
Ronnie Joice


The Great Hot Pastry Tax Swindle

Posted: 25/03/2012 23:28

Stupidity and suffering were the main courses for the Tories Budget 2012 last week. Now the dust has settled, and the millionaires have toasted to further riches and the Grannies panic, let's have a little look at one of the more ridiculous items that retailers are shaking their heads at.

Has anyone ever heard of Hot Food tax? No? Well brace yourself this summer for an increase in price for your favourite Ginsters and country pies. Cracking down on 'loopholes and anomalies' as opposed to just flogging Gibraltar to another country for £80billion, hot food is now subject to VAT.

Okay, so we're all pretty used to being charged VAT to "eat in" at restaurants, although for some reason it never ever makes a difference at McDonald's or Burger King when they ask you (yet you always lie - thinking you're cheating the system). But what exactly have our beloved pies, pasties and sausage rolls done to deserve this?

It's not like they're doing this for our benefit, is it? If it was part of a much-needed 'Obesity tax', I'd applaud it. Tax everything that's causing us to get fat. Chocolate, croissants, cheese. But why just these innocent items of comfort eating, of such important convenience, the cornerstone of any decent or reputable service station?

Of course, with the Tories planning to sell off the motorways, I'm sure soon they'll abolish the very British tradition of pasties and pies and a dodgy uncleared microwave and instead replace them with revoltingly healthy Itsu's and overpriced Pret a Manger's.

Tell that to the musicians and roadies of our great Briish Isles. These are hot foods that are essential to combat heavy hangovers, and the warm glow that inside of a pastie or sausage roll provides are there only playing second best to spooning groupies on tour bus bunk beds. These are not a public service, they are a necessity.

And the worst thing about all of this? Well, just like human beings, it's that affluent and well-off, dapperly dressed, always sought after fresh bread that finds itself exempt. The bloody French baguette gets to prance around our supermarkets and mini-marts with it's nationalities trademark smugness, firmly knowing the government will do anything to keep that lanky crust at the top.

I demand an end to the tyranny of fresh bread. I urge us all to leave our sofas, put down your Dominoes pizza boxes and head out to the streets to wage protest at this. You can take our NHS, reform our welfare, but if you think you can belittle our hot pastry friends like this, you've got another thing coming!


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