What turns you off?

[Wade]

@Wade

Adults should behave like adults, not 2 year olds.

On this we can certainly agree.

[cardiganwearer]

The obese pay taxes the same as anyone else.

The purpose of the NHS is to make people well, not to promote moral crusades. You would do well not to hijack it to pursue your own.

Follow this line of reasoning and it won't be long before questions are asked about the £18.000 a year (and rising as new drugs come along) it costs on average to keep a person with HIV alive.

As a service it's under greater threat now than it's ever been and there is no shortage of people who would happily slice away at it one group at a time until it's gone.

[cardiganwearer]

@Wade

...The parents should not have let him play there without supervision. If he dies, they're responsible for his death...

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Why, no, it's Personal Responsibility Man.

[AlfredM]

Meow~

[Spellbound]

@Cardigan

That's actually a pretty stupid comment. I don't know what your problem is with taking responsibility for your own life.

Obesity costs the NHS between 5 and 10 billion quid a year, and it's increasing. Unless something is done about it, that's the end of the NHS right there. That's why there is a concerted campaign to reduce the level of obesity in the country.

There was a long campaign to demonise smoking tobacco, and it finally worked; deaths are way down. It's going to be the same with obesity.

@mamza

I don't know what your issues are, so I can't comment.

[cardiganwearer]

I have no problems taking responsibility for my own life, perhaps you think you know something about my life that I don't?

If you actually had an argument, or took the trouble to address the ones I've made, instead of simply repeating yourself, you wouldn't have to make stuff up about me.

And it seems it's not just me. Why not address the argument instead of attributing "issues" to people you've no knowledge of?

I do indeed have "issues", I have "issues" with your propensity to advance ad hominems instead of producing arguments. I have "issues" with people who are slippery and dishonest. I have "issues" with people who resort to insult when they can't support the preposterous positions they've adopted.

These "issues" fall under a rubric we might call integrity. It's a failing, I know.

So let's run it again shall we? Why should any particular group who pay taxes the same as you and me be excluded from the benefits of an NHS designed to make people well rather than fuel moral crusades? And do you think doing so might endanger other groups who at the whim of public opinion (or perhaps just yours) may be deemed to have brought their troubles on themselves.

[Spellbound]

You made the comment about responsibility, not me, and a pretty stupid one at that.

I thought I'd explained about how much these life-style choices are costing the NHS, between 5% and 10% of the entire budget. Didn't you listen?

Obese people cost far more by way of health care and welfare costs than most people do, and because many of them are sick they pay less in the way of taxes. Many of them are bed-bound and have serious medical issues.

And listen, that's just the financial side. There are so many lives ruined and cut short by this epidemic, there is every reason to try and curtail it. I don't know why you have a problem with that. Prevention is way better than cure.

[cardiganwearer]

Your new found sympathy for people who you were demonising earlier in this thread is touching.

What happened to

Maybe it's time that people with self-inflicted problems paid for their own treatment.

They may indeed cost a lot of the NHS budget but the NHS is not going to be preserved as a provider of universal health care by excluding groups. What about the disabled, what about people who suffer from diabetes from birth? What about the elderly, 90% of the NHS money spent on individuals is spent in the last ten years of their life. Perhaps you'd advocate that people die ten years sooner than they do now?

I think you may have painted yourself into a corner, you started out with

Fat people crammed into those tight cycling shorts. Yuuuuck!

and now you want to reshape health provision to make that comment look rational.

And please, will you stop telling me I have a problem with this or that. I do not have a problem with anything, I have an argument to advance. It's an argument about not excluding people that someone finds distasteful from services to which they contribute financially.

The quote above suggests that you have a problem with people who are obese. It started out as a personal preference on aesthetic grounds and has moved on to suggesting they be denied the healthcare they have funded just like the rest of us.

The provision of any service funded by taxation is not going to be best preserved by excluding people from it, be that through cost or because you find them icky in cycling shorts.

[Spellbound]

The disabled and the elderly and those who suffer from diabetes from birth do not fall into the category of the self-inflicted. Your argument is stupid.

I said that fat people who cram themselves into cycling shorts look yuck, and they do.

There is no doubt that obese people are costing the NHS far more than they contribute, as I pointed out, and to which you are unable to respond. That is why there there is a concerted effort by health care professionals to tackle the whole problem of obesity. If we don't, the NHS will go bust.

I think you do have a problem; you are unable to see that obesity is a self-inflicted disease, via a bad life-style choice in most cases. I don't know you well enough to understand the reason for your prejudice.

And you are verging on getting personal, which I dislike.

[SolemnBoy]

Look, saying that obesity isn't self-inflicted is wrong and stupid. That doesn't mean we shouldn't lend our empathy and resources to help those who are obese and suffering from health problems.

A drug addict is who he is due to a row of seriously stupid choices he's made. He could have been influenced by peer pressure or just the joy of temporarily easening the burden of an otherwise miserable life but it's still his fault. Telling him it's his fault and claiming that the nature of his problem (being self-inflicted) is undeserving of financial aid is horrible from a humane perspective.

A woman who got AIDS after years of unprotected promiscuity has nobody to blame but herself. Nonetheless, it would be downright cruel to deny her the empathy and medical aid she deserves to ease the pain of a life-shattering disease.

A person who's been abusing his body with excessive amounts of food for years has nobody but himself to blame for his obesity. Just like the aforementioned examples, however, the fact that his harm is self-inflicted is no argument to deny him assistance and understanding.

Just because you've got problems caused by your own bad decisions it doesn't mean you're less deserving of respect and funding if necessary for your health. What you're promiting seems to me to be heartless and inhumane even if I can agree with some of your previous statements about how wrong it is to blame one's obesity on other factors. Fat people need to somehow find the motivation to lose weight and aim for a healthier lifestyle. In my opinion it's not good to tell them to be satisfied with how they are, because it's unhealthy. On the other hand it's a great idea to tell them their value as human beings and the amount you care for them won't change with their body. They should be encouraged to escape obesity but meanwhile, regardless of whether they succeed or not, you should respect them rather than insult and patronize them. You don't have to be attracted to them but it's just insensitive to express feelings of disgust over their bodies.