Drink, smoke, vape, eat fast food? You're not welcome in the Labour Party

Mr R. McDonald - Labour Membership refused

I don't know about you, dearest reader, but I'm not at all surprised to read that the Labour Party has turned down the request from McDonalds to open a 'pop-up' restaurant at the Party's annual conference. I am slightly surprised that the Party hasn't issued a lengthy, slogan-ridden justification for the refusal but this leaves us open to speculate as to the reasons.

Top of the list of reasons will be some sort of ideological objection to Ron and his burgers. After all the modern Labour Party does ideology, near everything is washed through the sieve of adopted political constraints. And, as a massive multinational fast food retailer, McDonalds is going to be pretty far removed from adherence to the Party's virtuous views on employment rights, public health, taxation, advertising and, of course, the children.

Right now, however, Labour is hiding behind it being the sort of 'commercial' decision they don't discuss in public. Meaning that we can tell the truth about the party - it's run by a bunch of right-on, snobby hippies who are just a bit uncomfortable with the sort of eating habits that those ordinary voters get up to. Especially the fat ones.

As we discovered from some 'research' by lefty politics professors, the left in Britain is no longer a party of the people who drag themselves bleary-eyed from bed in the morning to go and work in a regular sort of job - whether answering the phone in a call centre, making interminable cups of coffee for slightly rude people or flipping burgers for other ordinary people to eat. The sort of people who are active in the Labour Party simply don't do these sorts of jobs, they work doing public health campaigns or equalities monitoring in the public sector and third sector. Labour's enthusiasts are filled with righteous passion for banning fatty, sugar-filled and meat-ridden food (for the sake of the children, of course) and find the persistent preference of the regular worker for fast food, cigarettes and cheap lager slightly distasteful.

Here are those professors on who the left are today:

"People like us academics and the London elite just shrug off concerns about immigration, they shrug off concerns about the decline of Britain as a military power.

"This is where I think some of animosity is coming from and the electorate is saying we count too."

These are the people who Labour leaders will turn to ahead of tuning their ears to the worries of people with regular sorts of job in the private sector. For sure there's shouting about 'zero-hours contracts' that most working folk aren't on. There's stuff about trade union recognition that was relevant in 1880 but isn't today. And there's a load of cant about 'local economic strategies' that just means fewer of the shops those working people want and more for the well-paid, caring, gentrifying Labour supporter. Those Labour fans think they're sticking it to the man by going on protest marches, signing petitions and sending affirmatory messages to each other about Evil Tories or their own self-righteousness.

Truth be told, most people - let's call them the working class - don't have the time or money to spend on marching through London waving badly written banners about saving the NHS or banning tax havens. And even if they did have the time and money, I'm pretty sure they'd rather spend it taking the children into town for a film and a meal out (perhaps at a McDonalds) or, for those who've managed to offload the kids, a couple of pints and a burger somewhere disapproved of by the sort of judgemental snobs who sit on Labour's NEC.

Although there's a tenuous connection between today's Labour Party and the old unionised working class, the Party hasn't made the slightest effort to connect with the new working class - the one's who're working (and eating) in McDonalds, blowing vapour and buying the biggest, cheapest pizza in the supermarket. The Conservative Party at least has an excuse (not a good one but, nevertheless, an excuse) as it's always had a tendency to see the working classes as, well, a bit common. What's happened is that the same slightly disdainful attitude is now a dominant ideology in the Labour Party - the habits of these people need to be changed for their own good (and, one guesses, so they can be allowed into the sort of 'polite society' inhabited by the typical Labour activist).

People who drink beer (the cheap session beer they sell in working mens' clubs and discount supermarkets), smoke, vape and enjoy fatty burgers or sugary sweets, these are the people who aren't welcome in today's Labour Party. Indeed, it's hard to think of anywhere that these people - millions of them - can find a political place that doesn't treat them like some sort of pariah. It's a sad state of affairs when the persistent lobbying of a few - a tiny few - fanatics has resulted in the lifestyle choices of millions being condemned as unhealthy, unsightly and unfavoured.

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Fat taxes - targeting the preferences of the poor (again)

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Why do I never hear cries of anguish and anger from those who claim to champion the interests of the poor when the matter of nannying taxes on "junk food" arises.

"Fat taxes" would have to increase the price of unhealthy food and drinks by as much as 20% in order to cut consumption by enough to reduce obesity and other diet-related diseases, experts have said. Such levies should be accompanied by subsidies on healthy foods such as fruit and vegetables to help encourage a significant shift in dietary habits, according to research published in the British Medical Journal.

And the target for these nannying fussbuckets is to change the habits of the poor - to force them to eat more expensive, less pleasing (at least to them) food. And that this will be a "benefit" to those poor people:

Although the less well-off are affected more by health-related food taxes, they may also ultimately benefit because "progressive health gains are expected because poor people consume less healthy food and have a higher incidence of most diet-related diseases, notably cardiovascular disease"

The poor, ignorant chavs don't know any better do they - they must be shoved into a change of habits, into no longer eating the stuff they like to eat because a minority of them get unhealthily fat. There's no discussion as to why so people get so fat or how support from the medical profession might help such folk. No, we make these foods - what we might call "working class" foods - more expensive because we disapprove of them.

The New Puritan's first target is becoming clear - "sugary" drinks. And, as they ever do, the chosen approach is what we might call epidemiological creativity:

Research in America found that a 35% tax on drinks sweetened with sugar sold in a canteen, which added about 28p to the price, led to a 26% drop in sales. Studies have estimated that a 20% levy on such drinks in the US would cut obesity by 3.5% and that adding 17.5% to the cost of unhealthy food products in the UK could lead to 2,700 fewer deaths from heart disease

Read the above paragraph carefully and you'll see that, while it suggests a single piece of research, it really notes findings and "estimates" from at least three wholly unrelated studies. The first one shows that, in a controlled environment, if you increase the price of something by 35% you get a big drop in sales. Nothing surprising there then. However, the writer then eases smoothly into a "studies have estimated" statement about whether those price increases would reduce 'obesity'. This is what's known, in less high-flying circles, as a "guess" - indeed, a guess designed to fit the prejudice of the author.

This creative deception is then repeated with a second estimate, this time on reduced deaths from heart disease. Here we should note that the tax (one assumes VAT since the increase is 17.5%) is applied to all "unhealthy" foods not just to the sugary drinks referred to in the other half of the sentence.

The entire paragraph - I suspect lifted straight from a press release without question or challenge by Mr Campbell the Guardian's health correspondent - is designed to deceive us, to suggest that fat taxes will save lives whereas the truth is that we have no idea at all whether fat taxes will result in such a benefit. Especially when - as we know well - rates of heart disease have been falling, year-on-year for at least three decades.

Just as with minimum pricing for alcohol, these proposals - wrapped up in supposed concerns about obesity - are merely a pseudo-scientific manifestation of arrogant middle-class prejudice.

"Oh no, we wouldn't let our Jamie go to McDonald's"


"We only use natural fruit juices - we won't have Coke in the house"

And so on - these are the thoughts driving the fat tax campaign. It is simply New Puritan disapproval. So what if rates of childhood obesity are falling - something must be done. It you're going to eat burger and chips let is be hand-formed burgers using welfare-farmed lean rare breed beef and organic, hand-cooked chunky chips rather than a Big Mac and fries. So what if ordinary folk then can't afford to treat their kids - think of the health benefits!

We should stop and think for a minute about what all this means. Not just that introducing such a tax would be a "pasty tax" on steroids but that we are targeting the preferences of the poor for no other reason than that we disapprove of them. And this - while understandable in the righteous Guardian reader - is simply wrong.

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A reminder that regulation of personal choice by the state doesn't work...

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The oh so clever nannying fussbuckets who run San Francisco thought they'd got one over on Ronald McDonald:

The politicians bragged that they had instituted a de facto ban on the Happy Meal when they passed the law. Their assumption was that the crafty corporate types had programmed kids to incessantly nag their parents to buy meals that the nanny state had decreed unhealthy by dangling a plastic toy in front of impressionable youngsters.

Once the evil plastic toy was gone, Little Johnny and Little Sue would be clamoring for tofu burgers, carrot sticks, and spinach soufflé. The evil McDonald’s Empire would be brought to its knees.

Now leaving aside the gross immorality of this interference in personal choice, it seems that those running McDonald's are smarter than those running San Francisco (no surprise there):

Happy Meal sales haven’t slowed down, McDonald’s is making even more money, and parents are now spending an extra 10 cents per kid every time they stop by the golden arches.

How can that be?

McDonald’s simply started charging separately for the toys allowing them to continue hawking the dreaded Happy Meal. It essentially allowed Ronald McDonald’s bosses to institute a price increase by not having to package a toy with the meal.

And to cap it all Ronnie's mates are giving the extra revenue to their house charity that helps seriously ill children and their families. 


You see New Puritan regulation of personal choice doesn't work. Minimum prices for booze promotes smuggling, home production and moonshine. Smoking bans push smoking and drinking into "smoky-drinkies", the 21st century equivalent of the speakeasy. And officious attempts to target the food preferences of ordinary folk will result in much the same.


It really is time we started treating people like grown ups. So, for perhaps the first time in my life (and maybe the last) I shall say well done to McDonalds!


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Dear Health Fascists, Ronald McDonald isnt making kids fat. Really.

I have never eaten anything from McDonald’s in my life. I think that being mutilated with a chain saw is too good for Ronald McDonald. And I despair at the society of grazing, chewing and scoffing that goes with today’s society.

But the idea that McDonalds are evil or somehow responsible for levels of childhood obesity is utter and complete rubbish. Yet again we see the health fascists swarming all over the clown and his pals

“In a poll conducted for the Value [The] Meal campaign, it was found that two out of three Americans hold a favorable view of Ronald McDonald (that's the work of fifty years of branding and over a billion dollars in advertising each year in the U.S. alone). But roughly half of people support retiring the clown and "favor stopping corporations from using cartoons and other children's characters to sell harmful products to children.”

Well let me tell you “roughly half of people” – it’s your fault not Ronnie’s. You’re the one’s who give in to the pestering, ‘gimme-gimme’ of your children and take them to McDonalds. That awful clown isn’t cornering your kids like some modern day child-catcher and dragging them through the golden arches to be turned overnight into gross blubberballs. Nope – it’s you.

So stop blaming the bloody messenger.

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