Eating or drinking on trains and buses should be banned, in a bid to end Britain’s “mindless” snack culture, the country’s Chief Medical Officer has said, in her final report.
So, that train journey from Plymouth to Newcastle – I think there is one? – to be had with no drink, no eats. When do they bring back the cattle cars to make it a truly socialist experience?
We’re insane. For not hanging them from the nearest lamppost.
Time to abolish the position of CMO, it has outlived its usefulness.
I don’t use trains much anymore. But I would be willing to get in a literal fight with any of their staff trying to enforce such a “ban”.
Given they can’t stop stabbings and killings on their trains –I doubt anything will come of this nonsense. Just virtue signalling again.
Actually the Plymouth to Newcastle train is just a segment of the Penzance to Edinburgh route
Surprised they haven’t thought of giving passengers a free carrot with their ticket.
that train journey from Plymouth to Newcastle – I think there is one?
Yes, direct journey taking 7 hours plus a handful of minutes, thus very likely to cover lunch. There’s a train that actually goes from Plymouth to Aberdeen taking 11 hours 20 minutes. I think we should invite the departing CMO to do that without food to demonstrate how wonderful it would be.
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Plymouth/Newcastle+upon+Tyne/@52.6556955,-4.3664309,7z/data=!4m15!4m14!1m5!1m1!1s0x486c8d530e95ea3d:0x3b282cb5cef58593!2m2!1d-4.1426565!2d50.3754565!1m5!1m1!1s0x487d857e0c6f64cd:0xbe252b072a76191!2m2!1d-1.61778!2d54.978252!3e3!5i2
7 hrs ± 10 mins or so. Unless there’s railworks, of course.
Or you die of boredom.
Or hunger. Could always start eating the other passengers I suppose.
I suggest starting with the obese kids first. If you can find any that is…
When do they bring back the cattle cars to make it a truly socialist experience?
There’s a legally-enforced minimum space per passenger for cattle transport, so the moos actually get treated better than the people.
It is screamingly clear that the country needs a Chief Anti-tosspottery Officer – with the power to overrule or remove from office the various other Chief Tosspot Officers.
I feel that loss of pensions will be a necessary step for these and any other retiring/ departing totalitarians in the UK public sector. The swamp has to be drained or the parasites will overcome the patient…..
We are permitted “plain water” though, so praise their forethought and generosity.
Bad luck if you are a diabetic and travelling seven hours on the train, but these people have already thrown you under that bus.
Actually, the small print says “ban food on all urban trains”, so Virgin Rail can still rip you off by charging you several £ for a sandwich on a long-distance journey.
But the same calorie limits for meals sold to tubby idle children and marathon runners?
Charts showing that *no-one* is underweight?
I was staggered by how dictatorial these proposals were. I’d often thought that criticism of this woman was overblown but I’m revising my opinions now.
Banning people from eating in public. Really?! What goes on in her head?
Apparently it is ‘local’ transport only.
For now.
I expect government apparatchiks travel also by train, last thing they want is to ban their own dining cars.
I think the Chief Medical Officer got the idea from watching films like “Schindler’s List”. “Just look at how thin those Jews getting off the trains, are. There’s not a fat one among them. Oh, I have an idea….”.
Newcastle? Pah! It starts (/terminates) in Inverness! I used to do the Aberdeen-Sheffield leg, and one winter we left Abers at 10am and didn’t get into Sheffield until 1am the next day, with the announcer desperately asking if any passengers really wanted to continue to Plymouth.
If this were an important and serious issue, the CMO would not have waited until leaving her post to raise it. She would have campaigned long and hard and discussed with the government and train companies how to make it happen.
Instead, she just throws out the idea. Like me suggesting a huge new controversial project at work on the day I retired.
The role is clearly about generating fluffy ideas and getting media mentions.
She’s a totalitarian in the worst nanny sense. And she picked a time when Chris Snowden is on holiday
Sam Vara–she could have suggested something that would have been freeing –like using old sleeper carriages to run an on-train brothel –rather than po-faced tyranny. Which is why her pension should be confiscated as a suitable reward for her gob.
Shame she too old to make up the cash via my above idea.
Penseivat
October 10, 2019 at 9:31 am
Not so far off.
Many diet fascists triumphantly exclaim that there were no fat people in the concentration camps. When asked how many healthy people there were in the concentration camps, they tend to change the subject.
Rob,
“Apparently it is ‘local’ transport only.”
What does that *precisely* mean? My “local” bus takes nearly an hour on its complete route, which is from one side of town to the other. Is that “local”? We’re going to stop someone having a snack for an hour? Or are we going to have Snack inspectors checking tickets, so anyone who takes the full Wroughton to Tadpole Garden Centre journey is exempt?
I forsee dramatic scenes on the Clapham omnibus, like drug dealers trying to flush the coke down toilets, but with people trying to stuff a Whopper down their mouth before the Snack Fuzz get to them. The police jumping off a bus, running down the road to get a half-eaten Kit Kat. “Drop something Kowalski?” “You know this guy, chief?” “Yeah, we’ve been after this slimeball for months.”
For those extending the journey beyond Newcastle – she’s only Chief Medical Officer for England. The buffet car will be serving the usual selection of fried Mars Bars and single malts once north of Berwick.
Her predecessor as CMO, Liam Donaldson, was also a barking mad authoritarian megalomaniac.
He claimed hundreds of thousands would die from bird and swine flu.
It is the same weaponised hysteria that Extinction Rebellion uses to try to force through its authoritarian agenda.
The role is clearly about generating fluffy ideas and getting media mentions.
Alas, no – many extremely stupid ideas from them become law, and more will do so. The fanatics dominate this part of government, and for some unfathomable reason much of the media supports them. It is another illustration of the absolute chasm between the ruling class + media and the rest of the population.
For those extending the journey beyond Newcastle – she’s only Chief Medical Officer for England. The buffet car will be serving the usual selection of fried Mars Bars and single malts once north of Berwick.
You won’t get food south of Berwick, and you won’t get booze north of there. I’ve an idea, why not sack 100,000 civil servants as an opening gambit?
What does that *precisely* mean? My “local” bus takes nearly an hour on its complete route, which is from one side of town to the other. Is that “local”? We’re going to stop someone having a snack for an hour? Or are we going to have Snack inspectors checking tickets, so anyone who takes the full Wroughton to Tadpole Garden Centre journey is exempt?
I don’t think details like this matter to them. The idea is to turn the ratchet of authoritarianism click by click, even discussing how it could be achieved is a partial admission that it could/should be done.
My response anyway is just say you are a diabetic. You aren’t obliged (yet) to carry documentation saying you are one, such as some sort of coloured star on your sleeve, so your word against theirs. No bus/train employee will give enough fucks to get into a barney over that.
Lying to these people is a patriotic act.
No food on commuter trains and buses. Portion control in restaurants and at take-aways. Et bloody cetera. Who is going to enforce these new rules? How? The Transport Police? A new body, funded trained and with necessary backup and budget? Good luck with that.
An aside: The three ages of man: Youth; celebrating the lack of deference. Middle age; mourning the age of deference. Mature; realising that lawyers and doctors can be absolute bloody fools and always have been.
one in three children ending primary school overweight or obese.
All of you, look around you. Can you believe this absurdity even for one second? Where are these children?
Apparently this is a thing in Japan – they frown upon eating on trains, except for Shinkansen, but it’s not a legal ban, just a societal thing.
“Japan / societal thing”
It’s about manners.
Packed suburban commuter train and some worthless yob slobbering over a hot takeaway. Intercity routes used to have buffet cars. And then there is “in between”.
Our authoritarian class is trying to legislate for manners. And succeeding, one might argue, when we see (for example) how political correctness and hate speech are faring against freedom of speech.
I went to see a doctor the other day. A big fat woman.
Why the f*ck won’t the Tories grow some balls and say ‘OK, all State employees must show the way with this healthy eating and obesity reduction malarky. Become the example for the rest of the public. So from here on all State employees will be weighed at regular intervals and given fitness tests, and all those that fail will have to be given strict diets and fitness regimes that will be a condition of employment to adhere to’
See how far all this nonsense gets then.
Why is Sally Davies still employed as CMO?
Everybody in the government too busy fucking up Brexit?
She’s become Chief Nanny of Trinity, Cambridge, I believe. No doubt she’ll instruct the Fellows to stop sluicing and browsing in front of the Junior Members – it sets such a bad example.
What, she won’t? She’s just a rank hypocrite? Never! Knock me dahn wiv a fevver!
@jgh
As with most folk here I’m generally against banning things. But using the word ‘abers’ is criminal, and you should hang your head in shame.
C’mon. Standards.
Who is going to enforce these new rules?
The more bans, enforced or not on a whim, the less respect for the Law. Blair’s wankers are turning a law-abiding population into one increasingly treating the law with contempt and hoping they aren’t one of the unlucky ones who happen to get caught breaking one of the million new, pointless laws.
“Apparently this is a thing in Japan – they frown upon eating on trains,”
That’s because they’re too busy putting their hands either down the blouses or up the skirts of schoolgirls. 😉
@Jim,
I had a similar encounter with a nurse giving me a “health check” a few tears ago. I’m just in the normal BMI range, for what it’s worth, and was told sternly to be careful and try to get my weight down a bit more. The irony was her BMl must have been off the scale with her circumference > height.
Anyway, that’s her problem not mine and she was doing her job, let’s start with MPs. When all 650 have a mid range BMI and can confirm they consume less than the recommended units of alcohol I might give them the time of day on health related issues.
One in three primary school kids obese
Maybe make them walk to school and get some exercise
@BniC
One in three primary school kids obese
Maybe make them walk to school and get some exercise
You’re ‘avin a larf.
Walk to school? What with all the pedos in every bush, nasty cars belching out toxic CO2 and other horrendous dangers – what if little Johnny falls over and scrapes his/her/hie knee? Why do you want to inflict such pain on defenceless children? Why do you hate children? OMG! You’re a monster!
Etc
My instinctive response on the basis of no knowledge whatsoever was “F** off, you ugly fat sow”
&f=1&nofb=1
And after 30 seconds googling
@ Chernyy_Drakon
When our younger son was at Primary School my wife used to walk him to school and back every day which was good for both their waistlines; when he was at Secondary School in the next town, I was required to walk him home once or twice a week (so I had to arrange work around it) which he hated but had to put up with. Having left home some years ago he now weighs twice as much as I did at his age – I mention this partly because he ‘phoned up on Tuesday to ask his mother’s advice on how to lose weight.
Parental responsibility – walk your kids to school instead of driving them.
I was driven to school once. Once in 13 years is not a bad record, eh?
And for why? For because there was a downpour of unprecedented heaviness. At least, of unprecedented heaviness just after lunch.