood obesity index” is supposed to have started circa 1980, and no stats support it since 2001. Could that be a dual function of BMI being considered the same for kids as adults until circa 2000, and moving the goalposts?
Gunnar – The government is to the left of the Marxist dream??? What planet are you in. Are the workers imminently going to control the means of production?? I wish it were so, but it is sheer to lunacy to suggest this is the case.
You’re a confused young man Korova. Here in B-BBC-land, ‘Marxist’ means Ronald Reagan or lefter.
Alexwrites:
“You’re a confused young man Korova…”
Thus confirming (as if confirmation were needed) that you are both a pair of imbeciles. Gunnar was being sarcastic.
In fact, he waltzes to the same cracked record as you two.
Here something from the last waltz:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=FxGcAm0EkTU
But still question raised, no answers forthcoming …
Astonishing BBC.
Not at the unquestioning blame the fatties for everything bs, thats sadly only to be expected from the hopelessly biased BBC.
But the failure to use the opportunity to say fat Americans, truly shocking, no doubt heads will roll.
Gunnar- your points were far too generalised. Do you know anything about the recent price history of foodstuffs?
If you do you’ll know that prices have been very low for a long time- so much so that all the talk was about limiting production of food in Europe, going into sustainable eco-farming, converting to woodland and the like. Farmers couldn’t make money on the market. We’re talking about by large margins. Many across Europe were leaving the land or leaving it badly or un- cultivated.
In this context, inability to produce enough cannot be the problem- tha capacity is there (in Europe but also elsewhere, clearly, since European levels of productivity are far above the average thanks to technology), but the politics of world trade has messed it up.
So it’s just not right to say that fat people are behind the current crisis. Needs no fundamental appeal to supply and demand basics. Fat people are not responsible, politics is.
In answer to Korova et al who claim that the identification of this story as a “leftist” one is off- I would respond that it is very much on the agenda of the “new” left, men like Anthony Giddens, to suggest that obesity is a major social problem which requires major Government intervention and regulation.
The new left is, in my view, pretty analogous to the old left- dividing people into borgeois and proletariat depending on whether they need regulating or counselling, with the philosopher kings on top of all.
Don’t fatties’ bodies provide a useful means of carbon sequestration?
“Here in B-BBC-land, ‘Marxist’ means Ronald Reagan or lefter”
From the illiterate idiot who complains that posters ‘distort’ his words.
And yes, I know that this was a pathetic attempt at irony.
The horizontally ample should bring a class action suit against anyone who propagates this damaging idiocy.
But I think the line should be drawn against allowing the obese to become air hostesses. Pilots get confused when a wings dips with the burden of whatever aisle they are walking down.
Do “fatties” produce more methane aswell? We should be told?
Weren’t we also perviously “told” obesity was a genetic problem; that they are not to blame for their own stuffing of their porky faces with cream bun after cream bun? That they cannot control their motor functions that pick up a cake and transport it to their salivating mouths?
Arent they supposed to be victims? How dare they be accused of causing AGW when they cannot help themselves.
The next time a BBC wacko journo is interviewing a porky Labour minister talking about govt policies on managing the weather (aka “climate change”), then the minister should be asked to explain their own porkiness and what they were doing about it to save the world.
Perhaps ZanuLab will implement a policy of wiring fatties mouths shut!?
Obviously people are to blame.
The more there are the worse it gets.
So anyone ‘breeding’ is to blame.
Anyone that has kids.
And anyone that kills off people is ‘curing’ the problem.
So families and children bad, murder and war good.
That is the ‘logic’ of this quite pathetic fatties to blame notion.
Pie is right. As far as leftists are concerned, everything is a pie (food, energy, wealth, the right to pollute), a pie to be divided into equal shares.
If the social engineers at the BBC really are concerned about the effect of profligate obesity on food shortages, one hopes they will no longer be reporting favorably on things like this:
Burkina Faso’s Miss ‘Large Lady’
If they do report on these things at all, one hope they won’t write things like this:
Contrary to the western obsession with tall and thin beauty icons, many men in Africa find fat women attractive.
The organiser of the event, Fatou Djiguiemde, told AFP news agency contestants weighing between 75kg and 130kg turned out to prove slender figures are not better than anyone else.
Seeing as how, you know, Africa is one of the places where they might actually have food shortages.
Fatties decompose quicker, well at least from the small sample in my cellar …