Obesity has become a hot topic in recent months. The latest fat news came yesterday and again today when the UK media reported extensively on the recommendations of the House of Commons Health Select Committee, which has just published its concerns about the increasing number of obese children in Britain.

This change seems like yet another about-turn from the situation 20 years ago. When I graduated from university (the first time) the fashionable eating disorders of the day where those that made you thin: anorexia nervosa and bulimia. Remember all the fuss surrounding Princess Diana’s and the Duchess of York’s weight/eating problems? These days the disadvantages of fat are à la mode.

So Morgan Spurlock’s award-winning movie Super Size Me is perfectly timed. Spurlock filmed the effects of eating all his meals — breakfast, lunch and dinner — for 30 consequtive days at McDonald’s. He gained 25 pounds — that’s not far off a pound a day — but luckily he lived to tell the tale.

I’m looking forward to seeing the film when it opens in the UK, but in the meantime I can’t help thinking that with people like Michael Moore and Spurlock around, it’s not a good time to be running anything big in the USA. No wonder Krispy Kreme has just reported its first loss.

The UK’s best-known Martha is Miss Martha Lane Fox, the co-founder of Lastminute.com, an internet travel agency that has prospered despite the IT crash. Earlier this week the 30 year-old doyenne of Britain’s dot com boom made the news yet again for selling two million of her Lastminute.com shares, worth 4.6 million pounds. Apparently, she suggested it might be time to buy a new home (amongst other things).

London is flooded with rental properties

The experts increasingly think otherwise. Almost a year ago the Economist was predicting a property crash, and since then more and more pundits have agreed that the time for a correction must be near. On Monday even Stephen Nickell, a member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee (which sets the country’s prime interest rate) warned of the increasing risk of a dramatic fall in property prices.

I couldn’t help wondering about this latest boom last night as I watched the usual Wednesday night litany of property-buying and house-decorating programmes on television. What will the TV producers do once the market turns? Switch from how-to-buy to how-to-sell I suppose, but that’s not likely to be as much fun.

The Financial Times thinks the property programmes are similar to hemlines:

The anecdotal evidence for a bubble is also striking; TV channels are swamped with house-related programmes and there is a good business in seminars offering punters swift riches via the housing market.

But any sell-off needs a catalyst. Higher rates are an obvious trigger but, as Mr [Stephen] Nickell’s remarks show, the Bank is well aware of the dangers and is treading cautiously. Higher unemployment is another potential pitfall, but looks unlikely to be a problem this year. But the catalyst will eventually appear and when it does, the sell-off could be swift; as those buy-to-let investors, desperate to plug a cashflow shortfall, unload their surplus properties on a falling market.

So Martha may have timed her dot com business perfectly, but if she buys a new home soon it may turn out to be rather “last minute”.

Almost two years ago I wrote:

The railways in Britain have suffered from a lack of investment for decades, and commuters are now paying the price. I don’t think the general public appreciates how difficult it is to rejuvenate an industry like rail. It could very well take as long to renew as it took to decline, which puts the current Government in a difficult position. What can it possibly do to improve the railways before the next election?

Well, it looks like the answer is — nothing.

Now, given this morning’s Guardian story headlined Blair: fixing key services will take 15 years, it seems the Government hopes to change public expectations instead.

Surprise, surprise.

The news today was full of pub lunches. Well, one in particular. Tony Blair took George W. Bush to lunch at the Dun Cow Inn in Sedgefield, Blair’s home constituency.

As expected, a few protestors lined the route to the pub — but England’s countryside has a better class of demonstrator. When the Presidential motorcade drove past one man stood silently while his placard politely proclaimed:

“George Bush is not very nice.”

Enough said.

Update: Euan Semple describes another characteristically English response to George W. Bush’s visit in Oh I do love living in Britain!.

Anyone descended from missionaries will be interested in this story from the BBC: Eaten missionary’s family head for Fiji.

The residents of a Fiji village are preparing to apologise to the family of a Christian missionary who was eaten by tribes people 136 years ago…

The inhabitants of Navatusila on the island of Viti Levu believe their village has been suffering bad luck ever since the cannibalism incident, and hope saying sorry will help their fortunes.

I love the last sentence which suggests “Cannibalism died out”. Did the last man alive eat himself or die of natural causes?

Several media commentators have suggested that the official denial of certain unreported rumours by the Prince of Wales this week has backfired. I agree. I am not very interested in the lives of the Royal family, but the fact that something was being purposefully withheld from me was more than sufficient to peak my curiosity and motivate me to investigate.

I knew that the rumour would be available on the Internet at some point, so that’s where I started to look. I failed to find anything helpful at first, but reading between the lines of two stories published today has now convinced me that I know the gist of the scandal.

Read
Royal rumour stories leak in Europe in The Guardian and
Prince Charles Denies a Rumor, but Won’t Say What It’s About in The New York Times, and you too will figure it out.

Hindsight makes solving this mystery seem easy. Just ask yourself why someone named Michael Fawcett would successfully request an injunction preventing The Mail on Sunday from publishing details of a sex scandal involving the Prince of Wales. I’m pleased to report that I wasn’t sufficiently intrigued, nor sufficiently cynical, to make the connection prior to this week’s disingenuous challenge set by the heir to the throne.

Oh well, back to reality now.

Jessica Lynch, the US soldier who was captured and dramatically rescued in Iraq, is in the news again thanks to her recent engagement (this time it’s a marital, not military, engagement): BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Former Iraq PoW Lynch ‘to marry’.

The most amazing aspect of her story is that someone is willing to pay her a million dollars to tell a story that she doesn’t remember:

Private Lynch, who is still recuperating from wounds sustained during her ordeal and who reportedly has no memory of the incident, recently signed a $1m book deal to publish an account of her capture.

At least it’ll be a quick read.

The weapons expert accused by the Ministry of Defence as being the source of the “dodgy dossier” story has gone missing (see MoD expert goes missing). This development is worthy of a thriller. In fact, it reminds me of an excellent film directed by Ken Loach called Hidden Agenda. You could be forgiven for thinking that an apt title for current events.

Update: the BBC is now reporting that a body has been found.