Dear Virginia Bottomley: An outsize NHS customer fights back on behalf of fatties in the firing line of wealth-driven care

I once read a letter about you in a Sunday tabloid problem page. The writer was berating the agony uncle for constantly attacking you, in spite of the fact that you were 'attractive and well-dressed'.

Attractive, well-dressed and slim you might be, but convincing, I'm afraid you are not. Let us look at the latest victims in the firing line: fat people. This, of course, is an issue dear to my own poor cholesterol-loaded heart, which is teetering on the brink of collapse owing to the gallons of lard coursing through my veins. You say you want a fitter, healthier nation. Is this some unexpected shift that has rejected market-driven health care and moved benevolently across to the Samaritan school of policy-making? I think not. You want us to be fitter because it is cheaper. You want us all to use the NHS once in a blue moon so we won't be able to see the irreparable damage wreaked upon it by a bunch of bureaucracy-obsessed administrators who see pound signs instead of people who need caring for.

What a marvellous leap forward for humanity that some poor bloke is refused treatment after a lifetime of paying his taxes, because he can't give up smoking. Who's next, people who can't give up pudding? Is your hotline to Weight Watchers going to condemn the guilty to a lifetime of cottage cheese, or is it bathroom scales at dawn and off to the morgue with us on a reinforced trolley?

To me, this approach goes hand in hand with a gradual erosion in this society of individual rights, independent thinking and a welfare state that caters for all. We fat people have enough pressure on us to conform to the vacant stick-insect image that is chucked at us from television and magazines day in and day out, without the intervention of some stuck-up doctor who thinks he's God, telling us what to eat from his comfortable house in Surrey.

Just think of the advantages of being fat. We don't get so cold in the winter (bloody good job, with VAT on fuel); we keep Evans Outsize in business; and we die early, thus saving your government money on health care, pensions and other state benefits. Don't try to kid me that this new-found evangelism about our health is to do with anything other than money. One advantage we have with today's collapsing health service - at least fat people are easier to spot in a casualty department.

I may be fat and I may be heading for an early grave, but in the current climate I can't say I'm too bothered. I mean, I don't think it's going to be particularly heavenly to be a pensioner under your lot, being cared for in 'the community' along with the other individuals you can't be bothered to treat decently.

Fat people are here to stay, as are smokers, people with mental health problems and all those others who rock the boat of wealth-obsessed governments such as yours.

Fatties unite and have a cake.