She Can't Stay In The Closet, It's Not Big Enough...

As you might know if you read my columns, see me a mile away, or talk to me for five seconds, I am a card-carrying lifelong member of the Fat Lesbian Club.

I wonder what sort of cards they carry… 

However, ever since I first laid eyes on the television show Roseanne (very important to me) as a small child, the actor John Goodman has held a special place in my heart. It was confusing for me: did I want to be Dan Conner, or be with Dan Conner? I’m still not sure. He has always been so hot to me, from Dan on Roseanne to Fred Flintstone to Walter in The Big Lebowski. His body has now drawn attention in the last week or so, after a photo of him showing significant weight loss went viral.

He looked ill. Of course the media was rife with speculation. 

It’s not Goodman’s 74-year-old body (his choice) I want to discuss, but instead the arguments that broke out about how he lost the weight. On one side there were many people congratulating him on his hard work. Then there were people claiming he had taken Ozempic so it wasn’t actually hard work, and then there were people defending that by saying he’d been losing weight for years, so he’d done it the “right way”, actually.

I don’t know the details and I don’t care, but none of this is good.

For someone who ‘doesn't care’ you’re rather dwelling on it.

I’m a fat person. We are constantly badgered and tortured by a society that tells us to lose weight, at all costs. If you’re fat, that’s a moral failing: you’re lazy and unhealthy.

Society has spent decades telling fat people that our value depends on our ability to control our weight. Now there is medicine that can make that control easier, and suddenly the problem is not the weight but whether the person has suffered sufficiently to “deserve” it. People resent us for being fat, and they resent us for getting thin.

My god, ‘Not The Nine O’clock News’ was spot on, wasn’t it? 

🎵"Don't stick stickers on my paper knickers..."🎵

...especially not these sort!

Two council cleansing workers were taken to hospital after falling ill while removing an “unauthorised sticker” from a lamppost on Morningside Road on Thursday, sparking a large-scale response by emergency services.A 30-year-old has been arrested and charged after a substance was found on a lamppost in the Morningside area.

What substance? No-one's saying! And these stickers seem not to be 'hazardous' at all, or so the police woulld like us to believe, which makes you wonder what the 30 year old has been charged with. And 30 yrar old what? Man ? Woman? The police say woman. Social media says different.

Police Scotland later confirmed the substance had been deemed safe following testing, reassuring residents it posed “no threat” to the public. However, emergency services were called out for a second time late on Thursday night following “additional reports of a potential hazardous material" near Hermitage Terrace.

 The colours are significant, I feel...

Police have arrested and charged a 30-year-old woman after an ‘unknown substance’ was discovered on a lamppost in Morningside. She is due to appear at Edinburgh Sheriff Court at a later date.

The mystery deepens...

 

Well, It's Only Fair To Spread The Burden...

                              

....isn't it, Matt?

Sunday Funnies...

 Just in time for the release of 'Planet Zoo 2', I can only hope it doesn't have this level of realism...

Well, We Can Rule Out A Polar Bear...

..but does Paddington have an alibi?

In a rare kind of attack, a bear killed a man in Crystal, New Mexico, on Thursday, local police said. Authorities shot the bear, and the creature fled into woods near the scene of the attack. They said they ultimately found the bear and “neutralized” the animal.They neither identified the victim nor said what type of bear had killed him.

The only known species in the area is the black bear, Ursus americanus. 

North America generally has only a handful of fatal bear attacks annually.

That's not a lot of comfort for the deceased's family in this case, it it? 

As The UK Heatwave Dissipates, The Forces Are Marshalling for Next Year..

The El Niño event that is developing over the Pacific Ocean is likely to be the strongest in living memory, the Met Office has warned. The powerful natural climate phenomenon pushes up global temperatures and can increase the risks of extreme weather. Added to the effects of human-induced climate change, the Met Office is warning that it is "very likely" to mean 2027 is the hottest year on record.

I'd be worried, if I didn;t remember all the forecasts the Met Office made that didn't materialise.... 

There is growing evidence that weather patterns around the world are already being affected, with below-average monsoon rains in India and suppressed hurricane activity in the Atlantic Ocean. El Niño could put the UK at greater risk of a wet, stormy autumn.

Given monsoons and hurricanes kill people, isn't that rather a good thing? And a wet stormy Autumn is a typical season in the UK, isnt it? 

"We should be clear that this is an unprecedented event", said Prof Adam Scaife, head of long-range forecasting at the UK Met Office. "I have never seen an El Niño signal this intense in our forecasts."

Well, we'll see.  

Well, They Would Say That, Wouldn't They?

The programme, titled The Great ADHD Myth?, was broadcast on Tuesday and its host, NHS psychiatrist Dr Max Pemberton, concluded it was "a social construct, not a disorder of the brain". ADHD UK filed a complaint, saying: "ADHD is not a myth. It is not a social construct."

The Royal College of Psychiatrists also warned against "invalidating the condition".

Understandably, they have a business to protect. 

Channel 4 defended the show, saying there is "considerable public debate on various aspects of ADHD" and it "is legitimate for that debate to be explored and for conventional understandings to be challenged".

Once it would have been, but in 2026 that can be a risky business, as one professor has since found out. 

Another charity, ADHD Embrace, raised concerns with Channel 4 in advance, warning the programme risked "perpetuating misinformation about ADHD as a condition and discrimination against those families whose lives have been severely impacted by the condition".

But Channel 4 was not to be cowed... 

Channel 4 said: "Whilst the film does not seek to provide answers from one family's experience, their experiences have opened up discussion around whether today's world is equipped to accommodate ADHD behaviours and the ethics of medicating these, particularly in children and particularly when the long-term effects remain unknown."

Meicating children with little thought to the long term conseqequrances seem to be the way forward these day, that door has been well and truly opened.

Diagnosis rates of ADHD and autism have soared, and waiting lists for assessments on the NHS in England are at record levels, with lists even closing in some areas due to the huge demand. Research from University College London suggests nearly a 20-fold increase in the number of UK adults diagnosed with ADHD between 2000 and 2018.

Reduce the benefits and allowances associated with it if you want to see rates fall. 

Bodybags Sure Can Pick 'em!

The new farming minister fainted while visiting a refrigerated storage unit full of beef, it has been revealed.

Od dear. What was her name?

Stephen Morgan has been on a tour of farms and suppliers since being appointed.

Oops!  

...he felt ill when stepping into the room filled with shelves of meat from slaughtered cattle at a food processing plant in the Lake District. One local farmer, who knew about the incident, said: “He’d been shown large chunks of beef as well as some steaks but then he felt faint. 

“He said something like, ‘I don’t feel too well — I need a moment.’”

But it's OK, he may know sod all about farming, but his background in sociology and politics has made him a master of implausible excuses: 

The Portsmouth South MP explained of his wobble: “I felt unwell moving between the extreme heat and cold storage, and I’m grateful to all the staff at Lake District Farmers. 

“Hats off to the brilliant ­people working in these conditions and temperatures to keep the nation fed.”

When's that election? There was someone more incompetent that Starmer after all! 

All Part And Parcel Of Life In Our Capital City, Eh, Mayor Khan?

A man has been arrested after a woman was fatally stabbed on a street in London, and another rushed to hospital. The Metropolitan Police have launched a murder probe following the alleged attack in Shepherd's Bush, west London, on Tuesday. Officers responded to reports of a stabbing at around 8.19am on Askew Road, where two women, aged 52 and 32, were found with stab wounds.The 52-year-old was pronounced dead at the scene, despite the best efforts of medical staff.

Just another example of imported savagery on the capital's streets? We'll know as soon as the names are revealed.

A man, 48, was arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder at the scene of the incident.

Detective Inspector Richard MacKenzie, who is leading the investigation, said: 'Our enquiries continue at pace as we work to establish the full circumstances of this deeply tragic incident. 

'Our thoughts are with the family and loved ones of the victim and injured woman. 

'We believe this to be an isolated incident within a residential address, but we know it will cause concern locally. Our officers will remain in the area throughout today.'

So a domestic? And probably not a surprise to the neighbours either...

Should You Be Breeding If This Is Your Attitude To Your Babies Health?

Twenty-week-old Grayson easily could have become one of the tens of thousands of British babies left unvaccinated against polio. His mother, Lily, agrees with the principle of immunisation. But overwhelmed by the early weeks of motherhood, and suffering from post-partum depression after a traumatic birth, she was daunted by the prospect of a long journey to a doctor's surgery.

"I've been through the trenches, awake all night. You don't want to leave the house, or go to a different town."

Not even to protest your newborn against fatal disease? I know better than to wonder why the father couldn’t have taken the kid! 

Weeks ticked by, and eventually Grayson missed the polio and diphtheria jabs he was supposed to get at eight weeks old. By that point he was officially classed by the NHS as "overdue" for vaccination; effectively, he was on his GP's naughty list.

Then Lily realised there was a clinic practically on her doorstep - at a location she hadn't expected.That clinic - in Keighley, west Yorkshire - runs from a vacant retail unit at the Airedale shopping centre, a 1960s-era precinct that locals say has fallen on hard times in recent years, with plenty of empty, boarded-up units. The staff who created the clinic thought: why not use one of those vacant units to administer vaccines?

Well, marginally better than a self-immolating vape shop or Turkish barber VAT fraud outlet, I guess....

It's an imaginative solution to a national problem. Over the last 15 years, childhood vaccination rates have fallen across Britain. The share of five-year-olds in England who have received a four-in-one jab (which protects against viruses like polio and tetanus) is now 81%, down from 89% in 2014. About 84% have received both of their recommended MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) jabs, down from 88% a decade ago.

And no, the culprit isn't what you'd expect, either:  

Beccy Baird, a senior fellow at the King's Fund think tank, says that despite colourful media reporting around "anti-vaxxers", most parents who turn down vaccination are not ideologically opposed to it. Convenience plays a big role, she says; vaccination rates are highest when parents regularly interact with medics, who can remind them to get their children jabbed and tell them exactly where to do it.

Then make sure the GP service is there for them to do it, and not ring-fenced by barbed wire and dragon-like receptionists that make it impossible to get an appointment! 

There's Lily, the 18-year-old who finally gets her son Grayson his polio and diphtheria jabs. And there's Keeley, an assistant in a ceramics shop, who arrives with her baby Luca, and is impressed by the clinic's convenience, with no need for an 08:00 phone call or complicated online form.

See? Why aren't the GPs run like this?  

Most of the young mothers have come across online anti-vax posts. "I see these things on Facebook where it's like, don't give your child vaccines because it's got ADHD in them," says Lily. Indeed, Hussain says she still hears parents asking if the MMR jab causes autism, a full 28 years after a link was suggested in a now-discredited paper by the former doctor Andrew Wakefield.

And you'll no doubt hear it until a more convincing arguement for the cause of the rise in the disorder is discoverered. 

The clinic - which serves a relatively poor community - has vaccinated hundreds of infants since 2023, helping to boost coverage in an area that's historically had a low rate of immunisations. As of March this year, 88% of the children registered with Modality AWC (the GP practice that runs the clinic) now receive their first MMR dose by the age of 18 months, up from 78% three years ago.

Is it a 'poor' area in monetary terms, or educational ones?