Leading medical bodies are calling for a 20p-per-litre levy on soft drinks to be included in this year’s Budget.
More than 60 organisations, including the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, are backing the recommendation by food and farming [fake] charity Sustain.
They say it would raise £1bn a year in duty to fund free fruit and meals in schools to improve children’s health.
The soft drinks industry says raising taxation is unnecessary.
The soft drinks industry is right. Look, it is very, very simple. Firstly, there is no such thing as an obesity epidemic – given that being fat is not contagious and the measure of being fat is, like the recommended units of alcohol, a moving measure shifted to fit the argument du jour. And finally, it is none of their business what I put into my mouth. I do not expect to pay these evil little shits to fund yet more of their hectoring, nagging, nannying puritanism. If I want to drink a sugary drink, that is my concern, it being my body an’ all. So just fucking fuck off you arseholes.
If they do this, I’ll be doing a sugary drinks run across the channel rather than pay these evil arseholes. That along with Mrs L’s baccy we’ll stock up for six months at a time. I refuse to comply.
But Sustain says the tax is a simple measure that would help save lives by reducing sugar in our diets and raising money to protect children’s health.
My longevity is my business, not Sustain’s and the amount of sugar in my diet is my concern, not Sustain’s and I don’t give a flying fuck about children’s health, it being a parental matter and nothing to do with me and even less to do with Sustain.
God, I hate these bastards. Can we hang them yet?
Anyway, for a chuckle, what about this comment from Luke Castor:
If high taxes make for a healthy population, we would be fittest nation in the world instead of being among the fattest and least healthy.
Heh!
You say “being fat is not contagious”. This is of course true in the medical sense, but evidence suggests there is a social effect, so people with fat friends tend to become fat themselves, eg:
http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/fdafdaddt/2010-18.htm
http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/lvllacicr/1103.htm
Peer effects matter in all sorts of contexts, such as education and crime, so why shouldn’t they affect weight?
(I’m not sure this affects your fundamental point.)
It doesn’t. And as I had some fat friends back in the seventies, I should be fat, no? I’m still as skinny as a rake. And any study that uses BMI is immediately suspect.
“Fat” is PURELY self inflicted. FUCK the bastards.
They want to get fat, let them. But don’t come blubbereing to me for the shit YOU got YOURSELF into.
I have no doubt that to follow there will be a “Fat tax” on things like butter, cheese and full cream milk. I am so happy that all these caring people only have our best interests at heart.
I’m reminded of C S Lewis again…
The Danes introduced a fat tax on butter, cheese etc and a year latter had wto withdraw it as it didn’t work. Just resulted in Danes flocking to Northern Germnay to buy the stuff cheaper!
Someone really needs to tell them that fat doesn’t make you fat. I’m worried the denormalisation of fat could lead to other health problems as the people who get taken in by this rot cut out too much of their essential lipid intake.
As for the main post. What next? Are they going to start enforcing that we get X amount of sleep each night because we stay up too late and it is messing with our metabolism? They’d need more powers to check that. But haven’t they tried to get powers to see who was sleeping in your house before now anyway?
It is just a way to steal more money, isn’t it?
1. Find something they can label as a problem.
2. Create a campaign to demonise it.
3. Add a financial penalty in the name of the public good.
4. Watch the extra revenue roll into the treasury coffers.
Hanging’s too good for them.
Not only that, but you can see the tax becoming higher with time. If a 0,5l bottle of Coca-Cola is £1.09 now, it will easily be raised to £1.19. What if, in a few years time, the tax is doubled or even tripled? Before you know it you might be paying £3 for a 2 litre bottle of Coke.