What a waste

Britain throws away £10bn of food every year

It’s the talking point of the morning, Dizzy Thinks picked it up at an early hour and Victoria Derbyshire is debating it on Radio 5 Live right now, after this article appeared in today’s Independent.

Each day, according to the government-backed report, Britons throw away 4.4 million apples, 1.6 million bananas, 1.3 million yoghurt pots, 660,000 eggs, 550,000 chickens, 300,000 packs of crisps and 440,000 ready meals. And for the first time government researchers have established that most of the food waste is made up of completely untouched food products – whole chickens and chocolate gateaux that lie uneaten in cupboards and fridges before being discarded.

The roll call of daily waste costs an average home more than £420 a year but for a family with children the annual cost rises to £610.

The Environment minister, Joan Ruddock, said:

“These findings are staggering in their own right, but at a time when global food shortages are in the headlines this kind of wastefulness becomes even more shocking. This is costing consumers three times over. Not only do they pay hard-earned money for food they don’t eat, there is also the cost of dealing with the waste this creates. And there are climate- change costs to all of us of growing, processing, packaging, transporting and refrigerating food that only ends up in the bin. Preventing waste in the first place has to remain a top priority.”

Dizzy sees a law of unintended consequences as the nanny state tells us to get rid of food that is near, on, or past it’s use by date, and wonders if the Independent would scream the same big headlines if it were found out that we were consuming food that carried the slightest risk that it was “going off”. Derbyshire’s programme is carrying the full gamut of opinions from those calling us all greedy, even though we are going through a period of world food shortages and price rises, and those who call themselves “freegans” existing on a diet of food thrown out by others (yes there are such people in Britain who eat quite healthily by this method.) The anti consumerist/corporatist lobby isw also in there too blaming the supermarkets - it’s all their fault that we make the decisions that we do about food.

One of the best quotes that I heard this morning came from a “freegan” on the radio;

“There’s more than enough to cater for our needs, but not enough to cater for our greed”.

And this perhaps is the point that Dizzy misses, we make poor choices and our decisions are not rational when it comes to food shopping, sure supermarkets have tried and tested methods of promoting products (buy one get one free, buy a pack of six at a discounted rate etc.) but too many people have a lifestyle that dictates one big weekly shop instead of perhaps shopping a little more often and only buying what we essentially need. We are all prone to falling for the impulse purchase as we wander around the supermarkets filling our trolley to capacity, and they do make a point of putting the big promotional deals on gondola ends where we are more likely to see them. On those special occasions during the year such as Christmas and Easter we go out and behave as though we imagine the shops will be closed for a week, when in most cases the supermarkets will be closed for no more than a day or too whils your local shops will probably remain open. Without doubt I have seen families shopping in Asda and Tesco in South Shields filling three or four trollies at these times of year knowing full well that the contents of one of those trollies will be wasted as the food “goes off” before we have a chance to eat it.

It all seems rather mad!

I cannot agree with those who blame the supermarkets for this behaviour, it’s our choice yet we don’t tend to make the right choice, and I accept Dizzy’s point that we even make the wrong choices once we get the food home and into the fridge. Supermarkets have got much better at managing their own waste, food which is nearing it’s sell by date is often reduced to move it off the shelf quicker, there is no advantage to them in filling their skips with waste food (they pay a high price for having their waste collected so they like to cut the costs here too.) Smaller outlets and local shops also have mechanisms in place to reduce the amount of waste they produce, I like to recall the name used by one of my former work colleagues who describes a shop in Frederick Street, South Shields as “second hand Greggs”, it may sound disrespectful but the company is using this one outlet to sell off it’s products at discounted rates simply because they are now 24 hours old, but at least they are not throwing it all away. Others have arrangements to have food waste collected and reprocessed and recycled as animal feeds, again to prevent waste collection charges and as a positive measure to reduce landfill.

So business and retailers are doing their bit, it is the consumer who is failing to recognise the consequences of their own poor choices and decisions that results in such a mountain of waste, yet it need not be so. My mother made a virtue of using left overs to make a second nutritional meal for the family, my father even recycled chicken bones to make soups, and by consuming little and more often we are likely to buy only the things we really need rather than over indulging our fantasies about what we can actually eat in a week.

It may not help the “freegans” if we waste less, it may not help Tesco if we buy less, but hey it might help the family budget as food prices rise and shortages become more apparent. Market, price, supply, and demand, more often than not help to even things out, that’s the beauty of Adam Smith’s invisible hand.

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Brown is out of touch

PM doesn’t know what’s happening in the real world

At Prime Minister’s Questions today Gordon Brown stated that the average price of petrol is 110p per litre and that oil now costs $110 per barrel. He’s clearly out of touch, in many places away from the supermarkets petrol is selling at around 115p per litre and diesel (which the government is driving us all to use) is selling at 121p per litre, on top of this the price of a barrel of oil now stands at $122 US.

When was the last time that Brown had to buy a tank of petrol?

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Fair deal for motorists

Costs of motoring have doubled under Labour

Twelve years ago I worked in Bishop Auckland and made the return trip from South Shields in a small car with a petrol tank of roughly the same size as I have now, 40 litres. Twelve years ago, as John Major’s government was getting ready to cede it’s authority to the electorate and welcome the Blair/Brown partnership, I used to shop around to fill my tank for less than £15, today I shop around to fill it for less than £50! Add to my costs the inexorable rises in Road Tax, insurance, general maintenance etc. and you can see that the price of motoring has more than doubled during the term of Labour’s tenure.

Figures compiled by the AA show that the average motorist pays more than £1,800 annually in fuel duty, car tax, VAT on petrol and other levies – an increase of more than 50 per cent in little more than a decade.

Luckily, being now retired, I am not obliged to drive the same amount of miles as I did ten years ago, but many are, I know scores of South Shields people who drive up to 40 miles to get to their place of work. The revenue that the government takes from motorists has risen from £31bn in 1997 to an expected £50bn this year, an increase of well over 50%, motorists are being unfairly punished by a government that seems to have declared war on them. What really stinks as far as many average families are concerned is the retrospective tax increase for cars bought over the past seven years, so those who have tried to save money by making their vehicle last longer are to be hit again by another hefty increase in Road Tax. We even get taxed on our insurance policy these days!

The Daily Telegraph has launched a campaign aimed at getting the government to redress the balance, Gordon Brown has vowed to listen us all these days you know, and it is supported by motrists’ groups, MPs, and charities.

Edmund King, the AA president, said:

“This campaign is needed because it appears the car is seen and taxed as a luxury rather than a necessity. Motorists are now taxed at a higher rate than champagne drinkers but for the vast majority of people driving is an absolute necessity.

“The high taxes are now affecting people’s lives and families are having to cut back on other areas of spending to pay for their cars. What is really hitting people are these plans for retrospective taxes.

“The Prime Minister should now be listening to these concerns.”

Being a bit of a cynic when it comes to this global warming and CO2 emissions thing (I’m still trying to be convinced that it isn’t just a scam to raise revenue for western governments) I’d like to see just where this government is spending this revenue and what on, it certainly doesn’t look as though it’s being spent on repairing roads, or planting new forests or investing in recycling plants to produce biofuel from congealed vegetable oils! There is plenty of evidence, however, of it throwing money at local councils like South Tyneside to allow them to put back breaking humps along every thirty yards of each street that they can find, just be grateful you are travelling in a car rather than an ambulance! Some of our streets are so disfigured by these humps that there is little chance of the next Warney Cresswell being found playing football in our borough!

Ronnie Campbell the MP for Blyth is also expressing his “concern”, especially over the plight of his rural constituents in Northumberland, it may surprise him to learn that many folks from South Shields are feeling the pinch day in, day out, as they travel through the Tyne Tunnel to work in places like Ashington, Cramlington, Newbiggin, and Killingworth. These are places where it is virtually impossible to get to on public transport for 6.00am to start a day at work.

Give us all a break Gordon.

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Bank Holiday Blues

Retail sector only slowly improving

I had a fee paying job to perform in South Shields this morning and I was delighted to see so many retailers open for business in King Street, the market was busy, and shoppers had thronged to the town. Considering that most major retailers have reported poor year on year like for like growth figures recently
it was good to see that they were prepared to try and attract business on a Bank Holiday. However, it was not a completely rosy picture, our town centre like many others is a “clone” with so many national chains operating there cheek by jowel with a few local “independent” companies. These smaller independents are what gives some town centres that little extra added value, a niche market for those that specialise. Their availability to customers on Bank Holidays is only slowly improving.

Yet one couldn’t buy any saveloys at Dicksons today, nor could you stock up with printing cartridges at GHI Computers. It was even worse in Morpeth this afternoon when I took my children to see a different place. The Northumberland market town had been “invaded” by tourists, Carlisle Park was packed full, rowing boats were in full use on the river, the streets were thronged with expectant shoppers, in this town renowned for it’s “niche” independent traders. I love the cheese shop opposite the clock tower, but along with about 70% of other retailers it was closed, so no cheese for Mrs. Curly today!

With the British economy facing an uncertain future over the coming year it was disappointing to see so many businesses unprepared to take money on a day when footfall would have been huge! I know after spending thirty years in retail and being used to working on Bank Holidays that it is not always a popular decision to open for business, costs rise as premium payments are made to staff and extra days off in lieu have to be arranged, but the benefits have always outweighed the costs.

The DIY sheds may have led the way in changing our shopping and Bank Holiday habits but it seems to me that others are still a little slow to follow.

Do you prefer to see the shops open, in general, on Bank Holidays, or do you prefer to see your towns empty and shuttered?

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Survival at all costs

Gordon Brown’s roadmap

It must have felt like driving with the aid of a “Sat Nav”

“At the roundabout, take the third exit”

Gordon Brown’s massive climbdown and U-turn yesterday, cobbled together just a few minutes before he faced the House of Commons, was designed to ensure his own political survival in office, to avert a certain defeat when the Finance Bill is voted upon next week, and to alleviate the effects upon the Labour Party of a possible defeat in the London Mayoral election and a certain drubbing at the hands of the electors in the local government polls on 1st. May.

The writing was on the wall last week when in America he had to go cap in hand to George Bush in the Whitehouse to ask for an outside line so he could call a junior minister and persuade her not to resign. He returned to the certain knowledge that at least 46 of his backbenchers were ready to support Frank Field’s amendment, and that could only lead to a humiliating certain defeat for his Finance Bill and would lead to a confidence vote before the important elections next Thursday.

Knowing that Cameron’s Conservatives were planning to vote with the Labour rebels it became a trial of strength, a test of his Prime Ministerial authority, the two sides faced each other in a stare out and he blinked first. Yet the concessions ceded to the rebels were not designed to alleviate the financial hardships faced by the 5.3m people who are now paying up to twice as much annual tax as a result of Gordo’s last Budget, they were designed for one purpose only, and that was to have the troublesome amendment withdrawn and the headlines rewritten. With one eye on his own personal political survival and the other… (well I’d best not go there), Brown demonstrated the politician’s ability to put personal interest in front of the national interest.

The cost of yesterday’s about turn will run into hundreds of millions of pounds and not the £7bn required to lift the 5.3m out of the poverty created by the Prime Minister. The answer that he dared not face to this perfidious problem was to raise personal allowances and take these people out of the tax bracket completely, but that would have meant saving some money from his extravagant spending spree!

The next navigational problem with Brown in the driving seat will be the counter terrorism measure to extend detention without charge to 42 days, the rebels have now got a smell for the PM’s blood and will not be bothered that it may cost their Leader another red faced climbdown. They now know that he needs to be convinced to ditch the Sat Nav and take a good look at the political road map to find another route to extricate himself from another impending wrong turn.

Cameron succeeded yesterday in reminding the Labour Party that they have the wrong man at the steering wheel, he is a loser not a leader!

It’s only a matter of time before this unelected man runs out of road.

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A quick test

What about the economy?

Who can remember five initiatives introduced by Alistair Darling in his recent Budget?

Beer prices up, car taxes up, err, now what else?

It’s kind of difficult to remember the big headlines from only a few weeks ago, which just illustrates the big problems facing Gordon Brown and the Labour Party right now. This weekend the headlines have all been about Labour fighting each other with minister threatening to throw punches, former ministers threatening to be “stalking horses” against Brown, other former ministers acknowledging that the government has lost all sense of direction, and other people calling for David Miliband, the South Shields MP, to lead them out of the mess. There have been no headlines about the government fighting the downturn in the economy this weekend, yet over the next couple of years this will be the big major issue exercising our minds.

The credit crunch is going to affect far more than just the housing market, investments are likely to be hit, and job losses will ensue, mortgages will go into default and house repossessions will rise. If the Bank of England is forced to step in and make more money available or reduce interest rates below a critical point, then inflation may once again get out of control, yet even now the housewives are complaining about the prices of basics rising. It will be the bread, milk, and butter issues that start to dominate conversation and the public perception will be to question whether Brown’s government has any real control over UK economic conditions.

As in most general elections, when the time comes for Brown to go to the country it will be the state of the economy that will determine the outcome for the Labour Party, and people will remember the rising costs of indirect taxes, lost jobs, lost homes, and the £billions spent on public services that failed to deliver lasting improvements.

The quick one day test on that given Thursday will revolve around one basic question - “Did the Brown government position the UK’s economy favourably in the face of world economic turbulence?”

As we all start to take a deep intake of breath to tighten the belts, it’s unlikely that we’ll be blaming David Cameron, Nick Clegg or Alex Salmond for our woes!

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Speaker’s House get’s makeover

£1.7m cost to the tax payers

Is it any wonder that lots of people are saying that Gorbals Mick is not fit to oversee the investigations into MPs expenses?

Job vacancy

Executive Director of Resources and Regeneration, South Tyneside Council

We’ve already achieved a great deal in a short time, with improvements in educational attainment, the delivery of social services and the regeneration and transformation of the Borough. These posts provide an opportunity to join a Council with a reputation for innovation and quality services. To deliver our vision, we need enthusiastic leaders committed to our change agenda and keen to be at the very heart of the Council as well as playing a crucial role in the regeneration of our Borough. We’ve an ambitious vision and want people of all ages to have high aspirations, great confidence and the skills and opportunities they need to succeed. People will be healthy, able to find work and will enjoy living in our Borough.

Up to £109,000 (pay award pending)

For that money you will also get the privilege of setting the direction of the council and reflecting on what has gone well (and not so well), you won’t even need to face an election! 

The Bear and The Rock

Huge gulf of difference

Time seems to pass quite quickly, it feels as though it was years ago that huge queues were formed outside of Northern Rock’s branch in Fowler Street, South Shields as investors caught in a panic were determined to release their money. Cllr. Eddie McAtominey the Labour stalwart from Hebburn formed a one man queue to deposit a sum of exactly the amount the then government rules would protect in an act of bravura to show support for an ailing Chancellor.

But time changes little, the credit crunch continues to cause alarm and concern, the uncertainty and volatility of the foreign exchange markets, and the almost constant intervention of central banks belies the belief of Alistair Darling that Britain’s economy will remain resilient to the market turbulence. However, where we saw dithering and indecision in the UK (Lloyds TSB could have had The Rock many months ago) leading to a nationalisation that nobody desired, across the pond Bears Stearns has been bought at $2 per share by JP Morgan over a weekend! Whilst there can be little doubt that the Fed facilitated the deal it will go some way to allaying fears in the American banking sector along with the 25pt cut in rates to ease the credit pressures (if only for 24 hours). This decisiveness was something glaringly missing at the Treasury as Northern Rock drifted towards the coastline without a rudder, if a private solution had been found in the middle of 2007 it would have led to job losses, but we learn today that the government will slash jobs by half in any case to meet EU guidelines on it’s management of the Wreck, the other half will presumably go when it is belatedly returned to the private sector. As I have stated earlier in this blog, it would have been preferable to lose those jobs, and cheaper to pay for massive economic regeneration in the North-East than to throw over £110bn at the ailing bank with no guarantee of a return for the tax payer.

On the gulf of difference between the British and the American approaches to the banking crises John Redwood in his post says:

Since last August I have been commenting on how different the approach of the US authorities is to the approach of the UK authorities. It has taken just four days to rescue the assets and what remains of the business of Bear Stearns. More than six months have passed and we are still a long way from finding a private sector rescuer for Northern Rock. The Treasury and the Bank now have much less flexibility to deal with any other financial catastrophe, because their balance sheets are stretched by taking on the Rock. Meanwhile the Fed is well on the way to laying off its problems with the Bear.

Unfortunately we still have to bear a Chancellor who still insists on telling us that our economy is buoyant and resilient, despite the hard facts that our debt is out of control, inflation is plainly higher than he tells us, the budget shows a huge deficit, spending still outstrips receipts, and there is still open demand for even more money and credit for lending. Whilst not yet in free fall, the British economy is certainly slowing, investors are showing more support for commodities than equities, and the price of Gold has shot past $1000 per ounce as markets seek a safe haven. Central banks are trying their hardest to inject cash into uncertain markets, rates are being trimmed to sustain activity yet here in the UK there is a reluctance to bring rates down further, shortly there will be an inability to flush money into the markets, after Gordon Brown spectacularly sold 50% of our gold reserves when the market was rock bottom near the beginning of his Chancellorship.

What a crass and magnificently stupid decision this now looks- a reputation for competence? I don’t think so.

Time for the hair shirt?

Tories must replace the cuddly image

In one of his best articles for some time Matthew Parris suggests that it’s time for the Conservatives to move away from the course they have followed for the past two years. As the party meets at The Sage, Gateshead for it’s spring forum he tells us that a bit of honest grit, austerity, and financial probity is what is needed as the UK economy lurches towards an uncertain future. He wants David Cameron to change his clothes, don the hair shirt and become the Maggie Thatcher of our times.

In his opinion he thinks the electorate will thank the party for telling the truth about the state of Britain’s broken economy and for having the right tools to fix it.

The new Conservative language should be about waste, maladministration, extravagance, incompetence and drift. The new idea should be the need in hard times for rigour, severity and unsentimentality. Sheer necessity should be part of the backdrop to every Tory speech about the economy and public services.

Just as in 1978-79 people recited Tory mantra about the Winter of Discontent, the unburied dead, the Spanish practices of public sector unions and the subsidy of state housing. What might be their equivalents today? Gordon Brown’s tax-credit system; the abuse of incapacity benefit; the New Deal programme; the near-doubling (to such modest effect) of spending on the NHS; the proliferation in central and local government of advisers, consultants, inclusivity officers, media teams, communications experts and tin-headed, jargon-spouting Directors of Strategic Narrative; the legion of students pursuing pointless courses in woolly disciplines; the complete failure of the national drug-rehabilitation programme; the dissipation of the Department for International Development’s too-swiftly expanded budget into a thousand pointless club-class officials’ flights to and from Third World capitals. The staggering failures of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Lean and mean are the watchwords, and it is time to harden up.

Tim Montgomery takes up the theme at Conservative Home;

It’s time for David Cameron to tell the British people that Britain is going in the wrong direction. He needs to say that we’re living beyond our means. We’re spending too much and borrowing too much. We have surrendered our streets to yobbery and incivility. Britain’s schools are failing the poorest members of society. He needs to promise a government that will put things right and he should tell the British people that it won’t be easy or painless. We need to forget the focus groups and the polling for just one minute and tell the truth about a nation that is in trouble. Mr Cameron might be surprised at voters’ reaction. Our hunch is that the first politician to tell the British people ‘how it really is’ will form a bond with many millions of them. It doesn’t need to be a message that is soaked in gloom. Mr Cameron can be optimistic about the future but only, he should say, if Britain has the courage to elect a new government with a different agenda.

It’s clear that Parris trying to drag Cameron and his Shadow Cabinet out of their comfort zone, a slight though consistent lead in the opinion polls is not enough to suggest that the Conservatives will have an easy time at the next election and there is still much to be done to add some meat to the bones of a slowly developing policy book. To look man enough for the job the party needs to confront the economic issues facing Britain with some stark reality, and begin to look as though it won’t shirk some very tough decisions.