Stephen McNamara of Ryanair, with the blessing no doubt of his boss the ever arrogant Michael O’Leary has said “very large passengers should be asked to pay a fat tax.”. with one of the suggestions being to “Charge per kg over 130kg/20 stone (male) and 100kg/15 stone (females)”.
Seriously, this breaks so many moral boundaries and laws e.g. sex discrimination because men can weigh 20 stone and women 15 stone. Either you take up the seat and make the plane heavier or you don’t, regardless of your gender. What about anorexics or people under the recommended BMI, do they get charged less? So, Ryanair are advocating public humiliation via a public weigh in for anyone that wants to spend their hard earned cash and be stupid enough to travel with Ryanair. There will be repercussions from setting these kinds of precedents - like eating disorders and the belief that you are not 'normal' if you don’t fit into a certain body shape.
By allowing this type of fascism, where will it stop? What about disabled people who take up extra room because of their wheelchairs. Or blind people who may need more attention from cabin crew. Or elderly people whose frailties and walking sticks could jeopardise the planes safety?
What is more sinister is that it smacks of nazism and perhaps O'Leary is a secret eugenics fanatic – along with the 30,000 or so survey respondents.
This would be a very, very dangerous path to go down if it is allowed to happen. This will give the more moronic idiots in our society an absolute license to insult anyone over a size 12. I think people should boycott Ryanair out of principle.
Shame on you O’Leary. Shame on you for not remembering every person that has suffered persecution including you, with your Irish roots. Shame on you for not remembering the holocaust, Rwanda and every country whose people have been castigated, brutalised and isolated because of their looks, race, religion and colour and for committing the crime of being different. Shame on you for picking on a soft target. And shame on you, Mr & Mrs Public if you condone this bigotry.
You may wonder why I've made comparisons with other atrocities, this is because things like this generally start with something small and escalate because the ignorant tend to support discrimination en masse without thinking about where it could lead. I'm glad if I provoke a response, at least it'll make people think - feel free to disagree!
What a smart marketing move it would be if another airline took up the cause and used this as a way to close down Ryanair (happy days) by using a tagline like 'you're all welcome, no matter what you look like'' followed by a TV ad campaign showing all sorts of extreme looking travellers from the worlds tallest man to the shortest person, to the thinnest to the fattest, black/white/yellow/brown people, standard looking people, the lot - almost like the iconic Coca Cola 'I’d like to teach the world to sing' advert of the 70's. Are you brave enough?
Thursday 23 April 2009
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