For All Its Faults

Thank Heaven, I live in America:

Take the recent proposal by the Dutch Health Minister Hans Hoogervorst. In what we can only assume to be one of his more frivolous moments, Hoogervorst suggested forcing food outlets to reduce the size of the hamburgers they sell. It's an idea right out of the Soviet Union cookbook: the government issuing decrees on the maximum diameter of your burger (it makes you wonder what Hoogervorst would make of this initiative, by the way).

Others aim to shrink not the size of the average burger but the number of burgers sold. The way to achieve this aim is, apparently, to slap a big, fat tax on every burger sold -- a fat tax, if you like. In order to drum up support for this initiative, European politicians are even willing to sell the odd big fat lie, for instance when a British government minister claimed that no fewer than 900,000 people in his country were claiming incapacity benefit because of obesity, costing the British taxpayers a shocking £3.5 billion a year. Stunning figures indeed. Unfortunately, they were based on a small clerical error. The real figure, the minister in question, Lord Warner, later admitted in a press release, was not 900,000, but a rather less impressive 900. That's n-i-n-e h-u-n-d-r-e-d, a mere 899,100 fewer than first suggested. The real benefit costs of obesity were therefore approximately £3.5 billion less than the £3.5 billion mentioned above.

Yeah...I can't really say any more than "read the rest of the article, 'The Battle of Hamburger Hill.'"