Last weekend, I spent 30 minutes of excruciatingly painful moments of my life teaching my son on the best way to remove chewing gum from the soles of his sneakers. What works and what doesnt, the physics of not using too cold water/ice as it will make the soles crack, how to use a flat blade short screwdriver and not a Phillips one, why we shouldn't use our fingers to pick it off, why we do need to remove the gum as stones might get stuck in it and make it difficult to play football.
How chewing gum is made, the importance of cleaning up after chewing gum and disposing it off properly and so on and so forth. So after all this demonstration, i went and found another chewing gum on the street, stuck it to his other shoe and asked him to repeat what I had shown him. He wasnt impressed with his dad, but I am sure the lesson went in, and he wont throw the gum on the road.
But as the FT reports, a non-stick chewing gum is going to go on sale. Apparently it costs £150m to clean up gum from the pavements. So I wonder, why are we not simply adding £150m equivalent to old style chewing gum? Dont tell me that it cannot be done, we do have differential pricing on products, we charge separately on cigarettes, booze and and and. And I dont really think that people are going to smuggle chewing gum over the channel to save 2p. Makes one think, no?
All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!
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