Non-cyclists need wider crematorium ovens

Cyclists, on the whole, tend to be slimmer that average citizens. Cycling ought to be available on the NHS. Don’t pop a pill, get on yer bike.

This is one conclusion from the warning from the Department of Health that obesity is going to cost the nation £6.3billion by by 2015.

Kiddies are at risk. Not from paedos, but from fat parents. Council leaders represented by the Local Government Association have warned that social services will increasingly have to step in to deal with cases where the welfare of dangerously overweight children is put at risk.

The LGA, which represents over 400 councils in England and Wales, is calling for a national debate about the extent to which dangerous childhood obesity could be considered as a factor contributing to parental neglect.

The LGA says rotund residents cost councils a lot of extra money. Councils services having to cough for:

Wider school desks: Furniture in school classes, gyms and canteens are having to be made wider for larger children.

Wider crem furnaces: Town halls are widening crematoria furnaces to cater for spiralling numbers of “stouter clients.”

Bigger ambulances: Ambulances being re-equipped with extra-wide stretchers and winches for obese people.

Cllr David Rogers, LGA spokesperson on public health, said:

“The nation’s expanding waistline threatens to have a devastating impact on our public services. It’s a massive issue for public health but it also risks placing an unprecedented amount of pressure on council services.

“Councils are increasingly having to consider taking action where parents are putting children’s health in real danger. As the obesity epidemic grows these tricky cases will keep on cropping up.

“Councils would step in to deal with an under-nourished and neglected child so should a case with a morbidly obese child be different? If parents consistently place their children at risk through bad diet and lack of exercise is it right that a council should step in to keep the child’s health under review?

COFFIN STATS
Standard coffins range from 16 to 20 inches. However, increasingly coffins anywhere up to 40 inches are being ordered to fit larger bodies. Lewisham Council has ordered a special cremator from America, measuring 44ins in width. Lewisham’s crematorium has taken coffins from as far away as the West Midlands and Gloucester. A new furnace at Mintlyn Crematorium in Bawsey was recently installed by King’s Lynn and West Norfolk Council to accommodate coffins a metre wide. Blackburn with Darwen Council takes bodies from all over East Lancashire. Plans have been put in place to install a 42-inch cremator in the next few years to deal with wider coffins. Bodies have been taken to Manchester in the past.