History certainly does have a knack of repeating itself here in the UK. Just as we’re about to embark on another war against a mustachioed despot, we’re all set to bring back rationing:
“A ban on marketing fatty, salty and sugary products at youngsters is one of the options supported by the study from the Food Commission campaign group.
It also backs those calling for a nationwide promotion of healthy foods and a possible “fat tax” on junk food advertising.”
But why stop there? Why not compulsory jogging every morning? Followed by an invigorating dip in ice-water? How about mandatory colonic irrigation, too?
Actually the question is redundant, because, whoever the ‘Food Commission Campaign group’ are, we all know that they have not the slightest intention of stopping there. They wll get what they want and then move on to Stage 2 (and Lord alone knows what that consists of). And because this is Britain we can all more-or-less write the script for these campaigns now. It is even becoming mundane.
I don’t know who these campaigners are but perhaps, by some extraordinary stroke of luck, it will transpire that they have some connection with the WTC attacks. Then the Americans can come and drag them all off to Camp X-Ray.
P.S. Don’t forget the hoods!
Pah! Will these fussy nannying health fascists never cease? It will start out with a campaign against “junk food” but how long before we start to see health warnings for streaky bacon, full fat cheese, potatoes cooked in goose fat, trifle made with confectioners custard topped with whipped cream, all butter shortbread, Eccles cakes, Aberdeen butteries, etc etc? Its so reminiscent of the campaign against smoking. Personal choice? Can’t have that guv…
This is another reason for doing away with the National Health Service: it gives the government reason to take far too much interest in people’s personal habits. In the name of “conserving resources”, it can arrogate unto itself the prohibition of the consumption of anything that may endanger the health. If you eat fatty foods, eat too many sweet things, smoke, drink acohol, the government feels it has a role in regulating your behaviour because you might become a drain on the “resources” of the NHS.
Get rid of a publicly funded health service and boot the government out of our private lives. Let private health care providers, who in any case perform more efficiently, form lobbies and campaign openly for more health-endangering things to be forbidden. At least that way, it’s in the open and we can fight it. How long before the government hands out report cards in which you will be expected to note how many “servings” you’ve had each day of fruit and vegetables? If you haven’t consumed the government minimum quota, you won’t get treatment. Big brother is watching you and your refrigerator.
Okay. Who’s going to play Cromwell in this drama?
Looks like Michael Moore’s screwed.
I would like to see the government issue c-ration style daily food packages covering most of the nutrients and stuff you need instead of dole/pension money. They could then buy all the surplus crops and animals to mince up for these ration packs. I can imagine single blokes buying the things for the sake of convenience. In this manner hungry people could be fed cheaply and healthily (well, more healthily than at present) and there would be less waste.
Liberty Belle: Let private health care providers, who in any case perform more efficiently, form lobbies and campaign openly for more health-endangering things to be forbidden.
That is actually no different… it still involves accepting the premise that the state can interfere in your life and politicizes the very food you eat. All your suggestion does is just change the manner in which it is justified: the end result is the same.
Perry, You are correct, of course. Unforgivably, I did predicate my comments on the assumption that the state has the right to regulate our habits, and that was a mistake.
However, given the world we live in, I would rather that private companies had to go to the trouble of lobbying, thus giving consumers a chance to oppose them both by lobbying our own representatives and by withholding business. Your point is irrefutable, but with Big Brother owning everything, everything is planned quietly by the Ministry of Propaganda behind closed doors and is disseminated over the Big Brother Corporation airwaves and the consumer/taxpayer never has a chance.
I still don’t know what we’re going do with all those extra old people we got with the anti-smoking thing. If they keep this up, we’re going to be up to our eyeballs in miserably unhappy old farts.
How about campaigning for a “small-business paperwork amnesty”? Of course it would be better to go the whole way, but this might be more achievable. ‘Unhealthy food’ is just the latest burden placed squarely by government on the shoulders of small firms.
Choose a size of business [10 employees or fewer?] and form a campaign with one simple goal: a promise of no government enforcement of any extra labelling/packaging/certification rules. There are still a lot of small businesses left, and helping them looks better in the press than helping “rich multinationals” – who are of course just as entitled to complain, but better able to afford new rules.
Small firms are often driven out of business by new rules like ‘fat warnings’, metric-only labelling etc. So start with their support?
There has got to be some point where governments can be stopped from putting endless new responsibilities on the plate of small employers.
–
Phase 2 is the 1500 cal a day survival diet. So we can all live longer.
ummmm….fatty, salty, sugary products
I think a milkshake and cheeseburger sounds good right about now.
God, it would Russ, but I’ve come back from the pub to find no food in the house. Thank God for cigarettes, the greatest appetite-suppressant capitalism ever produced!
God, it would Russ, but I’ve come back from the pub to find no food in the house. Thank God for cigarettes, the greatest appetite-suppressant capitalism ever produced!
In response to: “I don’t know who these campaigners are…’ I can fill in a little of the background. ‘The Food Commission’ was once ‘The London Food Commission’ and was the springboard from which that particularly loathsome food fascist Professor Tim Laing launched his career (watch out him if you haven’t encountered his name – he’s got quite an act). TLFC originally came to prominence as a protectorate of Ken Livingstone’s first empire and when he was booted out, somehow managed to cling-on without GLC funding. Loathsome Laing went off to preach elsewhere, but TFC still ploughs much the same control-freak, scaremongering furrow.
What is deeply comical about all this is that the self-styled ‘food experts’ change their minds so frequently that what they are proposing legislating in favour of one year, could be the very thing they want to ban the next. The recent acrylamide scare springs to mind. Are cornflakes on or off the mandatory menu this week, comrade commissar?
But…if more people eat fatty foods, people will live shorter lives, which means that they will have less time on Earth for driving and using electrical appliances, which means that humanity will not be able to add to greenhouse gas buildup as it would otherwise.