Tesco no to BBQ sauce

Keith Floyd would spin in his skillet

It never ceases to amaze (and enrage) me when I read some stories about the nanny state, I get incandescent when I read that the private sector is starting to take up the same wrap ’em in cotton wool, tell them how to live and die, watch your Ps and Qs, do as you are told, we are watching you attitudes. So Tesco staff have now taken it upon themselves to refuse the sale of BBQ sauce to certain youthful and good looking customers on the basis that it contains 2% alcohol.

Get a life guys, if you want to see the problems caused by real alcohol then get yourselves around here and stop nannying about.

Here’s a video of Keith Floyd cooking duck with two bottles of fizz – up yours Tesco!

If you look under 25 you are not allowed to watch this video, and parents, don’t even think of passing any tips on to your kids!

[YouTube =http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIx5pa_T0IM]

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Who ate all the (humble) pies?

Having read about the fund raising do for David Miliband and South Shields Labour Party over at The Chief Whips place, I was rather amused to learn that the Labour Party cognoscenti were served up their beer and sandwiches wine and canapes by none other than the proprietor of The Northern Herald!

Being a man who has never hidden his dislike for anything associated with the boys and girls from Ede House it might explain the “buffet emergency” as the Chief Whip describes it. Was Shaw trying to starve them into submission or had he ate all the humble pies himself? Did the long hours of additional preparation of the Foreign Secretary’s food poisoning explain the absence of Mr. Shaw from the blogosphere recently?

Mr. Miliband might like to contemplate the security risk to his party (and perhaps the nation) in allowing such a fervent supporter of the “hard left” Independents to be serving up his food, one hopes there was nothing mucky in the mayonnaise!

Shaw could have taken them all out in one fell swoop! Instead, he bent the knee and took his pieces of silver.

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Hot food take aways

Have your say on Waynetta’s World

I made a post on April 16th criticising the lifestyle choices of some our residents in South Shields who seem unhappy with the idea of cooking a meal for their family and putting a reliance on the growth of hot food take away shops, I described the situation as “Waynetta’s World”. It brought a couple of interesting bu t contrasting comments, one had a distinctly liberal free market position the other was more pragmatic. However, sometimes the free market can create what we want at the expense of things that we really really want, and by allowing unfettered access to our High streets we could see normal shops being displaced by hot food take away outlets, in the same manner as grey squirrels displacing red squirrels.

It isn’t what we really really want.

As I set out in my previous post, education could be an enormous tool but it’s effect is subject to drag, i.e. it is going to take two or three years to have an appreciable effect. In the mean time we need to carefully plan our retail centres so that they offer a good mix, a variety of outlets, that serve the general needs of their communities. There would be little point in having a street full of estate agents (I mention this because Fowler Street in South Shields has been allowed to lose too much of it’s retail frontage in my opinion.)

South Tyneside Council now have a draft planning policy statement for hot food take aways setting out the criteria for allowing planning permission, and giving a vision for our retail areas. The council is inviting our comments until Monday June 30th. so now is a good time to think about making your opinions known, they say that our input will influence the final decision on a concrete policy on “Waynetta’s World”.

My own view is that two hot food take aways adjacent to one another is one too many, and that a lot of upper floors are unused and wasted. We could fit more in if people really really need them, by allowing them to operate at first floor level (subject to DDA restrictions) thus freeing up more general retail frontage. It’s good to be consulted and asked for an opinion, but a nice webform that allows me to make my comments online would be far more “switched on” and convenient.

I guess we can use this email address (ldf@southtyneside.gov.uk) to send comments to, at least that’s what I did.

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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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Food rationing

Return of rationing to the UK

Ellee has a great thought provoking post on food rationing here and in the USA, as well as highlighting the rather silly choices we have when we shop.

Ask yourself, do you feel good about being able to decide between Sainsbury at the Nook in South Shields, Aldi on Chichester Road, or Lidle at Laygate, when others around the world have absolutely no choice at all?

I guess our own gripes about rising food prices are firmly put in their place when we see what’s happening in the developing countries.

There are some who argue that the changing diet of the Chinese is to blame, with their new found liking for burgers and BBQs creating a necessity to grow fields of grain to fatten cows  instead of growing rice, there are others who blame the loss of agricultural land given over to grow various crops to feed the fad for biofuels.

It seems that some of our sensibilities over climate change are getting in the way of a free market that once determined what the world ate, how much it grew, and how self sufficient we could all be (assuming that we farmed land that the local weather favoured for growth.)

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Death of the stottie?

Difficult to believe survey

Just looking at this little story in the Newcastle Journal which reveals that a survey shows that a third of under 24s don’t know what a stottie cake is! Apparently another third think it is minced eel patties fried in breadcrumbs.

I’m finding this a little difficult to believe, but applaud their efforts to increase recogition for our regional foods.

The stottie is part of our staple diet in South Shields, is it not? Available at every branch of Greggs, just about every small baker that I can think of in South Shields, and packed with chips and sold to schoolchildren (who prefer the less healthy diet) at many fish and chip outlets at lunchtime! Having witnessed an explosion of sandwich bars in the town over the past ten years I also know that the stottie cake is well represented in their offerings with a huge variety of fillings.

The round flat bread that was traditionally baked in the bottom of the oven (or black range) by our grandmothers with it’s elastic and chewy consistency ought to be one of the more instantly recognisable regional foods that we offer here on Tyneside. Greggs of Gosforth do their best to market the product throughout the UK, but I have noticed that their outlets further south than Yorkshire don’t carry or produce much stock of the Geordie’s favourite bread.

Still, some supermarkets have made a few moves to feature locally produced foods and reduce the amount of food miles – which should assuage the “green” consciences.

The stottie is not yet in danger of death, it just needs a little more support! Perhaps the Member’s Tea Room in the Houses of Parliament could be persuaded to offer stottie sandwiches – over to you messrs. Miliband and Hepburn.

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Waynetta’s world

An open letter to Jimmy Foreman

Today’s meeting of the Cabinet of South Tyneside Council will consider a report setting out a new general policy that attempts to limit the number the number of successful planning applications for hot food take away shops in the borough.

Many of our recognised retail areas have a number of hot food take-aways at present, an indication of the general demand for such facilities (they wouldn’t be there if people didn’t want to use them), and in some areas we are actually losing good general retail space to make room for them. In South Shields 14% of our retail outlets have been given over to cafes and restaurants and a further 6% are occupied by hot food take-aways, does this indicate that many of our residents have a lifestyle which reflects that of Waynetta Slob (pictured), the character created by Harry Enfield?

One might argue that the modern lifestyle revolves around a couple with 2.2 children both working who have little time to prepare and cook their own food and therefore rely on a convenient supply of burgers, fish and chips, kebabs, Indian curries, pizzas, and Chinese food, yet at the same time there are areas in South Tyneside where unemployment is still unacceptably high with couples and single parent families relying upon the same sources for their meals. The applications for hot food take-aways would not be so high if the demand for their services was not there, and after reading in the News of the World on Sunday of the lifestyle enjoyed by Karen Matthews I was struck by instant recognition of a number of similar scenarios that I could point to in South Tyneside. We are in danger of allowing our residents to live in Waynetta’s world!

As a libertarian I will say that it’s their choice to live this way, to shop in these places, and to feed themselves and their children with an unhealthy diet high in saturated fats and carbohydrates. So whilst people want to use the facilities of hot food take-aways then why not let them?

There are a number of other disadvantages to allowing this market free and unfettered access to our High Streets of course, they nearly all (without exception) create problems with car parking, particularly between the hours of 6.00 p.m. and midnight when local residents hear a constant stream of car engines coming and going to make use of limited parking space. Many of them are the cause of increased litter problems, especially at weekends, some of them create odours , and some become the focus for attention from groups of youngsters who seem to enjoy flocking to a lit window like moths to a flame. This can be intimidating for ordinary law abiding citizens making their way home at night. Again, an illustration of Waynetta’s world.

Yet, the demand for these products and services need not necessarily be as high as it is at present if we start a massive educational onslaught against our children to help them enjoy the benefits of knowledge, and learn all about food, it’s preparation, and cooking. These skills were once passed on from mother to daughter (and even to sons) and yet as far as I can remember have never been given a general high focus within the educational curriculum. Some very basic cooking skills are being taught in South Tyneside schools from an early age (i.e. years 1 – 4) and the skills curve starts to rise again at year 7. However, the time and intensity given to the subject needs to be amplified, encouragement needs to be given to all pupils of both sexes to learn culinary skills between years 7 and 11 and in further education. Community education needs to become involved too for adults looking to further their knowledge and skills, community projects need to be initiated to involve as many sections of the community as possible, our community centres, clubs, and associations have a role to play too. Once culinary skills and talents are established the skill base will again start to widen as the knowledge gained starts to be disseminated amongst family groups.

This is the the way to break out of Waynetta’s world Jimmy, but first you need to be brave enough to break out and away from the national curriculum, and to establish a new pattern in South Tyneside which stakes a great pride and emphasis in increasing knowledge of healthy easy cooking and eating. You should be pressing your Cabinet colleagues to follow your lead in this venture and impressing upon them the benefits of health, fitness, and more importantly a lessening of the demand for hot food take-aways in our retail areas. the consequences of which will be a releasing of more square footage originally intended for general retail use.

Councillor Jimmy Foreman as the Lead Member responsible for education in this borough you have an important and pivotal role to play which overlaps into other areas of the region’s lifestyles, you can be instrumental in driving a cultural change which will benefit us all, and your lead could create a model which other authorities might follow and it could become a catalyst for much better styled shopping areas in the future.

People make better choices when they are better educated, and the culture of Waynetta’s world can be eradicated.

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