In like Flint

Getting fruity with Flint

I occasionally get the feeling that some of you do not believe Dr Crippen when he talks about the Stalinist control freakery that pervades the NHS.

One of the greatest control freaks in the NHS bunker is the very lovely Caroline Flint. You may remember her from one of the Stalin awards. On your behalf and at your expense she “invested” millions of pounds of taxpayer’s money to provide a “toolkit” to enable doctors to recognise obesity. You don’t believe it? Have a look here. There was of course a “pathway”. Isn’t there always?

Dr Crippen will not be taking the path, nor using the toolkit. As I said at the time:

Dr Crippen will struggle on with the soon to be out-moded equipment he has used to diagnose obesity for the last twenty years. This is a complex photo-electric receptor apparatus which has integral bionic micro-electronic circuitry calibrated automatically to orientate and binocularly co-ordinate the three-dimensional spatial presentation of the propositus in relationship to a complex wooden matrix specially designed by skilled craftsman to admit and contain all members of the population with guaranteed confidence levels up to and including the mean and three standard deviations of the population norm.

In other words, he glances at the patient as they enter the door, and knows instantly if they are overweight.

If they are fat, he tells them to eat less. Next!

Now Caroline Flint has turned her attention to fruit. We do not eat enough. So the government is going to sponsor (i.e. the tax-payer is going to sponsor) fruit eating lessons. Those of you who do not know how to peel a banana please listen carefully.

You don’t believe this either? Nor did I. But it is true.

Overweight people should be given lessons in how to eat fruit and vegetables, a health minister said yesterday. Caroline Flint said too many Britons are refusing to eat fresh produce because they see it as "scary food". She wants supermarkets to provide in-store demonstrations on how healthier food – even apples and bananas – should be prepared and eaten. Flint admitted the government faces an uphill challenge-to persuade some people to adopt healthier lifestyles. She cited a parent at a recent seminar held by the Department of Health who said she was intimidated by "scarier foods". "What she was talking about was vegetables she had never seen in her life before. Here’s a fruit you have never seen before. What do you do with it? Do you peel it? Do you boil it? Do you chop it?" she said. Flint said the solution was to provide cookery lessons in major stores. (source)

Patronising git.

I hardly dare tell you how Dr Rant approaches it.

Flint also plans to introduce vouchers for families on low incomes which can only be exchanged for fresh produce.

Patronising git.

Those of us working in the NHS have had to put up with this sort of codswallop for ten years.

It is appalling, rude, patronising, offensive, discriminatory, Stalinist, and ignorant to assume that “the poor folk” do not know how to peel an apple.

And anyway, Dr Crippen thought they all ate cake.