He’s getting beyond parody:
Britons must stop wasting food in an effort to help combat rising living costs, Gordon Brown has said as he travelled to the G8 summit in Japan. The PM said “unnecessary” purchases were contributing to price rises, and urged people to plan meals in advance and store food properly.
Now, I’m embarrassed to point this out, but people don’t need telling this. The more expensive food becomes, the less folk will want to waste it. That’s basic self-interest and GCSE economics.
So, why is Brown saying this? I can think of four possibilities.
1. The reverse Canute effect. Higher prices will obviously cause people to waste less food. Brown wants to claim some credit for what will happen anyway. In a few years’ time, he can say that thanks to his strong “leadership“, the problem of wasted food has declined. In the same way, when the tide is out, his strong leadership causes it to come in.
2. He’s got to be busy. He must respond to every “crisis”.
3. He’s incapable of seeing that spontaneous order is possible, that people can do things without leadership by responding to market forces. New Labour may be the party of business. But it is not the party of markets.
4. He’s a paternalist. This call is part of the same ideology as the anti-obesity campaign, alcohol strategy, smoking ban (arguably) or the desire to get people back to work. It’s a reflection of the belief that people are incapable of making rational choices by themselves without “leadership”.
However, the strongest evidence for this belief is, increasingly, the fact that they actually voted for this government.
It’s clearly just a political gesture and it’s true to say that as times get tougher some people will waste less food, but on the other hand where is the harm in a political leader saying things like this?
It doesn’t cost anything, he’s not implementing any laws and if you want to carry on wasting food then it’s completely up to you. On the other hand, you may just think well hang on I do actually waste a lot of food so maybe I should be a little more careful.
Of course it’s easy to be cynical about this and I’m sure the motives you ascribe to him are correct, but it is also true that some people do react to statements like this from politicians, the same way as they react to statements from Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall. And no matter how patronising those kinds of statements may sound to some people, for others they do actually change behaviour.
As far as I’m concerned, I would much rather politicians spent more of their time doing things like this rather than implementing yet more laws. And if Gordon Brown wants to spend the next two years dishing out these little nuggets of wisdom, rather than filling up the statute books, then that’s fine by me.
My favourite part of this is that he did it just before he went off to the G8.
When David Cameron turns up to these in a few years time, he will of course bring a packed lunch.
After arresting the kitchen staff for using pointy knives.
#3: You didn’t follow the link in my post, did you ;-)?
I did, and as far as I can see Adam’s comment still stands.
(also, damn that sounds like an awesome dinner. Reminds me I need to find an occasion to hit the Fat Duck…)
And if Gordon Brown wants to spend the next two years dishing out these little nuggets of wisdom, rather than filling up the statute books, then that’s fine by me.
Same with me…
If we eat all the food on our plate, won’t we become obese, thereby using more petrol to transport us from MacDonalds to Burger King?
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Adam Bienkov