Subs in shape...

Great sense of humour on display on the front page of the Hull Daily Mail today. In a story headlined NHS CUTS BACK ON SLIMMING SURGERY about 30 fat folk lined up for weight loss surgery being told by NHS Hull that they'll have to 'look at other ways of shedding the pounds', part of the puntastic overline reads 'health bosses trim waiting lists'. Very good. Rather cruel of me but I couldn't help but laugh out loud when I read that one of the 30, Leanne Bothamley, said that the decision is "crushing". Dr Wendy Richardson, Hull's director of public health, spends a lot of time repeating her mantra that all the many overweight people of this city need to do is "eat less and move more" and I imagine that Leanne, crushed after spending so many years doing the crushing, has been armed with this sound medical advice.

Full fat version at the Hull Daily Mail

No strength to change...

Rugby League does like to shoot itself in the foot. Repeatedly. Only in this crazy, odd-shaped ball of a sport would a club help launch an anti-domestic violence campaign one day and announce, the following day, that they had signed a player that had pleaded guilty to a charge of domestic violence. The club is my beloved but increasingly bonkers Hull FC, the campaign - NHS Hull's Strength To Change - directly targets those who commit acts of violence towards women, the player is ex-Warrington Wolves full back Stuart Reardon, and he will be sentenced for an assault on his estranged wife Kay on April 23. Reardon needs to play somewhere, of course, but, given the high profile launch of the campaign, it shouldn't be in Hull. Yet Hull it is. The club deserves to take some serious flak for what is, at the very least, a serious PR blunder. No shortage of backs and the need to get some cover in asap can excuse this crazy move. "The timing of his arrival is ironic," pointed out Dave Hadfield in today's Independent. Not half.