a huge amount of British people there were over weight - and consuming vast quantities of beer. And reeling about like drunken loonies. Especially the women; pulling each others hair and generally behaving like stupid potential Covid or Flu victims. Fat men. Fat Women. Fat children. Watch the news and other TV coverage - one in five interviewees in Vox Pops will be fat. Grossly fat. Look at Covid survivors. The majority are obese. But so few want to point this out. Like so few want to point out the vast majority of cancer victims smoke. So easy to ban nicotine. So easy to force people to lose weight. Humanity prefers not to be intelligent. Stupidity is nice'n'easy.

JK2006 wrote:
a huge amount of British people there were over weight - and consuming vast quantities of beer. And reeling about like drunken loonies. Especially the women; pulling each others hair and generally behaving like stupid potential Covid or Flu victims. Fat men. Fat Women. Fat children. Watch the news and other TV coverage - one in five interviewees in Vox Pops will be fat. Grossly fat. Look at Covid survivors. The majority are obese. But so few want to point this out. Like so few want to point out the vast majority of cancer victims smoke. So easy to ban nicotine. So easy to force people to lose weight. Humanity prefers not to be intelligent. Stupidity is nice'n'easy.

It's pretty much crime now to fat shame.

I notice this myself when on holiday abroad. Overweight, and by this I mean grotesquely fat, people are literally everywhere. And most of them are the British contingent.

But I think part of it is the environment we live in. I like taking summer holidays because I return much healthier. I eat better (lots of salads from hotel buffets) I burn energy walking in the sunshine, I swim and exercise. And that's really all there is to it.

One of my favourite holiday memories of recent years was in the dining room of the Benidorm hotel where they regularly served up a black rice seafood paella which you heaped on your plate and then drowned in aoli. I think I had three servings. Each time I had to tiptoe around the rather longer queue of pasty-faced Scots who were morosely waiting for their burger and chips from the grill.

My biggest regret in life is not learning how to swim.

You ain't never been to Tennessee or Mississippi then where obesity rates are close to 50%. Mobility scooters and similar everywhere, used by people in their twenties and thirties. Bad diet and zero exercise.

Oh I'm well aware that the UK isn't the only place; junk food and bloody Coca Cola has a lot to answer for.

Barney again?

JK2006 wrote:
Oh I'm well aware that the UK isn't the only place; junk food and bloody Coca Cola has a lot to answer for.

You really do hate Coca-Cola, don't you?

Apparently not Honey and yes, I really DO hate Coca Cola!

It’s interesting that associated with obesity is a breathing disorder known as obesity hypoventilation syndrome or “Pickwickian syndrome”, apparently named after Joe Pickwick, a character in Charles Dickens's novel "The Pickwick Papers".

md wrote:
It’s interesting that associated with obesity is a breathing disorder known as obesity hypoventilation syndrome or “Pickwickian syndrome”, apparently named after Joe Pickwick, a character in Charles Dickens's novel "The Pickwick Papers".

Dickens was always ahead of his time! I wonder what he would have made of it all
...

victorianweb.org/art/illustration/furniss/220.jpg

joe picwick, who constantly fell asleep

His response to the baby farm scandal of 1849 perhaps gives some indication of what he would have made of it all.

www.thecircumlocutionoffice.com/thetootingfarm

md wrote:
His response to the baby farm scandal of 1849 perhaps gives some indication of what he would have made of it all.

www.thecircumlocutionoffice.com/thetootingfarm

Thanks for posting md - enjoyed reading that. He had a great sense of social justice(or rather radar for injustice) and I think he would have a lot to say on the way we treat asylum seekers & detention camps, child exploitation and trafficking, county lines (using kids to sell drugs; how Fagin..). The language of outrage though is considered unfashionable (and is viewed suspiciously) at the moment; a cooler detachment is called for. More is the pity.

We all know the best chubby person in books is Billy Bunter.

Green Man wrote:
We all know the best chubby person in books is Billy Bunter.

No Winnie The Pooh is; the bear of very little brain and a fondness for honey. Love reading those books to my youngest - pure lyrical genius and very funny.

Green Man wrote:
We all know the best chubby person in books is Billy Bunter.


culturematters.org.uk/index.php/arts/fic...t/tag/Billy%20Bunter

Wyot wrote:
Green Man wrote:
We all know the best chubby person in books is Billy Bunter.

No Winnie The Pooh is; the bear of very little brain and a fondness for honey. Love reading those books to my youngest - pure lyrical genius and very funny.

Go read some Biggles.


Jess (Barney) I have never understood the concepts of boarding schools - it seems to be for rich parents who don't want their kids to stop them going on skiing holidays or their polo. Then again I don't get the idea of school either most forget what they were taught or indoctrinated. I think schools need to teach proper life lessons like how to assemble furniture, fix a tap, install a shelve and change a light bulb.

metro.co.uk/2018/09/09/84-of-millennials...lightbulb-7929087/#:~:text=How%20many%20millennials%20does%20it,how%20to%20change%20a%20lightbulb.