David Cameron: It is your fault if you are fat and poor.

[FairyMum]

Has anyone commented on the David Cameron-speech on moral neutrality? He is a price-dick, isn't he?

no, actually i think his over-privaliged background would prevent him from making decisions that affect the normal everyday folk in this country. He hasn't exactly grown up in the real world has he, poverty is just something he learnt about in his social science classes at school. Now im not saying that you have to be poor to run the country. But i think you do have to have a broad life experience, and sorry, doing is Eton holidays and Gap year around the world is not what i mean.

I just feel you need a more rounded leader. This would clearly follow for someone who had no experience of economics and whatever high-brow decisions politicians have to make. But it is a question of balance - i can see DC leaving "undesirable" sections of the country to flounder.

Personally i dont think it matters a hoot who runs the country though, i think we would be in this financial mire independant of Gordy, I had high hopes for him, but nup, he is proving to be a muppet.

I married into a fat family where a good proportion of my neices and nephews are very overweight or obese, as are my MIL, FIL, BIL and SIL.

They are all educated, bright people who don't eat junk food.

Over the past few years my obese FIL has had a stroke, my obese MIL had complications from abdominal surgery that left her very ill for two years, she's also developed type II diabetes. My BIL had a heart attack at 47, my SIL has got hypertension (at 47) and is on medication, my nephews and niece have been bullied about their weight at school.

Honestly it's not about the inability to afford healthy food in my family's case, it's about a fatalistic attitude to health: 'you might be run over by a bus tomorrow, and anyway look at so and so - lived to 80 despite being a smoker and the size of a house', and a complete inability to monitor portion sizes.

The thing I find most bizarre and distressing is their unwillingness to recognise that their children are seriously overweight and that it's because they are being overfed at home.

I do think something needs to be done. Not sure what. At the moment £1 in every £10 that's being spent on patient care in the NHS is going on diabetes related illness. If we carry on as we are the NHS will collapse under the strain. My own family have already been a huge and probably avoidable drain on its resources. My FIL is 76 and weighs 18 stone. Despite the fact that since his stroke he has been completely sedentary my MIL gives him as much to eat as she does my 25 year old nephew who works out 5 times a week. Each week my FIL puts on another pound or two. I suspect by the end of the year he won't be able to get up or down the stairs at home anymore. He can barely do it now. Then what?

At the very least I'd like to see the return of the school nurse and for children to be weighed at school on a regular basis. Parents of obese children need to be educated - to be told 'your child is obese - not just 'big', and that this is a danger to their health: you need to do something about it'.

Someone needs to point out to people - you have a responsibility to the rest of society who are reliant on the NHS to at least TRY to do something about your weight and your lifestyle.

Either that or go and get BUPA so the rest of us don't have to pay for your lifestyle induced illnesses......

It's not just Cameron being an Old Etonian that raises questions about his life experience. It's the very high proportion of OEs/Bullingdon club members in the shadow cabinet and positions of authority in the Tory party. You have a bunch of people who all come from a very narrow background, clearly recruit in their own image - how the hell are they going to be able to make judgements about the lives of the rest of us?

Gordon Brown's father was a minister so he had broad experience of all different sorts of people from childhood. Add in his links to the trade union movement and I think that gives him a much stronger claim to being able to understand the issues facing ordinary people and particularly those in poverty. Although I do wish he'd chosen a simpler way than the fiendishly complicated tax credits system to tackle poverty...

Have checked GB's biog. He didn't go into parliament until ten years after he'd graduated, so he did have some life experience. He was a lecturer.

Tell me about GB links to trade union movement - would like to know as all I know about him was that he was a "Son of the Manse"

"Those gits in the City with their clever-clever money making schemes have plunged us into recession" - I could argue that its more down to the gits in NEW York who have plunged us into recession but don't think it would add much.

i'm bowing out now - all this talk of politics brings me out in a rash! I am too excited anyway on account of having just booked my £9.50 Holiday!!!

haven't the majoity of politicians of both parteis had an "over-privaliged background" historically. Maragret Thatcher could have been argued to have one of the most "normal" upbringings of any prime minister - hardly made her empathetic to to lower socio-economic groups!

Good posts Kew!

my um voted for thatcher becuase she thought as a woman she would be more empathetic.

ha haa haa

Well, yes, but you can do things which help you to familiarise yourself with other social situations. Which doesn't tend to include joining the Bullingdon club and then going straight in Conservative Party HQ.

And even that would be OK if you had advisors and colleagues who had a broader range of experience.

Perhaps DC does. Does he? Really, that's what I want to know.

i am fat because i eat too much, fair play. will lose it (have before will again) as soon as i can but cant diet as ebf ds4 not gaining weight well.

butpoor? when we have been poor its because dh has been ill (was sacked for it, didnt choose to stop work), or because ds's sn makes it harder to work.

There are hopefully ways out- i passed my degree thursday, dh apllying to start in 2009 which should give flexibility. If i had been a single parent though i couldnt have done it.

Mum and dad have just had a reprieve at eu court level (yay) but until that happened all their pensions had been lost, due to them being regarded as usa assets. Had that nt happened (and this was their genuine belief would be their future) threy would have been reliant on state benefits, yet they paid pensions all their life: their fault? several of dads colleagues were older and ived in overty a decadedue to this.

I don't get it when people say "being able to afford healthy food"

Healthy food is way cheeper than junk food! I don't mean organic food either.

I find it sad that we talk about being poor as if it is some kind of crime, or even a freak aberration. If we want people to clean offices, wipe old ladies' bottoms and help our kids in school, then we must value the 'poor' and not consider them (us!) to be a social problem per se.
I suspect DC means the underclass by the poor. ie the fit young non-working economically inactive who are on the edge of crime or actively involved in crime.

I don;t actually much care what anyone#'s background is (though I do understand that its important to some people) I want to know what conservative and labour policies are on the areas of most concern to me and I want to know if they have a competant executive to see those policies into practice.

lack of tangible plicy scares me a lot with dc

if you talk about the 'poor' you need to define oyour terms: working poor- massive respect to them the rich of this world couldnt survive the same way without their childcarers / housekeeers etc; huge numbers of people sick or disabled- get really angry the way the are treated, choice is not theirs and most would choose to work; people who choose to rely on state benefits when they could work-

I think all political partied should provide an idiots guide to their policies with basic explanation of hopw they intend to carry them out.

The guide Kew - is this for idiots or by idiots?

I think they have something like this called a manifesto but it is impossible to understand once the spin doctors have been at it.

But Manifesto is inpenetrable to dimwits like me.

There seems to be a huge attitude of entitlement in this country. The state owes me. It's not my fault. It's not my responsibility.

I'm sure that for many people it absolutely isn't their fault and they are taking responsibility. And working hard and have more shit than any one person should ever have to deal with. And to those people, I sympathise and I really don't think for one second that that's who DC was referring to.

Personally, I applaud a politician who's prepared to cut through the politically correct crap and call a spade a spade. As someone who's only lived here for 5 years, the erosion in moral values and work ethic are more apparent now than they were when I first got here. Maybe I just didn't notice it at first, or maybe it's genuinely got worse. Hard to tell but the problem does seem to be worsening.

It would be nice to hear what his solutions are, but I think it's a good first step to get people - to whom he is referring - to face some home truths.

i think there should be council housing entitlement especially for fat and poor people
fat = most entitlement
then poor

Absolutely loving this thread! A proper political debate! At university I wrote my thesis on Teenage Pregnancy and covered some of the issues raised here.

If we can say that all social problems are the individual's fault and nothing to do with the state/culture or society as a whole then what is the point in the welfare system, education system and NHS etc etc?

Can you really seperate health from social issues? The danger with this Tory view is that we try to categorise health into those issues which are the individual's fault e.g. obesity and those that aren't e.g. cancer. This is too simplistic. Take for example Post Natal Depression.It is not the individual's fault but I feel a combination of biological AND societal factors. It is a fact that health and inequalities in health are linked to poverty and social deprivation.

Can you possibly say that a baby born to poor, drug addicted parents is individually responsible for growing up poor and drug addicted? NONSENSE