Ballot Ordering

When voting in yesterday's European elections, I was struck by the fact that the first parties on the ballot paper were Britain First and the BNP. It seems that the Scottish Government is considering alternatives to alphabetical ordering, including random ordering.

Food Regulation

As long-time followers of this blog will know, I have an interest in potentially paternalistic regulations. It's interesting to see that there are now calls for (unhealthy) food to be regulated in the same way as tobacco. The BBC article has one expert point out that we need food, whereas we don't need tobacco. This misses the point that the main justification for regulating tobacco (e.g. the ban on smoking in public places) is that it causes harm to others. While my eating unhealthy food might cause you some harm (e.g. by setting a bad example or through costing the NHS more) these harms are indirect and uncertain.