Trimming Away the Flab

Britain's lissom, slender Head Boy has ordered his prefects to squash a junior tick who proposed a tax on sugary foods. The minister for life sciences had implied that child obesity might possibly be lessened by reducing the profits of companies whose products make children obese. As might be expected, Britain's Head Boy and his chums regard any tax on corporate profiteers as a tax on hard-working families; they did initiate a voluntary "responsibility deal" whereby companies agreed to make their products healthier and were subject to no sanctions at all if they failed to do so, but somehow or other this has failed to have much of an effect. As playground bullies of long standing, the Bullingdons' own preferred solution is a war on fat people, and the Minister for NewsCorp and Profitable Healthcare, Jeremy C Hunt, is already planning the next phase of the campaign. Given Hunt's background as a Murdoch drone, doubtless ritual humiliation will have a role to play alongside the taxpayer-funded forcible surgery.