andrewducker

I don't know what the fuck is wrong with Labour, the day after the Tories suggest maybe obliging fat people to go to gyms or they lose their benefits, they come running out with 'BUT WE CAN BE EVEN BIGGER FASCIST AND RIGHT-WING REACTIONARY NUTJOBS THAN THE CONSERVATIVES!' There is something very wrong in the Labour party's planning wing where their default reaction to everything is to keep trying to place themselves further to the right on everything.

I don’t think that it is placing themselves to the right when Labour are authoritarian — they have always had a nanny-state mindset which comes directly from their socialist central-planning-can-solve-every-problem ethos.

I'd say this is the point where the 'Left vs Right | Authoritarian vs Liberal/Libertarian' model becomes a useful descriptor — Labour are Left, and (somewhat) Authoritarian, the Lib Dems are (mostly) Left and they're Liberal, and the Conservatives are Right and are a mix of Liberal and Authoritarian.

Now, all the parties are very broad churches, due to FPTP forcing that upon them, but I'd say that's an okay rough description of them.

The Tories seemed more liberal in opposition that they are now that they are in government. Maybe all parties become more authoritarian as they run a government, or ministers become more authoritarian as they start dealing with their departments. With that in mind, it worries me that Labour are so authoritarian in opposition.

Yup, it worries me too. I expect people to get more authoritarian when they're made responsible for making things happen (I get that way myself when I'm given managerial responsibilities), but I'd hope that Labour would be less so when out of power.

Labour have indeed always had a nanny state tendency, but the current trend is to react to Conservative authoritarian policies by being even more authoritarian. It's as if they think the public want authoritarians in government. And that's what's new.

Go back to the 1960s and you had a party which, yes, had a chunk of nannyism, but also had people like Roy Jenkins in the Home Office: they had a modernizing technocratic wing that held broadly progressive views on social policy, even while their economic policy emphasized central control.

Probably a reaction to the press demanding that politicians do something about every issue that comes up. Whatever is in the news today, journalists want to know what the government policy is. A reactive politician is a small step away from a reactionary politician.

To be liberal I suspect a politician has to ignore a lot of media pressure.

It's not that new. Labour have been advocating more authoritarian policies than the Tories at least since Tony Blair was Shadow Home Secretary.

That's a fair point, yes, Labour have tended towards thinking they can conduct grand scale social engineering projects.

I just find it a bit depressing that every time the Tories come out with something stupid, Labour jump in to out-stupid them.

If they really wanted to do something about obesity, they could maybe re-nationalise all of the public exercise places taht were sold off to private companies.

My local sports hall/swimming pool was privitised, and it now costs over £5 for an hour swim, and the hour long classes are at least £6 per session. The gym is similarly expensive. This is, I think, a significant price barrier.

Walking or running are free. It is a mistake to think that exercise depends on i) council provision of “facilities”, or ii) paying by the hour.

I don't know which is more crap - create an environment where Big Agro can (and do) peddle all sorts of strange Food Substitutes, then consider taxing people for becoming unaccountably fat on same, or enact laws such that Big Agro is forced to take the piss less. (Not forgetting that B-A is there, more or less, through central planning and needing to feed a country w/o imports.)

We can't feed the UK without imports. Carrying capacity is about 40 million, and that's assuming we stop eating meat and dairy, and use the land for something nutritious instead.

Indeed not. However, the great mechanisation of farming and development of the agro-chemical business was driven by the requirement to do just that in the 40s.

I've been watching 'Wartime Farm' from the BBC. Very interesting.

I'm fine with enforced labelling of food. And when it comes to kids I'm prepared to compromise somewhat. But banning adults from eating whatever they want is something I'm 100% against.

If it's costing the NHS then work out how much and stick a tax on it to cover the excess, so that people are paying for their extra costs. Beyond that, it's none of the government's business what I put into my body.

Yeah, I think there's a line. We treat advertising for children differently from advertising for adults - I think food can be considered analogous.

I wish we could find a more effective enforced labeling system, though. The current one just isn't working.

Isn't working in what sense?

If people are choosing to make decisions that you wouldn't, even when you both have good information, then the issue may well be that they have different goals to you, or that other parts of their worldview are significantly different.

Incidentally, I wonder how this debate will be viewed in (say) 100 years time.

I bet "it's none of the government's business what I put in my body" was used to argue against tobacco and alcohol taxes. In fact the government has done a good job of putting us off smoking and, to be honest, it's a good thing they have. With alcohol they've been conspicuously less successful.

In 100 years will we look back at the food stuffs and their marketting in 2012 in the same way we look at "Craven A will not harm your throat" adverts and radium-based health products
http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/offbeat-news/10-radioactive-products-that-people-actually-used/1388?image=4

I'm not sure -- even now some foods of my youth look like a deliberate attempt at mass slaughter. My regular diet was spam fritters and chips from the school canteen -- it was dripping with grease too -- made a turkey twizzler look like salad. I don't think I ever realised it was unhealthy: Chips five meals a week. In 100 years will we look back and think "Good christ, how could people have been so stupid as to let this go on unregulated -- you know they used to advertise hamburgers to children on television. Hohoho!"

Of course in 100 years it's equally possible we'll be stuffing our faces with even worse stuff and taking a magic pill to make it all be OK.

I'm absolutely find with Pigovian taxes that pay for the costs of the externalities of products. Charge for alcohol and cigarettes, because they cost us. And ban the usage of chemicals in the workplace that make them smelly, unpleasant and unhealthy.

And schools should be providing healthy food by default, certainly.

And, I'm even in favour of the idea that adults might be swayed by this to prefer salads when they get older, because that's what they're used to.

Doesn't mean that I don't think that people have the right to smoke, drink, and inject heroin into their eyeballs in the safety of their own homes.

I'm not in favour of banning adults from eating sugar-coated cereal. But then again, if they really wanted sugar-coated cereal they are perfectly capable of buying a bag of sugar and adding sugar to plain cereal until it is sugared to their taste.

I'm not sure where I stand on the banning of the sale of pre-sugared cereal. In part it feels very nanny-state. But on the other hand the way these products are advertised and sold affects what is seen as "normal" eating habits; I think it is a reasonable public-health goal to try to move "normal" eating habits more towards "healthy" than "unhealthy" (I think you need good evidence about what is healthy; and I'm not sure they have that in general) - partly I think that because I think that a lot of the time a lot of people just do the "normal" thing because they don't really have the time/effort/tuits to carefully think about everything that they do (I know I don't!).

Personally I'm particularly annoyed by the abundance of sugared porridge options - because I dislike sugared porridge and really wanted *salted* porridge which no-one seems to sell (yes, I can add my own salt! but if I buy instant porridge for eating whilst, eg, camping then carrying my own salt is added faff).

Here in the U.S., there's decent mandatory food labeling, but it still takes searching for it and doing mental arithmetic. It's ordinary for 2000 calories of Product to contain 200% or 300% of daily salt, for instance. I wouldn't mind a cap on that.

Sainsbury's over here has something like this on each packet:


as well as


So you can either do the maths with the second one, or just look at what's coloured red.

I wonder why 23.4% GDA of sugar is green but 15% of fat amber?

Oooh, good question!

I mostly just look at the pack to make sure that people haven't been slipping sugar into things like shepherd's pie. Which, sometimes, they do. I've seen everything from 3g to 15g of sugar in what should be meat, tomato, carrot, and potato. 3g is understandable (tomato has sugar in it, after all), but 15g? WTF?