Best Of

Chlorinated Food.

This is the type of chlorine washed salad eaten every day by millions of people in the UK.

Yet there is outrage over chlorinated chicken.

Simple solution - just don't buy it.

It's not that complicated.

https://x.com/LeeAndersonMP_/status/1908481747332878430

Fundamentally for me this is why Reform has a low ceiling. Just too many divergent opinions.

He's normally a loon but he is entirely correct on this one though.

Its unscientific, protectionist BS.

On food safety alone there is absolutely no argument - its safe.

That's not quite true: the US has significantly more salmonella cases per capita than the UK. 26,500 people were hospitalized if the US with salmonella poisoning last year, against just just a 1,000 in the UK.

Some Americans have a habit of washing chicken in the sink before cooking it, which probably just increases cross-contamination.

My Mum always washes chicken in the sink before cooking it*.

* for herself, of course

I always wash chicken. Who is saying it shouldn't be washed? Idiotic. Naturally you then clean the sink.

Why the hell would you wash it?

Of course it shouldn't. It should be cooked.

Cooking it gets rid of anything that you don't want, washing it just spreads whatever you're washing around the kitchen and serves no hygienic purpose not served by cooking it.

Yeah, there's no need to wash as long as you cool properly. Absolutely nothing survives an hour and twenty minutes at 180C/200C lol! 😂

You should of course wash your hands after handling, however. 👍

I cook my boneless chicken thighs 15 minutes in the air fryer at 185C which works well too, turning it over half-way. Chicken breast I give 20 minutes.

Absolutely agreed on washing hands, and having separate utensils/boards etc for raw etc - that's what your sink is for, washing your hands, not your meat!

I cook chicken breasts in the air fryer as you do at 180 for 20 minutes turning the breast over after 10 minutes

I also cook a whole chicken in the air fryer at 180 for 60 minutes with 20 minutes breast down then turning it

It works perfectly and tastes exceptional though it is M & S British chicken

Also hygiene and washing hands and utensils is paramount but I do not wash the chicken or the breasts

I'm going to call into Big G's this summer for some roast chicken!

You would be more than welcome

Big G suddenly goes why are there are a 100 people knocking on my door seeking roast chicken

By the way don’t book connecting flights through Newark. You have to queue up to clear immigration (“what brings you here?” “I’m transiting to Mexico City”), collect and recheck baggage (fortunately I was hand baggage only), get on a train to the other terminal, then a bus, then go through security again, and - in my case - a full hour later you’re in the new departure terminal.

Such is my newfound Trump paranoia, I closed my Vanilla PB window before getting to the immigration window.

Not in El Salvador or Louisiana yet?

Good oh.

"Go to Guantanamo, go straight to Guantanamo. Do not pass "Go", do not collect $200."

I just won second prize in a beauty contest.

The IDF finally admits they slaughtered medics in Gaza after they were caught lying when video footage clearly shows they knew they were medics and decided to execute them .

The IDF are out of control enabled by Netanyahu and the rest of the genocidal maniacs in his cabinet .

Three things I thought would see me out (born 1954): The Tories were always around with enough heavyweights either to be the government or to replace the failing Labour one; The middle east was complicated but at least there were reasons, however qualified, to support Israel post -holocaust and under unending existential threat; The USA was the USA and was the friend of freedom, and the west, and was on the same side as us.

All three vanished out of sight in a couple of years.

‪Luke Tryl‬ ‪@luketryl.bsky.social‬
·
21m
Talk to people in focus groups about Broken Britain yes they mention the big stuff, struggling NHS, the cost of living but also how the state or private utilities seem to go out of their way to make life harder “you can’t speak to anyone” - that drives populist backlash and the appeal of chainsaws

https://bsky.app/profile/luketryl.bsky.social/post/3lm34m376y22z

That's hardly a new thing. It's been at least a quarter century since "interactive voice response" made talking to an actual human being near impossible.

WhatsApp have added a bot to my contacts. Just tried it out. "Hello", I typed, and it replied immediately saying hello back and asking about my day. We then had a chat about this and that. Very nice experience.

I had a very pleasant chat with Claude about winemaking the other day.

I can see how this would be comfort for lonely people.

Why bother with bots? Just come on PB.

‪Luke Tryl‬ ‪@luketryl.bsky.social‬
·
21m
Talk to people in focus groups about Broken Britain yes they mention the big stuff, struggling NHS, the cost of living but also how the state or private utilities seem to go out of their way to make life harder “you can’t speak to anyone” - that drives populist backlash and the appeal of chainsaws

https://bsky.app/profile/luketryl.bsky.social/post/3lm34m376y22z

That's hardly a new thing. It's been at least a quarter century since "interactive voice response" made talking to an actual human being near impossible.

WhatsApp have added a bot to my contacts. Just tried it out. "Hello", I typed, and it replied immediately saying hello back and asking about my day. We then had a chat about this and that. Very nice experience.

I had a very pleasant chat with Claude about winemaking the other day.

I can see how this would be comfort for lonely people.

Why bother with bots? Just come on PB.

Since I retired I spend far less time here as I don’t need to kill the moments of boredom at work.

As I suspected.

Trump’s team did actually spend weeks calculating the true reciprocal tariff rates for each country, and then he just decided not to do that anymore and based it on trade deficits.

Absolutely absurd.
https://x.com/Geiger_Capital/status/1908318822349647872

DOGE, key appointments, Russia/Ukraine, Gaza, bombing the Houthis, tariffs ... there's a theme. No strategy or prep or planning or due diligence, all on the whim of a single individual. It's no way to carry on at the best of times and it's downright scary when the individual in question is not only lazy and borderline stupid but doesn't even mean well.

The only saving grace (and it's not much) is that lazy, stupid and malign is preferable to clever, hardworking and malign.

The best feature of autocracies is that they are usually incompetent. Indeed, competent people are seen as a threat to the Leader.

China being a very very notable exception

They made some of the most ruinous policy errors in world history under Mao. Then had a pretty sensible couple of decades. Xi has changed the dynamic again. I’m not sure that will end well.

One could add the bungled war with Vietnam, and the one-child policy.

Yes, there's a wide range of views on China's leadership's competence. Personally I tend to the view that incompetence is baked into autocracy and that China is no exception, and that there are dozens of areas in which poor decision-making - as a direct result of the autocratic nature of the country- has left them perilously placed (the housing market being a prime example). My view is that China is teetering on the abyss.

And yet, look at China's progress since 1980. In 1980 almost every country in Africa was richer than China. Almost the whole country existed on subsistence agriculture.

The only was I can square this circle is by suggesting that the leadership of the Deng era was actually anomalously competent - and anomalously unautocratic.

Whatever his faults, (and despite the one-child folly), I think that Deng did do an incredible amount of good, for a very high proportion of the human race.