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Why the long face? Rio’s obese treated like horses

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Great story on Medicexchange on protests against the use of facilities to treat horses also used to treat obese people (edited version below):

“Rio de Janeiro hospitals have been sending obese people to share medical test equipment with horses at the local race track, drawing complaints from activists who say the practice is humiliating.

“When people weigh more than the standard equipment can support they have to be directed to the Jockey Club, which is the only place in Rio where they have the appropriate equipment,” a spokeswoman for the Rio state health secretariat said on Wednesday.

“Rosimere Lima da Silva, head of the Group for Salvaging Self-Esteem and Citizenship of the Obese (Graco), said many patients feel embarrassed to go there.

“The obese patients already suffer from a lot of prejudice and having to be treated where animals are is not helping their self-esteem. Many simply refuse to go,” she said.”

Below: the Sao Paul Jockey club race track at night – well worth a visit .

sao paulo race trackPhoto by Stuart Glendinning Hall

What connects Cornershop, Oasis, Pulp & Black Grape?

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Watching the BBC programme on women with troublesome big breasts and serious issues about health and self-esteem; and then I remembered the line from the Cornershop track ‘Brim Full of Asha (mp3)’: “Everybody Needs A Bosom For A Pillow” not least ’cause back in 1993 I’d booked them to appear at some very very small event at Manchester Town Hall and a really nice lady had gobe out to buy them pizza as payment but was mugged for the pizza!

Which in turn leads me to recall another Manchester lad, Shaun Ryder, and in Feb 1996 on the night of the Canary Wharf IRA bomb going up to him at the Black Grape backstage party and for a dare telling him he had a big nose and he smelt. I managed to get into the after-concert party after some guy said his girlfriend was backstage so I talked out way in by saying I knew ‘Chris’. I later had a nice chat with his manager, and a great out-of-it one with the taxi driver speeding back to north London after the bombing, that was some night. (And even bumping ex-Beauchamp ladies, including Carole Orbell, at the concert which was well not expected.)

And a few months later even walking past Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker on Liverpool Road and pulling a face ’cause I wasn’t happy to see a celeb; and later outside Victoria Station walking past Noel Gallagher; so hey maybe I bring some musical luck to these guys, who knows?