Whether I am or not is for me to know and you to guess but that is not the point.   Today's headline grabbing rubbish is about so-called obesity.   The media is stuffed up with self-important experts from all areas berating the population about their follies.   "Don't eat this"  "Don't eat that" or you'll be dead before you swallow it or you'll puff up to the size of a barrage balloon.

Yesterday it was alcohol.  Similar self- expressed experts littered the air waves and newspaper columns threatening a slow and painful death to the "middle classes" who, they expound, are drinking too much alcohol.  There was the glorious spectacle on the radio - if you can have radio spectacles - of two eminent medical authorities sparring about the appropriate limits for the daily consumption of alcohol before the sky will fall in and the ground swallows you up.   They never did agree.

Radio 4 and 5-Live this morning had forgotten all yesterday's gloom and doom and were rabbitting on about Body Mass Index, waist measurements and coffin sizes - well, almost.   Phone-ins produced a mass of semi-hysterical people wondering whether to cash in their pensions.

But the experts were the best value.  They always are good for a laugh.

It wasn't long before one of them expounded that Nanny government has got to do something about it.   Pass a law.  Better still, pass fifteen laws.  Ban advertising of "junk food".  Have under-cover narks - as in anti-smoking laws - to fine on the spot those who dare to munch a bag of crisps in public.  Stick photographs of fat people on the packets of Mars Bars and the like.     Put the Walker's crisps on top shelves out of the reach of vulnerable children.   Fine parents who send their offspring to school with disgusting packed lunches.

I wouldn't put it beyond this Stalinist, authoritarian Brown government to do just that.  He's already made a start by banning smoking and introducing plain-clothes town hall geheimstaatspolizei to sneak on and punish landlords thousands of pounds if there's a whiff of smoke on their premises. I bet he's already thought about how much tax to put on savory snacks.   Just to deter his peasants, the hoi-polloi from buying them. of course.  Not so that he can raise more tax to fritter away and waste.

After all, Nanny knows best.

Well, get off our back, Brown and all the petty, self-important experts.  It's none of your damned business what I eat or drink.  It is certainly not in your manifesto to dictate my diet.   Advise, by all means but pass laws, introduce squads of nasty, nauseating, unpleasant town hall narks and on-the-spot fines, NO!

Get back to attempting to run the economy, the health service and the rest.  They are all in a shambles.

In short, Brown, get off my grass!  And whilst you are about it, don't let yourself go into history as the biggest traitor since Guido Fawkes.

(17/10/07)