Ban the burger

Prince Charles dislikes McDonald's:

The Prince spoke as he and the Duchess of Cornwall visited a diabetes centre in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, and watched children packing healthy lunch boxes to encourage awareness of the disease.

As nutritionist Nadine Tayara told him they tried to discourage children from eating fast food, he retorted: “Have you got anywhere with McDonald’s, have you tried getting it banned? That’s the key.”

It's true you get some shady characters there:

His own sons were fans of the hamburger restaurant and often taken there by their mother, Diana, Princess of Wales.

Prince Harry was recently pictured feasting on a hamburger, provenance unknown, while taking a break from an army training exercise.

And though it is unlikely Prince Charles has ever entered a McDonald’s, his mother, the Queen, gave tacit support to the chain by officially visiting a McDonald’s restaurant for the first time in Cheshire in 1998, although she did not sample its menu.

I'd suggest the Prince might care to visit a McDonald's in a poor part of a city, to watch parents giving their kids an amazingly cheap treat, sitting them on toadstool seats and playing with the stuff they get in the kids' meals at a price eben someone on the dole can afford once in a blue moon. But that would be beside the point.

Which is that this is the most illiberal thing I have ever heard anyone outside the Labour Party say. People can go where they like. It's up to him to persuade, not ban. And, in fairness, he's been doing an effective job there:

Ironically, it was down to Prince Charles, reportedly, that the chain introduced organic milk after one senior McDonald’s employee was invited to his Highgrove home and toured his Home Farm.