Childhood obesity continues to be one of the most consuming — literally — stories of our age. Among the many problems predicted as Great Britain turns into A Bit Too Great Britain, there now comes the threat of lawsuits. Anticipating government targets on scaling down fat kids, the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) has issued a warning that litigious parents may soon be in a position to sue schools, primarily for failing to prevent children from eating Dairylea Lunchables.

“We think it is going to be very dangerous and difficult if schools are going to be held to account for these things,” the ASCL declared. It then went on to blame the problem on bigger boys, literally — “kids with guts like Space Hoppers” — before hiding behind a ginormous jug of pink custard in the canteen.

Let’s face it, though — the Government isn’t going to make schools responsible for reducing childhood obesity. It could never happen. A school full of teachers is, essentially, a building full of swots, and if there’s one thing that the entire 1970s output of the Children’s Film Foundation has taught us, it’s that The Man will never get one over the swots. The swots aren’t going to end up in the brig for the fat kids. In all likelihood, the ASCL will be able to wire its primitive Texas calculators into the fire alarm at Westminster and force a mass fire drill just before the Bill is passed.

So we might as well admit it now — we’re not going to do anything about childhood obesity. Not a thing. We’re already too fat and lazy. Our societal response has been to shrug, settle back down to watching Deal or No Deal, and then eat a Ginster’s Meal Bar without even really noticing.

Given this bulky torpor, then, perhaps we should start trying to see the positive side of our kids swelling up, until they look like a sausage collage. We need to look on the bright side of endemic, morbid obesity — the lighter side of endemic morbid obesity, if you will.

First, fat people are always jolly. It surely can’t be a bad thing that we’re breeding a nation of people who will turn up at picnics carrying a crate of ginger beer, wearing a waistcoat with a garish pattern and laughing uproariously. People who wipe tears from their eyes after “pranks”. People who go into paroxysms of excitement thinking about something as simple as a bun. Similarly, fat people cannot follow fashion — and so tend not to be vain. This is surely a boon in an age that we believe to be increasingly materialistic, shallow and style-obsessed.

More good news: those teenage pregnancy rates are going to plummet. Once you get over 20 stone, physical conjoinment is near impossible, and so for the 21st-century teenager, a really heavy petting session will consist of texting each other apt emotions, and sighing. Similarly, crime rates should drop through the floor. A great deal of the skill in burglary involves slipping through small basement windows, shimmying over fences or tiptoeing around people’s drawing rooms. With the British population looking like legged whales in jogging bottoms, the instances of larceny will plunge. Indeed, muggings will disappear more or less overnight — it’s hard to mug a granny when she could easily overtake you, and then whomp you upside your fat head.

Indeed, the ramifications will touch on pretty much every area of our lives — just as our left thighs will, eventually touch on just about every area of our right thighs. Even the little changes will be joyous. If all children are the size of spaceships by 2012, clothes manufacturers will have to scale up their ranges accordingly. In turn, this means that a whole range of essentially adult-sized Spiderman merchandise will come on to the market — and all VAT-free.

And as for the economy . . . well, the Fire Service will spend billions using specialist cutting equipment to spring hefty-assed eight-year-olds from chairs, ghost trains and, in all probability, their own trousers. That is unavoidable, I admit. But where Nature takes, she also gives. That self-same grossly obese child will probably become a grossly obese adult, who will die at 53 from a combination of diabetes, heart disease and getting stuck in a turnstile. Ipso facto the pensions crisis disappears overnight.

Personally, I can see endemic, morbid obesity being the saving grace of this country. I think we could really, finally, come into our own as a nation that looks like a bunch of Teletubbies in leisure wear, all riding around on scooters because we’re too fat to walk. Where once we feared that the future would be a feral dystopia filled with ratchildren, a starving pensioner underclass, murder on every street corner and stress levels through the roof, we now face a different prospect entirely: a Britain of jolly, laughing Friar Tucks, teenagers too corpulent to fight, shag or rob, and just five people who have survived to pensionable age.

This will be a Golden Grahams era! Not-salad days! We’ve never had it so pud!

Weighty research is quite staggering

Medical research has uncovered a perilous fact about weightlifting. Apparently, anyone trying to lift a weight over 145lb (66kg) puts intolerable strain on the eye, and, temporarily, partially dislocates it. Of course, to anyone raised on cartoons, the matter of your eyes popping out on lifting a heavy weight has long been common knowledge. I wonder what other discoveries the medical world will make. Presumably, that being subject to extreme heat makes your head turn red and emit a whistling sound, or that head injuries are accompanied by a halo of tiny, tweeting birds. Later still, I’m sure they’ll discover that when a piano falls on you you crumple down to 14in high and walk around making concertina-y sounds.

Reading chemistry

I’m sure it was never intended as such, but a magazine survey on drugs — which compared the street prices of drugs around the country — has become a useful tool for those still agonising over which university to apply to next year. Stoners will have noted that cannabis is £35 an ounce in Gloucester, but a hefty £110 in Portsmouth. Similarly, any fans of ketamine, the horse tranquilliser, who have been torn between the universities of York and Exeter, will surely have had their minds made up on seeing the £40 differential per gram between the two cities. And I’m sure mathematics and economics students will have been able to make a few quick, profitable calculations about the price differential of Ecstasy in Bristol and Cardiff, and how little time it would take to drive between the two at weekends. It’s all so educational!

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