Anti-Fat Proposal Used Figures Wrong by 3 Orders of Magnitude

Fat fig­ures wrong admits minister

Speak­ing in sup­port of a pro­posed “fat tax” on cer­tain foods, the head of the Depart­ment of Health in Eng­land cit­ed a fig­ure of 900,000 peo­ple claim­ing ben­e­fits from the gov­ern­ment due to “inca­pac­i­ty” from obe­si­ty. He said that the gov­ern­ment was pay­ing out £70.9million a week because of these people.

The actu­al num­ber was only 900 peo­ple, and the week­ly ben­e­fits were only £70,965.

Don’t you think that this guy or SOMEBODY on his staff would have dou­ble-checked such shock­ing fig­ures? Unless, that is, they WANTED to be alarmist.