Pringles partially potato crispy snack biscuit things in a tube, now with added VAT. Photograph: Mark Lennihan/AP

    After a protracted court case between food giant Procter and Gamble and HM Revenue and Customs, it has been decided, once and for all, thatPringles are crisps. This won't come as a surprise to anyone who's ever eaten Pringles - AKA 'crack in a cardboard tube' - which look, taste, sound and feel like pretty much any other preservative laden fried starch - but it's a nicety of taxonomy that's going to cost P&G quite a lot of money.

    As you may remember, a High Court judge ruled only last summer that the Pringle, containing as it does less than 50% potato matter and formed into an entirely artificial shape, does not constitute a crisp - which would attract VAT. It was, the judge ruled, more akin to a cake or bread which, as a general foodstuff is zero rated. This ruling has now been overturned and P&G look set to face a gigantic tax bill to the tune of somewhere over £100m.

    Stop giggling at the back … this isn't funny.

    There's quite a history of products having to argue to defend their status. In 2006 there was an undignified spat when it was realised that Budweiser, brewed from rice rather than malt and hops didn't meet the German Reinheitsgebot purity standards sufficientlytobe called beer. More recently McVitie's biscuits have successfully argued that theJaffa Cake is indeed a zero rated 'cake', rather than a taxable chocolate covered biscuit - are you still following this?

    Let's leave aside the stupendous idiocy of this argument for a moment and just revel in the irony: a huge food processor going to court to publicly and expensively assert that their product is artificial, lacking in natural ingredients and utterly mucked-about with. The fact that they eventually lose and still have to pay a fortune is just too delicious. Is it possible to spontaneously combust from schadenfreude?

    What's your verdict though? Is the Pringle a vital foodstuff from which our government has no right to extract a screw? Or is it a filthy indulgence, a manufactured monstrosity for which we should justifiably be taxed?

    品客薯片其中的一部分產(chǎn)品是一種裝在筒狀盒子里易碎的馬鈴薯薄片零食,現(xiàn)在則有了更多的增值稅。照片:Lennihan/AP

    經(jīng)過食品巨人保潔和HM Revenue之間的漫長的訴訟程序,最后的結(jié)果是:品客是易碎的。這對所有曾經(jīng)吃過品客薯片的人來說都不驚奇——眾所周知薯片是裝在一個紙板筒盒中,它看起來、吃起來、聽起來和感覺起來都比其它任何富含防腐劑的油炸食品美妙——但是就是這將要使得保潔花上一大筆錢。

    如你所知,由于品客薯片的馬鈴薯含量低于50%,而且其形狀完全是人工制品,最高法院的法官在去年夏天裁定品客薯片不是油炸薯片——這使得要支付增值稅。法官曾經(jīng)認為,品客薯片更類似于一種蛋糕或者面包,作為一種普遍的食品是零定額的。這個裁決如今被推翻了,因此保潔要面對由這個筒裝食品而帶來的超過100,000,000£的昂貴的稅收賬單。

    停止對這件事的傻笑……這并不好笑。

    過去有許多產(chǎn)品必須去爭論、去保衛(wèi)它們的地位。在2006年發(fā)生了一個荒謬的爭論,百威啤酒是由稻米而非麥芽和蛇麻草釀制的,當時百威啤酒杯披露它沒有充分達到德國啤酒《純凈法》標準,而不能稱之為啤酒。稍微近一點的時間,比如 McVitie's 電信曾經(jīng)成功的證明theJaffa Cake實際上是一種零定額的蛋糕而非那種可征稅的表面淋了巧克力的餅干——你仍然這么覺得么?

    讓我們把這種驚人的白癡的爭執(zhí)先放到一邊,來感受一下這其中的諷刺:一個大型食品加工商到法庭去公開而昂貴的聲稱他們的產(chǎn)品是人造的,缺乏自然成分的,并且最后混淆不清了。他們最后敗訴并且仍然要付費的事實是美味的。在幸災(zāi)樂禍的同時，會不會引火上身呢?

    你的結(jié)論是什么呢?是否是品客是一種重要的食品而我們的政府沒有權(quán)利對其征稅?或者它是一種不潔的放任、一種人造的畸形產(chǎn)物,因此我們有理由對其征稅?