The lowest blow in City Hall’s war on wicked food is its recurring efforts to ban the buying of fizzy pop with food stamps. In an initiative that could easily be titled ‘No Coke for poor black folk’, the Bloombergers have sought federal permission to prevent welfare recipients from using government cash to purchase fizzy drinks. The killjoyism of this campaign, the Scrooge-infused miserabilism of it, is astounding. City Hall has launched an advertising campaign demonising sugary drinks as one of the great evils of our time, and its internal email correspondence about the campaign, which was leaked to the New York Times, shines a rather harsh light on the evidence-lite nastiness of the modern-day nudge-and-nanny industry. Scientific advisers emailed Thomas Farley, Bloomberg’s overactive health adviser, to say that the ad’s claim that drinking pop can make you gain 10 or 15 pounds is ‘simplistic’ and ‘exaggerated’. Overriding them, Farley responded: ‘I think what people fear is getting fat, so we need some statement about what is bad about consuming so many calories.’ Who needs evidence when you have fear? The ad shows human fat gurgling from the top of a can of soda. One City Hall employee could barely conceal his excitement: it is ‘deliciously disgusting’, he said in one of the emails that was leaked.
‘Deliciously disgusting’ — that just about sums up how New York’s new rulers view the huddled masses of this extravagant city. In a complete reversal of the traditional democratic relationship, Bloomberg and co don’t consider it their duty to mirror the desires and outlook of those who elected them. They want to remake New Yorkers as models of what they consider to be healthy citizenship. Much of this stuff comes from Thomas Farley, who is championed by both Bloomberg and the liberal media as an admirably thin jogging aficionado who believes in the power of the nudge to remould the citizenry. He is a ‘superman’, the New York Times recently gushed, who has ‘grasshopper-like legs’ (eurgh), a result of the fact that ‘he exercises seven days a week, loves his vegetables and has never smoked a cigarette’ (boring). This fanboy fluff piece was illustrated with a picture of Farley leading a workout of not-so-thin black New Yorkers, his grasshopper-like legs just as sure a sign of his superiority as his white skin would have been 100 years ago.
Brendan O’Neill, “The men who killed New York”, The Spectator, 2011-06-04
June 3, 2011
QotD: New York City, the capital city of Nanny State
June 2, 2011
Man succeeds in suicide attempt over an hour, as police and fire rescue watch
A hard-to-believe story from Alameda, California:
Fire crews and police could only watch after a man waded into San Francisco Bay, stood up to his neck and waited. They wanted to do something, but a policy tied to earlier budget cuts strictly forbade them from trying to save the 50-year-old, officials said.
A witness finally pulled the apparently suicidal man’s lifeless body from the 54-degree water.
The San Jose Mercury News reported that the man, later identified as Raymond Zack, spent nearly an hour in the water before he drowned.
Perhaps they assumed that the suicidal man would get too cold and come back to shore, but it’s hard to understand how they could stand around for an hour and not do anything.
June 1, 2011
When is plastic better for the environment than paper?
The answer: when the product gets dumped in a landfill.
Stateside boffins say that, contrary to popular perception, it would often be better for the planet if people avoided using biodegradable products compliant with the recommended US government guidelines.
This is because biodegradable wastes — for instance cardboard cups, “eco friendly” disposable nappies, various kinds of shopping and rubbish bags etc — often wind up in landfill, where they will degrade and emit methane. Methane is, of course, a vastly more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2, so it is seen as important to prevent it getting into the atmosphere.
[. . .]
The answer, according to Barlaz, is to get away from the idea that rapid decomposition is always a good idea — especially on things which won’t be recycled much but will probably wind up in landfill, for instance disposable nappies, fast-food packaging etc.
“If we want to maximize the environmental benefit of biodegradable products in landfills,” Barlaz says, “we need to both expand methane collection at landfills and design these products to degrade more slowly — in contrast to FTC guidance.”
May 30, 2011
Licensing Salem’s witches
Katie Zezima reports on the surge of witches looking to be licensed in Salem, Massachusetts, after the city council made it easier to get a license:
“It’s like little ants running all over the place, trying to get a buck,” grumbled Ms. Szafranski, 75, who quit her job as an accountant in 1991 to open Angelica of the Angels, a store that sells angel figurines and crystals and provides psychic readings. She says she has lost business since the licensing change.
“Many of them are not trained,” she said of her rivals. “They don’t understand that when you do a reading you hold a person’s life in your hands.”
[. . .]
But not everyone is sure that quantity can ensure quality. Lorelei Stathopoulos, formerly an exotic dancer known as Toppsey Curvey, has been doing psychic readings at her store, Crow Haven Corner, for 15 years. She thinks psychics should have years of experience to practice here.
“I want Salem to keep its wonderful quaint reputation,” said Ms. Stathopoulos, who was wearing a black tank top that read “Sexy witch.” “And with that you have to have wonderful people working.”
Under the 2007 regulations, psychics must have lived in the city for at least a year to obtain an individual license, and businesses must be open for at least a year to hire five psychics. License applicants are also subject to criminal background checks.
May 29, 2011
More on the Anglo-Danish Marmite affair
Colby Cosh rounds up the details on the Marmite affair:
Nothing stirs the blood of the British like a nice slapfight over European regulation, and this goes double when food is involved. The UK press has found its latest excuse for tut-tutting and finger-waggling in the unlikeliest of places: at the bottom of the squat, distinctive little jar in which the vile breakfast spread Marmite is sold. This week, English-language journals in Denmark reported that the Scandinavian kingdom’s food regulator was having the dark brown yeast extract cleared from the shelves of shops which serve Brit expatriates.
The British reared up as one, displaying a spirit of indignant unity. “What have the Danes ever done for global cuisine?” thundered the Belfast Telegraph, breaking Godwin’s Law into splinters over its knurled Ultonian knee. (Unfortunately, a good answer might be “Not given it Marmite, at any rate.”) Fans of the quasi-foodstuff gathered on Facebook to form a “Marmite army”. Social campaigners used the ban to call attention to dubious patches in Denmark’s record on human rights and environmentalism.
As he points out, nobody at the Danish food nanny office suddenly issued a ban: technically Marmite had never been cleared for import at all. So it’s just a matter of filling in a form or two and Bob’s your uncle? Not quite:
Marmite’s status as a “fortified food” has apparently only just been noticed, and the DVFA says that “it has not received an application for marketing in Denmark of Marmite or similar products with added vitamins or minerals.” A glance at the DVFA’s procedure for obtaining approval to market these foods reveals why brand owner Unilever might not be in such a hurry to file. (And it also reveals that free-trade fanatics like me should probably rein in their admiration for the EU’s trade barriers just a little.) The agency not only requires compliance with EU-wide regulations, but insists that each product pass an “individual risk assessment” performed using a made-in-Denmark scientific procedure.
May 26, 2011
The Danish Marmite affair thickens
Lester Haines has the latest on the plight of ex-pat Brits suffering under a dictatorial food regime in Denmark:
According to this official statement, neither Marmite nor its Oz rival Vegemite are banned in Denmark, because they’ve never actually been approved for sale.
A 2004 law controls the distribution of products with “added vitamins, minerals or other substances”, and in order to punt such foodstuffs, they “need to be approved by the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration before the product can be marketed”.
[. . .]
In effect, then, those shops selling Marmite are dealing in unauthorised enhanced substances.
We and the Daily Mail have no doubt that any attempt to legalise Marmite would be met with a swift rejection, in defiance of EU directives on free trade. As Copenhagen-based expat Lyndsay Jensen put it: “They don’t like it because it’s foreign. But if they want to take my Marmite off me, they’ll have to wrench it from my cold dead hands.”
It’s been said that Marmite is an “acquired taste”, but Denmark’s health regulators are moving quickly to ensure that Danes never have the opportunity to develop that taste. Of course, like most other forms of prohibition, it might actually increase the attractiveness of the “forbidden fruit”.
Denmark has a long coastline, so smuggling in the little black jars across the North Sea would be quite possible . . .
May 25, 2011
Denmark moves to save its citizens from Marmite
Danish diners will no longer be subject to the horrors of Marmite, thanks to swift and decisive action by the country’s Veterinary and Food Administration:
According to the advert, you either love it or hate it. As far as Marmite goes, the Danish government hates the stuff. That at least is the conclusion that many foreigners have drawn following a ban on the sticky brown yeast extract.
The sales ban enforces a law restricting products fortified with added vitamins. Food giant Kellogg’s withdrew some brands of breakfast cereal from Denmark when the legislation passed in 2004, but until now Marmite had escaped the attention of Danish authorities.
“What am I supposed to put on my toast now?” asked British advertising executive Colin Smith, who has lived in the country for six years. “I still have a bit left in the cupboard, but it’s not going to last long.”
I celebrated the decision by having some Marmite on crackers for lunch yesterday. More for me!
Update: “Let the rise of the Marmite Army begin!”:
“Spread the word, but most importantly spread the Marmite,” wrote Kelly. “On every street in good old Denmark, show ’em what they’re missing after they’ve banned this iconic product from our supermarket shelves! Make it a Marmite day everyday folks! Let the rise of the Marmite army begin!”
But even on the page, opinion remained divided. A perplexed Ray Weaver wrote: “but… it’s horrible…”
On the page calling for a boycott of Danish goods, fan Joe Figg feared the ban could have far-reaching consequences. “This dastardly move could bring about global warming of toast,” he wrote. While Mark Salisbury wrote: “Down with spread fascism!”
May 12, 2011
Record gasoline prices drive journalists insane
Well, that’s the only way to explain the causes when the reflexively right-wing Toronto Sun starts frothing at the mouth about “unregulated derivative speculators” while the staunchly left-wing Toronto Star claims “The oil industry doesn’t like high gasoline prices any more than you do.”
Jon, who sent me links to both articles, titled it “Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!”
I think the election has unhinged people — or at least finally driven out the pins for those who were already well on their way to being unhinged. [. . .] Go to Google and search the Sun‘s site for “fat cats AND pigs” and you’ll find a Saganesque hyperbole of hits from just the last three days. And a similar number of calls for increased government regulation of the oil industry.
I’ll cut the linked Sun article above some slack, as the author does mention unwashed hippies as being part of the problem — the guy does just a little to maintain the Sun‘s conservative front — but the overall tone from the paper in the last few days has been just a little weird.
That, and you could see the track marks all over yesterday’s Sunshine Girl. What is that paper coming to, I ask?
Update: On the other, other hand, here’s Stephen Gordon from the Globe & Mail‘s Economy Lab on why high gasoline prices are good for Canada:
If there is a proposition in economics that can aspire to law-like status, it is surely Easterbrook’s Law: “All economic news is bad.” This is a truly powerful insight, and it explains how phenomena that would ordinarily be seen as good news are generally portrayed as a problem demanding government intervention. And so it is with the recent rise in gasoline prices.
[. . .]
So how can higher gasoline prices be consistent with increased purchasing power? The answer is that we are observing a relative price shift. The prices of some goods — notably gasoline — have increased. But the prices of other goods have fallen, most notably imported goods that have been made cheaper by an appreciating Canadian dollar. The overall net effect on Canadians’ buying power is positive.
To be sure, there are some people for whom this shift is genuinely bad news: many with low incomes may not be able to easily reduce their consumption of gasoline. But the real problem facing these households is that they have low incomes.
May 9, 2011
May 6, 2011
CRTC: broadband decision now in government’s hands
Michael Geist sums up the CRTC’s universal service decision:
The CRTC issued its universal service decision this week, which included analysis of funding mechanisms for broadband access, broadband speed targets, and whether there should be a requirement to provide broadband access as part of any basic service objective. Consumers groups and many observers were left disappointed. The CRTC declined to establish new funding mechanisms (relying on market forces) or changes to basic service and hit on a target of 5 Mbps download speed (actual not advertised) to be universally available by the end of 2015. Critics argued this left consumers on their own and suggested that the targets were underwhelming, particularly when contrasted with other countries.
While I sympathize with the frustration over the CRTC’s decision to essentially make broadband a “watching brief,” I wonder why Canadians should expect the CRTC to lead on broadband targets and funding. Universal access to globally competitive broadband (in terms of speed, pricing, and consumer choice) is a perhaps the most important digital policy issue Canada faces and it should not be viewed through a narrow telecom regulatory lens.
April 29, 2011
Stephen Gordon: Layton needs to avoid disruptive monetary policies
It’s almost as if nobody bothered to read what the NDP had in their platform until last week . . . and paying even less attention to what Jack Layton said on the campaign trail. They’re paying attention now:
In my recent post on the prospects of a possible NDP government, I came to the conclusion that not very much would change; their platform had none of the transformational elements that had been a feature of so many NDP campaigns in the past.
But if recent reports are correct, and if Jack Layton seriously thinks that it would be a good idea for a Prime Minister to instruct the Bank of Canada to keep interest rates low, then this benign assessment no longer holds. Such an intervention would be a serious mistake that would seriously endanger the recovery, and could generate another spiral of higher inflation and higher interest rates.
The first thing that would happen after such an order is that Governor Mark Carney would have no choice but to resign. This would be a serious shock to the financial system, and unless his successor could extract a promise that no further orders would be forthcoming, the Bank of Canada’s credibility would simply disappear.
You remember all those smug, self-congratulatory pieces about how well Canada had weathered the recession and how well positioned the country was to take advantage of economic growth? Perhaps this is the imp of the perverse coming back for a revision of all that hearty back-patting.
April 25, 2011
Grameen Bank cleared of “irregularities”, but Yunus will not be re-instated
The Bangladeshi government has completed their investigation into financial irregularities at microfinance specialist Grameen Bank, but the founder, Muhammad Yunus, will not be brought back:
Yunus, 70, was dismissed by a central bank order — upheld by the high court and supreme court — on the grounds that he had overstayed in his position and refused requests to quit.
Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel peace prize, set up Grameen, which means village in Bengali, and had been the bank’s managing director since 2000.
Lauded at home and abroad by politicians and financiers as the “banker to the poor”, he has been under attack by the government since late last year, after a Norwegian documentary alleged the bank was dodging taxes.
Yunus denied any wrongdoing and a Norwegian government investigation later also cleared him of any malpractice.
April 24, 2011
No 21-gun salute for royal wedding due to “health and safety” concerns
Ah, those “elf’n’safety” goons strike again:
When Prince William and Kate Middleton leave Westminster Abbey on Friday, there will be no 21-gun salute to mark their union. Mandrake can disclose that plans for such an honour in Hyde Park were abandoned because of fears over “health and safety” and “noise pollution”.
One of the Prince’s pals tells me: “We thought it would be a fitting tribute for the wedding, but we were told that, because of health and safety, and noise pollution concerns, it would involve too much red tape to get a new salute authorised.”
Twenty-one gun salutes in Hyde Park and Green Park are a traditional military honour, carried out by the King’s Troop, Royal Horse Artillery, to mark important royal occasions including Coronation Day and the official birthdays of the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and the Prince of Wales. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s wedding in 1840 began with such a tribute.
April 20, 2011
One size rules don’t fit all
Dentists who have their spouses on their patient list are running the risk of losing their licenses:
Dentists are permitted to treat their spouses — but they better not have sex.
Put another way, dentists who have sex with their spouses better not be messing around with their teeth.
This is the current law of the land in Ontario, one that many dentists are secretly flouting and calling “dumb” and “stupid.”
In an interview with the Star earlier this week, Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews conceded the dentists may have a point and has agreed to review the restriction.
H/T to Chris Greaves for the link.
April 9, 2011
QotD: “In terms of outcomes — the greatest individual Liberty for the greatest number — Canada is a FAR more Libertarian country than the United States”
As a conscious, de jure Libertarian; and antiauthoritarian to the very core of my being — I have more than once observed that in terms of outcomes — the greatest individual Liberty for the greatest number — Canada is a FAR more Libertarian country than the United States.
You see — and you will find this point made in core libertarian writings — liberty requires social infrastructure in order to ensure basic, common wants; otherwise those wants and needs can be and WILL be used by the minority against the majority to reduce them to a state of permanent serfdom.
Unless you can afford to say “take this job and shove it,” you are not free. Arguably, it should not be a trivial step, without consequence, but it absolutely MUST be possible — or you are not living in a free society.
Likewise, there must be robust regulations and vigilant guardians watching over the markets and the commons, so that — well, so that what is happening in economic terms in the US and Europe, does not happen. And in Canada, that is the case. Canada has not abandoned regulatory oversight of critical industries in order to pander to would be Madoffs and Enrons and the result is more — not less — economic opportunity and practical liberty for more people.
But US Libertarians are of the opinion that Liberty is the same as License. It is a movement of the self-indulgent, those who cry that “I have mine, and you are a luser who deserves nothing from me.”
Bob King, “Basement Bunker Libertarians”, Graphictruth, 2009-04-30
