It was a tweet from Eamonn Butler of the Adam Smith Institute which read:
"Welcomes the HP revolt. Today's ruling elites don't pass laws, just threaten to if you don't accept their values."
that led me to this article which appears in My Food, My Choice:
"It’s possible that Heinz caved to growing pressure from nanny state activists who are calling for population wide salt reduction as part of a larger anti-obesity effort. But, it should be clear from this case that when government overreaches and acts before there is proven evidence to support their decision, there will be unintended consequences: Heinz made the changes after signing up to the Coalition Government’s Responsibility Deal, which aims to reduce salt used by food manufacturers........"
Which, in turn, calls to mind another quotation:
"What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long."
Thomas Sowell
5 comments:
Liberals: Liberating you from food choices.
This is of course exactly how the EU works, it decides so and so must be regulated and the local apparatchiks, like Clegg and the senior civil service, leap to attention and start regulating while the politicians declare Britain is leading the way and properly regulating these extremely important and serious matters, and it has nothing to do with the EU, we decided to do it entirely on our own, there was no pressure to do it from anyone except our own wonderful British experts and scientists and that the rest of the EU are all doing the same thing is complete coincidence. With their level of experience it is little wonder the government realised it was so much easier to cajole big businesses to do these things without actually having to regulate for it, so easy to avoid any blame if the public don't like it.
As for "... people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it." this has been standard practice for years now. It seems to me that almost every single day some pompous prat of a so-called expert usually linked to a large charity is holding forth along the lines of "the government MUST regulate this ..." or "the government MUST legislate for this ...". Always enthusiastically supported bythe BBC and Guardian, of course. It has always been around in the background but it really seemed to mushroom while Blair was in power, to be expected, I suppose, after all, if any government in our entire history ever suffered from legislative diarrhoea it was his, and it is still rampant.
It's just as well I don't suffer from high blood pressure (and cannot abide food with insufficient salt) as I would have been dead from a stroke many times over.
AR: True
PC: Also true and very much so. From the tone if your comment, might I suggest a lie down in a darkened room, suitably accompanied by some alcoholic calming.........
WfW, it wouldn't help. It just so infuriates me that these idiots cannot see that every time you ask the government to do something you are firstly giving away your free will and autonomy on that point, secondly you are likely to end up with something unsatisfactory that only works on a sledgehammer basis, especially if it's only nuts you want to crack, and thirdly you are creating more government jobs, higher taxes and more bureaucracy.
Personally I think every single one of these people should be locked into town stocks for twenty-four hours and the 'value' of their suggestion, or more correctly the lack of, determined by how much they have been pelted!
PC: Sorry was just trying to help and calm you down! Love the suggestion in your last paragraph!
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