There are occasions - not many, admittedly, but occasions nonetheless - when even hyperventilating, loony bloggertarians like myself have to stand back in silent astonishment, mouths agape, and admit that the sheer pace of state nannification is leaving cheap satire in the blocks. Consider this, for example:

A team of NHS nurses is patrolling Scotland's streets to target pot-bellied members of the public and tell them how to lose weight.

Armed with measuring tapes to check waists and equipment to test blood pressure, the "Street Nurses" are policing busy shopping centres, supermarkets and community centres. Any man with a paunch, or woman with an "apple-shaped" body whose waist measurement is higher than recommended limits is given diet and lifestyle advice or referred to local slimming classes.

Under the scheme the nurses, wearing high-visibility waistcoats, set up portable tables and chairs in town centres to monitor passers-by. If they spot someone who looks overweight they will approach them and strike up a conversation about their health, inviting them to have a "rapid nursing assessment", which includes having their waist measured and their blood pressure checked.

Overweight women can be referred to local Weight Watchers meetings, and men are sent to the NHS Ayrshire and Arran men-only weight loss club 'Slimmin Withoot Wimmin'. Locals can also attend cookery classes where they learn how to prepare healthy meals on a low budget.

I live in a country where government employees are coming up to me in the street and telling me that I look overweight? I mean, what?

My anger - fury, more accurately - exists on two dimensions. One is common or garden irritation with a transparent waste of money; I never signed up to pay for a travelling obesity roadshow and I don't sign up to it now. But my cash is spunked on useless shit every hour of the week; no mileage in having a coronary every time an example makes the papers.

No, beyond that, I am genuinely outraged at this because it embodies a lot of what is wrong with the relationship between state and citizen in our modern democracy; in this case, an assumption on the part of the state that my weight is any of their fucking business.

Where does this assumption stem from? By what authority do they harass me on the street and tell me to eat a fucking salad? Because be in no doubt, harassment is what we're talking about here. It may not be in-your-face, finger-jabbing bullying; no, it's more insidious than that. You! Yes, you, citizen! Look at the size of that gut! Aren't you ashamed of yourself? You should cut down on your porklife, mate! Get some exercise!

How patronising, to assume that walking past an NHS stall with a 38 inch waist is a cry for help! What a sense of priorities it demonstrates, when there are people lying dead in hospital beds for seven hours at a time without being removed! No wonder corpses are lying in wards when all the fucking nurses are out in the streets with tape measures!

I really don't know how else to phrase this without being accused of dumbing-down, so I can only repeat myself: my weight is absolutely none of your fucking business. Really, how complicated is that? Why the hell is it even controversial? Unlike alcohol abuse, or passive smoking, they don't even have the excuse of invoking the "harm to others" principle: your weight, your body shape and size, is about as personal to you as anything can be. It is, by definition, something that affects no-one except yourself, unless you roll over onto an unfortunate girlfriend during the night. (One of the several reasons why Mr Eugenides remains single since the last, er, "unpleasantness"...)

Yes, I know that there is a correlation between obesity and ill health, but I would rather overhang my belt and take my bloody chances, thank you very much, than be assailed by hit squads of inanely smiling nurses in fluorescent yellow bibs on the rare occasion I do manage to haul my wheezing carcass out to the shops. (Have you ever seen an Ayrshire nurse, by the way? Orca the fucking killer whale, every one of them; the only way they beat me over 400 metres is if there's a KFC family bucket at the finish line. I'd no more take health advice from them than financial advice from the ridiculous Alistair Darling.)

Needless to say, useful idiots abound:

Mary Scanlon, Scottish Conservative health spokeswoman said: "There's no doubt there's a community of hard-to-reach patients who do not respond to calls for screening or use their GP."

I really, really fucking hope that quote was taken out of context, Mary. I really hope that sentence was followed by another one beginning with the word "but", which the Scotsman craftily and dishonestly chose to omit - a sentence, for example, such as "but anyone who proposes this should repeatedly be smacked square in the face with a cast-iron skillet". Because if not, it's an absolute disgrace that you call yourself a Conservative.

If I may be permitted the lazy blogger's prerogative of self-quotation, here is how I responded, in my Normblog profile, to the question, "what philosophical thesis do you think it most important to combat?":

That any authority, temporal or spiritual, has the right to circumscribe my private behaviour. For such a simple, almost truistic idea, you'd be surprised how many people don't seem to get it.

They really don't, do they? Because this is how it begins, whether it's CCTV cameras that tell you off for dropping litter or a spy satellite in the sky, tracking every journey your car makes: a weak attempt at satire on a right-wing blog, usually with some crass reference to Stalin or the Nazis, pops up a year or two later, incredibly, as government pilot scheme, gets 'rolled out' nationally - at galactic expense to John Q. Taxpayer, naturally - and before you know it, there are nurses in hi-vis jackets coming up to you in the street, asking you your waist size and then sending you to - Christ, I can barely type the words, so tightly clenched are my fists with rage - "Slimmin Withoot Wimmin". Well, I'm sorry, but - dear God, I'm repeating myself yet again - mist descending - blood vessels rupturing in my eyeballs - not sure I'm even going to make it to the end of this paragraph - it is none of your GODDAMN BUSINESS. It just isn't, and if there are people out there who honestly and genuinely believe that it is the role of government to walk the streets policing this shit, then we have a real fucking problem here.

So if you're a nurse in a bright yellow vest, and you approach me to admonish me on my capacious belly, know this: I am aware you are only doing your job, and a thankless one at that, and I abhor violence, unless between Rangers and Celtic or against socialists, but I am a big man and the copious quantities of meat and beer I consume give me ample strength to lash out if provoked. You have been warned.



(h/t: Alex and David)