Counting More Than Calories

The great horsemeat scandal is rolling on and one consequence is to highlight the complexity and vulnerability of the major part of our food supply, processing and distribution systems.  There is general amazement at how little it is regulated and how much is done beyond our knowledge.

The real surprise is that for a long time should anyone wanted to have looked at it and tried to work out what was going on where it has not been too difficult.  There have been a good many people doing this and publishing on it.  But they have been confined to the back pages of some quality media or to specialist interests.

Like the banks and major funds in the money markets the food supply has come to be governed by the big boys whose advertising affects the media, who’s lobbying controls the politicians and whose financial power governs the farmers and the distribution chains.

The consequence has been that we have health crises and other problems which owe much to many foods being reduced to near junk contaminated by many things in many ways.  Real food does not come in identical packets in identical boxes or packaging.  It is not identical in texture, taste, colour or shape.

Some of the damaging entities however are not due to the processing or the distributors.  There are many arguing now that humanity in its careless, indeed stupid use of resources has poisoned the planet in a way that we are all affected whether we like it or not.

One web site today pointed out the extent of contamination in earth, water and foods of all the discarded plastics from the last half century.  It argues that quite literally they are almost everywhere and affecting all we eat or drink.

This is in addition to all the many items that are put into the soil, leech into the water, are in the air and in the livestock and animals we consume and which we then take in whenever and wherever we sit down to eat and drink.

In the meantime my local council demands that to be environmentally friendly, all my discarded material has to be sorted into three bins.  They are made of plastic. 

Also, they are collected by wagons to be taken far away to be either put into the ground and therefore the ground water or burned in an incinerator which puts waste into the air or turns it into ash to be used as building material.

It is possible to go on and on about how the world of food supply has changed, with what results and how hard it is now to either control or reform it.  Given that twice in the last century the population was close to starvation levels one aspect is how easily our government has given up on UK farming in the last generation.

In our area many of the fields that either reared livestock or grew foods for local, regional and national consumption are now growing crops for biofuels.  Other land is used for anything except foods.  How long we can go on with this nobody knows.

These are the real problems.  What might be in your favourite burger is the least of them.  What is even sillier is that really some of us have known it for some time.

Will You Be My Valentine Subject To Conditions

The following advice has been received for Valentine’s Day, which is necessary for a number of people for whom the issues are very real:

Quote:

Have the right reaction to romance this Valentine's Day.

As February 14th approaches, love is in the air.  Do you have a day planned full of romantic gifts and activities? Maybe flowers, chocolates, a candle lit dinner, stolen kisses and embraces? 

For severe allergy sufferers, these innocuous little treats can lead to a serious allergic reaction and a not so romantic trip in an ambulance to the nearest hospital.

To ensure cupid’s arrow hits the right spot on Valentine’s Day, please be aware of these potential risks:

Meals out.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) recently released an alert following several recent cases of severe and fatal allergic reactions.  Always make sure you make your allergies known to the manager of the restaurant.

Takeaway meals.

There have been a number of fatalities recently following consumption of takeaway meals.

Condoms.

These can pose a real risk to people with latex and also milk allergies.

Chocolates. 

Nut and milk risk and possibly soya.

Flowers.

Some individuals may be allergic to pollen commonly found in trees, grasses and weeds, but also flowers. In individuals with allergy and asthma, inhalation of pollen can trigger asthma symptoms and could bring on an attack.

Not having your adrenaline auto-injector to hand.

Our Youth survey revealed that only 66% of respondents reported always carrying their adrenaline auto-injectors. Always ensure you carry your medication with you, at all times, no excuses.

Kissing.

If you have a nut allergy it can be dangerous to kiss someone who has recently consumed nuts - always ask!

Close relationships. 

We advise allergy sufferers to always let their partner know their allergies in advance and equally to ask if your partner has any allergies.

Posters highlighting the risks associated with Valentine's Day are available on our website and will be shared on our Twitter and Facebook pages.

Keep an eye out!

Unquote.

Have a nice day.

In Memoriam

To the memory of the 1200 people who died in the care of the Mid Staffordshire Trust NHS and gave their lives to management progress, organisational reform and the major changes in nursing provision and procedures.

Remember too those elsewhere, in all their thousands, who also died in that cause.

This memorial recognises the work of past Prime Ministers, Chancellors of the Exchequer, Secretaries of State, their many advisers, civil servants and others in promoting the Private Financial Initiatives, the complex financial instruments and targets and other systems that caused this and for ensuring the high salaries and pension funds for their associates and friends the top NHS managers who were directly responsible.

Making A Meal Out Of A Dogs Dinner

Having already suggested that the present timing and nature of the two proposed referenda on Scotland and the EU promise us not just a confused constitutional situation but a potentially dangerous financial and economic shambles, the article below from LSE was of particular interest.

It tries to explain in a balanced way how incoherent the positions are both north and south of the border.

Perhaps it is only to be expected when you get a former RBS economist dealing with the former Director of Corporate Affairs for Carlton Communications.

Below the link is the conclusion to the longer article.

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/archives/30465

Quote:

Cameron’s policy on the EU is just as incoherent as the SNP’s policy on continuing EU membership on current terms. Cameron assumes he will win the next election, just as Alex Salmond assumes that Scotland will automatically be an EU member state.

Cameron claims that he can walk into the room and negotiate a new deal. Salmond claims that he can secure Scotland’s place in Europe on current terms: i.e. by inheriting the UK’s opt outs on the euro currency and the Schengen free travel area, which is illusory.

Moreover, a referendum (if one is to be had) needs to set out two clear choices beforehand. The in/out referendum on the EU or the Yes/No referendums on Scottish independence do not offer sufficient alternatives.

What will come after EU membership? A free trade (all pay and no say) agreement with the EU like Norway? The Commonwealth? The USA? NAFTA? The global market? Splendid isolation?

Likewise, Salmond promises continuity when any EU lawyer, politician, and bureaucrat will tell him that there is no automatic right to membership of the European Union. So, what if membership is not automatic?

Will Scotland stay outside the EU? Have its application fast-tracked? Join the queue of applicant states?

He also promises currency continuity within a skeletonised British union, when there are an array of economists and Treasury politicians past and present saying it either will not work, or will render the gaining of political independence pointless.

So what will happen then? Freelance use of the pound? Enforced joining of the euro? Invention of a Scottish currency?

The à la carte menus offered by both are, in reality, a dog’s dinner.

Unquote.

Try Youtube “How Much Is That Doggie In The Window” by Patti Page, it makes more sense than the songs our politicians are trying to sing.

Grub Up

The fuss at the moment about what is in food that should not be is old news with a new twist.  Adulteration of food and food products has been with us down the ages ever since people needed to source food supplies from others on a regular basis.

For about twenty years of his life my father was a butcher and in the age before refrigeration or freezing become the norm.  Their problem was that if the fresh meat had not sold then how it was to be kept looking and seeming fresh.

The answer was found in the basement barrels where the meats were steeped in various concoctions to make them last.  With a bit of a wash and the application of one thing or another it went on the slab as the cheaper cuts.

So the trick for shoppers was to find a good butcher and for that matter a good grocer and greengrocer who could be relied on not to go to the extremes of this kind of thing and where you were sure of the product and its sourcing.

But retailing has changed a great deal as has the sourcing and distribution.  It is all very well calling for regulations and inspections but without a draconian and extensive regime the term “caveat emptor” still applies.  Also big suppliers who are members of big marketing organisations have big political clout.

More to the point the shoppers, beguiled by modern marketing and packaging is more trusting and now innocent to the point of ignorance.  We live in a world of apparently perfect shapes and colours in food and a taste that is always exactly the same.

Once in a pub which prided itself on making its own ice cream from real contents I recall one customer complaining loudly that the fresh orange ice cream of the day slightly differed from one the month before.

The expectation of sameness and absolute identity of texture, colour, taste and shape is now part of most peoples shopping psyche.  There cannot and must not be any deviation from one season or year to another.

Zero Hedge has an interesting one today with some links to add to the point:

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2013-02-04/food-manufacturers-are-fraudulently-diluting-high-quality-food-inferior-quali

Another media story was that apparently our government wants to opt out of some EU food regulations.  One effect is that “mince” which should have at least 53% of the meat claimed might have in fact less than half, the remainder made up of “connective tissue” or fats or other items.

Something which is less commented on is the increasing armoury of substances packed in as filling, cosmetic effects and taste balancing etc. the great majority of which are synthetic chemicals derived from petroleum.

What is scary is that we could soon have two generations fed on foods of this kind and without any concept of what might be called basic or real eating patterns or provision, never mind how to handle them.  Also, they will be subject to their suppliers and not those who make the real choices.

The meals will not be eaten at table, but probably on the lap out of the microwave while watching high cuisine cooking on TV.

Now Is The Winter Of Our Discontent

There is too much news today.  So either things really are getting lively or what may have been delayed matters have simply come together.  Chaos theorists will know the feeling.  The real problem may be the stories that are not being told but are of significance because of the current clatter.

So to begin, not perhaps at the beginning but in the middle.  Chris Huhne, former leading LibDem Cabinet Minister and the nearly man of their leadership contest has pleaded guilty and is facing a spell of quiet retirement at Her Majesty’s Pleasure.  Hell hath no fury like a women scorned, in that his former wife blew the gaffe.

Also, he has resigned from his parliamentary seat with immediate effect which means an interesting bye-election very soon.  It is at Eastleigh in Hampshire, the one time railway town now more of a decayed suburb with a large rural element.  Theoretically, the Conservatives might win, but watch for outsiders such as UKIP.

By pure coincidence, the Chancellor, George Osborne, appeared to tell us about the Banking Reform Bill which he assures us will bash the bad bankers.  This ought to enable the good guys, or rather those with better alibis or lawyers, to give the ordinary people better service.  The fly boys in trading and speculation will take their own risks.

What was worrying about this was the way not only he lauded the financial services sector but that it sounded uncommonly like we are betting the house on keeping this industry in major play in a troubled world. 

There are indeed many excellent services The City and others in the UK can give to the world without ruining it but to regard it is the key to all our futures is misplaced optimism. 

In 1945 I recall the nationalisation of the Coal, Iron and Steel, Road Transport, Railways and docks were regarded as the way forward.  It did not really work out like that.  The world changed and is changing even more rapidly now, especially in financial structures and movements of capital and money.

One small clue to this was the announcement by the international soccer chiefs that 380 key matches have been identified as subject to fraud.  Their reasons was that major gambling syndicates in Asia had found it more profitable to know the results before the games took place rather than after.

In the financial world, this might have been regarded as justifiable hedging of bets, but then they have been fixing the data as well.  What we found intriguing about this is our private household bets with each other.

The extent of gambling advertising and sponsorship now in soccer is great and often during half time a gambling firm offers what look to be like attractive odds for a particular player to score next. 

My bet is that this indicates they will be substituted at an early stage.  To date, I am winning, which means I get the bigger half of the puddings.  All this is of dust compared to the big story.

The University of Leicester, after a major research effort, are of the opinion that the remains found entombed under a council offices car park at Greyfriars in Leicester are those of King Richard III who died at Bosworth Field in 1485.  He may have been the last of the Plantagenet Kings, but he was not the last of the Plantagenets.  There are a great many of them left from down various female lines of descent.

This was indicated by the number of executions carried out under the Tudors of persons who had some form of Plantagenet ancestry.  You have to know the way around the descents of many families to realise the scale of it, but as a simple example, all of the wives of King Henry VIII descended from King Edward I.

King Richard III these days is cast in the role of a villain, largely due to the play by William Shakespeare, superlative dramatist, but also spinner and propagandist to the Tudors and then the first Stuart King of England.  The reality may be much more complicated, life at the top in the Middle Ages could be brutish and short.

Shakespeare was a Warwickshire man, and his forebears could be amongst those of that name who in the early 15^th Century were members of the Guild of St. Anne at Balsall.  If you try the famous speech, titled above, in a Birmingham accent it works quite well and allows a distinct sneer to the tone, which may relate to the play.

On the other hand if you try it in what used to be a more East Midlands accent, shorter, more practical in sound and clipped it also works very well.  These days we have become conditioned to hearing it either in theatrical or more recently “estuary” accents.

Back to the beginning, in a more robust age of the past Huhne’s head may well have been off, no long prison days watching satellite TV, writing his memoirs and complaining about the non-vegetarian diet. 

George Osborne might remember that when former Chancellors adopted a high risk political venture, if it all went wrong they too would be facing the block and not wearisome years of high paid board meetings or consultancies.

But it may not be a good idea placing bets on anything because the bookies may already have all the answers.

Dr. Cameron, I Presume?

As Cameron toddled around Africa in his search for the source of the budget deficit he pitched up shaking hands with President Hollande of France, The Mullah of Mali, also searching for something for French troops to do to justify the defence budget.

While Cameron has sworn to go to some expense and trouble to assist France in Africa, back at the EU apparently there has been a new agricultural fix.  This will incur major increased costs for the contributing states and particularly benefiting French famers who grow tobacco.

Back at home in the UK those fussy health people are trying harder and ever harder to prevent people smoking tobacco.  One way is using taxes as a disincentive.  The trouble is if effective then the tax take will decline.

At this point the logic begins to escape me.  The question must arise, who is going to smoke all that state subsidised tobacco grown in France?  Perhaps they may be all those Brit’s who have fled the UK to become refugees in a land where smoke is good. 

More likely it will be to supply all those smokers in far flung countries where such rules do not exist or are safely ignored.  This may have a marginal effect on the balance of trade in France and by extension Europe.  It will not do much for us unless we abandon the new wind and solar panel farms for tobacco.

The 19^th Century was a time when France and Britain vied for territories and influence in Africa.  They were tempted by its riches, the scope for relocating surplus populations and their desire to be full or even dominant world powers.

There was supposed to be an agreed truce and share out amongst the European nations in the mid 1880’s after the Conference of Berlin.  This did rein in some of the greater extremes but the ambitions still existed.

This culminated in 1898 in The Fashoda Incident (see Wikipedia) after a French expedition started from Brazzaville in the Congo and after an epic journey arrived at Fashoda on the Upper Nile to raise the French flag in territory the British thought they had the rights.

The media and political fuss in both Paris and London meant that war was close and only averted by strenuous diplomatic dealing.  In some ways it was a pity that it did not happen.  Conceivably, if it had the Entente Cordiale a few years later would not have happened, maybe not The Boer War and perhaps not the First World War.

If the Kaiser had seized the opportunity and supported his British cousins, the Germans could have remained our best friends in Europe, both determined to hold the French in check.  Jointly, we could have done something about the imperial ambitions of the USA as well.

One of the famous stories of the British Empire in Africa is that of Dr, Livingstone the medical missionary who both explored and attempted to reach out to the Africans.  He went so deep into Africa that communications ceased and there was a great deal of media excitement about his whereabouts.

So much so that a large sum of money was raised for an expedition led by an American, Henry Morton Stanley, to seek to find him.  He wasn’t actually lost, just alone and ill in the interior and struggling to survive and work.  It all made a good media tale with hoorah’s all round for the various heroes.

But the way Cameron is cavorting around the world suggests that unlike Livingstone he may have lost his bearings and does not quite know what to do or where to go next.  The pound is down against the Euro, there is talk of a triple dip recession and the UK credit ratings are in peril.

The options are running out.  He must be a worried man.

It is enough to drive a man to start smoking.