NJS is going to love this!

[alden]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15137948

We have a lot of Danish members. I guess they will be staying slimmer now?

In disbelief

Michael

[Gruto]

If they combine it with lowering my income tax, I will accept it. However, I am afraid they forget that part

[Milo]

The fat tax is ridiculous. It is detrimental to business, as if growth was not low enough already, and the choice of consumers will be limited. For instance, one well-known dairy has halted domestic distribution of several specialty cheeses because of the red tape involved in reporting their fat content to tax authorities.

The only persons likely to get slimmer as a result of this tax are the owners of small and medium sized enterprises who'll lose weight from worrying over the sanctions they are liable to incur if they don't do the paperwork right.

Milo

[soren]

Oh yes, we had an election recently and indeed we'll be staying a LOT slimmer in the future. But that's due to the lack of financial knowledge on behalf of the new government; not their health care politics

[NJS]

I am duly spluttering! Fortunately, Brazil is not a country where carrying extra weight or eating lots of saturated fat is likely to become an issue and Denmark is too cold to visit for long. I don't know who these people in government think that they are to know what's best for us. If they truly were of the grade of Platonic Guardians, one might listen to them but, more often than not, they are selfish, greedy control-freaks, with their fingers in a till somewhere. Moreover, what effect is this going to have on sales of their famous butter? I doubt whether they have even thought of that one - just as the anti-smoking lobby didn't realize that the 'smoking ban' would force many pubs to close with a loss of thousands of jobs of the employees whose health was the ostensible justification, in the first place, for stopping certain adults from enjoying themselves.
-000oooOOO
NJS

[davidhuh]

I already see the brave Danish shopping good cheese and butter through online stores in other EU countries, while the genuine Danish dairy produce has to be sold at dumping prices elsewhere and farmers getting additional subsidies to cover the losses

Denmark has certainly opened Pandora's box. Life is a sexually transmitted fatal illness (Willy Rozenbaum).

Cheers, David

[NJS]

I already see the brave Danish shopping good cheese and butter through online stores in other EU countries, while the genuine Danish dairy produce has to be sold at dumping prices elsewhere and farmers getting additional subsidies to cover the losses

Denmark has certainly opened Pandora's box. Life is a sexually transmitted fatal illness (Willy Rozenbaum).

Cheers, David

Succinctly and cogently put, davidhuh; if I might say so. There is absolutely no long-term thinking in many government policies these days: just chuck some mantra out there that will, superficially, please the majority of morons and secure the votes next time around! Ah! We know their 'secret'. Few will utter it.
NJS

[NJS]

I see that dimbo Cameron and his muppets are now giving the matter consideration! If they tried that stunt in Brazil there'd be another revolution! The little bar around the corner sells the most excellent fresh pork crackling and the main local eaterie has a BBQ with spit-roasted joints of meat, which always include a selection with melt-in-the-mouth beef fat left on. Yummy-scrummy. All the Tin-Hitlers of the world should be treated to a plateful. Anyway, I have been out and bought some breakfast sausages and a fresh stock of pipe 'baccy, in a small protest at all this global, hobby-horse nonsense! Don't smoke! Don't drink! and now: Don't eat! Why don't they just introduce a law everywhere that 'all enjoyment, apart from intellectual onanism, is banned'? Then the human race would surely die out, because even actual sex would be proscribed.

Part of the momentum for all these campaigns seems to flow from the desire to cut health care costs. I wonder whether this is driven by the need to cut the costs because 'banning smoking' has probably lessened the tax revenue, to fund health care, to a very significant extent.
NJS

[Costi]

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[Simon A]

The Australian Green Party, (or Watermelon Party, green on the outside and red on the inside), has also picked up on this saturated fat tax nonsense. Given they control the balance of power in Australia, it will get an ill-deserved hearing.

[alden]

This is so amusing when you think about the citizens of another Euroland country who consume fat like it was air and think it is good for them: foie gras, rich pate, buttered croissants, butter, roasted lard (mmm good), fat enladen beef, rich desserts loaded with beurre etc.

Any idea what country they may be from? A few hints might help you. They are the slimmest EU citizens. They have the lowest incidence of heart disease. They drink like poissons.They start all their new born off at the hospital with a pack of Gauloises so they grow up fuming their entire lives. Give up?

It’s just as well. You would not want to go there anyway. Trust me!

Cheers

Michael

PS One of the great natural wines from this country has this as a label:

[NJS]

Costi, the LL would be banned for sure! It's certainly true that there is a frenzy to pretend that we are not born to die and it arises in some measure out of the increasing secularization of western civilization; or, at least, a refusal to accept death as a natural process, whatever happens afterwards. There is far too much clinging to the wreckage and encouragement to do so.

I guess that turning the Tin-Hitler's health warnings into a post-modern irony (as in the wine label) is a good way of dealing with the situation. Many of our activities affect the quality of life and our longevity but I am sure that, as a necessary implication from Michael's point, the fact that the French enjoy eating and drinking as much as they do, is a sign that lust for living is a very healthy thing, regardless of all the incidental dangers along the way of indulgence in the increasing category of 'hazardous substances'.
NJS

[Milo]

The Australian Green Party, (or Watermelon Party, green on the outside and red on the inside), has also picked up on this saturated fat tax nonsense. Given they control the balance of power in Australia, it will get an ill-deserved hearing.

Surprisingly, the Danish tax was voted by a nominally liberal-conservative government.

Less surprisingly, the new center-left coalition that took office earlier this week vows to increase the similar taxes on tobacco and alcohol.

Milo

[NJS]

Milo - None of this is surprising. Most politicians are control-freaks (except when it comes to tackling real crime of course) and it is worth remembering that it was a so-called 'liberal' British government that introduced the Mental Deficiency Bill of 1913, promising incarceration for life and even sterilization of the mentally 'subnormal' to prevent the 'proliferation of the feeble-minded'. Thank God that the Bill was withdrawn or the UK would have been twenty years ahead of Hitler. We all need to watch what the politicians are up to and protest at illiberalism and inhumanity, in whatever camouflage it comes at us. It pains me to reflect that it is those in my generation (and I amongst them) who are responsible for the way the world is going.
NJS

[zeitgeist]

I am disappointed in some of the slightly... overheated comments in this thread.

Consider that the Danes have an excellent public health system in which everyone is paid a decent European wage, state health insurance for all (that pays for a significant proportion of those that opt for private healthcare), and finally pays a decent pension to those incapacitated by chronic illness. It costs ~10% of GDP, a not insignificant sum in the case of Denmark.

They also run a relatively tight financial ship, as many members here who live in more... debt-ridden countries may or may not recognise.

In light of these, I think that the proposition makes some sense, even if the implementation is somewhat not quite ideal.