Via the London Times: “The Conservative Party’s Working Group on Responsible Business is likely to revive the debate about David Cameron’s youthful use of illicit drugs. For it raises one question: what has he been smoking? The paper proposes, for example, that the problem of obesity might be dealt with like the problem of climate change. Carbon emissions are a kind of environmental pollution; obesity, it says, is a type of “social pollution”. Given that emissions trading and quotas work for the environment (an unproven thesis, incidentally), why not introduce a scheme of alcohol quotas for the beverage industry and a set of “emissions limits” in fats, sugars and salts for food manufacturers in order to rein in the expanding national girth. This is not only intellectually flimsy, it contradicts Mr Cameron’s core belief in personal responsibility and individual liberty. Indeed, it is an idea that is both meddlesome and crunchy, as if dreamed up by a Norland Nanny in a tie-dyed T-shirt. The Conservative Party may well believe that it can score points in the polls by posing as a party that has shed its cosy relationship with business, but surely it can distinguish between areas of personal responsibility and the realms of corporate obligation. “

Quite what the evidence is for Mr. Cameron supposedly having a ”core belief in personal responsibility and individual liberty” escapes me.