Denmark introduces "fat tax"

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news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/16081190

We should do the same - and use the money to pay for an income tax cut.

Agree with Hecate. The Islingonistas dictate to the poor what they should eat and drink and try to impose "binge-drinking" taxes and "sin taxes" on them for eating healthy meat and for choosing to smoke. Let the people be free, stop taxing and squeezing them.

'Who are these 'planners' saying pasta, rice and red meat are unhealthy exactly?'

Very good question. They are the same planners who tell us "we have only 50 days left to save the planet". It certainly isn't Pickles. 3littlefrogs' DD, an athlete who trains 3 times a week, came up against their teaching. She failed her assignment because she ate pasta, rice and red meat.

HGOTN.... You're right, of course. If you're not that bothered about nourishment and just want to have something to chew, you can spend nothing at all.

They are the same planners who are introducing smaller bins. They serve you, they love you.

Maybe I missed the memo but I don't recall anyone telling me about '50 days to save the planet'. As far as I am concerned, given its several billion year track-record, the planet is highly likely to emerge from anything we can throw at it intact. Us... the little wriggly things clinging to its surface... may find we have to move to higher ground, grow different crops or adapt in other ways. But the planet will still be here.

It's not always that you're not bothered.

There was a time in my life, when we were struggling so much that all we had for food - and household and toiletries - was £25 a week.

To feed 2 adults and 2 children (and 4 cats but they mainly ate the mice that lived in the bathroom and the field next to the cottage!)

I was never 'not bothered' about nourishment. I used to cry myself to sleep every night because I felt such a total failure as a parent.

But £25 a week is £25 a week and all the wishing and worrying about nourishment in the world didn't turn it into enough to fill my trolley with fruit and veg and good meat and decent pasta, etc. I had to put something in front of my children three times a day, 7 days a week AND give them loo roll to wipe their arses AND shampoo to wash their hair AND be able to wash their clothes AND be able to wash dishes...

Please don't imply that those who don't buy good, healthy food aren't bothered about nutrition. It's not true.

There you go again with the smaller bins thing... What is with you and bin-size? In the last few years we've gone from little old fashioned dustbin-shaped dustbins to big old wheelie bins. That's why I can't fill the buggers!!!

How did you miss the "50 days to save the planet" information. They gave that maximum publicity. It was about "changing hearts and minds". Our PM told us.

www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/gordon-brown-we-have-fewer-than-fifty-days-to-save-our-planet-from-catastrophe-1805648.html

Of course, the planet will survive. The planners know it too. It's a con, just as the 45 minute dossier was too.

Maybe I missed it because I don't read the Daily Mail or the Guardian?... Maybe you should try it?

'There you go again with the smaller bins thing'

Please read the linked Daily Mail article. All you need to remain informed is in the Daily Mail.

'Maybe I missed it because I don't read the Daily Mail or the Guardian?'

Don't you listen to the BBC either? They plastered it all over their news reports.

'I don't read the Daily Mail or the Guardian?... Maybe you should try it?

No, I will continue to read the Daily Mail, because I want to remain informed.

But it makes no sense. If you throw away 10kgs of rubbish why does the size of the bin matter? You either fill 1/2 a 20kg capacity bin or 2 x 5kg capacity bins... And no, sorry, I don't regard the Daily Mail as the Oracle at Delphi. Their reporting may be true or it may be not but it is always angled to suit their own agenda.

The size of the bin matters because the planners intend to ration your waste disposal and charge large families more. It's all about the 'carbon footprint', the scheme that the planners have dreamed up to tax humanity. Your 'carbon footprint' will be rationed. The planners test their schemes in New Zealand etc. and then introduce them to you. They've only just begun with the rationing. They say you won't get something for nothing and they talk about the desrving poor. Soon it will be about desrving humanity and exceeding of the 'carbon footprint'.

CogitoErgoSometimes

Where's the UK campaign then? Lobby groups like PETA are not exactly in a position to start charging taxes ... largely ignoried if anything.

Shush! Stop using logic, it may confuse some agenda's!

Taxing 'non-healthy' foods will not have the desired effect, if taxing items that have an adverse effect on health worked nobody would smoke.

EducationIsTheKeyNotTaxationTiggaxx

Here are the rationers again. Just like their campaigns against meat and dairy and their campaigns for the 'carbon footprint', here they want to ration your cancer drugs, because extending lives "can't be justified".

But the Daily Mail keeps up with them.

www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2042172/Dont-terminal-cancer-patients-drugs-just-prolong-lives-say-experts.html

actually i think a tax on sugar, not fat per se would be fine. we don't need refined sugar at all. we all need some fat though, surely. that would get a lot of the high fat / sugar - stuff e.g. donuts, cadbury's mini rolls, biscuits, pricier but keep cheese, meat etc ok.
money could be used to subsidise prices of fresh adn frozen fruit and veg and put to nhs.
i'd vote for it. sugar has been as harmful to my life as nicotene is to some other people's.

Is it about the carbon footprint? Or is it that land is at a bit of a premium in the UK and that stuffing it with ever-increasing amounts of rubbish is relatively expensive, not to say increasingly unpopular? The supermarket schemes to discourage us from using yet more plastic bags but to bring old ones back and re-use them has caught on without much fuss. There are few financial incentives and few penalties but customers seem to have risen to the challenge.

BTW. The cancer drug discussion is an ongoing ethical balance of medical need, future prognosis and cost of treatment. That opening sentence 'Patients with terminal cancer should not be given life-extending drugs, doctors said yesterday" is deliberately alarmist, will panic many and makes it sound like all doctors are heartless killers.

'Is it about the carbon footprint? Or is it that land is at a bit of a premium in the UK and that stuffing it with ever-increasing amounts of rubbish is relatively expensive, not to say increasingly unpopular? The supermarket schemes to discourage us from using yet more plastic bags but to bring old ones back and re-use them has caught on without much fuss.'

Yes it is about holding humanity back with the 'carbon footprint'. Land is not at a premium, a few percent of the pouplation own over 90% of the land in this country. They ration land and force people to live on ever smaller plots of land. The supermarket plastic bag scheme is just a training exercise to "change hearts and minds" and train people to accept rationing. The goods sold are still wrapped in plastic, and even our bin bags are made of plastic.

Also they could incinerate the waste as they do on the Continent. But that would not help the "hearts and minds" campaign. Far better to show pictures of piled up rubbish at landfill sites to educate the public and warn them that we only have 50 landfill sites left to save the planet.

Now you're making even less sense... Reusing a shopping bag 'holds back humanity?' I'm old enough (just) to remember the days before big supermarkets were the norm. Everyone used baskets, shopping bags or those tartan trolleys on wheels to get the stuff home in before supermarkets offered plastic bags for convenience. The biggest reason for weaning us off them is that the supermarket saves £££s off the bottom line. Nothing to do with carbon footprint or holding back humanity either.

'The biggest reason for weaning us off them is that the supermarket saves £££s off the bottom line.'

Do you really think that the supermarkets' profit margin is affected by the flimsy plastic bags that they offer, which they buy in bulk. Some of themn even make a profit by charging for the bags far more than cost price.

The bags are there to train people about 'sustainability', the planet and the further step of rationing of services. Holding back humanity is the goal of the elites and the 'carbon footprint' is how they will do it. All they are doing now is educating the public to accept it.

The Danish 'fat tax' is part of the education process. 3littlefrogs' DD was educated about pasta, rice and red meat not being good for her. The doctors educated the public about cancer drugs, and Ed Miliband introduced the concept of the "deserving poor" and not being able to get "something for nothing".

So who's first against the wall then Claig... the mythical 'planners', the Danes, the doctors or Ed Milliband? What a bizarre world you inhabit. BTW... Tesco used 2 billion fewer bags between 2006 and 2008 than they had previously. Even if they're a penny each bought bulk, that's... well... you do the maths.

Global warming is definitely a nice little earner for some. Billion bags by Tesco as cogito says simple to do the maths.

Also all these governments around the world raking in so called green taxes. It is not as if they use the money to plant trees is it. All straight to the treasury...