*cough* context *cough* missing half the quote *cough*
The sugar has been removed, objective completed.
This 'sugar tax' crap is doing my head in!
- Thread starter MrRockliffe
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*cough* context *cough* missing half the quote *cough*
The sugar has been removed, objective completed.
Why did you miss the child obesity bit?
Surely to be claimed a success child obesity levels have to drop.
I didn't miss the child obesity part, I'm not sure if you are trolling or genuinely didn't interpenetrate the sentence correctly.
The word that makes the difference is 'contribute'. AKA the levy on its own is not designed to reduce childhood obesity and is a part of a much wider long term strategy aimed at tackling the issue.
The levy's only objective was to remove added some sugar from soft drinks or tax them to change people's purchasing behaviour, its done that and no one can really argue otherwise.
The money that it raises is then being pumped in to fund other parts of the strategy like education. If you don't believe me I suggest you read whats been published on gov.uk
Well yeah of course the .gov website says that! Public health is perhaps the no1 excuse used to raise revenue, as if 500mill is seen as nothing by the government, they are up in arms about comparitvely tiny tax evasion lol.
Taxation isn't what reduced tobacco consumption either, it was the research proving it caused cancer.
Because societal changes see a continuing shift in the attitude towards tobacco, resulting in ever decreasing consumption, it's not cause and effect.
The sugar tax already has this complication, the sugar tax only applies to added sugar drinks, not fruit juice for example.
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Is this true? I see my usual protein has gone up but didn't make that connection between the two??
I don't think it's related.
For example, this government already added an extortionate 20% Vat to fruit drinks like smoothies, if we believe the governments logic that the sugar tax reduces the amount of cola people buy, then this vat on smoothies must similarly reduce the amount of fruit people consume thus negatively affecting the populations health.
consuming smoothies != consuming fruit, thus the tax. Fruit juice is really, really high in sugar, with some evidence suggesting that fructose is the kind of sugar that does the most damage.
A lot of the fibre in fruit is lost when making fruit juice, leaving little else but sugar.
A lot of the fibre in fruit is lost when making fruit juice, leaving little else but sugar.
Not in relation to sugar tax. But years back protein used to be Vat free. Then they decided to slap tax on it which was annoying at the time.
I never mentioned fruit juice. Smoothies = blended fruit, identical chemical composition and vitamin content.
I knew that one was coming, £500 million is pocket change compared to the £769 billion total tax receipts, its not even in the margin or error. To put £500 million in perspective, it would cover just housing benefit spend for less than 8 days.
As for tax evasion, tiny? Not sure you see the same figures as everyone else. The latest tax gap estimates put tax evasion at £5.3 billion and the hidden economy is a further £3.2 billion. The overall tax gap is £33 billion.
Likewise. So often I see the same old tired arguments about x tax being so small it's "relatively insignificant" compared to total taxation etc, much the same arguments people used to excuse the cleverly disguised VAT raising measure that was the minimum alcohol unit price. If you think that that certain politicians didn't do very well for themselves out of the £500mill estimated revenue that was being raised by this measure and the lobbying groups you're very much mistaken.
The government's fudged figures aside, according to you the government isn't interested in such small figures as they are a relatively insignificant part of the total tax take.
However the government don't simply make a big deal out of the total estimated evasion, but single individuals who only have liabilities in the region of a few million, hell they zealously peruse those who even commit a few £k in benefit fraud.
So it has no quantified objective and uses subjective words like contribute, encourage, reduce without qualifiers.
Thus it's a wishy, washy, untestable, open-ended, wide scoped, open to interpretation bit of standard modern politics.
Also, "government plan's" is not defined, except to "contribute to reduce childhood obesity" (noted this is without a deadline).
So the only testable aspect of this, and it requires some assumptions, is if it does contribute to the governments plans to reduce childhood obesity and ... the only possible test for that is the reduction of childhood obesity.
Ergo it can only be said to have worked if it reduces childhood obesity.
For example, what if it turns out that sugar is not the problem? What if it turns out that the campaign against sugar sends children elsewhere to something as bad or worse?
Then you change policy again. You can only go on the knowledge you know at the times, you can't be frozen into inaction forever by saying 'well, we don't know the absolute truth so better do nothing'
And now they are going after banning special offers of sweets and crisps at the checkout.
The end of this will be just like cigarettes with them locked away in cabinets behind a special counter with fat kids on the packets.
******* stupid nanny state.
The end of this will be just like cigarettes with them locked away in cabinets behind a special counter with fat kids on the packets.
******* stupid nanny state.
Such as?
And it does have the clear stated objective of reducing sugar content which it has done
Drugs prohibition is just another charade. They manage to inflate the price of drugs by thousands of percent above their actual value by using law, because they automatically own all the money tied up in drugs because its proceeds of crime. This whole drugs prohibition thing is just to help retain cash. And so is this sugar tax lol.
People think some random politicians care about some fatty who's gonna fat? Unbelievable.
Fatty will be fat and/or unhealthy even if sugar becomes classified as Class A lol. This is a FACT.
The only reason sugar is in the scope of governments is because it's a necessary food and ALL people need it, not just fatties.
lol yep. This whole charade is just utterly stupid, I honestly cannot believe even one person would lap this crap up it's just such BS but i guess it goes hand in hand with the dumbing down of the nation and the current propaganda/mind control culture.