Given the anecdotal link with Welsh archers at Agincourt we might call it the Celtic Wave, but most today will associate it with Churchill's cheeky transformation into the V for Victory sign. Or, that general two finger wave at people who have simply lost the plot and who need to be told to travel. And we are rather getting to the point where we need to be deploying this sign language in a serious manner to our rulers:

Restaurants, cafés and pubs will be named and shamed unless they make food portions smaller or less sweet, the government has said.

Chains such as Pizza Express, Starbucks, McDonald’s and Gourmet Burger Kitchen have been told to “step up” by cutting sugar from food and reducing the size of desserts, cakes and croissants. Calorie-reduction targets for fatty, savoury foods will also be set.

Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, told a private meeting of more than 100 food companies yesterday that “going out to eat is no longer a treat” because it is so common. Takeaways and sandwich shops would therefore be expected to take the same action as supermarkets and food manufacturers in tackling Britain’s obesity problem, he said.

As we have pointed out innumerable times we are not all fatty lardbuckets because we eat more than our forefathers. We are so because we expend less energy than they did - this we know because we know that we ingest fewer calories than they did.

Further, there is no reasonable excuse for government intervention here. That usual excuse of the cost to the NHS of obesity is nonsense. People whose arteries pop or clog as a result of being 10 stone overweight save the rest of us money by consuming health care for many fewer decades than the slimmer among us. As is true of smokers and boozers by the way.

Finally, of course, there is the point which we consider to be important. It's no damn business of the government's what we decide to consume.

The only solution to this is to just generally ignore them. And if their hectoring becomes to shrill we recommend that Anglo Saxon Wave. Rather more vituperation from the rude mechanicals is what the prigs and prodnoses deserve - and who knows, perhaps enough of it will shut them up.