Tony Blair has been criticised after his arrogance today, suggesting junk food is taxed until it’s too expensive for the poor to eat, in a bid to reduce obesity in the United Kingdom.
The former prime minister urged the Government to have a more interventionist approach to public health, with an increase in the sugar tax alongside new levies on foods high in fat and salt, and advertising prohibitions.
He said ministers needed to help create the circumstances in which poorer families choose healthy food and likened the situation to the fight against smoking when he was in No 10, which included a ban on publicly lighting up indoors.
In an interview with the Times, he dismissed concerns about a ‘nanny state’ approach as a ‘minority view’, and said direct action was needed to make Britons take personal responsibility for their health.
But Professor Karol Sikora, a leading cancer expert who’s an advisor to the World Health Organisation, compared the concept to the Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez) in London, the £12.50 daily green car levy whose expansion has provoked a surge of protest over the summer.
He said that Tony Blair’s arrogance knows no bounds. Who will end up financially suffering? The poor, just like the Ulez.
He said that public health wasn’t purely about bans, taxes and restrictions, but Tony Blair wanted to put out a positive message, encouraging and enabling people to take responsibility for their health.
If they want people to eat healthy, then they should take the not-so-healthy products off the racks and make the healthy products affordable, but of course, they won’t do that.
Tony Blair told the Times that we’ve got to shift from a service that’s treating people when they’re ill to a service that’s focused on well-being, on prevention and how people can live more healthy lives.
He said that you can’t run a modern healthcare system where people are going to live much longer unless they take some responsibility. You’ve got to help them do that, and he said the way of helping them do that, particularly with poor families, was to create the circumstances in which they can choose healthier foods.
This week it was revealed that record numbers of young girls are hitting puberty too soon, with some as young as four, as experts blame obesity as a fundamental factor.
Does this make Tony Blair an egomaniac, just wanting to control people’s lives for his own kicks, and should he be ignored as it does appear that he could be a threat to democracy and normal people’s lives?
The simple truth is that Tony Blair doesn’t care about us. He doesn’t care about our children or our freedoms, welfare or safety. The only thing that he’s interested in is his own power, and to keep expanding it wherever doable.
This is out-and-out communism, and he’s a danger to our society.
Governments are all about running our lives. They’re supposed to support the people but they never do because it’s all about them. Anything to inflate their ego and bank accounts.
To be fair Tony Blair has always been an idiot and a first-class douchebag and will always be.
He lectures about unhealthy food like junk food, but in fact, he’s the junk food of politics. What gives him the right to dictate to anyone what they can and can’t do?
So, the wealthy can be obese, but if you’re poor you have to be skinny. One rule for them and another for us.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 