Should we all get fat and happy upon British Sugar? Or should we bankrupt the NHS with obesity fuelled by British sugar?
On that one capital letter rests the latest demand from the National Farmers’ Union, which is up in arms that Tate & Lyle is labelling its foreign-produced sugar with a British flag, simply because it is processed here.
As Roger Livesey says in the Life and Death of Colonel Blimp : ” It wasn’t a foreign country, it was Jamaica.”
Ottokrinh
Absolutely one of the best films ever.
I don’t like sugar beet. It can’t compete against cane without subsidy. The area we have planted in it could be better used. And then I wouldn’t have to put up with the mud, the slow tractors, the smelly processing works and all. Let the market decide, but ship the externalities to somewhere else. Selfish? Moi?
Rhoda, I’m happy for Oz to have another market for its sugar.
As for the interests of the UK, I’d argue that sugar is not a crucial commodity, the absence of which would seriously affect the safety and/or prosperity of the country. I’d also argue that there is a global market in sugar, and it is extremely improbable that any cartel or monopoly could be established.
Thus there is no reason not to leave the question of the UK’s sugar supply to the market.
Another triumph for clear writing. Which one capital letter?
TMB, Sugar – sugar.
Point obscured by the blog format capitalising the first letter of each word in the title header.
TMB, PJF
N
B?
The idea of growing sugar beet as an alternative to importing cane sugar was not the least of the many lunacies of the CAP. It should now be relegated to history alongside the Tanganyika Groundnut Scheme.
I would be quite happy to see all the beet grown around here replaced by more useful crops, like barley!
@ Chris Miller
It *is* history – Napoleon’s response to Nelson’s blockade of ships carrying sugar from the West Indies to France!
‘Bankrupt’ the NHS? It’s assets are State-owned and it has no money or profits just costs, being paid for out of taxes, so unfortunately it cannot be bankrupted. Besides, religions never go bankrupt.
It is the very fact it cannot go bankrupt that keeps it from ever putting consumers first, and being efficient. It, or rather the people running it and working in it, don’t need to, their jobs are safe come what may – and they always want £££MORE!
Thanks, John77, I’d forgotten that amusement. 🙂