Why don't they just bite the bullet and be done with it?

http://islam.about.com/od/dietarylaw/a/diet_law.htm

I remember on my first trip to Britain, buying fish and chips at a fish and chip stand in the Northernmost part of Scotland. It was one of the worst culinary experiences of my life. The fish was whole (including bones and scales) and was inedible. The fries were chunks of potato with skins on them and totally logged with grease. So much for "real fish and chips". If these regulations are aimed at improving cuisine in Britain, I'd be all for it. However, I suspect that this is not the case and is on the other hand, another example of the nanny state's intrusion on things we love. Such as fish and chips as most of us are used to!

Is it not time to remove the UK from the list of free countries?

Brown is already thoroughly despised in the UK. The Tories will be back in power at the next election, and while David Cameron is far from Margaret Thatcher, it's a good start. As bad news as I hear from Britain, I honestly think the worst of it is almost past, and things will start turning around. The "mustn't grumble" default attitude of the British public is difficult to shake them out, but once angered they can be merciless: on the wreck that Labour and its hangers-on have made of the country, they will be.

Did you read that the lament was because of the NHS? They dont give a rats rear end about the people,its about the amount of money left to pay bloated salaries in the NHS.

KATE, CAN YOU POST THIS ARTICLE UP?

***Don’t use the S-word. This is a place of learning, not a school***
**Critics condemn show of ‘political correctness’**
"Watercliffe Meadow Primary in Sheffield has adopted the new phraseology because it thinks that the word school may have negative connotations for pupils and parents."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article5435175.ece

I spent 3 cold winter months in Nottingham in 1985 and the very best thing about my stay was the fish and chips. Greasy but hot and crispy and really salty with lots of malt vinegar-fish fresh and flaky. Wrapped first in clean paper to absorb the grease and then newspaper.
I remember kids on bikes would ask for a scoop of the cracklings with salt - pure fat and salt. The good old days - gone forever.

Bozo commented "another example of the nanny state's intrusion on things we love. Such as fish and chips as most of us are used to!"

If the masses in England are too stupid to eat properly, then regulations are a necesary evil.

I see enough fat arses and potbellied pigs around that maybe we Canadians and our fellow fat slobs to the south of us could use a bit of regulation to save us from ourselves. Afterall, who will fight off the Moslem hords if we cannot raise a non-obese army?

Ahh....the joy of activists and excess number of social workers. It is so sad to see Britain reduced to imposed stupidity and mindless interference in daily living. There was a time that the sun never set on the Empire. Perhaps now we see why darkness has crept in.

I WANT THE GOOD OLD DAYS BACK!

I read that somewhere in GB the council reduced the number of holes in the salt shakers in the fish and chip places. The owners stated that people just shook longer or took the lids off.

I lived in England for two years while in the army and had fish and chips from many places while there, as it is one of my favourite meals. Although I had lots of good fish and chips in England, (and Atlantic and Pacific Canada) the best fish and chips in the world are at Jasper's on Liverpool road in Pickering Ontario. I have been eating them their, although not often enough for thirty years.

So when do the bangers and mash hit the garbage can?

yes...the greatest country in history...the greatest benefactor of poor long suffering humanity...the leader...the exemplar...the very source of all we western folk hold sacred...brought low ...brought to this sorry pass within a mere half century by faux liberal philosophy taking the bit in it's teeth ...

the reaction...the reckoning will be terrible enough i suppose in the short term but of course most instructive...we shall all learn anew what our ancestors once knew by heart......

Eat more. Get two airline tickets for the price of one.

There is definitely something wrong with Britain let me tell ya.

Amazing what you can get away with once you've disarmed the populace, eh?

If people only had to work for a living, rather than sit at a desk..........

soon the unions will demand a treadmill for every worker:-))))))

If German aggression hadn't wiped out two generations of young men, I doubt they'd be in this mess.

Then again, The Who would never have written "Tommy", nor Pink Floyd "The Wall".

Damned! It's pizza tonight (normally eat sensibly). But to hell with them all, it will be fish and chips with lots of salt & vinager tommorow night! To hell with Mohammad, he has 72 virgins some of them actual girls to bugger, I've heard through the grapevine to bugger.mms smells natural they would say, good breeding.

Muslims be not offended.......for some reason my SDA post above was only half processed, I wished to include that not all the buggery that Mohammed or his Islamic followers would approve be little boys, but sheep and goats as the prefered cultural intertainment. No offence if I alluded to a few underaged girls in the mix.

Fish and chips best served in a newspaper wrapping loaded with salt and malt vinegar, now that's good food.

I'm convinced that these little humorless fascist liberal anorexics have issues with mother.

Obesity is a big problem. The question is - what do you do when people will not take care of themselves - and become a burden on society and tax payers, etc. I don't know the answer.

I saw this show last year detailing the paths of 2 people, who were grossly overweight. The first person was a Mexican and he was the heaviest person in the world (over 1600lbs). The second person was an American who weighed in at close to 600lbs.

It was disgusting looking at this Mexican guy. He was bedridden, had sores all over his body, had to be rolled around to be cleaned and have someone clean his arse. He managed to contact an American diet doctor. The diet doctor put him on a normal healthy diet for a man his size who should weigh 220lbs (this was a normal meat and potatoes type diet - no yogurt or funny herbs - just correct portions of meat, veg, fruit). This Mexican got down to about 800lbs in about 18 months and you could see the difference. The doctor thought that the guy would be below 300lbs in another 18 months. It was amazing to see.

Contrasting this was the American woman. The woman had extreme health problems but she could not and would not stop her eating habits. It was disgusting to watch her pulling up to fast food joints and ordering the equivalent of 3 meals at a time - and basically shove the food into her mouth like it was the end of the world. Her solution was to have an operation to constrict the size of her stomach to a very small pouch. In this way she could still eat what she wanted but the operation would help her to reduce her intake without personal resolve. This operation was at the public expense.

So the problem is how to handle this seemingly growing population of people who have a right to get themselves to death and expect a quick fix which usually ends up costing the taxpayer.

Concerning fish and chips, I used to love eating fish and chips as a kid growing up. I used to love slapping some tartar sauce on the battered fish and flooding the chips with malt vinegar and salt. For some reason (and not for diet reasons or conscience reasons), I stopped eating fish and chips for about 5 years. Recently, I went out for fish and chips and I couldn't wait. The food initially went down great but I could definitely feel the fat in my throat and taste all the salt and I actually didn't feel good. So now I still have this great memory of the taste of fish and chips coupled with the fact that my body is no longer used to taking in lots of fat and salt which no longer agrees with me.

"Bozo commented "another example of the nanny state's intrusion on things we love. Such as fish and chips as most of us are used to!"

If the masses in England are too stupid to eat properly, then regulations are a necesary evil.

I see enough fat arses and potbellied pigs around that maybe we Canadians and our fellow fat slobs to the south of us could use a bit of regulation to save us from ourselves. Afterall, who will fight off the Moslem hords if we cannot raise a non-obese army?

Posted by: Canuckguy at January 2, 2009 9:49 PM "

Who took over canuckguy"s name????

What makes it worse in the UK is that the govt pays for the health care and owns the major broadcasting outlets. So they spend a huge amount of time on the BBC preaching to people in order to keep down costs in the other division. Eventually, we will all be living, for our own good, in padded cells with our teeth and fingernails removed, "for our own good", waited on by robots who bring us a slurry of ideal nutritional content.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote a short story like that when he was still worth reading.

"So the problem is how to handle this seemingly growing population of people..."

How many genuinely obese people do you see every day (not including on Oprah or TLC "special interest programs") that makes you have the attitude that "we need government to control this"?

Are you an ex-fatty, controlling-type personality or both?

As I am very familiar with the culinary habits of the brits(first wife from Liverpool, exchange duty with the brit army)let me say this.

Those buggers deep fry everything! My first meal with the brit army was deep fried eggs and spam(yes, that's right, plopped the eggs right into the deep fryer, I was so hungover I had to beeline for the nearest can), so it is no wonder that they have an obesity problem.

But, saying that, the brits should be focusing on their biggest health problem.........BOOZE!

**I see enough fat arses and potbellied pigs around that maybe we Canadians and our fellow fat slobs to the south of us could use a bit of regulation to save us from ourselves.**~Canuckguy

Perhaps we could also find a way to regulate intelligence.

Wonderful outburst of typical North American ignorance.

Few if any of you have been to Britain. If you had, you would have noticed that healthy food is a national obsession around here, despite the "Full English" breakfast, and the Fish and Chips.

Go to any grocery store and you will find a heavy emphasis on non-preservative, not artificial flavours and coloring health foods. Marks and Spencers has built an entire food section around it. Even the cheapest of the cheap grocery stores put a heavy emphasis on it.

North America is too used to chemical and hormone riddled food to appreciate how strong the emphasis here is on avoiding both. Chicken breasts here don't look like they have been carved of dogs (or Alsatian sized chickens for that matter).

Its a different lifestyle out here. There is an emphasis on healthy eating and freshly prepared preservative free food. I know Canadians who come to England and eat the same amount, but end up losing a lot of wieght - a delightful side effect of not pumping your body with all manners of chemicals and preservatives. Try it. The government, I daresay, is acting well within the popular mandate here.

Feel free to pump hormones and chemicals into your body up in Canada. Often without knowing. Thats real freedom, eh?

"Wonderful outburst of typical North American ignorance."

Wonderful outburst of typical European condescension.

I love being lectured at by people who assume I am ignorant of all things simply because of my place of birth and accent: were the former not American, that would be immediately condemned by exactly the same people as racism. And the irony escapes them completely.

and in more smart Uk news . . .

"A new £4.7m primary school in Sheffield is facing criticism for dropping the word "school" from its title after governors decided the term had "negative connotations".

The headteacher of Sheffield's Watercliffe Meadow, Linda Kingdon, said the south Yorkshire school, which is due to open on Monday, will instead be called a "place for learning".

"We decided from an early stage we didn't want to use the word 'school'," she told local newspaper the Sheffield Star. "This is Watercliffe Meadow, a place for learning. One reason was many of the parents of the children here had very negative connotations of school."

Limits could be imposed on the amount of fat and salt in certain products

And, given that it will be a government agency, the first products on which these limits will be imposed will be:

lard
butter
salt

readinger, you've never been to Canada, have you? Or on a farm anywhere, ever. Right?

What you've done is drink the "natural" food bong water dude. You're letting clever operators charge you triple for the same head of lettuce because it has a "certified organic" sticker on it. You know what the difference is between a "normal" vegetable or meat product and a certified organic one? The price.

Oh, and btw? That main stream media outlet that told you about Canadian food? They were lying. Like a Persian carpet.

Its called propaganda, old son. Don't be a sucker.

YES. Remove all salt from salt,fat from lard,and butter from butter!Next.Remove O2 from oxygen.Not much left.It appears the brain has already been removed.

Lets see here, people are too stupid to know what to eat so they let other people, who whey were smart enough to elect, take care of those decisions... Am I the only one to see a problem here?

Down east here we have the nanny state dictating the price of booze the bars must sell for because the precious snowflakes who are old enough to vote and drink are not old enough to be responsible for what they consume. That will teach those nasty barkeepers for pouring all that stuff down Johnny and Sally's throat against their will.

I wish all the petty tyrants who want to control others' food choices would just buy a pet and mind their own goddamned business.

How about all those that want 'free' health care submit to government regulation of their diet (and physical activity, and sun exposure, etc., etc., etc.), and leave the remaining free citizens at liberty to seek private for-profit health care?

The Phantom,

Of course I have been to Canada, albeit never to any farms on Canada. I have to go there quite often both for work, and because I am from Canada, and let me be the first to say, organic or not, the chicken in North America tastes like nothing. It literally has no taste.

Its odd that you should bring up the cost of food - natural organic produce versus hormonally charged stuff. In my experience, and I am sure there are studies out there to back me up, while the cost of living is higher in England, the cost of food in grocery stores is about the same as North America. Lettuce costs the same etc etc. We don't pay inflated amounts for the same food.

In America organic food has become a product with which you can rip people off. Capitalism at its very best, frankly, since it all boils down to marketing. Walk into Sainsbury or Waitrose or Tesco, and compare the prices to Dominion or Loblaws, and, well, you will find that the organic meat in England costs the same as the non-organic meat in North America.

Furthermore there is an emphasis on fresh food with a low shelf life here that is pretty rare in North America. Bet you didnt know that. A macaroni and cheese here will have a use by date within 4 days, and zero preservatives. In North America it will have a use by date months down the line, and enough chemicals to throw you out of whack.

I am a Canadian in England. The difference here is that people actually give a damn. Canada relies on the questionable philosophy of "what I don't know cannot hurt me".

Lets put it this way. Chemicals in foods are a relatively new phenomenon. The Human body is not used to these chemicals. It has side effects. Whether you want to acknowledge that or not, is up to you. It is a bizzare freedom to claim.

First they came for the tobacco smokers....some people encourage the gument to regulate because they cannot tolerate anyone enjoying life!

The English people are no fatter than the people in the southern hemisphere - look at the King of Tonga.

Being fat is not a crime, being bone thin is not a crime, ruining other people's lives with fanatical control demands IS a crime, IMO. A big layer of fat is really no different from a burka...some women like that protective layer; some don't.

As for fat men, usually low testerone, low self esteem and feeling powerless lead to this impasse, IMO.

Older men and women often put on weight because of the natural aging process..gravity pulls everything downhill.

Living a useful productive life makes fat firm and leads to a pleasant countenance, it is the flab that is unsightly. Flab and Fish and Chips are not related; flab and despondency are related, IMO.

Nulabour has left a vandalised landscape throughout Britain - House of Lords trashed, parliament neutered, economy in shambles, and fast approaching sharia. Not much is left. The last remaining institution, CoE, is now in the sights of Nulabour. There wont be much left by the time NuLabour finishes its term of office.

We have got to the stage that the main parties in contention, Labour and the Conservatives, are vying with each other, to come out with ever more unpopular programs. With the chickens, as well as the flying pigs coming home to roost, neither party wants be in power when that happens. Both parties are playing for the long-term, as whoever is in power, will get the blame for past follies, and will be out for a long time.

Justthinkin asked: "Who took over canuckguy"s name????"

Ans: Nobody, it's same guy, just was being a bit facetious about the need for a non-obese army. The comment was triggered by an article about the German forces in Afghanstan who were protrayed as fat beer-guzzling sausage eaters hunkered down in their camps, too out of shape to do patrols and fight.

just remember...when the tough times come, the skinny ones will always go first. Britain is safe for now. So is Canada & the US. Someday these health nuts will really feel stupid, when lying in a hospital bed....dying of...nothing.

Yeah, Peterj, I guess in the case of a severe famine in our land, fat will be where it's at. The shinny guys will either starve to death faster or they can outrun down the fatties and cook them.