montcler Although it is for his services to trash that the local government secretary Eric Pickles will always be most admired, the party conferences have demonstrated his no less treasurable contribution to political humour. In the absence of Mr Pickles, it is fair to say that modern political speeches, those at the Tory conference in particular, would read like Billy Bunter stories without the Fat Owl of the Remove or Harry Potter without Dudley Dursley: "Dudley was very fat and hated exercise."Think of the ambitious Lib Dem pretender Tim Farron and his seamless inclusion of Pickles in a whimsical sally about a coalition "divorce": "There's good news and bad news. Good news: we might get half of Ashcroft's money. Bad news: we have to have Pickles at the weekends!" The entire gag, Farron confessed, was a pretext for a Pickles joke. And the hope, presumably, was to best Nick Clegg, who quipped that Pickles was "the only cabinet minister who you can spot on Google Earth".For the chancellor George Osborne, Mr Pickles provided this year's keynote speech with its only memorable line. "Economic adviser to Gordon Brown," mused Osborne. "I'm not sure I'd put that on my CV if I were Ed Balls. It's like 'personal trainer to Eric Pickles'."Pause for mirth."Although I have to say, when it comes to chasing down council waste, no one runs faster than our Eric."Did this, as some Pickles joke connoisseurs have suggested, come close to plagiarism? In last year's conference speech, after alluding to the "great shadow" cast by "the big man on the side of the people", David Cameron said Pickles had "hit the ground sprinting". On the contrary, surely we should savour the subtle condescension of "our Eric", with which phrase George Osborne, the heir to Frank Richards, conjured up the true spirit of Greyfriars School. Here, Bunter fans will recall, Billy's nouveau riche origins were of a deplorable piece with his obesity, idleness and doomed exercises in low cunning. It cannot be impossible that "our Eric" has become the nation's janitor because, in the eyes of more affluent and elegant colleagues, he both looks and sounds like one.Even if you accept that Pickles's crimes against local government are on a scale so massive as to merit almost any form of torment, including eternal jibes about his appearance from his supposed allies, you wonder how much this new, high-level incorrectness is going to help, say, teachers in the post-Greyfriars era, who must care for overweight pupils as well as thin ones, and without making hilarious jokes about running, personal trainers and Google Earth.Many of them next month will be spreading the message of Anti-Bullying Week 2011: "Stop and think – words can hurt". If, mercifully, most children are not sufficiently au fait with coalition politics to have noted its rival, pro-bullying message – ie, find your nearest fat-bastard kids and go for it lol – its sanctioned, high-level taunting must be instructive to any overweight people who are both politically ambitious and averse to constant personal humiliation. Against an increasing disinclination outside Westminster to persecute overweight people for the problems caused by impoverished diets and eating disorders, coalition ministers reserve the right to engage in the kind of old-fashioned, good-natured ribbing that has seen Billy Bunter go the way of Enid Blyton's gollies and Tintin in the Congo.Conversely, any person w From the fringe to centre stage, the Occupiers may yet change US politics ho can spare the cost of a personal trainer and the time to run round in circles now finds him or herself at an immediate political and moral advantage. Possibly, even considered leadership material. One day, at this rate, it will seem absurd that we let David Cameron run the country instead of the infinitely faster, higher and stronger Matt Roberts. Virtually the only point raised in Ed Miliband's favour two weeks ago was that, unlike a certain Ed Balls, Mr Weird had definitely lost weight, a process involving, it was revealed, a personal trainer and fewer carbs."Nobody ever tells you you look fat," he blushed, "they just tell you how slim you're looking once you've lost weight." Unless you are Eric Pickles. Now, like Cameron and Osborne, Sarkozy and Boris Johnson, the improved, reduced fat Miliband has taken to exhibiting his confident, leadership bod in running shorts.In the US, the withdrawal of Chris Christie from the presidential race has already signalled that even in a country where almost 34% of the population are obese, excess weight will be interpreted as a lack of discipline that contrasts unforgivably with the poise and self-control of politicians who play ball games and get their wives to bang on about vegetables. According to this wisdom, even the vanity of a preening Blair or Cameron is preferable to the bloated evidence of pies.Given Christie's size, David Letterman's 10 fat gags might have been expected – "cabinet now has a secretary of cake" was one gem the comedian was proud to advertise – but the politician was also discriminated against, quite openly, by liberal pundits such as Michael Kinsley, writing for Bloomberg. "Look, I'm sorry," he said, "but New Jersey governor Chris Christie cannot be president: He is just too fat."Christie's weight is indefensible, explain writers who were able to tolerate Obama's smoking and Clinton's philandering, because he sets a poor example, because his health is compromised, because he is a symbol of excessive consumption. Just as a leader the size of Churchill is now unthinkable here, William Taft, more than 300lbs when he quit in 1913, looks to have been the last fat US president. No one told him to "eat a salad and take a walk", the prescription of one enlightened well-wisher, indifferent to Christie's claim that he has, genuinely, been "struggling" to lose weight.Maybe it's the effect of too much exercise – people do sometimes go a bit mad on the endorphins – but Cameron, too, seems less and less inclined to listen to excuses. At any rate, an early interest in nudging people into good behaviour involving, if memory serves, the proposal that they stop living off chocolate oranges seems to have given way to an interest in outright bullying: a new Danish tax which puts a punishing surcharge on all food containing more than 2.3% fat. "A fat tax is something we should look at," Cameron declared last week, ignoring the obvious objection that such a tax would make absolutely no difference to the wealthy Pickleses in his own party, while it leaves the less fortunate and overweight as obese as ever, on a diet of refined carbohydrates."The problem in the past," he conceded, "when people have looked at using the tax system in this way is the impact it can have on low incomes. But frankly, do we have a problem with the growing level of obesity? Yes."But not half as much, frankly, as the growing level of obesity has with him. Why is rape so difficult for some people to understand? </a>
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