As most schoolboys know, muscle weighs much more than fat so an active young man of above average height could probably look slightly overweight on paper. In a sane world, a properly trained nurse or doctor would take one look at the boy and realise that weighing 7st 10lb at 5'1" meant he was not in danger of keeling over at any minute. However, the semi-trained chimps and their computers at Barnsley PCT decided to spew out an automatic letter and cause offence by insulting Tom's parents by suggesting they were overfeeding him. The letter upset Tom so much that he stopped eating. Genius... we now have one young boy erroneously tagged overweight and no doubt anorexic within the next few months. What halfwits!
No doubt Tom was weighed at school and his data passed on to the PCT by an imbecile with a silly job title. This then triggered the Nanny State into full offensive action and ended up causing all the trouble. As the new Secretary of State for Health, Andrew Lansley, said the other day, government must stop lecturing people. Of course, NuLabour Super Nanny has been poking its nose into areas where it wasn't welcome for far too long but let's hope this stupidity is going to be increasingly rare now that we have a change of government. I hope that the fatheads whose job it is to send out these letters are reassigned to more useful duties very shortly... picking up litter or cleaning toilets would probably be more within their capabilities.
Barnsley PCT was approached for a comment and said it was only following national policy. Hmm... that old chestnut! They have since issued a grovelling apology. Not good enough. Send them to the gulag!
Many years ago (25), I had given birth to my third son. Along came a person from the health clinic knocking at my door every damn morning.
ReplyDeleteThe bespeckled fuddy duddy, dressed in the style of a 1940`s vicar`s wife, wielding a briefcase and smelling of moth balls and bad B.O. , mixed with cheap perfume, and had the accent of " wannabe posh and nun like ".
I got really peed off with her as I had two older boys to bring up, a husband who was useless and all my clamps from a ceaserian were taken out too early so I was in no fit state.
This bloody woman was an interfearing cow, disrupting my routine and dished out advice on how to care for a new born, it was government policy to do this at the time.
I brought up my boys healthily on my own initiative and mothers instinct and fantastic experience and guidence from my own parents.
So there was this " expert" telling me this and that , new ways that will help combat colic, also to introduce the baby to plenty of greens and fruit... Erm baby was only a week old... " Oh she said .... yes I can see that now".
I asked her if she was married.... No was the answer.
I asked her if she had a baby ....No was the answer.
I asked her if she had any first hand experience in motherhood .... No was the answer..
I then said ..... " See the door there ... get out and never come back to harass me again until you have had first hand experience ".
She protested,so I said, as I was breast feeding at the time.. " ok, pick a window as you are going to go flying through one in 3 seconds".
I found out years later while I was a domestic in a clinic. This so called expert, was a 46 year old virgin, one doctor was interested in her but was put off by her moralistic and staid ways, also she was not fully qualified.
How many so called " experts" are out there , with false degrees and documents.... How many so called " experts" are running loose filling the heads of decent parents with bad advice ?
Ness..
A few years ago i went to the doctors with raging ear infection. After having to explain why i need to see a Doc (i aint been for 10 years or so so has been taken off their list) i found myself sat in the waiting room. A quick poke around in my ears and with a perscription in my hand i went to leave the room. The following chat took place:
ReplyDeleteDoc " Ah before you go, wehn was the last time you were weighed?"
Me (confused)"Erm...whats that got to do with my ears?"
Doc "Well by the looks of things you'll be overweight according to the charts"
Me (fuming by know)"WHAT....."
Doc "The Gov guidelines state that a person of your height and weight may be at risk of being clinically obease"
Me (still fuming) "I aint being weighed, i came here to get some antibiotics for my ears, not a lecture on how fat the Gov think i am"
Doc "But...but...but looking at you and according to the charts you are over weight"
So the Doc had made an assesment of me just by looking at me and his charts.
DP
When I was first diagnosed with sleep apnoea, in Zurich, my weight was 132 Kilos, January 2007. I was told I needed to lose weight. Based on experience with other patients they thought I could get down to 115 Kilos but if I managed to keep to that I would be very unusual and they did not expect it to happen. This is called realism.
ReplyDeleteBy April 2008 I was 107 Kilos. I did this by calorie counting (past dieting experience) and ignoring a dietician who seemed flummoxed that I was single and therefore did not have a wife over whom she could masturbate her ego by castigating the wife's food preparation skills. The dietician wished to take me out in the shops and show me how to shop for food, buy her defined approved 'healthy' foods and teach me how to cook! This girl was in her 20s, had only lived in Switzerland; I was 60, had been cooking and shopping for myself since a student in 1960s, had lived and worked in UK, Africa and Central Europe. I've had around 60 changes of address. I've forgotten more than she knew. The reason I was fat was because I was working 200 hours minimum per month trouble shooting for an investment bank's IT dept, on call evenings and weekends - spending my life in the office, eating in restaurants and crashing out in my apartment.
By the time I came to leave Switzerland in August 2008 I was 100 Kilos. A weight loss of 32 kilos.
When I arrived in UK I discovered the NHS did not send such as me to a sleep clinic. I was assigned to respiratory out-patients.
When weighed in Switzerland one strips to the minimum of trousers - sans boots, jacket, shirt - and removes money etc from pockets before being weighed. The external variables are cut to a minimum and they try to weigh one using a common method so that results are affected by as few extraneous factors as possible.
In UK the hospital weighs me fully dressed - jacket, boots, shirt, scarf, pockets full of money, diaries, wallet etc - whatever I am carrying that day. Needless to say the weight varies by the seasons, the number of layers being worn and whatever business I have planned that day. No scintilla of scientific method whatsoever, absolutely zilch. When I suggested weighing should be without my boots I was disparagingly told "Good heavens if we had you all removing your things we'd be here all day, we've got better things to be doing with our time!" with a look between them as if I was a raving idiot.
As far as the UK hospital doctor is concerned my time before the UK and the NHS might as well never have happened. My 30+kilos weight loss in Switzerland is of no account. All he is concerned about is that when I first attended his clinic, according to his technician my weight is 105 kilos and has not changed since I arrived.
I have no respect for him, the UK hospital people who weigh me, their methods and his hospital. The hospital technician who looks after my breathing apparatus is first rate - the rest can go hang.
If they can't even weigh one properly what credence can be placed in any of their alleged results? If they ignore past history, even when documented, what confidence in their skills can they be accorded?
Lazy medicine on the cheap!
JohnB
Thought you may be interested in this -
ReplyDeletehttp://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/modern-heroes-let-their-children-ride-to-school-20100706-zyv9.html
An article by Boris Johnson regarding how the trained chimps have gone mad - telling parents that allow their kids to ride to school that the journey must be supervised or else they will be reported to social services.
Pit the UK, however Australia is getting to be as bad!
Hope the recovery is going well.
Those articles are the two sides of the 'trouble of kids today'- one side wants to wrap them in bubble wrap while complaining about the obesity issue and the other side is trying to counteract inactivity. I'm going to say that at least there are some who see the idiocracy in policies. Thankfully people like the mayor of London will push back.
ReplyDeleteLets vote in smarter people...Calgary Alberta's city hall is called "Silly Hall" because of stupid decisions. Other than being elected, how do these non-elected people get the jobs? They must be absolutely amazing in their job interviews because I'm at a loss how a stupid (not intellectually handicapped, just plain stupid) person gets jobs that require tack and compassion along with knowledge. Just plain stumps me.
Lets keep speaking up. We're bound to make a difference sometime.
Keep up the advocacy!
Libby (Canada--summer is finally here!)
bloody hell... what is going on?.... and I'll bet my pension the one who thought the whole joke up is a fat bastard.... sorry but its probably true.... The lad will probably end up suicidal and then they will blame his parents instead of there own utter stupidity.
ReplyDeleteTell Tom that he is undoubetly more intelligent than the people who declared him fat. You don't always have to believe someone just because they say they are right. I am five foot one and weigh eight stone five and am easily within the healthy weight for my age.
ReplyDeleteStand on somebody's Wii, Tom. It will take down your details and prove you are normal. Do not stop eating. I will challenge you to a vitual swordfight.