So, two months into the new age of austerity, how is it panning out for you?
Here, (what with the pay freeze and my husband’s pending redundancy), we’re struggling a bit, as even severe efficiency savings - such as restricted visits to Costa and breaking my Boden shopping habit - aren’t going to produce the required budget reduction…
I think we’re looking at losing front-line services, particularly around the cleaning and gardening departments.
Fortunately, there has been plenty of material to take my mind of the financial gloom. I’m particularly concentrating on:
1. Impending death by dehydration due to the fact that we haven’t seen one drop of rain in Manchester for at least 10 days - which hasn’t happened, apparently, since 1896.
2. An email landing in my inbox from the Prime Minister asking for ideas on how to save money in the public services. Fortunately I do have a cracking idea, which I sent back to him yesterday. I’m still waiting for the White Paper to follow. My idea is this (actually, it’s not my idea, because they’re already doing it in Denmark, but perhaps they don’t teach Danish at Eton): the public finances are in crisis and desperate times call for desperate measures so let’s admit that the country can no longer afford obesity.
Forget the tired old arguments about personal choices, individual responsibility, etc, and stick to pure economics. The fact is we can no longer afford to continue paying for the consequences. We’ve tried public education, we’ve tried self-regulation of the food industry, and the result is exponentially increasing obesity rates and an unsustainable burden on the NHS. As Einstein once pointed out - a sign of insanity is to go on doing the same thing, and expect different results.
The government’s recent proposal to reduce regulation and force food companies to spend a tiny proportion of their vast profits on public health advertising must surely represent the most pathetic example of this insanity. Instead, let’s try something new which is in keeping with the desperate times we find ourselves in: tax fat-filled and sugar-laden food and drink an extra 25%, and pay this to the NHS so that the food companies are at last forced to share in the consequences of their actions.
Why is this any more unthinkable than slashing 40% from the police or education budget, as has been proposed last week? Why is it more unthinkable than cutting pensions and pay in the public sector, or scrapping replacing crumbling school buildings?
I’m not holding my breath. Anyone else replied to Mr Cameron yet?
Tags: Obesity
