More EU lunacy

[Lord Jim]

Lets all hate on fat people and be like LJ and the Maj.Genl.!


Screw fat people! Let them all die! They don't really have degenerative joint damage to their knees and hips they're just self-indulgent flabbos! Fuck 'em! We can all hate them because its their own fault, they are disgusting. Jesus hates fat people too.


That's the way. God wants us to have someone to hate. That's how we know god is good!


yrs,
rubato

Ten sentences, (well, if you include "Fuck 'em" as a sentence...) six ended with exclamation points...

And none of them having any logical meaningful relationship to anything that has been said...

Gettin' a start on the Christmas Cheer, are we rube?

[Lord Jim]

I have this feeling that Rube fights with his wife then comes on here and takes it out on folks.

I think that's close, but not exactly correct...

I doubt rube has the balls to argue with his missus...(afterall , she's his meal ticket...)

As I've said before, I think rube is enormously frustrated by the subordinate position he has both in his personal and professional life, and he comes here to take out those frustrations...

ETA:

And frankly, looking at the larger picture, that's really not a bad thing...

Better that this guy works off his angst by being an asshole on an internet forum, (which really doesn't do any real, tangible harm to anyone) than getting an AK-47 and going postal....

[MajGenl.Meade]

Oh I deleted what I did post and want to replace it with this message for rube:

"Your playful badinage is a lifeline in my ocean of despair "

Mind you, I have him to thank (obliquely) because I realized a few minutes ago that Dickens was making a joke with the name Mr. Bumble the Beadle. It's a bit of a pun

[Jarlaxle]

I have this feeling that Rube fights with his wife then comes on here and takes it out on folks.

Or he gets snockered and babbles here...

[wesw]

this is the (italics) most childish back and forth I have seen since grade school.

[Crackpot]

Stick around I've seen worse.

[Gob]

An overweight British man won a landmark discrimination case against his employers, after a High Court judge ruled the effects of obesity can be classed as a disability.

John Walker, 49, weighed more than 21 stone when he was dismissed from his post as an IT manager at Sita Information Networking Computing UK. He was sacked after spending seven years off work with health problems linked to his size such as asthma, diabetes, high blood pressure, chronic fatigue and knee problems.

His case echoes the ruling by the European Courts of Justice last week that although obesity itself was not deemed to be a disability protected under EU laws, it could be disabling in its effects. It means that companies could now be obliged to provide bigger desks and special parking spaces to accommodate larger staff members.

The ECJ case was brought by Karsten Kaltoft, a 25st Danish childminder, who claimed he was fired because his weight affected his performance. The development was described as ‘regrettable’ by Tam Fry, a spokesman for the National Obesity Forum. He said: ‘Employers should be hugely concerned about this. They will face problems if employees insist that they are disabled, and need special furniture or wider access to fire exits, for example.

‘But the biggest cost will be the amount of money they will have to spend in contesting cases made against them. Lawyers will be licking their lips over this ruling.’ He added that lack of clarity around what constitutes obesity would prove problematic.

‘In my opinion the [European] court was gravely in error not to put a definition on what they consider to be disabling obesity,’ he said. ‘They did not confirm the original ruling from July which indicated having a body mass index of 40 would be the cut-off point. Now, without that definition, every person over the World Health Organisation’s threshold of a BMI of 30 will feel that they can make a claim.’

[MajGenl.Meade]

He was sacked after spending seven years off work with health problems linked to his size such as asthma, diabetes, high blood pressure, chronic fatigue and knee problems.

OK - he's fat. But I blame his employer - lack of imagination. Back in the good old days, his job would have been phased out and he'd have been made redundant, being as how no other job was available at the company. His work would have been farmed out in little bits to other job titles - obviously he's not been doing the job for seven years so either it wasn't necessary work or others were doing it.

Memo to company managers (verbal only): no more hiring fat people. That (it seems to me) is a possible consequence of lazy bastards like this one. It's wrong - but possibly a consequence

[Big RR]

I don't know British or EU law, but I do think the concern is at least a bit overstated. In the litigious US all an employer has to do is to make a reasonable accommodation to a disabled person; are bigger desks or parking spaces "reasonable"? I'm uncertain, but it would not address what appears to be the biggest concern, his inability to show up at work regularly; I don't think the law permits someone to take off as much time as they want/need to, even if it is based on a disability.

And if the accommodations requested are "reasonable", then why the concern? Isn't it better for all of us to have people gainfully employed in productive work than out on government assistance?

As for the litigation; doesn't the UK have a losers pay system where the loser has to pay the legal fees of the winner? That's always touted by many (even here) as a way to decrease "nuisance" litigation--doe it not work?

[Long Run]

are bigger desks or parking spaces "reasonable"?

Well that and longer lunch hours.

no more hiring fat people.

I think there is already a proven bias that was discussed on here at one point.

[Big RR]

Big RR wrote:
are bigger desks or parking spaces "reasonable"?

Well that and longer lunch hours.

I don't know about that; isn't eating too fast a cause of obesity?