Peter Jackson column

Feb 24 2005 By Peter Jackson, The Journal

At a national "gum summit" in London there are calls to tax chewing gum to deal with the problem of the stuff being irresponsibly spat onto the street.

Apparently it costs about £4m a year to clean it up in the capital and other council representatives report their own problems. Sadly, it is not easily solved, with gum maker Wrigley reporting that £5m spent on researching biodegradable gum has been money wasted.

I'm tempted to side with the anti-gummers.

When I was at school, as a punishment for some misdemeanour or other, the headmaster - nicknamed Potter, owing to his remarkable resemblance to the caretaker in the 1970s school sitcom Please Sir - made me spend several hours in detention scraping ancient gum from the school's corridors.

I have Potter to thank for a lifelong aversion to the stuff.

And I'm always attracting by the idea of taxing things I don't much care for, like Peter the Great of Russia, who famously taxed beards.

My list of things to tax would be a long one. It would include people who use the word "paradigm"; newspaper articles on Sylvia Plath; people who leave their mobiles switched on in meetings; anyone who says: "Suits you sir," and credits on films which pop up once you think the film has started.

There would be such a swingeing tax on people who give their children silly names that the Beckhams would practically pay off the national debt.

It is, in fact, no laughing matter - and when I say that I'm not referring to the problem of chewing gum, but the strength of feeling it arouses.

On one web discussion site there are many calls for on-the-spot fines and for gum to be banned altogether. I should imagine our government will be surprised to learn this is something it has not already banned.

And I'm sure the police, flushed by their successes with public smoking and foxhunting will be lobbying for it to do so.

The moderate view seems to be for a tax, say a penny on a packet, to defray the expenses of cleaning it all up, on the grounds that the polluter pays.

Actually, this would provide a perfect example of how hypothecated taxes do not work.

A tax on chewing gum would no more be dedicated to cleaning up gum than road tax is dedicated to maintaining the roads. No, as far as gum is concerned - we're stuck with it.