Lazy overweight people should NOT be given free fat jabs – the NHS can’t pay for their greed and bad decisions
ARE you fat? Are you out of work?
If the answer to both of those questions is yes, then I have a great offer especially for you.
I’m offering my spare room to anyone currently unemployed because they are too obese to get a job.
You can move in this weekend, I will lock the door shut and feed you a calorie- controlled healthy diet until you lose enough weight to be able to return to work.
And all for just a basic rent to cover room and board.
Does that sound like a good deal?
Because it’s certainly a much better deal than the one the Government is offering taxpayers to tackle the obesity crisis.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting has decided that it would be a good idea for the NHS to offer free “fat jabs” to help get overweight people off the dole and back into work.
Nearly 250,000 people are expected to get the Mounjaro weight-loss jab on the NHS, including 3,000 as part of a trial to see if the monthly injections — similar to the better-known Wegovy and Ozempic jabs — can reduce the burden on the NHS and get people off their sofas and back to work.
Two thirds of adults in England are overweight or obese, with illnesses relating to obesity costing the NHS billions every year.
So it’s really no mystery why Government ministers want to narrow the nation’s waistlines.
But this plan won’t work.
These jabs have been hailed as a game-changer for the many millions who battle the flab, with many a famous name praising the drugs for their dramatic weight-reducing effects.
However, the evidence for this is actually very poor.
The drug companies’ own trials found that seven out of ten people taking part in the trials lost weight while having the jabs, shedding an average of ten per cent of their body weight over a year.
If you’re, say, 20st, that’s a 2st weight loss — just half a pound off a week, which is hardly a MIRACLE cure.
Crucially, the jabs are only licensed for use for two years and — guess what — as soon as people stop having them, they start piling the weight back on.
Does that really sound like a good use of your hard-earned taxes?
Of course it isn’t.
We’re told that spending billions on fat jabs could be far cheaper for the NHS than dealing with the long-term health impacts of obesity, but surely the cheapest option is for fat people to simply eat less and exercise more — which is not only guaranteed to work, it’s also 100 per cent free to the taxpayer.
‘PILING WEIGHT BACK ON’
After all, the NHS is already struggling to treat millions in genuine need and for whom simply giving up fizzy drinks and pizza is not a remedy.
Patients languish on waiting lists for cancer treatment, thousands are dying while waiting for care in A&E, and most of us can’t even remember what our GPs look like.
Yet the Health Secretary thinks it would be a grand idea to spend a FORTUNE on fat jabs? This is madness.
People have a right to eat what they want and to be as fat as they choose.
But they don’t have a right to expect the rest of us to pay for the consequences of their bad decisions.
If they really want weight-loss jabs, they can fork out the up-to-£200 a month cost for themselves.
And if they DON’T want to lose the flab and get a job, then I don’t want to pay for their benefits.
I’m sure the pounds will fall off them very quickly when they can’t afford their nightly Deliveroo.
And if they don’t have the willpower to fight the flab on their own, then my spare room is ready and waiting . . .
FAME is really bad for you.
Time and again we hear tales of how ordinary people are crushed by the pressures of becoming extraordinarily famous.
Liam Payne is just the most recent casualty of this deadly affliction.
We don’t yet know why he fell from his Buenos Aires hotel balcony but a young man has tragically lost his life at just 31 and a young son has lost his dad.
At just 16, Liam became part of the 1D juggernaut, with smash-hit songs and sell-out concerts, travelling the world in private jets and living a life of luxury.
He was rich and famous beyond his wildest dreams, but that life is an exhausting and lonely existence, adored by fans but isolated from family, friends and reality.
Like many stars, his mental health suffered and he sadly turned to drink and drugs.
Fame has always been a double-edged sword, and especially in the era of social media when there is no escape.
But celebrity from a young age can be a fatal blow.
RACHEL’S RISE CLOBBERS JOBS
YOU don’t have to be a Nobel prize-winning economist to know that if you want to grow the economy, the one thing you definitely should NOT do is put a tax on jobs.
Yet that’s PRECISELY what Chancellor Rachel Reeves plans with her first Budget, on October 30, when she is expected to raise the rate of National Insurance contributions paid by employers for every worker on their payroll.
The Treasury insists this isn’t putting up taxes on working people, but even the Office For Budget Responsibility says that the extra tax burden WILL fall mostly on workers, through fewer new staff being taken on and lower wage rises – while the rest will simply push up prices, which will hit everyone.
And the Chancellor knows it.
We know that because only a few years ago she blasted the Tories for planning a similar rise for exactly the same reasons.
This policy isn’t just a breach of Labour’s manifesto pledge not to raise National Insurance, it’s economic idiocy.