This year I will celebrate my 45th Christmas day, and with every passing year I find I am increasingly preoccupied with two things: spending more and more money on a week’s enforced family ‘fun’ and trying not to get even fatter as a result. And this year, my concerns are, for once, shared by politicians; David Cameron wants me to be a happier and skinnier member of the Big Society rather than just a law abiding non-rioting taxpayer.
To be fair, the problem of British obesity is undoubtedly getting worse. Most of us will spend Christmas week gorging and drinking like Henry the Eighth and a smaller number will probably follow suit and divorce our partners as a result. This places great strains, both physical and emotional, on our hearts and the National Health Service. By 2050, it is estimated that obese British citizens will be in the majority and the average weight of the population will be the highest it has ever been (although if Uncle Ted comes over, my family will achieve this particular milestone on Boxing Day).
The government wants to reverse this trend and has placed improving public health at centre of its new White Paper. They are also reallocating the responsibility for dealing with this to local councils so, as well as not being able to fix last winter’s potholes, they will now be notionally responsible for my expanding waistline.
This is all laudable stuff and most commentators welcome the Conservatives new focus on the wellbeing and happiness of the nation rather than their traditional themes of traffic cone hotlines, shutting down coal mines and opting out of Europe. There is also an emerging consensus that shifting power and responsibility to local communities is always a good response to national problems although on this point I am not so convinced. Would we really have defeated the might of the German army if the defence of our country had been organised by a collective of parish councils?
However, irrespective of who is now responsible, I think the more fundamental issue is that as a society we have, at best, an ambivalent attitude to food and health. We desperately want to be as thin as Posh Spice but we celebrate every milestone of our adult lives with a drunken feast, underemployed and overweight celebrities advertise ‘party food’ every night on the television and my office life is a continual succession of Marks & Spencer’s cakes for somebody’s birthday.
Given this national obsession with eating and drinking, is it really feasible for my hard pressed local council to make any difference? Let’s be realistic here. They struggled to empty my bins for two weeks after an inch of snow, so are they really going to reverse Uncle Ted’s 30-year love affair with buffet pork pies dipped in brown sauce? I suspect David Cameron secretly knows this and that’s why he is pushing responsibility to the local level. Easy and more tangible wins like the Olympics tend to be kept the preserve of Westminster whereas the more tricky long-term stuff like Uncle Ted’s paunch is best left to somebody else.
I also wonder if, for a lot of people, the government’s dual aims of health and happiness are mutually exclusive. Dieting is dreary, cakes are nicer than carrots and most of us prefer to lie on the sofa watching our national teams lose at sport than take part ourselves. The Beatles were wrong, for the British public, happiness is not a warm gun, it’s a warm bun.
So in rueful conclusion, I think that setting targets for reducing the nation’s weight is like my 2009 new year’s resolution to take up yoga. It seems like a great idea at 12.05 am, we are all really really committed this time but we know it won’t ever happen. Governments come and go, this week’s rioting students will eventually settle down to become chartered surveyors and British people will keep on getting fatter. And on that note, I wish you all a merry and calorie-filled Christmas.
Michael Ware is corporate finance partner at BDO
