http://www.politics.co.uk/…/liquid-diets-iain-duncan-smith-…
It seems that Minster for Workhouses (not his title, but maybe it really should be) Iain Duncan-Smith, yes he of the £39 breakfast expenses claim fame, has previous form in the fatty-bashing stakes. Late last year he not only suggested forcing 'obese' recipients of unemployment and disability benefits to undergo the ultra low-calorie Cambridge Weight Plan, but held several meetings with the director (Sir Anthony Leeds, who incidentally also frequently pops up in the media as an 'obesity expert') of the company AND applied pressure to the health secretary to consider setting up an interdepartmental group to consider the efficacy of ultra low-calorie liquid diets as a means of getting benefit claimants back to work. Never mind that these programmes (like all diets) have little proof of their long-term effectiveness, their safety has also been called into question. But if you're IDS, those concerns are irrelevant next to a strategy of making benefits conditional and kicking out, again and again, at those least able to defend themselves.
(Trigger warning: the linked article is very fatphobic, contains a Weight Loss Journey (TM) story, lots of scaremongering about the 'projected implications' of 'obesity', statistics taken at face value, conflation of weight and health, etc etc. However I wasn't able to find a version that DIDN'T incorporate these elements - itself revealing, of how the media can't even report a story about the infringement of the rights of fat people without the obligatory reminder that 'fat people are a very bad thing').
No comments:
Post a Comment