Dentally challenged

In recent weeks thousands of NHS doctors have found themselves under fire for the sheer, unbelievable vastness of their salaries and I know that I should feel massively aggrieved on behalf of all my hard-working relatives and friends who pay for them via the tax system. However, I prefer to direct my ire at a different breed of healthcare professional.

Last week I finally took the plunge and went to the dentist. Yes, I know – I'm a mad, extravagant bitch, but I had seen an ad in one of the local freebies offering a check-up and clean for 19€. Much to my amazement this was, in fact, the amount that was charged. It was a bargain, especially considering that I hadn't had my teeth examined or professionally cleaned since a cavity necessitated a visit in 1998, an experience that still gives me nightmares of the darkest and most depraved kind. Later I discovered that the same butcher already had several complaints lodged against his name with the British Dental Council, a fact that didn't surprise me, but it has left me with a lasting grudge against the profession and a more general disinclination to subject my poor, plaque-ridden gnashers to any more rough treatment.

Yet it's not just the pain and suffering that has put me off going to the dentist, despite the fact that my gums are receding faster than the Spanish economy; it's the mind-boggling bill that accompanies it. A friend of mine went to the dentist this week, a visit necessitated by an exposed nerve. The cost for a temporary filling and a squirt of fluid to kill the nerve was 150€! Of course, he still has to go back in a few days to have a permanent filling – another crafty 150€. At those prices the Civil List begins to look like good value for money.

I'm not suggesting that dentists shouldn't be rewarded for their years of training and their expertise, but this is now beyond a joke. Unfortunately the profession's insane get-rich-quick mentality is having dire consequences for the health and welfare of the people of Britain. Every day we are bombarded with some new warning of what health horror lies in wait for people who fail to look after their teeth, yet with NHS dentists becoming an endangered species and private treatment being beyond the means of many, what are we supposed to do?

When I lived in South Africa my medical aid scheme was so comprehensive it allowed me a pair of specs every other year and two dental check-ups annually. It helped that my dentist was so skilled that I experienced not even the vaguest twinge of pain in all the years that he treated me, so I was quite happy to book my next appointment before leaving. No worries about payment – as long as it was a necessary procedure and not a cosmetic job, the medical aid scheme would take care of it. These days, while it's still possible to find a few vaguely affordable private healthcare schemes, it is a rare thing indeed to encounter a medical aid deal that includes dental treatment. Therefore, it's either a question of finding an NHS dentist (good luck with that, boys!) or going private.

Admittedly I'm slightly out of touch but it seems that the closest NHS dentist to my hometown of Pembroke is 25 miles to the east in an even smaller town called St. Clear's, which is in Carmarthenshire - a different county! As for getting on to his overcrowded books you might have to offer sexual favours or clean his car every Sunday for a year.

Over the years Americans have delighted in taking the mickey out of us Brits for our dodgy dentition and, while I have no desire to see U.K citizens turning into the Osmonds (I am quite fond of teeth looking functional rather than purely decorative) I am beginning to see their point.

If these insane dental charges continue I fear that a return to a nation of medieval mouths is inevitable.

This bullying must stop!

Q: When is bullying not really bullying?
A: When it's being done FOR YOUR OWN GOOD!

This is a philosophy with which I'm painfully familiar. Blame seven years spent in a girls' boarding school in the 1970s.

Every so often one would encounter a fellow pupil, sometimes but by no means always older than oneself, who would feel morally obliged to point out in a spirit of concerned frankness that one was a fat, useless, boss-eyed freak. This information was offered merely in a spirit of concern that without intervention this state of fat, useless, boss-eyed freakiness would extend to adulthood. However, armed with the knowledge of one's mental, physical and spiritual inferiority one might feel moved to effect improvements.

This is pretty much what one might expect of a group of bitchy teenage girls. Yet this week cancer campaigner Lynn Faulds Wood revealed that she has begun to approach lardies in the street and ask them whether they are aware that their vast bulk will shorten their lives by 10 years. I am loath to have too much of a go at the otherwise wholly admirable Faulds Wood, but there is something of the school prefect about her and I can well imagine her treading the streets of Edinburgh or Glasgow to upbraid innocent passers-by with her brisk schtick.

My first thought was that she had chosen her victims carefully. My experience of my fellow lardies is that we are generally quite a meek and shame-faced bunch, ground down by a lifetime of being bullied at school and thereafter absorbing quite horrific abuse from family members, ersatz friends and various members of the medical profession, not to mention the constant bombardment of unattainable – or at least unsustainable - media images. No doubt Faulds Wood considers us to be a burden on the NHS, but most lardies that I know (myself included) would sooner die quietly at home than go to a doctor's surgery. One specialist to whom I was referred in the 1980s (for a suspected kidney infection, in case you're wondering) suggested that I seriously consider a stomach-stapling operation, a procedure which at that time had already resulted in the deaths of several women by septicaemia. When I pointed out its dangers he said, “But surely it would be better to be dead than to look the way you do.”

So, Faulds Wood, I know your game. You are picking on the already ground-down and dispirited rather than tackling people whose lifestyles really are harming their communities. I note that she is not promising to hang out with street gangs in South-East London to warn them of the folly of using guns and knives, or approaching lairy teenage girls falling out of pubs and suggesting that they give up the booze that could well result in chlamydia, unwanted pregnancies and exploding livers by the age of 30. Why doesn't she spend her time sorting out the drug addicts that keep local dealers busy and also do a roaring trade for the neighbourhood pimp, whose “girls” are obliged to sell themselves to pay for their heroin habits? This would really be doing a valuable service. I could also name scores of families whose lives have been ruined by the troops of feral youths that roam inner-city areas and create havoc. What about rounding them up?

The truth is that Faulds Wood's cojones ain't that big. She might have the chutzpah to collar Tracy Turnblad, but I bet she would blanch at the thought of bearding Wayne and Waynetta Slob.

On a more positive note I think that this is a campaign that we could all join; just choose your special interest group and start doorstepping. I'm thinking of tackling the appalling problem of mingers on the street. I'll hang around until I see someone who looks like Jimmy Nail or Mick Hucknall, then I'll go up to them and say, “Did you know that with looks like yours you could probably get cosmetic surgery on the NHS?”

So here's my challenge: why not come to Estepona, Lynn? I can promise you that if you try any of your evangelical crap with me I'll cut your life short by considerably more than 10 years.

Bitch Wars: The Fatty Strikes Back

So Amanda Platell has finally come out of the closet and admitted that she's fattist. Mein Gott! I haven't been so amazed since Herr Hitler admitted that he wasn't terribly keen on gefilte fish.

Still, you have to hand it to La Platell, she's consistent. A dedicated gym bunny she's probably the sort of woman who would block the aisles in Waitrose for hours, reading the contents on every item before deeming them sufficiently healthy to grace her shopping basket. Her steadfastness on the subject of physical fitness does her credit, unlike dear Sue Carroll who regularly lambastes the obese in her Daily Mirror column before ranting about the draconian anti-smoking laws that make it difficult for her to enjoy a fag.

And we all have our little irrational prejudices, don't we? In the course of my life I have met people who have admitted their hatred of poodles, Irish accents, Geordies (they sound thick and common, allegedly), bald men, men with beards, hairy chests (the same woman, for whom matters of hair distribution are obviously key), kilts, outie navels, teetotallers and pineapples.

It's differences of opinion like this that make the world go round. How wonderful to think that, for every person who cringes every time Jayne Middlemiss opens her mouth, there is another who swoons at every cry of, “Away the lads!”

And all of these people at least confess that there is no rational explanation for their dislikes.

Admittedly, most of these personal Room 101-isms are eccentric rather than harmful. These days many groups are thankfully protected from more Hitlerian censure. Should I harbour a hatred of – for instance – Hispanic people or homosexuals they would be shielded by law from any attack by me. I certainly wouldn't be paid by a national tabloid newspaper for an article in which I explained why I disliked gay men, offering a series of spurious rationalisations (they prey on straight, married men, they all lurk around Hampstead Heath looking for casual sex, their strict regime of personal grooming has led to the general feminisation of men) concocted to legitimise my prejudice.

This is exactly what Platell has done.

Those who know me will suspect that I have a very personal interest in her recent article (“My Visit to Fat Central”, Saturday, August 8th 2009) in The Daily Mail. I am a woman who is not big-boned, not Rubenesque, not cuddly, but definitely (and, these days, defiantly) FAT. In fact, this blog should be called A View From a Broad Broad – or even A View From a Broad Broad Abroad. I have always been fat and, given the fact that my main hobbies involve sitting on my lardy Welsh arse reading, writing or watching movies while drinking copious cups of tea (semi-skimmed milk but no sugar, thanks for asking), I probably always will be. I admit that this is hardly the most mature or responsible response to life but it's my choice and I really don't need the Social Tourette's brigade crossing the road to ask me whether it's my glands (no, it bloody isn't!) or reminding me every whipstitch that I currently enjoy the least fashionable body shape in the history of Western civilisation. If I fancy a biscuit, I´ll have a sodding biscuit but, as far as so-called junk food goes, I'd sooner eat the container in which it's served than tackle a greaseburger and fries.

Get this Platell, I don't spend my days sitting in a darkened room eating clotted cream and butter in order to maintain my fighting weight. I have no idea who ate all the pies, but it wasn't me. Lack of exercise is my downfall. As Vanessa Feltz once memorably said, the reason that I am what I am is that most of my hobbies involve reclining on a chaise longue reading poetry rather than hitting the gym. I'm not blaming the government, a difficult childhood, my pet cat or anyone else.

That said, I don't drink alcohol (the recommended weekly units for a female would last me at least 18 months), I have never smoked and the idea of taking drugs makes me feel quite queasy. I have friends that happily indulge in a combination of all three. That is their choice and I certainly don't think any the less of them for doing so; it just doesn't appeal to me. It's a matter of personal choice, no more and no less.

The main problem that we fatties have to contend with is that our shape immediately gives us away. I'm sure that we all know several normally proportioned people who present a relentlessly professional front during the week but, come the weekend, like nothing better to down so many pints and/or shots that they spend most of Saturday night lying on the street in a puddle of their own wee and vomit. So long as they maintain their sobriety at work, their weekend revelries can remain a secret.

When living in South Africa I met a Human Resources Manager who refused to employ anyone remotely obese on the grounds that “they have no control over their lives”. At the same time – and in the same place - an acquaintance of mine maintained her size 8 figure on a combination of cocaine and bulimia. No question of her life being thought out of control, obviously.

Platell confesses that her main objection to lardies is that she doesn't much like the look of them.

I think that we can all admit to finding some people more attractive than others; even the less than physically perfect are entitled to a say in the matter. For instance, I tend to find people who are smallish, stocky and dark (i.e. the classic Celtic or Mediterranean type) far more attractive than tall blondies. That's not to say that I feel that Scandinavian stringbeans have any less right to exist on the planet, which is what Ms. Platell is implying in her toxic article. Wander too far along the path that privileges the rights of one physical type of person over another and ultimately one enters the gas ovens of Auschwitz and Dachau.

However, Platell is far too intelligent not to offer some justification for her prejudices.

Fat people have no self-discipline, apparently. Well, it depends on what you mean by self-discipline. I might have a backside the size of Greater Manchester but, as a features writer, I know how much self control is needed to meet a deadline.

We also have no self-respect. This is a dubious claim, but were it true, it's good to know that we're receiving so much help in rectifying this matter by the tabloid Monstrous Regiment of Glenda Slaggs who simply can't resist reminding us how loathsome we are in body, mind and spirit.

We're a menace on public transport, taking up too much room. Now, that I cannot deny. Obviously someone who shops at Evans is going to take up more millimetres than someone who can fit into the latest basque from Agent Provocateur. However, most fatties that I know would sooner squeeze themselves into an unfeasibly tiny space in order to avoid being accused of bagging too much room. Unlike the curious breed of über-macho man who likes to sit with his legs wide apart, presumably in the desperate hope that the birds on the bus will imagine that he's packing the biggest tackle since King Dong. Or the businessman who takes up two seats on the train with his laptop, briefcase, Blackberry and assorted bits of technology. Or the woman with the enormous pushchair and assorted screaming toddlers. Or the troop of hoodies that clear the bus or train with a single collective glare. Need I continue?

Then, we are the products of uncaring parents who shovel junk food into our gaping maws and are far too unintelligent to see the damage that they're doing. My parents were very careful about my diet. I was brought up in a rural area where most of the food I ate was local and most of the vegetables I consumed travelled from my Grandad's veggie patch at the bottom of our garden direct to my plate. I was taken to see a specialist in obesity at Cardiff Infirmary when I was eight and, when I went to boarding school at the age of 11, the headmistress offered to oversee my weight loss. I played sport sometimes three times a day, a plate of stewed tomatoes on toast was considered an adequate meal at the end of a winter day when I'd just spent almost an hour outside playing hockey or lacrosse and, as a special treat, I was summoned before the school doctor once a term who told me how fat and disgusting I was and how I would never find a university place, job, love etc. if I failed to mend my ways. And – guess what? When I left school I was still fat.

Finally, Platell delivers her coup de grâce; fat people are a burden on the National Health Service. This is where fattists normally adopt that infuriatingly smug expression that says, “There! You can't argue with that, can you?” Admittedly I don't have access to any figures, but I would have thought it unlikely that the obese were any more of strain on the poor old NHS than Saturday night binge drinkers or the growing ranks of the elderly. In Platell World death and decomposition can be delayed by frequent vigorous exercise. If this is true then we can possibly look forward to an era when the post-Fonda Workout brigade all reach 90 and gum up the NHS or its successor with their old age complaints, while we fatties (if the same theory is to be believed) have had the good grace to drop dead in our comparative youth.

Perhaps the argument that posits that the obese have no right to health treatment is the most troubling of all. When medicine loses its sense of compassion we're all in for a rocky ride. Consider the growing list of illnesses and diseases that are considered self-inflicted. Lung disease? You shouldn't have smoked, it's all your fault. Been a drinker? No liver transplant for you then. Overweight? Well, the world's your oyster when it comes to illnesses that you could have prevented.

Self-inflicted? How about attempted suicides? No point in treating those selfish bastards, is there? Had a car accident after driving too fast? Sorry, we're only treating injuries that we can prove were inexplicable acts of God today.

If this sounds stupid to you then speak up, because this is the way we're heading.

I'd like to reclaim the word “fat”. I have no problem with it being used to describe me in its pure form. Obviously I'm fat. I'm not medium sized and I'm sure as hell not thin. It's the associations that I dislike: fat and stupid, fat and slow. Slow physically, perhaps. I narrowly avoided lamping an acquaintance once who suggested that, “You probably drive your boss mad because you're slow”. Since I wasn't at the time employed as a postie, I can only assume that she thought that my shape means that I'm mentally slow. Come closer to me and say that again, bitch. You'll soon find out how slow I am. Me and my M.A.

So this is the fat woman's burden. Having people ask you what your “excuse” is (I don't have one, still less one I'd care to offer you – what's your excuse for being crass and rude?) or whether any man has ever found you attractive (yes, and oddly enough not all of them had white sticks and guide dogs).

Still, it has its compensations. It opens your mind up to a new world where sometimes being human is more important than being right.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Platell.