Weighty issue as NHS paid out £125m for obesity operations for 18,000 patients over three years
Forget the nanny state, it's time we took control over what we put in our own mouths
THERE could hardly be a starker demonstration of the cost of obesity.
In the past three years alone, the NHS has had to fork out £125million on weight-loss operations for 18,000 patients.
That’s £125million which is no longer available to spend on other desperately needed procedures. The nanny staters say we need to change the law to ban some foods and hike the cost of others. But we all have control over what we put in our mouths.
Yes, we need better education and guidance so people learn to eat more healthily.
But there are so many myths around obesity.
The nanny state advocates say, for example, that ever greater numbers of us are overweight. We’re not.
Official figures show that 62 per cent of the population are overweight — exactly the same figure as 2001.
We have an obesity problem. But being honest about it is the first requirement.
Over the top overtime
IT’S bad enough that Scotland Yard bosses decided to pursue a politically motivated witch-hunt against Sun journalists.
But the overtime sums that ended up in the pockets of the cops involved show just how scandalous the entire operation was.
At a time when police claim they’ve not got enough money to protect the public, they squandered almost a million pounds on Operation Elveden overtime.
Contrast that with the normal overtime budget for operations into sex crimes and the drugs trade of around £25,000 a year.
Blooming good news
A STUDY shows that pensioners who spend half an hour pottering in the garden can halve their risk of a heart attack or a stroke.
That’s the kind of exercise most of us can take.
Unless you live in a flat!
A fight to the death
WHAT could be worse for Labour than being led by its current hard-left buffoon?
Being led by another one.
Few care what Owen Smith thinks about the world — including his own MPs, according to top Labour backer John Mills.
By choosing to run against Jeremy Corbyn on the same radical agenda, he’s let the party down. And if he won, Labour’s collapse would be just as certain as under Mr Corbyn.
That takes a special kind of incompetence.