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Cabinet heavyweights Alan Johnson (health) and Ed Balls (families) are on the obesity warpath. They aren't going to sit on the sidelines while Britain becomes a nation of fatties. Oh no. Johnson is intent - just possibly - on banning so-called "trans fats", the man-made artery-cloggers that bulk out junk food. Meanwhile, Balls wants schools to increase the amount of sports British pupils do beyond the agreed target for 2008: just two hours a week.
For Johnson, obesity is a threat "on the scale of climate change", while for Balls, although he abhors anything that "smacks of the nanny state", he believes the Government can do more to make sure "young people and parents have got better choices and more information".
Sadly, Mr Balls, young people and parents need less information, not more: fewer junk food ads, less detail about where they can stuff their faces. And they need fewer choices - when I was a kid, even if you went to primary school by car, the ride was over by the time you were eight or nine. At 11, I was walking two miles to school and back again every day, and at my north London state school there were a mandatory five hours of sport and PE a week.
Fat Britain doesn't need a nanny state - it needs one of those supernannies who will tell us to get off our backsides. I applaud Mr Balls for tackling the issue of getting more children playing sports at school but it's a bit rich coming from a minister in a government that has presided over - if not actually encouraged - the wholesale flogging off by London's local authorities of their sports pitches and their public swimming pools. There's no point in shutting the stable door when the horse is too overweight to do anything but lie in the straw.
And as for Mr Johnson, is he seriously proposing to ban junk food advertising during children's TV programmes or is he just going to make the usual grunting noises of a pig in a poke, who doesn't dare upset the "wealth-generators" of the food industry? Given that this is a Government-that has pursued policies that have directly contributed to a culture of pathological social exclusion, it's hard not to be cynical about this latest public health campaign.
It's a savage paradox that in today's Britain, the rich get in their 4WDs and drive to the gym, or patronise restaurants where they pay a hefty cover charge to eat lettuce. Ours is a greedy culture but whereas the wealthy svelte pursue money, the least well off comfort-eat themselves into morbid obesity.
Reader views (1)
Fat should be taxed. Fatty food should attract higher VAT. Companies that make and sell it should pay higher corporation tax. Overweight people should pay more income tax. Taxes on cars, fuel and parking should increase to the point where people walk and cycle more - supermarkets with free parking should be taxed on the number of spaces they provide.
The opposite should also apply. Skinnies like me should pay less tax so we can buy healthy food from companies that care more for their customers' well-being - with more money spent on safe, attractive cycling and walking facilities. VAT on bikes should be waived.
- Austen, London, 17/10/2007 08:16
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