Chancellor uses budget to appease trendy food fetishists.

The Chancellor, George Osborne, has capitulated to food fanatics and has announced a 'sugar tax' on soft drinks. But even at the very moment that he announced the tax in the House of Commons he clearly had no idea of what he was doing.

Allegedly concerned with obesity in children he taxes soft drinks, Does he hope this will discourage consumption of soft drinks? Evidently not! For in his next breath he says the measure will raise an extra £512m in revenue! This will somehow be used to finance 'sport in schools'. How? Will manufacturers have to keep separate records to show to the taxman how much is spent on sugar? If he has already calculated the extra revenue he will garner to be half a billion pounds then this does not sound like much of a reduction in consumption of sugar. In fact it sounds more like the Government will be making a profit out of unhealthy drinks.

This measure clearly is not a health measure since the Chancellor is clearly more concerned with raising cash than cutting down on sugar consumption.

We on this blog have reported in the past on 'health measures' which are suspect. Remember, the first social welfare measures were introduced before WW1 when it was discovered that up to 40% of volunteers for the army in the Boer War were unfit. This had to be addressed since at the time Britain realised the Germans were a threat. Who are we being slimmed down to fight now?