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Tuesday 13 June 2023

Undaunted by pointlessness



Maxwell Marlow has a useful CAPX piece on BOGOF, buy one get one free offers in relation to food.


Can the Government BOGOF out of our diets?

In October, the Department for Health and Social Care will go ahead with a ban on buy-one-get-one-free offers on foods containing a modicum of fat, sugar, or salt. Public Health England’s own analysis shows that a ban would hit household finances and save the calorie equivalent of a single grape per day. Undaunted by the sheer pointlessness of the enterprise, the Government presses on.


Apart from the obnoxious diet nannying, the piece is well worth reading for this reminder of what bureaucracies use governments for.

Undaunted by the sheer pointlessness of the enterprise, the Government presses on.

For bureaucrats, what matters is the extended remit, not the pointlessness of it. A major bureaucratic advantage of pointless activity is that the point of it is never achieved. Obviously not. Of course they are undaunted by the sheer pointlessness of it, that's a feature not a fault.

6 comments:

Sam Vega said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
DiscoveredJoys said...

It will lead to mission creep, of course, until it becomes the mission of the creeps. Which perhaps demonstrates that there are too many bureaucrats if they have time for such pointless endeavours. And (surprise!) all these bureaucrats will need meetings to coordinate their activities and managers to manage them and write reports to each other (which are never read).

Sam Vega said...

We seem to have EOGOF: Elect One Get One Free. I voted for a reforming Conservative government, but seem to have been given a massive side-order of Civil Service and NGO blob...

The Jannie said...

"Undaunted by the sheer pointlessness of the enterprise, the Government presses on."

Did someone mention HS2?

dearieme said...

It's a pity that insane terrorists target passers by rather than aiming specifically at the bureaucrats as they leave "work". I suppose it's a result of their being insane.

A K Haart said...

DJ - yes it does demonstrate that there are too many bureaucrats, far too many. They also have too much control over government direction through lack of worthwhile political oversight.

Sam - it feels as if we may as well have voted for the Civil Service and NGO blob because that's all we'll get next time, but more of it.

Jannie - and Net Zero and...

dearieme - "M'lud, he failed to target a whole herd of civil servants, which surely proves his unfitness to stand trial."