Fatuous Claim of the Day Health Officials say VAT on 5 A Side will make Britain Fatter

Health Officials never tire of telling us how to run our lives and seeking ways of flushing taxpayer’s cash down the toilet. Rarely does it have any effect other than to add the flab that is Central Government and all its works. Today’s claim (plucked from thin air and with absolutely no evidence to support it whatsoever) is that the imposition of VAT on 5 a side soccer will make Britain fatter. You doubt that health officials are daft enough to make such a claim? It is in the Daily Telegraph so it must be true. I quote:

Tam Fry of the National Obesity Forum said the tax would be counterproductive. “Successive governments have put activity at the top of their Olympic legacy and we now have the Olympics upon us but we have a fatter nation than we had eight years ago,” he said.

“It seems that in the pursuit of tiny amounts of money because of the problems we are facing, we are going for easy solutions without looking at the long-term disaster they are bringing about.

“It is a tremendous activity for people to run around and burn off the calories but a lot of people will find VAT on a very beneficial activity will be the last straw. They will do less activity. The Government should be putting more money into that activity after the billions they have spent on the Olympics.”

VAT on 5 a side will add 20% to the cost of the average game. Assuming that the teams play with no substitutes that works out at about £1 per player (on an expensive Goals pitch). Assuming that each side has 7 players allowing for some rotation that is 60p per player. So the cost of my weekly or twice weekly game has gone up by 60p or 120p and that is going to cause me to change my lifestyle completely, sit at home and spend my footie subs on deep fried mars bars. I can see a wave of obesity.

Tam is correct in pointing out that the billions pissed away on the Olympics has not had any effect on making Briton’s more sport obsessed as Boris/Ken/Tessa/Call Me Dave, etc said it would. We are still a nation of slobs it is just that we are a poorer nation of slobs thanks to having to pick up the tab for the Olympics. But the rest of his thesis is bunk.

I doubt 60p a week will change anyone’s behaviour. If it does then perhaps Goals and the other pitch providers might absorb some of the VAT hike into their costs. After all if they are renting out a piece of Astroturf for £45 an hour, one assumes that they are making a recent gross margin. Oh yes indeed. On 2011 revenue of c£30 million the gross profit for Goals soccer centres was £27 million. So if Goals really cares about the nation’s health as it bleats that it does when objecting to having to pay VAT, how about it cut the price of a pitch to £37.50 (c£45 with VAT) and it would still be making a fair old return.

But Tam shows his true colours when he demands that the Government puts even more money into making us all less lazy. When will these folk realise that a) the UK has no money and b) the Government cannot make us thinner etc it is down to the individual.

It goes without saying that the NOF is a quango which is funded by money from a) drugs companies that produce anti obesity products/diabetes treatments, b) slimming companies and of course c) the ever grateful taxpayer. So joining the dots. The taxpayer hands over cash to Tam Fry who then tells us that the taxpayer must spend more cash to tackle a problem which he himself concedes is getting worse and worse despite the hundreds of millions of quid the taxpayer already spends on tackling it.

I am sure that folks like Tam Fry are the first to object when nasty banksters come up with tax avoidance wheezes to make themselves richer. Yet when Goals and the other pitch providers are rumbled for doing exactly the same, Fry et al come to the natural conclusion that the taxpayer should pick up the tab. And some. I despair.