British Politics Thread

The Lord Martin of Springburn, Speaker of the House of Commons 2000-2009, died today aged 72. [1]

Well, with the sugar tax and now minimum alcohol pricing coming into force in Scotland, we seem to be moving towards a point where anything unhealthy is reserved for the wealthy. I'm expecting some sort of bacon tax next on anything "too fatty" where of course you can't cut the content.

Though one observation the BBC had to make...

I think that one says more about overcharging on the cola, to be honest.

The next stop is a chocolate tax.

There was mention of it in the Telegraph and New Scientist a couple of days ago:

'Chocolate tax' could work better than new fizzy drinks tax, study says ^{Article Quote} 

Taxing chocolate and other sweet foods would be a more effective anti-obesity strategy than the new “sugar tax” on fizzy drinks, a new analysis suggests.

A major study by Oxford and Cambridge Universities and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, predicts that adding 10 per cent to the price of confectionary, cakes and biscuits could lead to a 7 per cent drop in purchases.

The figures are similar to those for taxing sugar-sweetened drinks, where previous research suggests a 10 per cent price rise can reduce purchases by 6 per cent to 8 per cent.

However the latest study, published in BMJ Open, found that taxing sweet snacks could have an additional knock-on effect on the sale of other foods, leading to consumers cutting their buying of soft drinks, biscuits, cakes and savoury snacks as well.

Sweet snacks provide twice as much sugar in the diet as sugar-sweetened drinks, so the overall reduction on sugar intake would be greater than that observed with taxes on sugar-sweetened drinks alone, the report said.

The researchers found, for example, that increasing the price of chocolate snacks was estimated to result in a significant reduction in buying across most food categories, while a price increase on biscuits showed a potential reduction in the purchase of cakes (2.3 per cent) as well as chocolate and confectionery (1.7 per cent).

The authors said the study was observational and they could not explain why consumers changed their buying behaviour.

Lead author Professor Richard Smith, from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said: "We know that increasing the price of sugar-sweetened beverages is likely to generate a small, but significant, reduction in their purchase.

"However, there has been little research on the impact that a similar price increase on other sweet foods such as chocolate, confectionery, cakes and biscuits could have on the purchase of sugar.

"This research suggests that taxing these sweet snacks could bring even greater health gains and warrants detailed consideration."

Co-author Professor Susan Jebb, from the University of Oxford, said: "It's impossible to study the direct effects of a tax on snack food on consumer behaviour until such policies are introduced, but these estimates show the likely impact of changes in the price.

"These snacks are high in sugar but often high in fat too and very energy dense, so their consumption can increase the risk of obesity.

"This research suggests that extending fiscal policies to include sweet snacks could be an important boost to public health, by reducing purchasing and hence consumption of these foods, particularly in low-income households."

Could a tax on chocolate make us healthy? Let’s not be too hasty ^{Article Quote} 

Earlier this month, the UK brought in a new tax on sugary drinks, following a few other countries, including France, Mexico and Finland. As a result, a can of Coke, for instance, now costs 8 pence more, although many brands, such as Ribena, Irn-Bru and Lucozade, have replaced some of their sugar with sweeteners, to a chorus of internet outrage.

But the official crusade against the white stuff isn’t stopping there. Now, a group of doctors says we need to start taxing sweet foods, like chocolate, confectionary, cakes and biscuits.

The team used data on the shopping habits of more than 30,000 British households to study what happens when the prices of sweet snacks and sugary drinks rise. In both cases, a price hike of 10 per cent reduces purchases by around 7 per cent. Because snacks contribute twice as much sugar to our diets as drinks do, a tax on the former should lead to a bigger fall in consumption, argue Richard Smith of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and his colleagues.

Yet it is not clear that taxing sugar will achieve our true goal – controlling our ever-expanding waistlines. Almost two-thirds of UK adults are now overweight or obese, with figures being similar in most Western countries. But we don’t actually know why.

Too much sugar in our diets isn’t the only possible cause of this widespread weight gain – other causes might be excess of fat, processed food, overall calories and our sedentary lives. We might be focusing on the wrong thing by singling out one particular food group for taxes and bans. Perhaps we would do better to put more effort into teaching children to cook, encouraging more sport participation or changing our cities to help people get around by cycling and walking. No one knows.

Sweet talking

The desire of governments to nudge us into healthy eating habits has parallels with anti-smoking measures, but our understanding of these problems is not at the same level. While the evidence linking tobacco with cancer and heart disease is solid, the science of nutrition stands on shakier ground.

Most nutrition research consists of “observational” studies, which, rather than randomising people to different diets, just record what they choose to eat, and are notoriously open to bias. It is unsurprising then that dietary advice has undergone some changes over the years.

For decades, the line was that the root of all dietary evil was fat, particularly saturated fat from red meat and dairy products. As part of this narrative, we demonised cholesterol, a fatty substance also found in animal products; eggs were almost verboten. Now we know that dietary cholesterol has little bearing on levels in our blood. Come back eggs, all is forgiven.

Similarly, we have long been told to replace butter with vegetable oil. But, for decades, vegetable oil-based spreads and processed foods like biscuits were based on trans-fats, which we now think are even worse for our arteries than saturated fats. Most such foods have been reformulated to cut their trans-fats, but it makes you wonder if we’d have been better sticking to butter all along.

Sugar now seems to have taken over from fat as public health enemy number one, but in the light of previous U-turns, perhaps governments should be a little more cautious about trying to remodel our eating habits, when the science is still uncertain. At the least, we should wait to assess the results of the first sugar tax before broadening its scope.

edited 29th Apr '18 11:52:41 AM by Wyldchyld

Oh, and there's the proposed surcharge on plastic bottles to encourage recycling them, too. And the plastic bag charge.

I hate to project trends, but at this rate we'll have a charge on breathing within a decade.

Rt Hon Amber Rudd MP has resigned as Secretary of State for the Home Department.

Let the righteous celebrations begin. This puts May under a bit of pressure, although one minister resigning is hardly a Night of the Long Knives. The important thing is that this proves that gross incompetence and malice directed towards British citizens IS grounds for the removal of a senior politician these days, which quite frankly shouldn't have had to be established but it's good it has.

Wasn't the Night of the Long Knives something that consolidated a government's power (and a very unpleasant one at that)?

This is one of the Great Offices of State being vacated because the current holder couldn’t and wouldn’t adequately cover for the incompetence and malice of her predecessor, the current prime minister. Just ahead of the local elections, too.

Yeah, this is a pretty big deal.

Also because she has been revealed to have been neck-deep in the target-setting despite denial of all responsibility.

Also a famous cabinet reshuffle they attached the name to. Harold Macmillan planned one for autumn 1962 but it was leaked months early, so he decided to sack seven ministers over the next two days. Cue cartoons of him running around Westminster with an axe and bag of heads, since that third of his cabinet hadn't shamed themselves at all, they were just not particularly great and he wanted new blood.

Sajid Javid is getting Rudd's job, becoming the first BME person to hold it.

edited 30th Apr '18 3:00:17 AM by EruditeEsotericist

Rt Hon James Brokenshire MP returns to the front bench, succeeding Javid as Secretary of State for Housing, Communities & Local Government.
Rt Hon Penny Mordaunt MP succeeds Rudd as Minister for Women & Equalities.

edited 30th Apr '18 3:07:06 AM by TommyR01D

Is it just me or is this whole Windrush trouble an argument in favour of ID cards, something I have long been in favour of (as long as they are provided free of charge by the government of course).

Can't understand why you'd need an ID card,it's just another thing to lose.

Well my idea has always been to integrate the passport, driver's license, etc. into a single ID card so that there isn't as much to lose.

edited 30th Apr '18 5:03:21 AM by SebastianGray

It wouldn’t help, the government had the information records and refused to keep/make them in document form.

An ID card is great if you need to show information to someone other than the government, but it’s no use in forcing the government to retain information about you, it will keep or not keep said information regardless of if you have a card with a copy of it all.

When the problem is "the government has decided to burn its own paperwork", no amount of ID cards will help. And they'd find some other way to use them maliciously.

Like the push for Voter ID that totally isn't an attempt to disenfranchise demographics that typically vote Labour.

An ID card has countless purposes, if used right. In Germany, it is required for everyone to own one and the data is used to send you your voter slip, meaning rather than disfranchising voters it makes sure that nobody has an excuse to not vote. Voter fraud is practically impossible this way, too. It also helps to curb immigration and illegal work, because it helps the government to keep track of people. It also happens to double as passport within in the EU and some selected countries (I currently don't even have a passport because I haven't left the EU for years).

In short, Windrush would have never happened in Germany simply because the people who came would have gotten their ID back then instead of living within the country for decades without proper papers. (And to be clear here, I don't blame them, I blame the government).

At the end of the day, an ID has more upsides than downsides. There are countless situations in which they come in handy.

It only has more upsides when not being pushed by groups that would actively take advantage of the downsides and push for more whilst not giving a toss about any possible upsides.

And I'm not sure how the hell an ID addresses people working illegally. Or why anyone ever thinks "it stops voter fraud" makes a huge amount of difference because voter fraud just doesn't happen on those scales.

Well, not on a small scale, but on a big scale, yes, it does. Ie the police can randomly visit a construction side and ask the workers there for I Ds or work permissions. And if they don't have them, well, then the employer is in trouble, because he is supposed to register his workers properly.

I admit though that introducing ID cards now would be difficult.

I mean, I'll be honest, immigration agencies don't have that much difficulty already (why on Earth there are TV shows following this I don't know), it would be a whole lot of expense for negligible upside.

It makes no difference. I've seen the amount of evidence you need to prove that you have the right to work in the UK (and employers have to ask everyone for it). It's a bloody nuisance when you get a new hire resigning before they've brought in the relevant documents (on our system at least, you can't give them their wages for the time they've worked or terminate their employment).

If anything, it'll just be an excuse for the police to show up and intimidate people who look a bit too foreign, and that's just not cricket.

Brexit: Government defeat in Lords over terms of meaningful vote

This "tax unhealthy foods" idea is uncomfortably close to similar bullshit we've had to deal with in the US. It's going at things completely backward.

Maybe in the UK, fresh foods are cheaper? In the US, cola and preserved foods are cheap calories and we poor people buy them because of that, and because a lot of poor people don't have actual grocery stores in walking distance (only convenience stores that sell chips-n-coke). You don't fix that by taxing said foods, you fix it by making sure healthy foods are available to buy at a reasonable price and ensuring that there are grocery stores within walking distance of everyone's residence.

This is sounding like locking the barn door after the horse has fled. Parliament doesn't get control of the process until after the UK is already out of the EU.