All I’ve heard people talking about offline for the last few days are “Pastie Gate” and the “Fuel Strike”
1: Within the next 60 - 80 years we’ll run out of oil. And unless world governments get their collective arses into gear, fuel shortages will pale into insignificance compared to what’ll happen.
2: The solution to “Pastie Gate” is quite simply - just shove a blanket 10% increase on food that’s deemed unhealthy - pasties, take aways, chocolate, sweets etc, etc.
The latter option seems to piss everyone off I’ve noticed - so here’s my reasoning behind it:
The average waist size for a bloke in the UK is a little under 38”. That’s, quite frankly, horrendous. As a nation we seem to be racing ourselves to see what’ll be the fastest way to kill our health - by drinking to excess, or consuming obscene amounts of awful food. For years we’ve been quick to call “The yanks” a nation of fatties, whilst our own waist size has increased at a rapid rate.
The majority of kids leaving school - aside from being unable to speak “proppa like bruv innit like?” would, left to their own devices in a kitchen stocked with fresh, raw ingredients, likely starve to death.
Clearly the labelling on food is too complicated for a lot of people - I know I’ve overheard people express sentiments like the following:
But the numbers am for ‘undred grammaticals of stuff, this as only got 35 grammaticals init, so I core work it out.
Black Country dialect to one side [‘cause there bay nothing wrong with talking proper!] the fact people can’t take nutritional information for 100G of a product, and apply it to 35G speaks volumes.
Which is why the Government introduced this “Traffic light” scheme - Green, Amber, and Red, which would apply to various content within food - i.e. it might be Amber in terms of calories, but Red in terms of salt.
Even that seems to confuse people - so why not simply things.
Have every product that isn’t a vegetable, or a piece of fruit, put in front of a panel of doctors and nutritionists. They can decide if said product is healthy enough to form part of an adults regular diet, and if so, deem it to be a “healthy food”.
If it’s not deemed healthy - fine, just shove a 10% VAT / Junk Food levy on top.
Think about it - for people who only occasionally buy those goods, it wouldn’t have a huge impact - a 50p packet of crisps would now cost 55p. If you only have the occasional bag, that’s hardly going to break the budget.
Of course, if you eat five packs of crisps a day, then you might start to notice, especially when combined with other unhealthy foods.
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The above probably explains why I’d never be elected into office :)
