Future Crumble

A legal case against some expensive knead-and-primp merchants provides a useful glimpse at the workings of our new, deregulated nation, where buccaneering entrepreneurs steer by pluck and gumption, nail the skin of their teeth to the mast and talk through the seat of their pants. West Sussex county council has prosecuted the luxury "wellness centre" chain Champneys for allegedly claiming that cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease could all be avoided by taking the corporate apple crumble according to directions. At rates of up to £230 a night, such medical miracles might arguably be the least one should expect; but the humourless local authority has filed nineteen charges and the trial would have started today but for the minor legal technicality of neither side attending court. It would presumably be too much to hope that the defendants were kept away by an attack of food poisoning or a Biblical inundation of the mineral springs; for its own part, West Sussex county council is Conservative, and therefore no doubt has a conscientious objection to legal judgements being made by unelected enemies of the people just because they happen to know something about the law.