Rachel Reeves is preparing to bring in a milkshake tax in an attempt to reduce obesity levels despite the complete failure of the 2018 sugar tax that has seen obesity levels accelerate rather than fall. The Telegraph has more.
The Chancellor has drawn up plans to impose a sugar tax on milk and yoghurt-based beverages for the first time, after concluding that they are damaging public health.
The levy will drive prices up by as much as 24p a litre, with officials expecting 93% of drinks on the market to be affected unless they change their recipes.
Ms Reeves also intends to make an existing tax on fizzy drinks more onerous. This would force the makers of drinks such as Irn-Bru and Ribena to cut sugar content or face having to pay the tax.
The Treasury, which disclosed the plans in a consultation published on Monday, insisted that the anti-obesity move was needed because its current levy had not reduced the nation’s sugar intake, which is still twice the recommended levels.
However, experts accused Sir Keir Starmer of another breach of his election pledge not to raise taxes on working people.
Dr Christopher Snowdon, head of lifestyle economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs, said: “The sugar tax has been such a dramatic failure that it should be repealed, not expanded.
“It has been costing consumers £300 million a year while childhood obesity rates have continued to rise.
“To claim it has been a success on the basis of a hypothetical reduction of one calorie a day is absurd. Sugar taxes have never worked anywhere. What happened to Starmer’s promise to not raise taxes on working people?”
The sugar tax – officially the “soft drinks industry levy (SDIL)” – is set at 18p per litre, or 24p for higher-sugar drinks.
It was introduced in 2018 and Ms Reeves announced in October that she planned to extend it. However, she did not give details.
At present, only fizzy drinks with more than 5g of sugar per 100ml qualify for the tax, but the document said the Government is proposing to reduce this to 4g: a more “ambitious target”.
The change will capture drinks such as Sanpellegrino lemonade, which has 4.5g of sugar per 100ml, as well as the likes of Lucozade, Old Jamaica Ginger Beer and Fanta, all of which have reduced their sugar content to slightly below the existing 5g threshold.
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Look just get up the f…..g ladder
Perhaps “Fire” is just a label that runs along a spectrum? Maybe the service should think twice about responding to an emergency call, if it’s just a “conflagration”, “blaze” or “flickering flames”.
But I’m sure that courses on the spectrum of gender will help them put out house fires more efficiently!
It’s hard to think of a less gender-relevant job… except that your female-male trans firefighter is going to be significantly lacking in physical strength, endangering both colleagues and the public.
Rapid promotion to a desk-based senior rank.
“in white Western cultures, gender is seen as being an either/or choice, also known as a binary”.
Well, in every culture on Planet Earth, since time immemorial, sex has been correctly recognised as an either/or fact (not a choice).
Their statement doesn’t even make sense on their own mad terms, because if your evil White western culture correctly observes that there are two sexes, they will also correctly observe that sex is not a choice but simply a fact determined by the hand of fate.
The fire service is not made up of private companies therefore it is a public service. Like the Civil Service, It is not a plaything for activists or similar individuals that haven’t matured enough to be aligned with reality. Would using the correct pronouns have allowed the fire chiefs at the Grenfell Tower disaster to have read the reality of the situation so as to abandon the rules and get the inhabitants out one way or the other?
All too stupid for words.
Another question to consider is who gave the fire service “educators” their own education in biology, sociology, philosophy, psychology and metaphysics to qualify them to teach these subjects to their staff.
I’ve no doubt that some ordinary firemen have, through choice or necessity like so many nowadays, foresworn careers in these subjects before signing up. So are they not perfectly entitled to tell these amateur experts to shove their theories up their hoses?
You can’t just mess with someone’s world view and epistemology even if you are the Messiah. I think the offence consists in the sheer effrontery of me telling my neighbour that I have a hitherto unrevealed truth to tell them and that once I have told them they will be expected to take it as gospel. This is not human interaction it is a reflection of something else. Fortunately even the simple-minded have the nous to see this for the most part.
For all you firefighters out there – there is a choice, you may have to sit and listen to this crap, but you don’t have to believe it.
Well, I suppose it is important to know if you are called out to rescue a cat from up a tree, whether it is a felis catus or whether it is someone identifying himself/herself/themselves as a cat.
It takes balls to go into a burning building.
It’s not possible to ‘teach’ adult human beings something that is biologically, scientifically, and morally bonkers…you may be able to persuade them that to prevent being disciplined or sacked they should just nod and agree…hopefully there’s enough sensible firefighters to disagree…and yes just put the fires out, rescue folks from fires, crashes, flooding, etc….