The Waistline Police

Christmas dinner is, by now, mostly digested. It was a traditional Danish one, prepared by CStM. A 2.5 kg duck stuffed with 0.5 kg of pork and beef mince plus some other special things, then its arse sewn shut so the stuffing doesn’t emerge in the oven like a gigantic turd.

This was accompanied by roast potatoes (in goose fat) and caramelised potatoes. Oh yes. Caramelised potatoes. Melt sugar and butter in a frying pan and add small well-drained canned potatoes and coat them all in sugar and butter while heating them.

Pigs in blankets… of course.

Also cabbage. Well… red cabbage boiled in vinegar and cranberry juice and sugar and then sauteed with redcurrant jelly. It looked like this –

All of it was then covered in a gravy made with duck fat.

To follow? A home made vanilla rice pudding mixed with whipped cream and sugar and a homemade cherry sauce on top. Made with home grown cherries.

Don’t ask me for recipe details. I just did the washing up afterwards

No calories were counted in the making or consumption of this meal. Certainly they are off the scale of Permitted Consumption. But, you see, we only do this once a year (although caramelised potatoes are on the menu again with the New Year ham).

If we ate like this every day, no doubt we would soon be rivalling Pluto in its bid for planet status. Once a year does no harm. Really. It doesn’t. I am not as slim as I was when I worked in Local Shop and most of this is due to spending much of the time from September to now sitting in front of a computer. However, I have nowhere near returned to my former globular self and once the garden fires up again, the winter fat layer soon disappears.

If Public Health England had their way, that meal would not be possible. Not even once a year. It would not be possible to buy a duck of that size, they might let you have a grouse or, if you’re lucky, a pigeon, and the stuffing would be boiled tofu. Caramelised potatoes would be an arrestable offence and that dessert would get you shot on sight.

Public Health recommended no more than 1600 calories per day as an adult intake, a year ago. If I had stuck to that while at Local Shop I would not have been slim – I would have been skeletal. Six hours a day, six days a week (sometimes seven) of intense physical activity. A week on 1600 daily calories and I would not have had the strength to walk to work.

Now they want their ridiculous limits applied to all foods and enforced by law. I no longer wonder what these people are thinking. I wonder whether.

We are often told that Brexit will lead to food shortages. What does that matter if we aren’t going to be allowed to buy any food anyway?

These Public Health lunatics have finally gone far enough that even the Tories are saying ‘Hang on a minute…’

The Tory party is already facing oblivion over the utter shambles they are making of Brexit. Now they are expected to enforce rationing on everyone – over or under weight – to put the entire country on the Venezuelan crash diet without even bothering to destroy the economy first. I suppose, if Jerry Cordite and the IRA get power, it will save time. Let’s face it. at the next election, the Tory party is going to be the next Lib Dem trivial aside, and they aren’t even trying to avoid it.

I suppose it’s one way to solve the immigration problem. We’ll all be grabbing those little boats left on the south coast and paddling over to France where they still have food of sorts. I’m okay with lots of garlic and I have tried frogs’ legs (not bad, but not much, a decent meal would result in a lot of wheelchair frogs) but I draw the line at snails. Even so, the French are good at food and I don’t see them ever accepting calorie limits.

I have never counted calories and I have not been inside a gym since I was at school. Yet I have reached 58 with no medication of any kind and can split a log with one swipe of an axe. I can’t do that on limited calories.

Fortunately I live on a farm that only grows crops. Primarily, barley for the whisky industry. No livestock. So rabbits and pheasants are considered a problem by the farmer and he won’t mind at all if a few of them disappear. The farmer next door has sheep and also culls wild deer. I have been offered free venison. The Public Health Nazis won’t even be aware of my existence.

But what if I ever need to call the police or fire brigade? What if I ever have to spend time in a hospital? Can I rely on these people if they are following a calorie restricted diet?

What use is a skeletal policeman? A fireman who gets out of breath climbing a ladder? A surgeon who can’t stay awake for a long operation?

Public Health does not care about any of that any more than they care about their own calorie intake or waistline measurement. Neither do the dopey chubby politicians enforcing this control freakery. None of them care about the consequences of their actions, they just want total control. Even if the entire population starves to death, as long as they have total control that’s all fine with them.

Well, as I’ve said before, these silly rules, like all the others, will kill off those who comply with them. Those who want total control over us all are engaged in the eradication of hte compliant ones. They won’t understand that so don’t tell them.

All they will be left with are those of us who ignore them and those who actively oppose them.

So let them make their rules. Let them impose their made-up limits. Let them terrify and control and ultimately eradicate their base support.

We’ll still be here when they have killed off all their tofu-driven whiners.

And then let’s see if they can control a population composed of 100% ‘don’t care’.