Really I knew I shouldn’t have read Janet Street-Porter’s Editor-at-Large column for The Independent on Sunday, the heading “Let Let adult fatties eat themselves to death. The kids we can save” was enough, let alone the quote “It’s a result of wilful self-abuse”.

One of the premises of Porter’s article is that the government shouldn’t waste her taxes on promoting healthy eating, coupled with the fact that she has something against the working class when she says.

Please don’t tell me obesity is a result of poverty – it’s a result of wilful self-abuse. It’s perfectly possible to eat well and substantially on a low income, preparing food that doesn’t take hours to cook.

Still I wonder how much tax she pays, very little I suspect, with the aid of her no doubt expensive accountants. I bet if you calculate her percentage of tax against total earnings and compare that figure with those people in poverty you’ll see how little tax that is. And, lets be fair those people in poverty are likely to be the least educated and most bereft of opportunity. Isn’t it nice that Porter wishes that situation to continue.

Further more Porter reckons that “by the time a child is 10 the war on a trim waistline is won or lost” and hence we should give up after that and let them eat themselves to death. I wonder how many fat children have fat parents? Quite a few I suspect. I guess they’ll be left to die in the world of Porter. The Independent is supposedly one of the more enlightened of our newspapers, you really wouldn’t expect it to pedal such rubbish.