Dear
Sir/Madam/Other,
(Please
excuse the ambiguity, but the civil service doesn’t know
the number of transgender MPs, and I know this is a driving concern in
certain sections of Government right now.)
Recent
press reports show that your organisation is launching a report, endorsing
money gifts to be handed out by the state to encourage people to get trim.
I can
understand at a most basic level the logic in your thinking. You want people to
look ship shape rather than the shape of a ship.
Currently,
to continue the nautical theme, I am myself on a fairly even keel, with only a
modicum of excess ballast. However, the inducements you are about to endorse
run contrary to my own human rights, namely my right to get paid by the taxpayer
for acting in my own self-interest too.
Having made
a lifestyle choice freely in the past, it is obviously unfair for me to miss
out on this state intervention in my pies. Of course, it is nonsensical for me
to start eating in order to stop again; so under the principles already
endorsed by for instance the Common Agricultural Policy, if you forward a giro
to me straightaway, we can cut out the middle man, namely in this case the
chocolate cake freezer of my local branch of Iceland.
Incidentally,
I understand that grants have also been made available to help people stop
smoking? I stopped smoking several years ago as I realised it was bad for me.
The fact that I was on the Gauloises and the Belga was a bit of a pointer too. It
would, of course, be very unhealthy of me to start it up again on a packet and
a half a day, especially those nice ones I once got given at a reception at the
Indonesian embassy which tasted of rainforest. If you could drop a line to the
right people, I could do with that taxpayer money too.
I have
heard about other schemes, like the juvenile offender who was sent to a
Romanian bear sanctuary. I am not sure if this was a Michael Howard metaphor, and
so am prepared to skip that one. But if there are other benefits on offer that
reward my own freedom of choice, I should be delighted not to do all of them,
for a price. Otherwise I’d be paying a subsidy on common sense.
Lee
Rotherham