This blog quoted on Channel 4's Newsroom website

Forgot to say that this had happened - and thanks to Pupski, who spotted it and let me know. At least it means that we're not all blogging into a complete void.

Go to: http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/world/surgery%20for%20obese%20kids/173190 or http://www.channel4.com/blogs/page/newsroom?entry=stomach_stapling_for_kids

OFFICIAL -BMI UNRELIABLE, NEW BVI WILL TELL THE TRUTH

At last, some common sense may be about to prevail in the overheated and often hysterical so-called 'Size Zero Debate' of which I have been such an outspoken critic in this blog.

It turns out that the BMI (on the basis of which Ken Livingstone and others considered banning thin models from London Fashion Week) is inaccurate and may not mean that someone with a supposedly 'underweight' BMI of below 18 is unhealthy. Well - tell me something I don't know!

An article in today's 'Independent on Sunday' (8 April 2007 Home News http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article2432469.ece) refers to a new measuring system, the BVI, which is a more accurate test of someone's weight as a guide to health. I'll try not to go on (although I am crowing in triumph) but just give you two of the examples quoted in the article:

1. Maria Sharapova, tennis player. Supposedly underweight with a BMI of 17.6 and therefore both unhealthy and verging on the anorexic by standard criteria - obviously nonsense as tennis is a rather demanding sport, but then when has common sense entered this debate up until now? Under the new, more accurate BVI measuring system, she is perfectly healthy - which should have been obvious from both her appearance and occupation.
2. Jonny Wilkinson, rugby player. With a BMI of 26.7, he was 'overweght and verging on obese' - a bit of a joke if you've ever seen him. The BVI test would again show that he is perfectly healthy and has no need whatsoever to cut down on his eating.

So let's hope this message gets through to the various idiotic fuckwits who have jumped on this bandwagon. May it also put an end to the media barrage of anti-size zero publicity that has been equating size zero with being anorexic.

The new BVI will apparently show, quite clearly, when someone actually is anorexic. Of course, it would be too much to expect the various special interest and lobby groups with their funding and jobs dependent on scaremongering to be gracious about this. The old Eating Disorders Association (now re-named Beat for some reason that entirely escapes me) were ' cautious about whether people could be helped by the results of a [BVI] scan. "People with eating disorders can know they are severely underweight but are less frightened of death than by the idea of having lunch", said Susan Ringwood, the chief executive of BEAT.'

Then, in classic illogical fashion, and despite the EDA's protracted assault on size zero women as being somehow responsible for causing eating disorders, Ringwood actually confirms what I have been arguing all along: 'The mind is so distorted in these cases so that one cannot apply logic'.

Seems that this lack of logic also applies to those organisations and individuals representing those with eating disorders for whom slim women have, up til now, been the easy target to blame in our nationwide victim culture. Please God, the media and the do-gooders will now realise that anorexia is entirely different to slimness and get off size zero's backs.

Richard Alston Dance Company.

No time for anything tonight except to steal someone else's view of the male of the species.......

New Bloody Blogger

Spent hours transferring my account to the new super-dooper Blogger. Now can't seem to leave comments on previous posts, have spent hours simply struggling to log in and my blood pressure is going through the roof.

If you don't get a reply to a comment, apologies - it's not for want of trying, or swearing, or kicking inanimate objects. Why is 'New and improved' always a lie?

So, common sense has prevailed - for now.

The proposed ban on size zero models has been dropped in favour of a 'voluntary code'. Reading between the lines of Caroline Flint's comment, she wasn't convinced it was a good idea either - probably because she is saddled with the job of addressing the nation's inactivity and obesity. It wouldn't have lasted long anyway - being completely in breach of all the UK's discrimination at work legislation.

Was amusing last night watching the panellists on Question Time trying to justify why any anti-discrimination law should allow for exemptions - presumably because that is a completely indefensible position. They were discussing the issue of adoption by same-sex couples, but the wider issues were similar. I was shouting at the TV trying to make the idiots hear (amidst all their politically-correct posturing and obvious prejudice) that ALL gay people had straight parents - so presumably a child brought up by gay parents could be more likely to grow up straight, on that reasoning!

I have been working on my Visual Project on the anti-thin agenda all day. Have started to get some interesting responses to questionnaires. In every case so far, the language used about people between size 4 (UK) and 8 (UK) has been unapologetically negative and to the point. Any negative comments about heavier people (and only above size 20 (UK) ) were all bound about with apologies and qualifications - the respondents terrified of causing offence. All admitted freely that they thought they had to be more careful about describing fat people than thin - and then added that they had been surprised to realise that this was hypocritical.

I've been trying to establish some statistics to defend my position in the forthcoming group tutorial next week. It's been surprisingly difficult as deaths where obesity is a contributory factor don't seem to be being logged on death certificates at present in England. The only (presumably accurate) figures I could get on relative mortality rates was from an answer given by the MSP responsible for health at the Scottish Parliament and therefore only apply to Scotland. However, they are very revealing - especially in the light of the recent attempts to ban thin models from working on the basis that they damage others' health. In the years for which figures were available, the maximum number of deaths per year from anorexia in Scotland were.........................................................................................................................................................
wait for it................................................................................................................................................
5. FIVE.

The number of deaths from obesity per year in Scotland during the same period were..........................................................................................................................................................
...................................................................................................................................................................
14,000. FOURTEEN THOUSAND.

That means that, for every 1 death from anorexia in Scotland during those years, there were 2,800 deaths from obesity. And thin models need to be banned?

I rest my case, your honour.