inspired by the UK media of the last few weeks. The people this is aimed at know who they are.

1. I don’t care how fat someone is or how they got that way, if they are a legal citizen of the UK they are eligible for NHS treatment. That’s the whole idea of the NHS, in case you hadn’t noticed. Or to put it another way, no taxation without resuscitation.

2. Even if you add up all the ‘rising’ costs of treating obesity-related illness (if it is indeed obesity-related) on the NHS, it still amounts to less than 2% of its total budget. The vast majority of our health budget is spent on the elderly, and I don’t see anyone arguing that we’re wasting money on them.

3. It’s wrong to vilify people, bully then and beat them up. It’s equally wrong even if you believe that whatever they got beaten up for is something they can change. (Anyone remember not so long ago when the excuse for homophobia was ‘but they can stop being gay if they want to’? Neither true, as we now accept, nor any excuse.)

4. Not everyone who eats the same as you do and does the same amount of activity will be the same size as you. This is called human diversity, and has nothing to do with anyone’s self-discipline or perceived lack of it. (And as the wonderful Marilyn Wann once put it: ‘If you think fat people have no self-discipline, consider the fact that they haven’t killed you yet.’)

5. Odd as it sounds, you don’t know complete strangers on the internet. To make assumptions about them is, to say the least, foolish. To make assumptions, based on what they say about their body weight or size, that you know all about what they eat and how much of it, their activity levels, their health, their character, and indeed, the innermost motivations of their sexual partners, seems a step rather too far. I believe a Mr. James Randi offers a substantial cash reward if you can prove your psychic powers, but until then, best keep any ‘insights’ to yourself.

6. Last time I looked, the only thing Crystal Renn had in common with a heifer was that both appear to be mammals.

7. Finally and most importantly…nobody has to lose weight to earn respect, compassion and decent treatment. You get that by being human. So fat people are as entitled to those things as anyone else. The clue is in the word people, people…