I Intend To Escape ......................And Come Back

Obesity - It's Not The Individuals Fault?

According to the largest ever government investigation into obesity in the UK, the problem is not the fault of the individual.

Nothing ever is.

I'm not quite sure why the government needed to spend so much of the taxpayers money on this investigation. Surely they could have got exactly the same results by going up to the first fat person they saw in the street and asking them?

For Hayfever Sufferers

One of the great lies of my childhood was "Don't worry about hayfever, you'll grow out of it."

I never did. Indeed as I got older I saw more and more people begin to suffer from it - perhaps indicating a link to pollution? Tablets have proved broadly useless, except of course for improving the share prices of various pharmaceutical companies. The only real cure I have ever had is spending time at the seaside - sea air cures all!

One thing thing that helps is Olbas Oil. Also, if you can find it, do try Olbas Bath - which as the name suggests is a bath foam based on Olbas Oil. Some health shops in London certainly stock it, and you can order it on-line here.

The Fat Bastards Charter

The news coverage of the alleged "fat gene" is a disaster for those who advocate healthier lifestyles, and those like me, who also want to see more honesty around health issues.

I don't think I have ever met a fat person who admitted they were overweight because they ate too much, or did not do enough exercise.

But I have met a lot of people who were big-boned. I have encountered a lot of people who are "making a stand against body fascism" or claim to have health issues that are never there fault, but that effect their weight.

Perhaps they were all telling the truth.

But just once in my life I want to meet someone who is fat because they eat too many pies. Or because they can't be bothered to walk to the shops. Ever. Or because they stay indoors all day watching their children sit about because everyone knows if they let a child play outdoors they will be abducted by paedophiles.

Alas, my hopes of meeting an honest fat person are dashed for ever. The fat gene exists, and every single person who is overweight wil have it. Read about it here.

Affluenza?

I was at a friends house last night and for the first time saw a copy of the book "Affluenza" by Oliver James.

I had time to read the introduction, and it is James' belief that a wave of unhappiness has swept the prosperous Western world, an illness based around the cult of possession and owning. Keeping up with the Joneses is making us all ill, with extreme examples of this existing, particularly in the USA.

All very interesting, but not that different from what Doctor Huber and the Socialist Patients Collective (known as the SPK in Germany) were saying in the 1970s. Indeed James even comments that he does not like the term mental illness, and that in many cases he encounters it is society making people ill - there is not an illness in the physical sense.

The debt he holds the SPK is huge. Lets hope James' followers don't end up following the SPK and blowing up the German Embassy in Stockholm!

Fat People Make Terrible Travellers

My flight from London to Bangkok last month was not pleasant.

As a football supporter I have made enough long journeys to know that fat people make the worst possible travelling companions. They react badly to being in a confined space, take up more room than their share, and often develop either breathing problems or a terrible desire to fidget as the journey wears on.

Given all this, my heart sank when I saw the size of the man taking the inner seat on my flight. A good 3-4 stone overweight, his beer belly regularly jabbed the seat in front. Worse, he declared his intention to "get his money's worth" from his flight ticket, by drinking as much airline beer as possible. Whilst this is perhaps laudable it meant that he took every opportunity to not only harangue the stewardesses for more beer, but he also needed to squeeze past everyone else in the row at regular intervals to put out what he had put in.

We read a lot about customer care policies. Perhaps the airlines could show some radical thinking on this issue, and put all the fat people together on long-haul flights?

Driven Mad By Boredom?

At the Anarchist bookfair last month I met some people from the German organisation the Socialist Patients Collective.

Reading their famous book "SPK - Turn Illness Into A Weapon" I came across this fascinating quote:

Since the Civil War in Northern Ireland is raging the number of depressive illnesses and also the rate of suicides has fallen to a flabbergasting degree, being now only half of their former levels. This can be found with men of the lower social classes, who are the persons most engaged in those struggles. Men of the upper classes and in some of the quieter parts of Northern Ireland are now suffering more from depressions than before.

Dr H.A. Lyons, Purdysburn Hospital, Belfast. Originally quoted in Frankfurter Runsdschau, 21 August 1972.

Put simply - "the troubles" gave people something to live for, that was more exciting than pressing buttons in a factory, or shuffling paper in an office. It does not say much for day to day, "normal" Western societies, does it?

Under The Needle

For the first time in my life, last month I started acupuncture.

For many years I have suffered from a nagging, intermittment pain just above each ankle. It means that I have difficulty running long distances (twenty to thirty minutes jogging can be hard) and it is often particularly uncomfortable in the mornings.

Wanting to try something other than ankle supports and doctors recommendations of rest, I visited the Herbal Inn in Dalston. This is part of a chain of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine stores across London and the UK. Details here - you can switch the music off on their website by the way!

I was assessed by a Chinese speaking Doctor who used a member of staff to translate. Acupuncture was recommended and after some haggling over price and other treatments (this seems a perfectly acceptable thing to do by the way) I had seven sessions for the price of six. Within minutes I was in a back room, lying on a bed being approached by a Doctor holding sharp instruments! Just as when I give blood, I was determined to watch the needles going in, and it has to be said it is broadly painless. You notice they have pierced the skin, and that is pretty much it. About 5-10 minutes later I could feel that something was happening in my lower legs, and this pattern was repeated each time I went.

In all I had 10 sessions, with two different doctors. For reasons that were never explained to me, one would always put the needles in with me lying face down, the other when I lay on my back. On occasion I noticed that certain needles seemed to be tapped in a little further, and one or two of these you could imagine being really used to hurt, if the person in charge wanted to. Some slight pain is apparently a sign of progress!

Does it work? Well the straightforward answer is yes - my legs feel better than they have for years. How it works remains a mystery however!

I Think I Might Be Pregnant

The last two times I have boxed I have experienced a strange craving.

On both Tuesday and again tonight I have been sparring and I have had an overwhelming desire for a glass of bitter lemon. With ice. Even though I don't normally drink bitter lemon.

All very strange.

Either I am pregnant, or I am slowly becoming that character Kenneth Williams played in Carry On Doctor, who is convinced he has an ever changing succession of things wrong with him. It might be time to dust off that medical encyclopedia........

More Spa Than Spar!

To Bath - for a visit to Britain's only natural thermal spa. In recent years I have visited natural spa's in Hungary, Slovenia, Iceland, Serbia and Germany, so given the re-emergence of Bath (it closed in 1978) I wanted to visit as soon as it opened. Indeed, given the Spa arrived three years late and £10 million over budget, I was not the only one keen to see what was on offer!

Save Up
The first thing to say is the Spa is not cheap. My trusty companion and I paid £29 each for a four hour session. For 2 hours, it is £19. Add rail fares from London and a bit of lunch and you are comfortably breaking the £100 barrier for a day out for two.
What do you get for your money? Two baths, the Minerva Bath on the lower ground floor, and the spectacular rooftop pool, where you can lie in beautiful warm water whilst looking out across Bath and its environs. For many people, that experience alone will be worth the visit.

Elsewhere there are four steam rooms, each of varying temperatures, and assorted foot baths. The hot bath appeared to be reserved only for those taking treatments, and a massage suite is available for those interested in mud wraps, reiki and traditional massage. What was missing? Well a Finnish, wooden sauna usually makes me sweat more than the type of steam rooms on offer, and it is curious to be surrounded by so much water and there not be a cold plunge pool. Given the medicinal benefits, particularly to athletes, of cold water after exercise, this is a curious ommission.

Massaging Fat Wallets
It has to be said that the prices for massage and specialist treatments at Bath Spa are truly shocking. A Thai massage retails at £48 or 50 minutes, which when you have had an expert Thai massage, in Thailand, for 200 baht (about £2.80) hardly appeals. Mud wraps at £45 for a 50 minute session are no bargain either - indeed it would almost be cheaper for anyone whose skin actually needs this on a regular basis to fly to Budapest with a budget airline and use one of the many Spa's there.

Local People?
Bath is a tourist city, and nearly all of the people we saw inside the Spa had, like us, travelled some distance to be there. Given it is local taxpayers though who have stumped up much of the £45 million total cost of Thermae Bath (some funding also came via the national lottery) the Spa may have to do more to justify itself to local council taxpayers. Time will tell.

Smiling faces only!

Queuing to get in.

Number Plates For Bikes?

This apparently is Ken Livingstone's latest big idea. All the better to then register every bike, and - he claims - to prevent cyclists jumping red lights and riding on the pavement. It reads to me more like another money raising scam, a new form of taxation. Having hammered the car owner, they start on the cyclist.

Would you believe I was cycling through the west end earlier this afternoon and I got waved over by a film crew from London Tonight, wanting to discuss this very issue!

I decided not to go into full Class War mode, but made several general points about Ken always playing to the gallery, there being far bigger issues for Londoners than the behaviour of cyclists, and that rather than using cyclists to raise revenue, he should cut his cloth better with the money he already has.

We will see at 6pm tonight if they use it!