Saviour Complex

Where the line should be between the state and the population is blurred in the UK. I believe its weird that if you go to A&E because you have problems with your eyes which could be a brain tumour you have free at the point of use service. Yet if you go to an optician for the exact same problem, it is private. Its weird that mental health is essentially private. You need therapy (which we all do) state provision is so poor and underfunded that it the only reasonable solution is to go private.  if you self harm bad enough you will end up in the NHS. Chiropractors are private, and if you go to them with back pain you pay extortionate fees to “maintain” your back, its maintenance, not fixing. Yet if your back problems are caused by cancer… NHS. Obesity is going to be one of the largest killers in the UK in 10 years. Yet gyms are private businesses, fruit and veg are subsidised via 0% VAT rates. Personal trainers are private, but we all know people who have gotten weight loss surgery on the NHS.

My old workplace did a fascinating piece of work on health and social care. We lord over everyone our NHS, however there is a blurred line between health and social care and the concept of wellbeing. Having backpain, is a wellbeing issue, but it stems from a medical one. For me I was bullied as a teenager and the bully used to jump on my back using my back straps of my bag. I also have really close together vertebrae. That is a medical issue. But if I want to fix it its £45 per session every 2 weeks. I have poor mental health, if I want to be medicated its £9.60 for 30 days of pills on the NHS. Yet the therapy to make me feel better is £50 a week privately. If I needed to lose weight, my GP would be lambasted for suggesting I go to the gym, some GP’s are giving free gym memberships, and prescribing healthy eating and more exercise which is EXACTLY WHAT THEY SHOULD BE DOING! But they should be doing it when people reach BMI 23 (what I was at my heaviest) and over. 23 is still in the healthy range. 25 is the beginning of overweight. Those extra couple of kg will go on so easily, it’s a couple of pints a week for maybe 6 months that will do it. Then you have someone who is overweight and a danger to their health.

I’m currently 22.3 on the BMI scale, which is weird, because I’ve lost 4kg but I’ve gone down 0.7 points. But I’m now over 30 and everyone tells me. “Everything goes downhill after 30” (NO! I reject you Satan. Everything goes downhill after 30 IF YOU LET IT) I will not be allowing obesity into my life. I’ve cut down my meals, bought fruit and drink more water. (she says in bed, with tea and cornbread for breakfast about to go eat tea and cake at a café with a friend 😊) however what I believe is wrong with the UK is that we all have a “Saviour complex” or “Messiah complex. We believe, not in God but in a higher force that will make us “thin for summer” or will save us from the bad choices we make. The obesity crisis is getting worse, for one reason alone, our attitude is getting worse. Our attitude stinks, we believe in what we “deserve” and not what we worked for. And we especially, believe in a large state provision. I personally believe the state should be larger when it comes to healthcare. Prevention is roughly 10x cheaper than cure when it comes to medical services. So yeah I believe that chiropractors, dentists, counsellors and opticians should all be under the NHS for everyone. But I also believe that GP’s should be handing out free gym membership to the 23 and over (if you are black) BMI. Why? If 10% of those people take it up, and then lose the weight that stops them from having horrible co-morbidities then we all save a metric TONNE of money per person. Gym membership costs maybe £50 per month for a nice gym. Weight loss surgery is £4,000-£8,000. Do the maths. It also gets people into a different environment where they see healthy people more than they see unhealthy people. If you have the misfortune of going to Basingstoke or Reading or any major town in the UK, you will see a bunch of obese people hanging around the town centre. They hang around each other and see nothing other than their body type. If they were given the opportunity to go to a nice gym they’d see people who look like them losing weight all the way up to “the body beautiful” and they’d stop swallowing the bullshit excuses of their peers who say its “poor metabolism” or “they’re big boned” that makes them stuff whatsits in their mouths and chug back beer at the rate of knots. Don’t get me wrong, plus size people have always been with us. People genuinely do have thyroid problems that make them gain weight. However if you take 100 obese people, and test their thyroids/genetic markers 10% of them will have problems that will make them gain weight, the rest is bad lifestyle choices. But yet they believe the government is responsible for their woes. Because clearly Boris was downing pints with them and Rishi Sunak was shoving chips down their throat. Crisps with Cameron, Cake with Churchill and buns with Brown.   Also, it humbles the hell out of “gym bros” Those who look down on fat people in the gym are the same kind of people who beat up the homeless. Scum. i.e. they don’t like to see anyone else trying to improve themselves. Instead they wish to lord superiority over their fellow man like its going to get them into heaven. I worked for a private gym in London once. I hated going. (I went 3 times and always in the morning first thing) because I felt people were judging me for not being toned. I was judging myself. Turns out 95% of people who go to the gym go there to…Work out. 3% go to find partners and then there’s the 2% of scum who go so they can feel better than mere mortals.

But once we start empowering ourselves over our health and stop looking to the state to save us I believe the obesity crisis will diminish. What I find deeply troubling is not just on obesity (although that is likely to cost the most money going forward) but in every aspect of life, British people have an underlying assumption that every problem is the government’s to fix, and there is nothing they can do to fix their own problems. We are never totally powerless. Never. Only when we die. But while we live… Nobody is coming to save you. You need to save yourself.

Grace and Courage.

Annetta Mother Smith.