Letters: The sweet and the sour on sugar tax; employees should pay a price for working from home

"The World Health Organisation recommends countries tax sugar-sweetened beverages, along with alcohol," a reader writes.

A tax that’s easy to swallow

Ryan Bridge, like most people, hates taxes. However, he goes on to suggest a wealth tax, a capital gains tax or both will help reduce government debt (NZ Herald, September 25).

He also suggests we should have a sugar tax. Bridge correctly points out that we tax booze and cigarettes because they are bad for our health. So why not soft drinks?

The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends countries tax sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs), along with alcohol. Currently, 148 countries tax alcohol and 108 countries tax SSBs.

The WHO says “taxing unhealthy products creates healthier populations. It has a positive effect across society, with less disease and more revenue for Governments to provide public services including hospitals tackling obesity and diabetes caused by these sugar-sweetened beverages”.

The UK, France, Ireland, Belgium, Finland, Norway, India and Mexico all have taxes on SSBs. It is well known that the Scandinavian countries have the world’s highest taxes. It is also documented that these same countries have the highest standard of living, with modern schools and hospitals.

To summarise, I think our Government should be brave enough to increase taxes, especially on SSBs. The subsequent increase in our living standards, along with reduction in debt, will see them re-elected.

Glen Stanton, Mairangi Bay.

A matter of taste

Ryan Bridge’s suggestion of a sugar tax ignores the obvious. Firstly, the amount of sugar, fat or salt anyone consumes is down to quantity.

Secondly, substituting artificial sweeteners merely makes the product taste awful. The UK has a sugar tax, but there doesn’t seem to be a decrease in the number of morbidly obese people around – far from it.

Last year while in the UK, I managed to get a bottle of my favourite soft drink, something I’ve enjoyed for years in New Zealand and Australia. After just one swig, I spat it out and then read the bottle. Sweeteners. It went down the sink. I wrote to the company, who responded promptly and apologised, saying it was due to the tax and assuring me that the New Zealand and Australian recipe was untouched – but they were collating complaints. Just about every other soft drink, carbonated or still – even those purporting to be fruit drinks – was the same.

This year, even one bottle of cider tasted odd. Yup, sweeteners in that too.

Cadbury’s messed with their chocolate recipe and look what happened there. Messing with what we like and changing the taste by adding chemicals is not the way to reduce obesity, nor increasing the tax take by adding a complication that would be a total nightmare.

Ray Green, Birkenhead.

WFH isn’t working

While working from home may have been a necessary solution during the Covid-19 pandemic, the situation has evolved. It’s hard to understand how employees working remotely can be adequately monitored, and how their productivity is reliably measured.

One woman’s claim that working from home allowed her to care for three children raises questions. Managing three demanding children alongside work seems an unlikely combination and it’s hard to believe that meaningful work can be done in such circumstances.

Similarly, a young woman working for Wellington Water recently posted her daily activities online, and the description of her work week suggests that low productivity isn’t just an issue at home – it may be just as prevalent in the office, at least in some councils.

For many essential workers – such as those fixing leaks, maintaining electrical systems or repairing cars – the concept of working from home, or even implementing a four-day work week, is simply not feasible.

In my view, working from home should come with a reduction in salary, just as any proposal for a four-day week should.

Neville Cameron, Coromandel.

Evidence ignored

In his column (NZ Herald, September 24), Simon Wilson canvasses the compelling reasons why the proposed changes to allow increases to the speed limits on roads are so antithetical to the public interest.

There is solid evidence that the proposed speed increases will result in more deaths and injury, notably for children. And furthermore, that it will not result in any significant improvements to traffic congestion, productivity or the economy.

To add insult to injury, these rule changes will require councils to produce detailed cost-benefit analyses should they want to revert back to lower speeds in the future.

This comes on top of two other areas where new policies are being introduced which will clearly cause public harm: tobacco sales and gun control. Again, these are changes that have no supporting evidence, but where there is solid evidence for the adverse impacts they will have. And all this from a Government that campaigned on an assurance that all new policy or policy changes would be evidence-based.

Chris Chadwick, Mission Bay.