Businesses suffer more from lost working days from overweight and obese employees than they do from their slimmer, fitter counterparts. Once again, governments in their stumbling aim to protect the population have made it extremely easy for workers to take time off from work and still get paid.

Start of article about diet and health.

Previous page about obesity and links to health problems.

There of course is nothing wrong in this, people who are genuinely ill should receive generous benefits from the social system. However, when an illness is deemed to have been self-inflicted due to someone being obese because of their excessive eating habits, there should be a cut off point where businesses and the social system should not be penalised for someone else's greed.

There is a tendency for fat people to take time off work for the slightest reason. They get a cold but in order to be seen to be taking time off work legitimately; they have to get a sick note from their doctor.

Doctors should be addressing the cause of the problem and not treating the symptoms. If someone is overweight due to poor diet and lack of exercise, they should be put on a diet and if they refuse or do not adhere to it and lose weight, they should not benefit from any social benefits.

Of course this would be as popular as a barbed wire enema but whose fault is it anyway? If people cannot take responsibility for their own health, it isn't the responsibility of the rest of society to put their hand in their pockets and pay for their health and welfare benefits. It is time for governments to take a tougher stance and not molly-coddle fat people who are constantly taking time off work due to illnesses caused by their excessive greed and disgusting eating habits.

This problem is particularly acute in the public sector where government workers take far too much time off for the slightest reason, including back strain, stress related illnesses and depression, many of which are caused by obesity. The problem is almost as bad in the private sector, whilst self employed people have to be near death before they even visit a doctor.

These public and private sector workers should try being self-employed for a while to discover what real stress is. Self-employed people don't take time off work because they don't earn money if they don't work. The whole system needs to be tightened up with doctors taking responsibility and refusing to give sick notes for minor ailments and making it clear that they will not condone malingering simply to get a few days off work.

This would greatly reduce the waiting room queues in doctors' surgeries and reduce the work load and pressure on the health system. Furthermore, doctors should stop issuing prescriptions for antibiotics for minor ailments.

People troop off to the doctors because they have a cold. The doctor tells them they have the Flu and issues them with antibiotics which these morons happily take because the doctor gave them the prescription to keep them happy. Believe you me; if you really had a dose of the Flu, you would not be able to get out of bed.

Antibiotics