FPT re: obesity. For all that I am a fan of @NickPalmer , I'm fairly shocked and disappointed about his attitude to food. It's worrying enough that a former MP and minister has never bothered to learn to cook. It's more worrying still that a guy who has devoted much of his life to the food and farming sector (and doing great work therein) eats mostly ready meals. Food in a packet is full of shite.
Interestingly, those countries where food and home cookery is prized and children are taught from an early age to eat proper food – namely France and Italy – have among the lowest rates of obesity in the G20. Coincidence? I think not.
A major issue is that many people who don't cook have retreated into a zone of "Cooking means cooking from scratch. Too complicated and I don't have the time."
Start by cheating. I did. Buy sauce in jars, use cans. Some cooking is better than none. Progress where you can and where you have time.
One thing that is completely left out of the cooking books seems to be cooking in bulk, home freezing etc. The myth that every meal has to be 100% hand made and eaten just after cooking......
Imagine if every kid was taught how to make 10 simple, healthy meals.
Th problem is time - what people need to be taught, as well, is how to do quick cheats for cooking.
Partly.
Mostly though they need to understand how to make simple, healthy, delicious food.
For example, salmon, baked with butter or olive oil and salt in tin foil - maybe with some cooked broccoli - is as simple as it gets.
Start there.
No let's not start there. Farmed salmon, very accessible is dreadful on very many levels go crazy on google if you want. Second of all, let's take someone doing a manual job. Salmon and some broccoli ain't gonna swing it calore-wise for that person. They will want more carbs. And thirdly, it is the mindset as much as anything and for cash poor, time poor people cutting up some broccoli (bought where/when) is simply a stretch.
Farmed salmon is fine. Don’t let the best be the enemy of the better.
If you want carbs, add toast to keep it really, really simple.
If you really can’t cut broccoli (and can’t even find the time to buy it) then there is probably no saving you.
There is certainly no hope for you if you are an advocate of and continue to buy farmed salmon.
I’ve generally found it bureaucratic, badly-maintained, incurious, but staffed by genuine heroes and there when needed.
I don’t know how it compares globally, but coincidentally I was looking at “perceptions of healthcare quality” across the OECD, and the U.K. tends to come lower down.
France and Switzerland seem to be at the top.
We seem to have given up on reform since Lansley’s ill-fated measures - the only solution is now just to funnel cash into it.
Switzerland has got a fully insurance based system with subsidised access for low income people. Switzerland doesn't have any concept of long term unemployment or living off the welfare state so ultimately the state doesn't need to fund healthcare and welfare for the "won't work" millions we have in the UK claiming ill health.
Swiss healthcare costs are some of the highest in the world.
Swiss government spends $3,100/person vs. $3,400/person in UK.
But then Swiss individuals pay $6,800/person on top of that privately vs. $900/person in the UK.
Pretty meaningless if you don't look at it as a percentage of GDP. All told the Swiss spend 11.3% of their GDP on healthcare. Compared to 11.1% for France and 11.7% for Germany. The US spends 16.8%.
The key thing is that Switzerland spends a lot more than the UK. The figures I have are 11.9% of GDP vs 10.0% for UK.
The national curriculum should include compulsory home economics, from KS1 all the way to at least year 9, and that should include:
- Basic cooking: not the old style come to school and bake a cake or make a lasagne, but proper basics like how to fry a piece of meat, how to chop an onion, peel a potato, scramble some eggs, steam some veg etc - Food hygiene and storage - Budgeting, money management and investment
I don't understand why this isn't absolutely core. It would save the country a lot. Perhaps even send school classes off to the local catering college every week and get them to complete foundation catering skills.
These things are as critical as other forms of personal education that are, fortunately, properly part of the curriculum such as PE, first aid and sex education.
In Iraq, the initial capture and occupation of Basra, entered into with soft hats and the self-congratulatory confidence of an Army that believed it led the world in peacekeeping and counterinsurgency, ended in a humiliating negotiated withdrawal of British forces to the edge of the city, where, pinned down by constant bombardment by the Shia militias who now ran the city, they lost all capacity to exert their influence.
The Americans, distinctly unimpressed at the failure of the British officers, were forced to help Iraqi forces retake the city in 2008’s Charge of the Knights operation, a humiliation for Britain. “This damaged the reputation of British forces with the US and the Iraqis and inflicted major dents in British military self-confidence,” Barry notes. Akam is less stoic, describing it as ”an acute and lasting humiliation to the British Army”, which “will linger and follow the troops halfway around the world to Afghanistan”.
Barry observes: “The US government’s decision to invade Iraq must stand as the worst military decision of the 21st century. It was a military strategic folly on a level equal to that of Napoleon’s 1812 attack on Russia and Hitler’s 1941 attack on the Soviet Union.” The failure, then, was ultimately a political one, of British politicians blindly following their American patrons into unwinnable wars.
Perhaps the Army’s capacity to win the next war, like the British state’s to weather the next crisis, would be better served by generals finding the courage, when necessary, to tell politicians that some things simply can’t, or shouldn’t be done.
However I disagree with the conclusion, Iraq is now free of Saddam and Iraqis elect their own government
Iraq was a catastrophic blunder. Worse than Suez if not Vietnam.
Polluted the body politic and opened the floodgates to mass distrust in government and from there to QAnon etc.
Just the other day I was reading some crypto “guru” explain that one could not trust fiat currency because it was “brought to you by the same people who said there were WMDs in Iraq”.
Saddam would still be in power if there had been no invasion
Why has someone flagged this as Off Topic? HYUFD is making a perfectly sensible point, in response to someone else, and doing it in a polite way
This Off Topic crap is quite annoying. May I humble suggest the moderators ban, for life, anyone that does it
Can't believe that some puerile, annoying wee twat hasn't Off Topicked this. In fact..
FPT re: obesity. For all that I am a fan of @NickPalmer , I'm fairly shocked and disappointed about his attitude to food. It's worrying enough that a former MP and minister has never bothered to learn to cook. It's more worrying still that a guy who has devoted much of his life to the food and farming sector (and doing great work therein) eats mostly ready meals. Food in a packet is full of shite.
Interestingly, those countries where food and home cookery is prized and children are taught from an early age to eat proper food – namely France and Italy – have among the lowest rates of obesity in the G20. Coincidence? I think not.
A major issue is that many people who don't cook have retreated into a zone of "Cooking means cooking from scratch. Too complicated and I don't have the time."
Start by cheating. I did. Buy sauce in jars, use cans. Some cooking is better than none. Progress where you can and where you have time.
One thing that is completely left out of the cooking books seems to be cooking in bulk, home freezing etc. The myth that every meal has to be 100% hand made and eaten just after cooking......
Imagine if every kid was taught how to make 10 simple, healthy meals.
Th problem is time - what people need to be taught, as well, is how to do quick cheats for cooking.
I have a go-to recipe for doing risotto in the microwave. A delicious meal in about half an hour.
Anything that has been in the microwave for half an hour will be cinders, certainly not edible.
Er, you don't cook it all in one go, 30 mins is total prep/cooking time. There's a lot of water to be absorbed by the rice too. Believe me, it is delicious!
Why not post the recipe, and let us decide for ourselves?
Cut up a leak and a couple of cloves of garlic, add about 1oz butter and some olive oil, put in a large glass bowl, cover and microwave on high for 5 mins. Meanwhile make 1.5 pints stock with boiling water. Stir 10oz risotto rice into bowl to get it well covered with oil and butter, add stock and black pepper, cook on high uncovered for 10 minutes. Meanwhile slice some mushrooms, eg about 6 or 8, after 10 minutes add to bowl, stir briefly and cook another 6 minutes on high. Stir in some grated parmesan and leave for a few minutes before serving. The recipe is in a cookbook we have (I think bbc good food) but can't find it online. Plenty of variations are possible.
Here's mine. 30 minutes to an amazing fish risotto
STEP 1 Heat oven to 200C/180C fan. Lob a large chunk of butter into an ovenproof dish. Put dish on the hob on a medium heat. Chuck in 1 large slicked leek, stirring regularly, until it begins to tenderise, about 3 minutes. Add cracked salt, black pepper, and then some chopped garlic. 1 clove. Stir for another minute. Add about 150ml white wine. Cook another 2 minutes, simmering the booze away. Then add 300g risotto rice, and cook for another 2 minutes, stirring frequently
STEP 2 Throw in 500ml fish stock and about 150ml milk, bring to the boil and bubble for 5 mins, then sit 300g of chopped undyed smoked haddock on top. Cover with a lid or foil ,and bake in the oven for 18 mins, or until the rice is tender.
STEP 3 Fold in 2 table spoons of crème fraîche and a fistful of rocket leaves (or spinach, or steamed cavolo nero), season with plenty of black pepper, then cover the pan again and leave to rest out of the oven for 3 mins before serving – the steam will soften the greens.. Garnish with fresh flaked parmesan and chopped parsley
I’ve generally found it bureaucratic, badly-maintained, incurious, but staffed by genuine heroes and there when needed.
I don’t know how it compares globally, but coincidentally I was looking at “perceptions of healthcare quality” across the OECD, and the U.K. tends to come lower down.
France and Switzerland seem to be at the top.
We seem to have given up on reform since Lansley’s ill-fated measures - the only solution is now just to funnel cash into it.
Switzerland has got a fully insurance based system with subsidised access for low income people. Switzerland doesn't have any concept of long term unemployment or living off the welfare state so ultimately the state doesn't need to fund healthcare and welfare for the "won't work" millions we have in the UK claiming ill health.
What happens if a Swiss person can't work then? How do they get by?
They get whatever job they can. There's not really a concept of "can't work". At least not in my experience of living there. The jobs all pay enough that there really isn't very much of a "can't work" attitude. In terms of healthcare there is a provision for low income people but it's a subsidy. Unemployment in Switzerland is mostly incidental rather than structural. They also don't have in working benefits, no housing benefit and generally a very tiny welfare state. Retirement saving is done on an individual basis too and there really isn't a way to avoid it.
It's a very rich and ordered country, and quite a small one, so I can imagine they don't have the poverty issues we do, but there must be people there who, for one reason or another, can't work, or can only work part/time, and who haven't racked up the contributions they need to access state support. Just wondering what happens with such people in a so-called "contributory" benefits system. I've always kind of assumed it's not the whole story. That if you truly haven't a job and have no savings, then regardless of age or employment history, or your attitude, the state will help you out. Or at least there'll be a mechanism for it. In the prosperous West, I mean, of which Switzerland is very much a part. I see hyufd mentioning "emergency support" so maybe that's it.
Again, you're starting from the wrong place. Obviously for people with disabilities etc... there is care available but there just isn't a "can't work" attitude. That is something the UK enables with a non-contributory benefits system. The emergency support is basically a nothing and is essentially a workfare option, the state will make you work for your emergency support. My brother-in-law who is a lazy git ended up going down that route because he didn't want to get a job and he ended up doing street cleaning until he realised that getting paid a real wage was a better idea than workfare.
There really is no concept of "can't work", the idea of it is an anathema. There simply exists no valid reason other than medically diagnosed disability.
I’ve generally found it bureaucratic, badly-maintained, incurious, but staffed by genuine heroes and there when needed.
I don’t know how it compares globally, but coincidentally I was looking at “perceptions of healthcare quality” across the OECD, and the U.K. tends to come lower down.
France and Switzerland seem to be at the top.
We seem to have given up on reform since Lansley’s ill-fated measures - the only solution is now just to funnel cash into it.
Switzerland has got a fully insurance based system with subsidised access for low income people. Switzerland doesn't have any concept of long term unemployment or living off the welfare state so ultimately the state doesn't need to fund healthcare and welfare for the "won't work" millions we have in the UK claiming ill health.
What happens if a Swiss person can't work then? How do they get by?
They get whatever job they can. There's not really a concept of "can't work". At least not in my experience of living there. The jobs all pay enough that there really isn't very much of a "can't work" attitude. In terms of healthcare there is a provision for low income people but it's a subsidy. Unemployment in Switzerland is mostly incidental rather than structural. They also don't have in working benefits, no housing benefit and generally a very tiny welfare state. Retirement saving is done on an individual basis too and there really isn't a way to avoid it.
Unemployment benefits in Switzerland are more generous than JSA here ie 70% of the average wage earned in the year before you lost your job, 80% if you have children.
Even if you are still not in work after that you can still claim emergency assistance and welfare.
Those in receipt of social assistance also get their housing costs covered
Yes, it's a wholly contributory system that is time limited. It's generous but finite.
It's a genuine safety net which is what ours was supposed to be.
I think we should be looking to move back in this direction. Our welfare system evolved to deal with the mass unemployment and long term unemployment associated with the profound economic shock of deindustrialisation in the 1970s-90s, which was magnified by the coincident working age population bulge of the baby boomer generation. In the mid 1980s you really couldn't get a job in many parts of the country, and so the alternative to long term unemployment benefits was starvation. Today's labour market is quite different, characterised by a shortage of workers. There is no reason for people to be long term unemployed, the system should be more generous but time limited. There are communities (eg the Welsh valleys) still blighted by long term ill health as a legacy of heavy industry and mass unemployment, perhaps what they need are properly funded localised programmes addressing those issues rather than just the drip feed of inadequate amounts of money via the welfare system. I don't want to come over all Norman Tebbit either, but perhaps if people can move to SE England from Poland for a job then they can move from Merthyr or Blackburn too. You don't have a right to a job on your doorstep.
Wow. I can completely agree with you. 😲
Oh dear! 😉
It would be interesting to really understand the micro-factors that prevent people moving from Merthyr to Cardiff (or London) for work.
The U.K. is quite weird in that very poor, deprived areas, exist cheek by jowl with richer ones - and never the twain shall meet.
It's an attitude I struggle to understand too, since I have worked overseas twice and live hundreds of miles (and in a different country) from where I was born. Of course those kinds of moves are easier for well paid professional jobs - everything is easier with money.
Yep. You go where the work is. That also used to be the way in the earlier part of eth 20th Century. Whole communities would up and move from one area to another if that was what the work demanded. I am not necessarily advocating that now but it shows how attitudes have changed post war.
In Iraq, the initial capture and occupation of Basra, entered into with soft hats and the self-congratulatory confidence of an Army that believed it led the world in peacekeeping and counterinsurgency, ended in a humiliating negotiated withdrawal of British forces to the edge of the city, where, pinned down by constant bombardment by the Shia militias who now ran the city, they lost all capacity to exert their influence.
The Americans, distinctly unimpressed at the failure of the British officers, were forced to help Iraqi forces retake the city in 2008’s Charge of the Knights operation, a humiliation for Britain. “This damaged the reputation of British forces with the US and the Iraqis and inflicted major dents in British military self-confidence,” Barry notes. Akam is less stoic, describing it as ”an acute and lasting humiliation to the British Army”, which “will linger and follow the troops halfway around the world to Afghanistan”.
Barry observes: “The US government’s decision to invade Iraq must stand as the worst military decision of the 21st century. It was a military strategic folly on a level equal to that of Napoleon’s 1812 attack on Russia and Hitler’s 1941 attack on the Soviet Union.” The failure, then, was ultimately a political one, of British politicians blindly following their American patrons into unwinnable wars.
Perhaps the Army’s capacity to win the next war, like the British state’s to weather the next crisis, would be better served by generals finding the courage, when necessary, to tell politicians that some things simply can’t, or shouldn’t be done.
However I disagree with the conclusion, Iraq is now free of Saddam and Iraqis elect their own government
Iraq was a catastrophic blunder. Worse than Suez if not Vietnam.
Polluted the body politic and opened the floodgates to mass distrust in government and from there to QAnon etc.
Just the other day I was reading some crypto “guru” explain that one could not trust fiat currency because it was “brought to you by the same people who said there were WMDs in Iraq”.
Saddam would still be in power if there had been no invasion
Why has someone flagged this as Off Topic? HYUFD is making a perfectly sensible point, in response to someone else, and doing it in a polite way
This Off Topic crap is quite annoying. May I humble suggest the moderators ban, for life, anyone that does it
Can't believe that some puerile, annoying wee twat hasn't Off Topicked this. In fact..
Most items that end up being flagged as Off Topic are due to people pressing the wrong button on a mobile / tablet...
I wouldn't worry about it unless it happens an awful lot.
FPT re: obesity. For all that I am a fan of @NickPalmer , I'm fairly shocked and disappointed about his attitude to food. It's worrying enough that a former MP and minister has never bothered to learn to cook. It's more worrying still that a guy who has devoted much of his life to the food and farming sector (and doing great work therein) eats mostly ready meals. Food in a packet is full of shite.
Interestingly, those countries where food and home cookery is prized and children are taught from an early age to eat proper food – namely France and Italy – have among the lowest rates of obesity in the G20. Coincidence? I think not.
A major issue is that many people who don't cook have retreated into a zone of "Cooking means cooking from scratch. Too complicated and I don't have the time."
Start by cheating. I did. Buy sauce in jars, use cans. Some cooking is better than none. Progress where you can and where you have time.
One thing that is completely left out of the cooking books seems to be cooking in bulk, home freezing etc. The myth that every meal has to be 100% hand made and eaten just after cooking......
Imagine if every kid was taught how to make 10 simple, healthy meals.
Th problem is time - what people need to be taught, as well, is how to do quick cheats for cooking.
I have a go-to recipe for doing risotto in the microwave. A delicious meal in about half an hour.
Anything that has been in the microwave for half an hour will be cinders, certainly not edible.
Er, you don't cook it all in one go, 30 mins is total prep/cooking time. There's a lot of water to be absorbed by the rice too. Believe me, it is delicious!
Why not post the recipe, and let us decide for ourselves?
Cut up a leak and a couple of cloves of garlic, add about 1oz butter and some olive oil, put in a large glass bowl, cover and microwave on high for 5 mins. Meanwhile make 1.5 pints stock with boiling water. Stir 10oz risotto rice into bowl to get it well covered with oil and butter, add stock and black pepper, cook on high uncovered for 10 minutes. Meanwhile slice some mushrooms, eg about 6 or 8, after 10 minutes add to bowl, stir briefly and cook another 6 minutes on high. Stir in some grated parmesan and leave for a few minutes before serving. The recipe is in a cookbook we have (I think bbc good food) but can't find it online. Plenty of variations are possible.
Here's mine. 30 minutes to an amazing fish risotto
STEP 1 Heat oven to 200C/180C fan. Lob a large chunk of butter into an ovenproof dish. Put dish on the hob on a medium heat. Chuck in 1 large slicked leek, stirring regularly, until it begins to tenderise, about 3 minutes. Add cracked salt, black pepper, and then some chopped garlic. 1 clove. Stir for another minute. Add about 150ml white wine. Cook another 2 minutes, simmering the booze away. Then add 300g risotto rice, and cook for another 2 minutes, stirring frequently
STEP 2 Throw in 500ml fish stock and about 150ml milk, bring to the boil and bubble for 5 mins, then sit 300g of chopped undyed smoked haddock on top. Cover with a lid or foil ,and bake in the oven for 18 mins, or until the rice is tender.
STEP 3 Fold in 2 table spoons of crème fraîche and a fistful of rocket leaves (or spinach, or steamed cavolo nero), season with plenty of black pepper, then cover the pan again and leave to rest out of the oven for 3 mins before serving – the steam will soften the greens.. Garnish with fresh flaked parmesan and chopped parsley
Serves a hungry 2 or a less hungry 3, simply increase all amounts for more people
That sounds excellent. Do you think it would work with uncooked mackerel? I've got quite a lot of it in the fridge that we need to use, this seems like a perfect recipe for it.
Anuk Arudpragasam/A Passage North - The book follows Krishan's journey as he travels across Sri Lanka to attend a family funeral and was been described by Jenny Bhatt on NPR as a "tender elegy" to those caught up in the country's civil war where an estimated 100,000 people were killed and 20,000 people remain missing.
Damon Galgut/The Promise - The Promise, explores recent South African history through the wish of a white woman to leave a house to her black woman who had worked for her. Rebecca Jones from BBC News described it as "beautifully written with characters you come to care deeply about".
Patricia Lockwood/No-one Is Talking About This - The stylistically experimental book explores human experiences on social media. Writing in The New York Times, Merve Emre praised the book for transforming "all that is ugly and cheap about online culture into an experience of sublimity".
Nadifa Mohamed/The Fortune Men - While The Fortune Men is a novel, it is based on the true story of the wrongful murder conviction of Mahmood Mattan, the last man to be hanged in Wales in 1952
Richard Powers/Bewilderment - In Bewilderment, Powers tells the story of astrobiologist Theo Byrne who is struggling to raise his son Robin after the death of his wife.
Magge Shipstead/Great Circle - Maggie Shipstead's novel Great Circle weaves together the story of a trailblazing female aviator who disappeared in 1950 with that of a contemporary Hollywood star trying to make a film about her.
Wokeness in literature is insane
Check the short list for the T S Eliot poetry prize
Interesting how people perceive things differently. I was thinking what a nice and varied list of interesting sounding books that was. It never crossed my mind that they were "woke".
I have to agree. I would probably be described as pretty anti-woke but I didn't get any sense of bridling at that list. I thought at least some of them sounded really interesting. And in the end that is what matters.
Foodyism is just another way to spit in the face of the poor.
Ha ha you're poor - if only you learnt how to Cook you would be eating much better.
Pasta and rice are as cheap as burger and chips as are many fruit and vegetables, no matter what your income there are tasty and healthy dishes that can be cooked
Foodyism is just another way to spit in the face of the poor.
Ha ha you're poor - if only you learnt how to Cook you would be eating much better.
That's a load of crap, I grew up on an estate and my parents were very much at the lower end of the income scale when I was a kid, that my mum could cook and create something from nothing is why our family didn't go hungry on my dad's pittance income.
In Iraq, the initial capture and occupation of Basra, entered into with soft hats and the self-congratulatory confidence of an Army that believed it led the world in peacekeeping and counterinsurgency, ended in a humiliating negotiated withdrawal of British forces to the edge of the city, where, pinned down by constant bombardment by the Shia militias who now ran the city, they lost all capacity to exert their influence.
The Americans, distinctly unimpressed at the failure of the British officers, were forced to help Iraqi forces retake the city in 2008’s Charge of the Knights operation, a humiliation for Britain. “This damaged the reputation of British forces with the US and the Iraqis and inflicted major dents in British military self-confidence,” Barry notes. Akam is less stoic, describing it as ”an acute and lasting humiliation to the British Army”, which “will linger and follow the troops halfway around the world to Afghanistan”.
Barry observes: “The US government’s decision to invade Iraq must stand as the worst military decision of the 21st century. It was a military strategic folly on a level equal to that of Napoleon’s 1812 attack on Russia and Hitler’s 1941 attack on the Soviet Union.” The failure, then, was ultimately a political one, of British politicians blindly following their American patrons into unwinnable wars.
Perhaps the Army’s capacity to win the next war, like the British state’s to weather the next crisis, would be better served by generals finding the courage, when necessary, to tell politicians that some things simply can’t, or shouldn’t be done.
However I disagree with the conclusion, Iraq is now free of Saddam and Iraqis elect their own government
Iraq was a catastrophic blunder. Worse than Suez if not Vietnam.
Polluted the body politic and opened the floodgates to mass distrust in government and from there to QAnon etc.
Just the other day I was reading some crypto “guru” explain that one could not trust fiat currency because it was “brought to you by the same people who said there were WMDs in Iraq”.
Saddam would still be in power if there had been no invasion
Why has someone flagged this as Off Topic? HYUFD is making a perfectly sensible point, in response to someone else, and doing it in a polite way
This Off Topic crap is quite annoying. May I humble suggest the moderators ban, for life, anyone that does it
Can't believe that some puerile, annoying wee twat hasn't Off Topicked this. In fact..
Most items that end up being flagged as Off Topic are due to people pressing the wrong button on a mobile / tablet...
I wouldn't worry about it unless it happens an awful lot.
This is true, the only times I've done it is by accident and remedied when I've noticed. Until very recently, that is.
Foodyism is just another way to spit in the face of the poor.
Ha ha you're poor - if only you learnt how to Cook you would be eating much better.
Cookery teaching at schools disappeared in 1986 as O levels and CSEs gave way to GCSEs and Cookery gave way to the cheaper and easier to teach Home Economics.
So the last set of people who were given proper cookery lessons at school are now 50 years old.
FPT re: obesity. For all that I am a fan of @NickPalmer , I'm fairly shocked and disappointed about his attitude to food. It's worrying enough that a former MP and minister has never bothered to learn to cook. It's more worrying still that a guy who has devoted much of his life to the food and farming sector (and doing great work therein) eats mostly ready meals. Food in a packet is full of shite.
Interestingly, those countries where food and home cookery is prized and children are taught from an early age to eat proper food – namely France and Italy – have among the lowest rates of obesity in the G20. Coincidence? I think not.
A major issue is that many people who don't cook have retreated into a zone of "Cooking means cooking from scratch. Too complicated and I don't have the time."
Start by cheating. I did. Buy sauce in jars, use cans. Some cooking is better than none. Progress where you can and where you have time.
One thing that is completely left out of the cooking books seems to be cooking in bulk, home freezing etc. The myth that every meal has to be 100% hand made and eaten just after cooking......
Imagine if every kid was taught how to make 10 simple, healthy meals.
Th problem is time - what people need to be taught, as well, is how to do quick cheats for cooking.
I have a go-to recipe for doing risotto in the microwave. A delicious meal in about half an hour.
Anything that has been in the microwave for half an hour will be cinders, certainly not edible.
Er, you don't cook it all in one go, 30 mins is total prep/cooking time. There's a lot of water to be absorbed by the rice too. Believe me, it is delicious!
Why not post the recipe, and let us decide for ourselves?
Cut up a leak and a couple of cloves of garlic, add about 1oz butter and some olive oil, put in a large glass bowl, cover and microwave on high for 5 mins. Meanwhile make 1.5 pints stock with boiling water. Stir 10oz risotto rice into bowl to get it well covered with oil and butter, add stock and black pepper, cook on high uncovered for 10 minutes. Meanwhile slice some mushrooms, eg about 6 or 8, after 10 minutes add to bowl, stir briefly and cook another 6 minutes on high. Stir in some grated parmesan and leave for a few minutes before serving. The recipe is in a cookbook we have (I think bbc good food) but can't find it online. Plenty of variations are possible.
Here's mine. 30 minutes to an amazing fish risotto
STEP 1 Heat oven to 200C/180C fan. Lob a large chunk of butter into an ovenproof dish. Put dish on the hob on a medium heat. Chuck in 1 large slicked leek, stirring regularly, until it begins to tenderise, about 3 minutes. Add cracked salt, black pepper, and then some chopped garlic. 1 clove. Stir for another minute. Add about 150ml white wine. Cook another 2 minutes, simmering the booze away. Then add 300g risotto rice, and cook for another 2 minutes, stirring frequently
STEP 2 Throw in 500ml fish stock and about 150ml milk, bring to the boil and bubble for 5 mins, then sit 300g of chopped undyed smoked haddock on top. Cover with a lid or foil ,and bake in the oven for 18 mins, or until the rice is tender.
STEP 3 Fold in 2 table spoons of crème fraîche and a fistful of rocket leaves (or spinach, or steamed cavolo nero), season with plenty of black pepper, then cover the pan again and leave to rest out of the oven for 3 mins before serving – the steam will soften the greens.. Garnish with fresh flaked parmesan and chopped parsley
Serves a hungry 2 or a less hungry 3, simply increase all amounts for more people
That sounds excellent. Do you think it would work with uncooked mackerel? I've got quite a lot of it in the fridge that we need to use, this seems like a perfect recipe for it.
Might work but it'd be a different thing, mackerel being oily and haddock not. Not sure parmesan (flaked or otherwise) would go with mackerel either.
Foodyism is just another way to spit in the face of the poor.
Ha ha you're poor - if only you learnt how to Cook you would be eating much better.
It really isn't snobbery or sneering. Everyone should learn to cook, and/or be taught at school. It is a failure of our education system
I've long held the opinion Gardenwalker espouses: state schools should teach ten recipes - ten basic, tasty, nourishing meals that every British child can learn to do. Some fish, some meat, some curry, some veggie, ten classics. Done.
That way every child will learn about food, about cooking processes, about preparation, about seasoning, about fresh fruit and veg, about nutrition.
It amazes me that we don't do this. It is far more important than science, for the vast majority of kids
Foodyism is just another way to spit in the face of the poor.
Ha ha you're poor - if only you learnt how to Cook you would be eating much better.
Cookery teaching at schools disappeared in 1986 as O levels and CSEs gave way to GCSEs and Cookery gave way to the cheaper and easier to teach Home Economics.
So the last set of people who were given proper cookery lessons at school are now 50 years old.
Foodyism is just another way to spit in the face of the poor.
Ha ha you're poor - if only you learnt how to Cook you would be eating much better.
Pasta and rice are as cheap as burger and chips as are many fruit and vegetables, no matter what your income there are tasty and healthy dishes that can be cooked
There’s your issue though. Carbs are cheap and make you fat.
Foodyism is just another way to spit in the face of the poor.
Ha ha you're poor - if only you learnt how to Cook you would be eating much better.
It really isn't snobbery or sneering. Everyone should learn to cook, and/or be taught at school. It is a failure of our education system
I've long held the opinion Gardenwalker espouses: state schools should teach ten recipes - ten basic, tasty, nourishing meals that every British child can learn to do. Some fish, some meat, some curry, some veggie, ten classics. Done.
That way every child will learn about food, about cooking processes, about preparation, about seasoning, about fresh fruit and veg, about nutrition.
It amazes me that we don't do this. It is far more important than science, for the vast majority of kids
Private schools are little better, there should be at least one or 2 cooking lessons a week for all pupils in all schools up to 16 I agree
Why couldn't the climate summit have been conducted online?
I thought until yesterday that the added investment in fuel to get there paid off because of the added gravitas of in person meetings, but I can't for the life of me see any difference between Johnson and Modi being there in person vs Queenie and Xi being remote. If we have had 26 of these things that's ample. If we really need annual COPs three out of four can surely be virtual, with an actual one in Olympic or world Cup years.
Foodyism is just another way to spit in the face of the poor.
Ha ha you're poor - if only you learnt how to Cook you would be eating much better.
I can't cook a fucking thing and have no interest in learning but I utterly despise soi disant car enthusiasts who own adjustable spanners and don't corner balance their cars.
FPT re: obesity. For all that I am a fan of @NickPalmer , I'm fairly shocked and disappointed about his attitude to food. It's worrying enough that a former MP and minister has never bothered to learn to cook. It's more worrying still that a guy who has devoted much of his life to the food and farming sector (and doing great work therein) eats mostly ready meals. Food in a packet is full of shite.
Interestingly, those countries where food and home cookery is prized and children are taught from an early age to eat proper food – namely France and Italy – have among the lowest rates of obesity in the G20. Coincidence? I think not.
A major issue is that many people who don't cook have retreated into a zone of "Cooking means cooking from scratch. Too complicated and I don't have the time."
Start by cheating. I did. Buy sauce in jars, use cans. Some cooking is better than none. Progress where you can and where you have time.
One thing that is completely left out of the cooking books seems to be cooking in bulk, home freezing etc. The myth that every meal has to be 100% hand made and eaten just after cooking......
Imagine if every kid was taught how to make 10 simple, healthy meals.
Th problem is time - what people need to be taught, as well, is how to do quick cheats for cooking.
I have a go-to recipe for doing risotto in the microwave. A delicious meal in about half an hour.
Anything that has been in the microwave for half an hour will be cinders, certainly not edible.
Er, you don't cook it all in one go, 30 mins is total prep/cooking time. There's a lot of water to be absorbed by the rice too. Believe me, it is delicious!
Why not post the recipe, and let us decide for ourselves?
Cut up a leak and a couple of cloves of garlic, add about 1oz butter and some olive oil, put in a large glass bowl, cover and microwave on high for 5 mins. Meanwhile make 1.5 pints stock with boiling water. Stir 10oz risotto rice into bowl to get it well covered with oil and butter, add stock and black pepper, cook on high uncovered for 10 minutes. Meanwhile slice some mushrooms, eg about 6 or 8, after 10 minutes add to bowl, stir briefly and cook another 6 minutes on high. Stir in some grated parmesan and leave for a few minutes before serving. The recipe is in a cookbook we have (I think bbc good food) but can't find it online. Plenty of variations are possible.
Here's mine. 30 minutes to an amazing fish risotto
STEP 1 Heat oven to 200C/180C fan. Lob a large chunk of butter into an ovenproof dish. Put dish on the hob on a medium heat. Chuck in 1 large slicked leek, stirring regularly, until it begins to tenderise, about 3 minutes. Add cracked salt, black pepper, and then some chopped garlic. 1 clove. Stir for another minute. Add about 150ml white wine. Cook another 2 minutes, simmering the booze away. Then add 300g risotto rice, and cook for another 2 minutes, stirring frequently
STEP 2 Throw in 500ml fish stock and about 150ml milk, bring to the boil and bubble for 5 mins, then sit 300g of chopped undyed smoked haddock on top. Cover with a lid or foil ,and bake in the oven for 18 mins, or until the rice is tender.
STEP 3 Fold in 2 table spoons of crème fraîche and a fistful of rocket leaves (or spinach, or steamed cavolo nero), season with plenty of black pepper, then cover the pan again and leave to rest out of the oven for 3 mins before serving – the steam will soften the greens.. Garnish with fresh flaked parmesan and chopped parsley
Serves a hungry 2 or a less hungry 3, simply increase all amounts for more people
That sounds excellent. Do you think it would work with uncooked mackerel? I've got quite a lot of it in the fridge that we need to use, this seems like a perfect recipe for it.
Might work but it'd be a different thing, mackerel being oily and haddock not. Not sure parmesan (flaked or otherwise) would go with mackerel either.
I've had mackerel with a parmesan crust before which was good, but yes the issue was with the oiliness of the mackerel vs haddock.
Foodyism is just another way to spit in the face of the poor.
Ha ha you're poor - if only you learnt how to Cook you would be eating much better.
Pasta and rice are as cheap as burger and chips as are many fruit and vegetables, no matter what your income there are tasty and healthy dishes that can be cooked
There’s your issue though. Carbs are cheap and make you fat.
There are plenty of cheap vegetables and fruit which don't.
There are also plenty of fat rich people and thin poor people, it is about eating the right things not just what you fancy
Foodyism is just another way to spit in the face of the poor.
Ha ha you're poor - if only you learnt how to Cook you would be eating much better.
It really isn't snobbery or sneering. Everyone should learn to cook, and/or be taught at school. It is a failure of our education system
I've long held the opinion Gardenwalker espouses: state schools should teach ten recipes - ten basic, tasty, nourishing meals that every British child can learn to do. Some fish, some meat, some curry, some veggie, ten classics. Done.
That way every child will learn about food, about cooking processes, about preparation, about seasoning, about fresh fruit and veg, about nutrition.
It amazes me that we don't do this. It is far more important than science, for the vast majority of kids
Why couldn't the climate summit have been conducted online?
Yes, the report that about 150 private jets have flown into the summit, yet now they are sitting down to menus explaining the different carbon footprint of each dish, doesn’t really compute in any sensible world.
FPT re: obesity. For all that I am a fan of @NickPalmer , I'm fairly shocked and disappointed about his attitude to food. It's worrying enough that a former MP and minister has never bothered to learn to cook. It's more worrying still that a guy who has devoted much of his life to the food and farming sector (and doing great work therein) eats mostly ready meals. Food in a packet is full of shite.
Interestingly, those countries where food and home cookery is prized and children are taught from an early age to eat proper food – namely France and Italy – have among the lowest rates of obesity in the G20. Coincidence? I think not.
A major issue is that many people who don't cook have retreated into a zone of "Cooking means cooking from scratch. Too complicated and I don't have the time."
Start by cheating. I did. Buy sauce in jars, use cans. Some cooking is better than none. Progress where you can and where you have time.
One thing that is completely left out of the cooking books seems to be cooking in bulk, home freezing etc. The myth that every meal has to be 100% hand made and eaten just after cooking......
Imagine if every kid was taught how to make 10 simple, healthy meals.
Th problem is time - what people need to be taught, as well, is how to do quick cheats for cooking.
I have a go-to recipe for doing risotto in the microwave. A delicious meal in about half an hour.
Anything that has been in the microwave for half an hour will be cinders, certainly not edible.
Er, you don't cook it all in one go, 30 mins is total prep/cooking time. There's a lot of water to be absorbed by the rice too. Believe me, it is delicious!
Why not post the recipe, and let us decide for ourselves?
Cut up a leak and a couple of cloves of garlic, add about 1oz butter and some olive oil, put in a large glass bowl, cover and microwave on high for 5 mins. Meanwhile make 1.5 pints stock with boiling water. Stir 10oz risotto rice into bowl to get it well covered with oil and butter, add stock and black pepper, cook on high uncovered for 10 minutes. Meanwhile slice some mushrooms, eg about 6 or 8, after 10 minutes add to bowl, stir briefly and cook another 6 minutes on high. Stir in some grated parmesan and leave for a few minutes before serving. The recipe is in a cookbook we have (I think bbc good food) but can't find it online. Plenty of variations are possible.
Here's mine. 30 minutes to an amazing fish risotto
STEP 1 Heat oven to 200C/180C fan. Lob a large chunk of butter into an ovenproof dish. Put dish on the hob on a medium heat. Chuck in 1 large slicked leek, stirring regularly, until it begins to tenderise, about 3 minutes. Add cracked salt, black pepper, and then some chopped garlic. 1 clove. Stir for another minute. Add about 150ml white wine. Cook another 2 minutes, simmering the booze away. Then add 300g risotto rice, and cook for another 2 minutes, stirring frequently
STEP 2 Throw in 500ml fish stock and about 150ml milk, bring to the boil and bubble for 5 mins, then sit 300g of chopped undyed smoked haddock on top. Cover with a lid or foil ,and bake in the oven for 18 mins, or until the rice is tender.
STEP 3 Fold in 2 table spoons of crème fraîche and a fistful of rocket leaves (or spinach, or steamed cavolo nero), season with plenty of black pepper, then cover the pan again and leave to rest out of the oven for 3 mins before serving – the steam will soften the greens.. Garnish with fresh flaked parmesan and chopped parsley
Serves a hungry 2 or a less hungry 3, simply increase all amounts for more people
That sounds excellent. Do you think it would work with uncooked mackerel? I've got quite a lot of it in the fridge that we need to use, this seems like a perfect recipe for it.
it is great, it's an adaptation of a BBC recipe, which I tried, which is a bit bland - so I read all the comments about making it tastier, and added them to the recipe
I’ve generally found it bureaucratic, badly-maintained, incurious, but staffed by genuine heroes and there when needed.
I don’t know how it compares globally, but coincidentally I was looking at “perceptions of healthcare quality” across the OECD, and the U.K. tends to come lower down.
France and Switzerland seem to be at the top.
We seem to have given up on reform since Lansley’s ill-fated measures - the only solution is now just to funnel cash into it.
Switzerland has got a fully insurance based system with subsidised access for low income people. Switzerland doesn't have any concept of long term unemployment or living off the welfare state so ultimately the state doesn't need to fund healthcare and welfare for the "won't work" millions we have in the UK claiming ill health.
What happens if a Swiss person can't work then? How do they get by?
They get whatever job they can. There's not really a concept of "can't work". At least not in my experience of living there. The jobs all pay enough that there really isn't very much of a "can't work" attitude. In terms of healthcare there is a provision for low income people but it's a subsidy. Unemployment in Switzerland is mostly incidental rather than structural. They also don't have in working benefits, no housing benefit and generally a very tiny welfare state. Retirement saving is done on an individual basis too and there really isn't a way to avoid it.
Unemployment benefits in Switzerland are more generous than JSA here ie 70% of the average wage earned in the year before you lost your job, 80% if you have children.
Even if you are still not in work after that you can still claim emergency assistance and welfare.
Those in receipt of social assistance also get their housing costs covered
Yes, it's a wholly contributory system that is time limited. It's generous but finite.
It's a genuine safety net which is what ours was supposed to be.
I think we should be looking to move back in this direction. Our welfare system evolved to deal with the mass unemployment and long term unemployment associated with the profound economic shock of deindustrialisation in the 1970s-90s, which was magnified by the coincident working age population bulge of the baby boomer generation. In the mid 1980s you really couldn't get a job in many parts of the country, and so the alternative to long term unemployment benefits was starvation. Today's labour market is quite different, characterised by a shortage of workers. There is no reason for people to be long term unemployed, the system should be more generous but time limited. There are communities (eg the Welsh valleys) still blighted by long term ill health as a legacy of heavy industry and mass unemployment, perhaps what they need are properly funded localised programmes addressing those issues rather than just the drip feed of inadequate amounts of money via the welfare system. I don't want to come over all Norman Tebbit either, but perhaps if people can move to SE England from Poland for a job then they can move from Merthyr or Blackburn too. You don't have a right to a job on your doorstep.
Wow. I can completely agree with you. 😲
Oh dear! 😉
It would be interesting to really understand the micro-factors that prevent people moving from Merthyr to Cardiff (or London) for work.
The U.K. is quite weird in that very poor, deprived areas, exist cheek by jowl with richer ones - and never the twain shall meet.
It's an attitude I struggle to understand too, since I have worked overseas twice and live hundreds of miles (and in a different country) from where I was born. Of course those kinds of moves are easier for well paid professional jobs - everything is easier with money.
Change is tough. To leave everything and everyone you know, to go to a strange place... all the things that can go wrong....
Foodyism is just another way to spit in the face of the poor.
Ha ha you're poor - if only you learnt how to Cook you would be eating much better.
What's your problem? Tesco mince: £3/kg. Tesco salmon: £10-20/kg.
Oh.
Broccoli is cheap though.
Mince and tinned tomatoes on rice or pasta is cooking. Doesn't have to be fancy.
Indeed. Had sausages, red cabbage and spuds for dinner last night - just plain grilling or boiling as needed, with butter/pepper and mustard added.
My mother was an world-historic atrocious cook, and I grew up with very bad food habits. Also, TV told me that cooking was incredibly complicated. I did have home economics at school but it concentrated on baking - the right quantities of baking soda etc.
I still remember my astonishment when I went to dine at a French friend’s house.
Dinner: 1 very tasty (probably fennel) sausage. Lettuce and tomatoes, with a good dressing.
Why couldn't the climate summit have been conducted online?
I thought until yesterday that the added investment in fuel to get there paid off because of the added gravitas of in person meetings, but I can't for the life of me see any difference between Johnson and Modi being there in person vs Queenie and Xi being remote. If we have had 26 of these things that's ample. If we really need annual COPs three out of four can surely be virtual, with an actual one in Olympic or world Cup years.
BJ wouldn't have been able to have his tiny dick tantrum about plastering the event in Union flags and not wanting to see Sturgeon anywhere near it though.
FPT re: obesity. For all that I am a fan of @NickPalmer , I'm fairly shocked and disappointed about his attitude to food. It's worrying enough that a former MP and minister has never bothered to learn to cook. It's more worrying still that a guy who has devoted much of his life to the food and farming sector (and doing great work therein) eats mostly ready meals. Food in a packet is full of shite.
Interestingly, those countries where food and home cookery is prized and children are taught from an early age to eat proper food – namely France and Italy – have among the lowest rates of obesity in the G20. Coincidence? I think not.
A major issue is that many people who don't cook have retreated into a zone of "Cooking means cooking from scratch. Too complicated and I don't have the time."
Start by cheating. I did. Buy sauce in jars, use cans. Some cooking is better than none. Progress where you can and where you have time.
One thing that is completely left out of the cooking books seems to be cooking in bulk, home freezing etc. The myth that every meal has to be 100% hand made and eaten just after cooking......
Imagine if every kid was taught how to make 10 simple, healthy meals.
Th problem is time - what people need to be taught, as well, is how to do quick cheats for cooking.
I have a go-to recipe for doing risotto in the microwave. A delicious meal in about half an hour.
Anything that has been in the microwave for half an hour will be cinders, certainly not edible.
Er, you don't cook it all in one go, 30 mins is total prep/cooking time. There's a lot of water to be absorbed by the rice too. Believe me, it is delicious!
Why not post the recipe, and let us decide for ourselves?
Cut up a leak and a couple of cloves of garlic, add about 1oz butter and some olive oil, put in a large glass bowl, cover and microwave on high for 5 mins. Meanwhile make 1.5 pints stock with boiling water. Stir 10oz risotto rice into bowl to get it well covered with oil and butter, add stock and black pepper, cook on high uncovered for 10 minutes. Meanwhile slice some mushrooms, eg about 6 or 8, after 10 minutes add to bowl, stir briefly and cook another 6 minutes on high. Stir in some grated parmesan and leave for a few minutes before serving. The recipe is in a cookbook we have (I think bbc good food) but can't find it online. Plenty of variations are possible.
Here's mine. 30 minutes to an amazing fish risotto
STEP 1 Heat oven to 200C/180C fan. Lob a large chunk of butter into an ovenproof dish. Put dish on the hob on a medium heat. Chuck in 1 large slicked leek, stirring regularly, until it begins to tenderise, about 3 minutes. Add cracked salt, black pepper, and then some chopped garlic. 1 clove. Stir for another minute. Add about 150ml white wine. Cook another 2 minutes, simmering the booze away. Then add 300g risotto rice, and cook for another 2 minutes, stirring frequently
STEP 2 Throw in 500ml fish stock and about 150ml milk, bring to the boil and bubble for 5 mins, then sit 300g of chopped undyed smoked haddock on top. Cover with a lid or foil ,and bake in the oven for 18 mins, or until the rice is tender.
STEP 3 Fold in 2 table spoons of crème fraîche and a fistful of rocket leaves (or spinach, or steamed cavolo nero), season with plenty of black pepper, then cover the pan again and leave to rest out of the oven for 3 mins before serving – the steam will soften the greens.. Garnish with fresh flaked parmesan and chopped parsley
Serves a hungry 2 or a less hungry 3, simply increase all amounts for more people
That sounds excellent. Do you think it would work with uncooked mackerel? I've got quite a lot of it in the fridge that we need to use, this seems like a perfect recipe for it.
it is great, it's an adaptation of a BBC recipe, which I tried, which is a bit bland - so I read all the comments about making it tastier, and added them to the recipe
FPT re: obesity. For all that I am a fan of @NickPalmer , I'm fairly shocked and disappointed about his attitude to food. It's worrying enough that a former MP and minister has never bothered to learn to cook. It's more worrying still that a guy who has devoted much of his life to the food and farming sector (and doing great work therein) eats mostly ready meals. Food in a packet is full of shite.
Interestingly, those countries where food and home cookery is prized and children are taught from an early age to eat proper food – namely France and Italy – have among the lowest rates of obesity in the G20. Coincidence? I think not.
A major issue is that many people who don't cook have retreated into a zone of "Cooking means cooking from scratch. Too complicated and I don't have the time."
Start by cheating. I did. Buy sauce in jars, use cans. Some cooking is better than none. Progress where you can and where you have time.
One thing that is completely left out of the cooking books seems to be cooking in bulk, home freezing etc. The myth that every meal has to be 100% hand made and eaten just after cooking......
Imagine if every kid was taught how to make 10 simple, healthy meals.
Th problem is time - what people need to be taught, as well, is how to do quick cheats for cooking.
I have a go-to recipe for doing risotto in the microwave. A delicious meal in about half an hour.
Anything that has been in the microwave for half an hour will be cinders, certainly not edible.
Er, you don't cook it all in one go, 30 mins is total prep/cooking time. There's a lot of water to be absorbed by the rice too. Believe me, it is delicious!
Why not post the recipe, and let us decide for ourselves?
Cut up a leak and a couple of cloves of garlic, add about 1oz butter and some olive oil, put in a large glass bowl, cover and microwave on high for 5 mins. Meanwhile make 1.5 pints stock with boiling water. Stir 10oz risotto rice into bowl to get it well covered with oil and butter, add stock and black pepper, cook on high uncovered for 10 minutes. Meanwhile slice some mushrooms, eg about 6 or 8, after 10 minutes add to bowl, stir briefly and cook another 6 minutes on high. Stir in some grated parmesan and leave for a few minutes before serving. The recipe is in a cookbook we have (I think bbc good food) but can't find it online. Plenty of variations are possible.
Here's mine. 30 minutes to an amazing fish risotto
STEP 1 Heat oven to 200C/180C fan. Lob a large chunk of butter into an ovenproof dish. Put dish on the hob on a medium heat. Chuck in 1 large slicked leek, stirring regularly, until it begins to tenderise, about 3 minutes. Add cracked salt, black pepper, and then some chopped garlic. 1 clove. Stir for another minute. Add about 150ml white wine. Cook another 2 minutes, simmering the booze away. Then add 300g risotto rice, and cook for another 2 minutes, stirring frequently
STEP 2 Throw in 500ml fish stock and about 150ml milk, bring to the boil and bubble for 5 mins, then sit 300g of chopped undyed smoked haddock on top. Cover with a lid or foil ,and bake in the oven for 18 mins, or until the rice is tender.
STEP 3 Fold in 2 table spoons of crème fraîche and a fistful of rocket leaves (or spinach, or steamed cavolo nero), season with plenty of black pepper, then cover the pan again and leave to rest out of the oven for 3 mins before serving – the steam will soften the greens.. Garnish with fresh flaked parmesan and chopped parsley
Serves a hungry 2 or a less hungry 3, simply increase all amounts for more people
That sounds excellent. Do you think it would work with uncooked mackerel? I've got quite a lot of it in the fridge that we need to use, this seems like a perfect recipe for it.
it is great, it's an adaptation of a BBC recipe, which I tried, which is a bit bland - so I read all the comments about making it tastier, and added them to the recipe
FPT re: obesity. For all that I am a fan of @NickPalmer , I'm fairly shocked and disappointed about his attitude to food. It's worrying enough that a former MP and minister has never bothered to learn to cook. It's more worrying still that a guy who has devoted much of his life to the food and farming sector (and doing great work therein) eats mostly ready meals. Food in a packet is full of shite.
Interestingly, those countries where food and home cookery is prized and children are taught from an early age to eat proper food – namely France and Italy – have among the lowest rates of obesity in the G20. Coincidence? I think not.
A major issue is that many people who don't cook have retreated into a zone of "Cooking means cooking from scratch. Too complicated and I don't have the time."
Start by cheating. I did. Buy sauce in jars, use cans. Some cooking is better than none. Progress where you can and where you have time.
One thing that is completely left out of the cooking books seems to be cooking in bulk, home freezing etc. The myth that every meal has to be 100% hand made and eaten just after cooking......
Imagine if every kid was taught how to make 10 simple, healthy meals.
Th problem is time - what people need to be taught, as well, is how to do quick cheats for cooking.
I have a go-to recipe for doing risotto in the microwave. A delicious meal in about half an hour.
Anything that has been in the microwave for half an hour will be cinders, certainly not edible.
Er, you don't cook it all in one go, 30 mins is total prep/cooking time. There's a lot of water to be absorbed by the rice too. Believe me, it is delicious!
Why not post the recipe, and let us decide for ourselves?
Cut up a leak and a couple of cloves of garlic, add about 1oz butter and some olive oil, put in a large glass bowl, cover and microwave on high for 5 mins. Meanwhile make 1.5 pints stock with boiling water. Stir 10oz risotto rice into bowl to get it well covered with oil and butter, add stock and black pepper, cook on high uncovered for 10 minutes. Meanwhile slice some mushrooms, eg about 6 or 8, after 10 minutes add to bowl, stir briefly and cook another 6 minutes on high. Stir in some grated parmesan and leave for a few minutes before serving. The recipe is in a cookbook we have (I think bbc good food) but can't find it online. Plenty of variations are possible.
Here's mine. 30 minutes to an amazing fish risotto
STEP 1 Heat oven to 200C/180C fan. Lob a large chunk of butter into an ovenproof dish. Put dish on the hob on a medium heat. Chuck in 1 large slicked leek, stirring regularly, until it begins to tenderise, about 3 minutes. Add cracked salt, black pepper, and then some chopped garlic. 1 clove. Stir for another minute. Add about 150ml white wine. Cook another 2 minutes, simmering the booze away. Then add 300g risotto rice, and cook for another 2 minutes, stirring frequently
STEP 2 Throw in 500ml fish stock and about 150ml milk, bring to the boil and bubble for 5 mins, then sit 300g of chopped undyed smoked haddock on top. Cover with a lid or foil ,and bake in the oven for 18 mins, or until the rice is tender.
STEP 3 Fold in 2 table spoons of crème fraîche and a fistful of rocket leaves (or spinach, or steamed cavolo nero), season with plenty of black pepper, then cover the pan again and leave to rest out of the oven for 3 mins before serving – the steam will soften the greens.. Garnish with fresh flaked parmesan and chopped parsley
Serves a hungry 2 or a less hungry 3, simply increase all amounts for more people
That sounds excellent. Do you think it would work with uncooked mackerel? I've got quite a lot of it in the fridge that we need to use, this seems like a perfect recipe for it.
it is great, it's an adaptation of a BBC recipe, which I tried, which is a bit bland - so I read all the comments about making it tastier, and added them to the recipe
Foodyism is just another way to spit in the face of the poor.
Ha ha you're poor - if only you learnt how to Cook you would be eating much better.
It really isn't snobbery or sneering. Everyone should learn to cook, and/or be taught at school. It is a failure of our education system
I've long held the opinion Gardenwalker espouses: state schools should teach ten recipes - ten basic, tasty, nourishing meals that every British child can learn to do. Some fish, some meat, some curry, some veggie, ten classics. Done.
That way every child will learn about food, about cooking processes, about preparation, about seasoning, about fresh fruit and veg, about nutrition.
It amazes me that we don't do this. It is far more important than science, for the vast majority of kids
I bet they do it in Putin's Russia
You can easily make authentic solyanka by getting four strangers to vomit into a bucket.
I’ve generally found it bureaucratic, badly-maintained, incurious, but staffed by genuine heroes and there when needed.
I don’t know how it compares globally, but coincidentally I was looking at “perceptions of healthcare quality” across the OECD, and the U.K. tends to come lower down.
France and Switzerland seem to be at the top.
We seem to have given up on reform since Lansley’s ill-fated measures - the only solution is now just to funnel cash into it.
Switzerland has got a fully insurance based system with subsidised access for low income people. Switzerland doesn't have any concept of long term unemployment or living off the welfare state so ultimately the state doesn't need to fund healthcare and welfare for the "won't work" millions we have in the UK claiming ill health.
What happens if a Swiss person can't work then? How do they get by?
They get whatever job they can. There's not really a concept of "can't work". At least not in my experience of living there. The jobs all pay enough that there really isn't very much of a "can't work" attitude. In terms of healthcare there is a provision for low income people but it's a subsidy. Unemployment in Switzerland is mostly incidental rather than structural. They also don't have in working benefits, no housing benefit and generally a very tiny welfare state. Retirement saving is done on an individual basis too and there really isn't a way to avoid it.
Unemployment benefits in Switzerland are more generous than JSA here ie 70% of the average wage earned in the year before you lost your job, 80% if you have children.
Even if you are still not in work after that you can still claim emergency assistance and welfare.
Those in receipt of social assistance also get their housing costs covered
Yes, it's a wholly contributory system that is time limited. It's generous but finite.
It's a genuine safety net which is what ours was supposed to be.
I think we should be looking to move back in this direction. Our welfare system evolved to deal with the mass unemployment and long term unemployment associated with the profound economic shock of deindustrialisation in the 1970s-90s, which was magnified by the coincident working age population bulge of the baby boomer generation. In the mid 1980s you really couldn't get a job in many parts of the country, and so the alternative to long term unemployment benefits was starvation. Today's labour market is quite different, characterised by a shortage of workers. There is no reason for people to be long term unemployed, the system should be more generous but time limited. There are communities (eg the Welsh valleys) still blighted by long term ill health as a legacy of heavy industry and mass unemployment, perhaps what they need are properly funded localised programmes addressing those issues rather than just the drip feed of inadequate amounts of money via the welfare system. I don't want to come over all Norman Tebbit either, but perhaps if people can move to SE England from Poland for a job then they can move from Merthyr or Blackburn too. You don't have a right to a job on your doorstep.
Wow. I can completely agree with you. 😲
Oh dear! 😉
It would be interesting to really understand the micro-factors that prevent people moving from Merthyr to Cardiff (or London) for work.
The U.K. is quite weird in that very poor, deprived areas, exist cheek by jowl with richer ones - and never the twain shall meet.
It's an attitude I struggle to understand too, since I have worked overseas twice and live hundreds of miles (and in a different country) from where I was born. Of course those kinds of moves are easier for well paid professional jobs - everything is easier with money.
Yep. You go where the work is. That also used to be the way in the earlier part of eth 20th Century. Whole communities would up and move from one area to another if that was what the work demanded. I am not necessarily advocating that now but it shows how attitudes have changed post war.
I've moved up and down the country for work so you aren't going to get any arguments from me. Its a lot harder to do if you feel identity with the place you live, have "put down roots", have friends and family close by etc.
I am amazed by people - usually men of a certain age - who cannot cook
I have older male relatives who are completely helpless in the kitchen. I don't get it. Cooking is healthy, soothing AND pleasurable. You can whip up delicious meals in 30 minutes, Jamie Oliver does not always lie
Perplexing
When you've worked a 12 hour day and you're exhausted, 30 minutes is too long.
I agree.
In 15 minutes though you can:
Grill lamb Bake fish Fry beefsteak
And prep two vegetable accompaniments.
You can make an omelette in 10 minutes.
Of course you are not going to win Masterchef, but you’ll be a lot healthier.
Absolutely spot on. Even a stew/casserole can be prepped in about 15-20 minutes max - all the rest is largely unattended on low heat in the oven or on the hob.
Why couldn't the climate summit have been conducted online?
I thought until yesterday that the added investment in fuel to get there paid off because of the added gravitas of in person meetings, but I can't for the life of me see any difference between Johnson and Modi being there in person vs Queenie and Xi being remote. If we have had 26 of these things that's ample. If we really need annual COPs three out of four can surely be virtual, with an actual one in Olympic or world Cup years.
BJ wouldn't have been able to have his tiny dick tantrum about plastering the event in Union flags and not wanting to see Sturgeon anywhere near it though.
SNP Types really don't like the Union flag do they? And they've managed to turn the Saltire into a flag of division.
Maybe the socialist utopia that would be indy Scotland will have no flag like IMB's The Culture.
FPT re: obesity. For all that I am a fan of @NickPalmer , I'm fairly shocked and disappointed about his attitude to food. It's worrying enough that a former MP and minister has never bothered to learn to cook. It's more worrying still that a guy who has devoted much of his life to the food and farming sector (and doing great work therein) eats mostly ready meals. Food in a packet is full of shite.
Interestingly, those countries where food and home cookery is prized and children are taught from an early age to eat proper food – namely France and Italy – have among the lowest rates of obesity in the G20. Coincidence? I think not.
A major issue is that many people who don't cook have retreated into a zone of "Cooking means cooking from scratch. Too complicated and I don't have the time."
Start by cheating. I did. Buy sauce in jars, use cans. Some cooking is better than none. Progress where you can and where you have time.
One thing that is completely left out of the cooking books seems to be cooking in bulk, home freezing etc. The myth that every meal has to be 100% hand made and eaten just after cooking......
Imagine if every kid was taught how to make 10 simple, healthy meals.
Th problem is time - what people need to be taught, as well, is how to do quick cheats for cooking.
I have a go-to recipe for doing risotto in the microwave. A delicious meal in about half an hour.
Anything that has been in the microwave for half an hour will be cinders, certainly not edible.
Er, you don't cook it all in one go, 30 mins is total prep/cooking time. There's a lot of water to be absorbed by the rice too. Believe me, it is delicious!
Why not post the recipe, and let us decide for ourselves?
Cut up a leak and a couple of cloves of garlic, add about 1oz butter and some olive oil, put in a large glass bowl, cover and microwave on high for 5 mins. Meanwhile make 1.5 pints stock with boiling water. Stir 10oz risotto rice into bowl to get it well covered with oil and butter, add stock and black pepper, cook on high uncovered for 10 minutes. Meanwhile slice some mushrooms, eg about 6 or 8, after 10 minutes add to bowl, stir briefly and cook another 6 minutes on high. Stir in some grated parmesan and leave for a few minutes before serving. The recipe is in a cookbook we have (I think bbc good food) but can't find it online. Plenty of variations are possible.
Here's mine. 30 minutes to an amazing fish risotto
STEP 1 Heat oven to 200C/180C fan. Lob a large chunk of butter into an ovenproof dish. Put dish on the hob on a medium heat. Chuck in 1 large slicked leek, stirring regularly, until it begins to tenderise, about 3 minutes. Add cracked salt, black pepper, and then some chopped garlic. 1 clove. Stir for another minute. Add about 150ml white wine. Cook another 2 minutes, simmering the booze away. Then add 300g risotto rice, and cook for another 2 minutes, stirring frequently
STEP 2 Throw in 500ml fish stock and about 150ml milk, bring to the boil and bubble for 5 mins, then sit 300g of chopped undyed smoked haddock on top. Cover with a lid or foil ,and bake in the oven for 18 mins, or until the rice is tender.
STEP 3 Fold in 2 table spoons of crème fraîche and a fistful of rocket leaves (or spinach, or steamed cavolo nero), season with plenty of black pepper, then cover the pan again and leave to rest out of the oven for 3 mins before serving – the steam will soften the greens.. Garnish with fresh flaked parmesan and chopped parsley
Serves a hungry 2 or a less hungry 3, simply increase all amounts for more people
That sounds excellent. Do you think it would work with uncooked mackerel? I've got quite a lot of it in the fridge that we need to use, this seems like a perfect recipe for it.
it is great, it's an adaptation of a BBC recipe, which I tried, which is a bit bland - so I read all the comments about making it tastier, and added them to the recipe
Why couldn't the climate summit have been conducted online?
I thought until yesterday that the added investment in fuel to get there paid off because of the added gravitas of in person meetings, but I can't for the life of me see any difference between Johnson and Modi being there in person vs Queenie and Xi being remote. If we have had 26 of these things that's ample. If we really need annual COPs three out of four can surely be virtual, with an actual one in Olympic or world Cup years.
BJ wouldn't have been able to have his tiny dick tantrum about plastering the event in Union flags and not wanting to see Sturgeon anywhere near it though.
SNP Types really don't like the Union flag do they? And they've managed to turn the Saltire into a flag of division.
Maybe the socialist utopia that would be indy Scotland will have no flag like IMB's The Culture.
Wonder if they will sell "No Flag" flags, like "No Logo" T-shirts?
At the moment it looks like a narrow Tory majority or a hung parliament.
Whether Starmer can achieve the latter and get enough seats to become PM with SNP and LD support could depend on whether he can squeeze the Green vote back or not
Normally, you'd expect the opposition to be at ahead at this stage of the parliament. Of course, the combination of Brexit and Covid has thrown off the usual yoyo-ing of parties shares, but if I were Boris I'd be pretty happy with these numbers.
Exactly. We should expect some swingback to the government at the election based on historical trends.
Just because the swingaway hasn't been enough to put Labour into the lead doesn't mean there won't be any swingback. There has been some swing to Labour as your dad notes in the OP, so no reason that can't be comed with swingback is there?
As it seems to me at the moment, the most interesting features of the election landscape is that neither party is offering a coherent vision of the principles on which it stands and neither party is distinguishing itself from the other main party on matters of fundamental interest or importance. Furthermore neither party (this follows really) is making a traditional offering to its traditional voter base.
The other factor is one which we have not really got used to. It is for now structurally baked in that only the Tories have any chance of single party government. So there is an odd imbalance - which at the next election the Tories are going to max out on - the idea of 'The election between centrist, high spending, loyalist, royalist, pro working class Tories and a rainbow alliance of Lab, Green, LD and separatists.'
This is at least a coherent Tory line. ATM Labour have not got one.
I’ve generally found it bureaucratic, badly-maintained, incurious, but staffed by genuine heroes and there when needed.
I don’t know how it compares globally, but coincidentally I was looking at “perceptions of healthcare quality” across the OECD, and the U.K. tends to come lower down.
France and Switzerland seem to be at the top.
We seem to have given up on reform since Lansley’s ill-fated measures - the only solution is now just to funnel cash into it.
Switzerland has got a fully insurance based system with subsidised access for low income people. Switzerland doesn't have any concept of long term unemployment or living off the welfare state so ultimately the state doesn't need to fund healthcare and welfare for the "won't work" millions we have in the UK claiming ill health.
Swiss healthcare costs are some of the highest in the world.
Swiss government spends $3,100/person vs. $3,400/person in UK.
But then Swiss individuals pay $6,800/person on top of that privately vs. $900/person in the UK.
Pretty meaningless if you don't look at it as a percentage of GDP. All told the Swiss spend 11.3% of their GDP on healthcare. Compared to 11.1% for France and 11.7% for Germany. The US spends 16.8%.
The key thing is that Switzerland spends a lot more than the UK. The figures I have are 11.9% of GDP vs 10.0% for UK.
Wow contrast the Australia figure which is one of the world's best systems and compare its cost to the NHS. Incredible, and that's with nearly two years longer life expectancy too.
We really need someone brave enough to advocate for an Australian style healthcare system.
PS completely unrelated but I don't want to double post ... How do you convert decimal odds to percentage chance? Eg if I have odds of 2.25 then what percentage is that?
Why couldn't the climate summit have been conducted online?
I thought until yesterday that the added investment in fuel to get there paid off because of the added gravitas of in person meetings, but I can't for the life of me see any difference between Johnson and Modi being there in person vs Queenie and Xi being remote. If we have had 26 of these things that's ample. If we really need annual COPs three out of four can surely be virtual, with an actual one in Olympic or world Cup years.
BJ wouldn't have been able to have his tiny dick tantrum about plastering the event in Union flags and not wanting to see Sturgeon anywhere near it though.
SNP Types really don't like the Union flag do they? And they've managed to turn the Saltire into a flag of division.
Maybe the socialist utopia that would be indy Scotland will have no flag like IMB's The Culture.
Wonder if they will sell "No Flag" flags, like "No Logo" T-shirts?
I wouldn't put it past them! I really didn't like that book for what it's worth.
Foodyism is just another way to spit in the face of the poor.
Ha ha you're poor - if only you learnt how to Cook you would be eating much better.
I can't cook a fucking thing and have no interest in learning but I utterly despise soi disant car enthusiasts who own adjustable spanners and don't corner balance their cars.
We all have our priorities.
Agreed re priorities. I did have cooking lessons at school, but thought the process was often unpleasant (making jam rolls by smearing the jam on with your fingers, yuck) and the results uninviting. I think Leon's "basic 12" would suffer from the same problem. You need to want to eat the result for motivation, and the school's ideas of what you'd fancy is unlikely to happen to match yours. Indeed, like compulsory Dickens, it would tend to put you off them.
To be positive, a couple of years ago I suddenly thought I'd quite like an omelette, so I asked a friend and I now enjoy knocking them off with a minute's work (actually FASTER than a ready meal, gosh), but as with the joke about how many psychiatrists are needed to change a lightbulb - "Only one, but the lightbulb has to want to change"), you need to want it. Cyclefree helped me learn pasta in the same way.
Why couldn't the climate summit have been conducted online?
I thought until yesterday that the added investment in fuel to get there paid off because of the added gravitas of in person meetings, but I can't for the life of me see any difference between Johnson and Modi being there in person vs Queenie and Xi being remote. If we have had 26 of these things that's ample. If we really need annual COPs three out of four can surely be virtual, with an actual one in Olympic or world Cup years.
BJ wouldn't have been able to have his tiny dick tantrum about plastering the event in Union flags and not wanting to see Sturgeon anywhere near it though.
SNP Types really don't like the Union flag do they? And they've managed to turn the Saltire into a flag of division.
Maybe the socialist utopia that would be indy Scotland will have no flag like IMB's The Culture.
Wonder if they will sell "No Flag" flags, like "No Logo" T-shirts?
I wouldn't put it past them! I really didn't like that book for what it's worth.
Every idea can be turned into a Fascism, it just takes a bit of effort. See Buddhism in WWII era Japan.....
Anuk Arudpragasam/A Passage North - The book follows Krishan's journey as he travels across Sri Lanka to attend a family funeral and was been described by Jenny Bhatt on NPR as a "tender elegy" to those caught up in the country's civil war where an estimated 100,000 people were killed and 20,000 people remain missing.
Damon Galgut/The Promise - The Promise, explores recent South African history through the wish of a white woman to leave a house to her black woman who had worked for her. Rebecca Jones from BBC News described it as "beautifully written with characters you come to care deeply about".
Patricia Lockwood/No-one Is Talking About This - The stylistically experimental book explores human experiences on social media. Writing in The New York Times, Merve Emre praised the book for transforming "all that is ugly and cheap about online culture into an experience of sublimity".
Nadifa Mohamed/The Fortune Men - While The Fortune Men is a novel, it is based on the true story of the wrongful murder conviction of Mahmood Mattan, the last man to be hanged in Wales in 1952
Richard Powers/Bewilderment - In Bewilderment, Powers tells the story of astrobiologist Theo Byrne who is struggling to raise his son Robin after the death of his wife.
Magge Shipstead/Great Circle - Maggie Shipstead's novel Great Circle weaves together the story of a trailblazing female aviator who disappeared in 1950 with that of a contemporary Hollywood star trying to make a film about her.
Wokeness in literature is insane
Check the short list for the T S Eliot poetry prize
Interesting how people perceive things differently. I was thinking what a nice and varied list of interesting sounding books that was. It never crossed my mind that they were "woke".
I have to agree. I would probably be described as pretty anti-woke but I didn't get any sense of bridling at that list. I thought at least some of them sounded really interesting. And in the end that is what matters.
The danger, of course, is that it becomes a box-ticking exercise, with books chosen because of what they are about, or the background of the author, thus assuring "diversity", rather than the quality of the writing.
Why couldn't the climate summit have been conducted online?
I thought until yesterday that the added investment in fuel to get there paid off because of the added gravitas of in person meetings, but I can't for the life of me see any difference between Johnson and Modi being there in person vs Queenie and Xi being remote. If we have had 26 of these things that's ample. If we really need annual COPs three out of four can surely be virtual, with an actual one in Olympic or world Cup years.
BJ wouldn't have been able to have his tiny dick tantrum about plastering the event in Union flags and not wanting to see Sturgeon anywhere near it though.
BJ posed for a photo with Sturgeon, Drakeford, Givan and O'Neill earlier to show all areas of the UK are united in fighting climate change
Why couldn't the climate summit have been conducted online?
I thought until yesterday that the added investment in fuel to get there paid off because of the added gravitas of in person meetings, but I can't for the life of me see any difference between Johnson and Modi being there in person vs Queenie and Xi being remote. If we have had 26 of these things that's ample. If we really need annual COPs three out of four can surely be virtual, with an actual one in Olympic or world Cup years.
BJ wouldn't have been able to have his tiny dick tantrum about plastering the event in Union flags and not wanting to see Sturgeon anywhere near it though.
SNP Types really don't like the Union flag do they? And they've managed to turn the Saltire into a flag of division.
Maybe the socialist utopia that would be indy Scotland will have no flag like IMB's The Culture.
Wonder if they will sell "No Flag" flags, like "No Logo" T-shirts?
I wouldn't put it past them! I really didn't like that book for what it's worth.
Every idea can be turned into a Fascism, it just takes a bit of effort. See Buddhism in WWII era Japan.....
Which Banks book?
I was referring to No Logo - and the reason I didn't like it was because of the point you made about it.
Why couldn't the climate summit have been conducted online?
I thought until yesterday that the added investment in fuel to get there paid off because of the added gravitas of in person meetings, but I can't for the life of me see any difference between Johnson and Modi being there in person vs Queenie and Xi being remote. If we have had 26 of these things that's ample. If we really need annual COPs three out of four can surely be virtual, with an actual one in Olympic or world Cup years.
BJ wouldn't have been able to have his tiny dick tantrum about plastering the event in Union flags and not wanting to see Sturgeon anywhere near it though.
SNP Types really don't like the Union flag do they? And they've managed to turn the Saltire into a flag of division.
Maybe the socialist utopia that would be indy Scotland will have no flag like IMB's The Culture.
You dopn't get the SG perpetrating this sort of thing in a world heritage site:
In the old days, big events such as coronations had a mix of all three flags (UJ, saltire and Lion Rampant) - now it's almost always solely the UJ in anything which the UKG organizes: the OLympics torch, for instance, was solely UJ plus sponsors).
Which gives very odd overtones given a certain element of Central Belt culture (so to speak). I find myself worrying if it's safe to cross the road.
Foodyism is just another way to spit in the face of the poor.
Ha ha you're poor - if only you learnt how to Cook you would be eating much better.
I can't cook a fucking thing and have no interest in learning but I utterly despise soi disant car enthusiasts who own adjustable spanners and don't corner balance their cars.
We all have our priorities.
Agreed re priorities. I did have cooking lessons at school, but thought the process was often unpleasant (making jam rolls by smearing the jam on with your fingers, yuck) and the results uninviting. I think Leon's "basic 12" would suffer from the same problem. You need to want to eat the result for motivation, and the school's ideas of what you'd fancy is unlikely to happen to match yours. Indeed, like compulsory Dickens, it would tend to put you off them.
To be positive, a couple of years ago I suddenly thought I'd quite like an omelette, so I asked a friend and I now enjoy knocking them off with a minute's work (actually FASTER than a ready meal, gosh), but as with the joke about how many psychiatrists are needed to change a lightbulb - "Only one, but the lightbulb has to want to change"), you need to want it. Cyclefree helped me learn pasta in the same way.
There are bound to be at least a few of the basic 12 schoolkids like.
They can then cook them as they want them and also will cut down on the number of ready meals and fastfood eaten.
Nothing to then stop them experimenting with cooking other dishes once they get in the habit
Foodyism is just another way to spit in the face of the poor.
Ha ha you're poor - if only you learnt how to Cook you would be eating much better.
That's a load of crap, I grew up on an estate and my parents were very much at the lower end of the income scale when I was a kid, that my mum could cook and create something from nothing is why our family didn't go hungry on my dad's pittance income.
Exactly right. I wonder what British Asian communities would make of Briskin’s post. His (and Nick’s) unimaginative and anachronistic attitude to food is part of the problem. It’s chastening to see that it still exists.
I made enough on Sunday to do lunch for the whole week. I bought a 1kg pack of chicken thigh fillets (£6) and a pack of cheap tomatoes (£1). I had everything else at home - 2 onions (20p), half a bulb of garlic (30p), 2 chilli peppers (20p), a thumb of ginger (20p) and 3 cups of basmati rice (60p), plus garam masala, mustard seeds and cumin seeds (20p), and some chard from my garden. I chopped all the veg up and put in my large oven dish with the thighs and spices with the lid on, into the oven at 150C for 40 minutes. Take it out of the oven to add the rice and 3 cups of boiled water (I usually use 1.5 times the volume of rice if cooking it alone in the rice cooker, but there's plenty of liquid in the veg and meat), then stir well, trying to make sure the rice is all underwater, lid back on and into the oven now turned down to 100C for half an hour more.
So, less than 15 minutes' work cooking, just over an hour cooking time, and less than £9 (and probably could have done it cheaper if it wasn't bought at Waitrose) for 5 decent sized meals. It's a bit samey having it every day for the week, but it's a hell of a lot nicer than sandwiches from the local petrol station, healthier, more filling and considerably cheaper.
I’ve generally found it bureaucratic, badly-maintained, incurious, but staffed by genuine heroes and there when needed.
I don’t know how it compares globally, but coincidentally I was looking at “perceptions of healthcare quality” across the OECD, and the U.K. tends to come lower down.
France and Switzerland seem to be at the top.
We seem to have given up on reform since Lansley’s ill-fated measures - the only solution is now just to funnel cash into it.
Switzerland has got a fully insurance based system with subsidised access for low income people. Switzerland doesn't have any concept of long term unemployment or living off the welfare state so ultimately the state doesn't need to fund healthcare and welfare for the "won't work" millions we have in the UK claiming ill health.
Swiss healthcare costs are some of the highest in the world.
Swiss government spends $3,100/person vs. $3,400/person in UK.
But then Swiss individuals pay $6,800/person on top of that privately vs. $900/person in the UK.
Pretty meaningless if you don't look at it as a percentage of GDP. All told the Swiss spend 11.3% of their GDP on healthcare. Compared to 11.1% for France and 11.7% for Germany. The US spends 16.8%.
The key thing is that Switzerland spends a lot more than the UK. The figures I have are 11.9% of GDP vs 10.0% for UK.
Wow contrast the Australia figure which is one of the world's best systems and compare its cost to the NHS. Incredible, and that's with nearly two years longer life expectancy too.
We really need someone brave enough to advocate for an Australian style healthcare system.
PS completely unrelated but I don't want to double post ... How do you convert decimal odds to percentage chance? Eg if I have odds of 2.25 then what percentage is that?
(1-(winnings/odds))*100, so in your example (1-(1.25/2.25))*100 ~45%
Anuk Arudpragasam/A Passage North - The book follows Krishan's journey as he travels across Sri Lanka to attend a family funeral and was been described by Jenny Bhatt on NPR as a "tender elegy" to those caught up in the country's civil war where an estimated 100,000 people were killed and 20,000 people remain missing.
Damon Galgut/The Promise - The Promise, explores recent South African history through the wish of a white woman to leave a house to her black woman who had worked for her. Rebecca Jones from BBC News described it as "beautifully written with characters you come to care deeply about".
Patricia Lockwood/No-one Is Talking About This - The stylistically experimental book explores human experiences on social media. Writing in The New York Times, Merve Emre praised the book for transforming "all that is ugly and cheap about online culture into an experience of sublimity".
Nadifa Mohamed/The Fortune Men - While The Fortune Men is a novel, it is based on the true story of the wrongful murder conviction of Mahmood Mattan, the last man to be hanged in Wales in 1952
Richard Powers/Bewilderment - In Bewilderment, Powers tells the story of astrobiologist Theo Byrne who is struggling to raise his son Robin after the death of his wife.
Magge Shipstead/Great Circle - Maggie Shipstead's novel Great Circle weaves together the story of a trailblazing female aviator who disappeared in 1950 with that of a contemporary Hollywood star trying to make a film about her.
Wokeness in literature is insane
Check the short list for the T S Eliot poetry prize
Interesting how people perceive things differently. I was thinking what a nice and varied list of interesting sounding books that was. It never crossed my mind that they were "woke".
I have to agree. I would probably be described as pretty anti-woke but I didn't get any sense of bridling at that list. I thought at least some of them sounded really interesting. And in the end that is what matters.
The danger, of course, is that it becomes a box-ticking exercise, with books chosen because of what they are about, or the background of the author, thus assuring "diversity", rather than the quality of the writing.
I'm sure that during all those decades when 99% of the authors considered to be good were white men telling stories about white men, their race and gender played absolutely no part in that judgement...
Why couldn't the climate summit have been conducted online?
I thought until yesterday that the added investment in fuel to get there paid off because of the added gravitas of in person meetings, but I can't for the life of me see any difference between Johnson and Modi being there in person vs Queenie and Xi being remote. If we have had 26 of these things that's ample. If we really need annual COPs three out of four can surely be virtual, with an actual one in Olympic or world Cup years.
BJ wouldn't have been able to have his tiny dick tantrum about plastering the event in Union flags and not wanting to see Sturgeon anywhere near it though.
SNP Types really don't like the Union flag do they? And they've managed to turn the Saltire into a flag of division.
Maybe the socialist utopia that would be indy Scotland will have no flag like IMB's The Culture.
You dopn't get the SG perpetrating this sort of thing in a world heritage site:
In the old days, big events such as coronations had a mix of all three flags (UJ, saltire and Lion Rampant) - now it's almost always solely the UJ in anything which the UKG organizes: the OLympics torch, for instance, was solely UJ plus sponsors).
Which gives very odd overtones given a certain element of Central Belt culture (so to speak). I find myself worrying if it's safe to cross the road.
Foodyism is just another way to spit in the face of the poor.
Ha ha you're poor - if only you learnt how to Cook you would be eating much better.
I can't cook a fucking thing and have no interest in learning but I utterly despise soi disant car enthusiasts who own adjustable spanners and don't corner balance their cars.
We all have our priorities.
Agreed re priorities. I did have cooking lessons at school, but thought the process was often unpleasant (making jam rolls by smearing the jam on with your fingers, yuck) and the results uninviting. I think Leon's "basic 12" would suffer from the same problem. You need to want to eat the result for motivation, and the school's ideas of what you'd fancy is unlikely to happen to match yours. Indeed, like compulsory Dickens, it would tend to put you off them.
To be positive, a couple of years ago I suddenly thought I'd quite like an omelette, so I asked a friend and I now enjoy knocking them off with a minute's work (actually FASTER than a ready meal, gosh), but as with the joke about how many psychiatrists are needed to change a lightbulb - "Only one, but the lightbulb has to want to change"), you need to want it. Cyclefree helped me learn pasta in the same way.
You'd teach it in a fun way. No exams, no failures, just learn what you can. If you don't like it, fine
I bet most kids would love it, and it would be seen as an easy, relaxing lesson, especially as they get older and GCSEs loom
The more I think of it, the more obvious it becomes. We HAVE to do something like this. We have a massive obesity problem, even in kids, especially with kids, and Covid has taught us we cannot ignore this any more. So we have to teach our children to understand food, and nutrition, and that means learning to cook
In Iraq, the initial capture and occupation of Basra, entered into with soft hats and the self-congratulatory confidence of an Army that believed it led the world in peacekeeping and counterinsurgency, ended in a humiliating negotiated withdrawal of British forces to the edge of the city, where, pinned down by constant bombardment by the Shia militias who now ran the city, they lost all capacity to exert their influence.
The Americans, distinctly unimpressed at the failure of the British officers, were forced to help Iraqi forces retake the city in 2008’s Charge of the Knights operation, a humiliation for Britain. “This damaged the reputation of British forces with the US and the Iraqis and inflicted major dents in British military self-confidence,” Barry notes. Akam is less stoic, describing it as ”an acute and lasting humiliation to the British Army”, which “will linger and follow the troops halfway around the world to Afghanistan”.
Barry observes: “The US government’s decision to invade Iraq must stand as the worst military decision of the 21st century. It was a military strategic folly on a level equal to that of Napoleon’s 1812 attack on Russia and Hitler’s 1941 attack on the Soviet Union.” The failure, then, was ultimately a political one, of British politicians blindly following their American patrons into unwinnable wars.
Perhaps the Army’s capacity to win the next war, like the British state’s to weather the next crisis, would be better served by generals finding the courage, when necessary, to tell politicians that some things simply can’t, or shouldn’t be done.
However I disagree with the conclusion, Iraq is now free of Saddam and Iraqis elect their own government
Iraq was a catastrophic blunder. Worse than Suez if not Vietnam.
Polluted the body politic and opened the floodgates to mass distrust in government and from there to QAnon etc.
Just the other day I was reading some crypto “guru” explain that one could not trust fiat currency because it was “brought to you by the same people who said there were WMDs in Iraq”.
Saddam would still be in power if there had been no invasion
Why has someone flagged this as Off Topic? HYUFD is making a perfectly sensible point, in response to someone else, and doing it in a polite way
This Off Topic crap is quite annoying. May I humble suggest the moderators ban, for life, anyone that does it
Be better to have a 'dislike' button. Especially for y ...
No, but seriously, it would. Because with the present set up we're only getting half the story and it can be very misleading. Like, if you look at sites (eg Beeb) where there's a thumbs up and a thumbs down, what you often find is that the most liked post is also the most disliked. It's a marmite affair. Such a post is a totally different animal to one that lots of people like and hardly anybody doesn't. Or to one that lots dislike and absolutely nobody likes. It's not as good as the first and much better than the second.
We're not getting this naunce.
Eg, a Big G oneliner update on Sky News might not get a bunch of likes but neither would it (if we had it) get any dislikes. Who could dislike a oneliner update from Big G on Sky News? Cf a post from hyufd about invading Scotland, also no likes but would (if we had it) have the dislike button well exercised. At present both of these posts will look as if they've had exactly the same response from the community and this is wrong. It's wrong.
Or take one of your "antiwoke" diatribes. There, only the people who get aroused in a positive sense by this sort of thing get the chance to express this quickly and easily via a button. Again it leads to the post being mismarked (in this case looking more popular than it is), but also think of the human rights aspect. The people who like your post are getting their voices heard but the rest of us (a far greater number) are not. We're effectively neutered. Have to suffer in silence. Not to hyperbolize but there are mental health and blood pressure ramifications of having to tolerate such a regime.
So that's my request and it's a formal one. Change the "off topic" button to a "dislike" one.
Foodyism is just another way to spit in the face of the poor.
Ha ha you're poor - if only you learnt how to Cook you would be eating much better.
It really isn't snobbery or sneering. Everyone should learn to cook, and/or be taught at school. It is a failure of our education system
I've long held the opinion Gardenwalker espouses: state schools should teach ten recipes - ten basic, tasty, nourishing meals that every British child can learn to do. Some fish, some meat, some curry, some veggie, ten classics. Done.
That way every child will learn about food, about cooking processes, about preparation, about seasoning, about fresh fruit and veg, about nutrition.
It amazes me that we don't do this. It is far more important than science, for the vast majority of kids
I bet they do it in Putin's Russia
You can easily make authentic solyanka by getting four strangers to vomit into a bucket.
Is there a strong reason why they need to be strangers?
On obesity: as a poster boy of skinniness I can exclusively reveal the secret isn't cooking. It's not caring about food.
I actively disliked it for a time, and it took me decades to realise other people are really into food.
Other people confound me. We'd be so much better governed if people were less interested in pies, and more in the Second Punic War.
I can remember as a child being struck by the disparity between the time it took to cook a meal, and the time it took to consume it. So have sympathy with non-foodies, of which I am one. Just can't get interested. Would rather read a book than flail around in a kitchen.
Nevertheless I think Leon is spot on. Schools should teach cooking. It's an essential life-skill and we really need to do something about obesity in this country.
Why couldn't the climate summit have been conducted online?
I thought until yesterday that the added investment in fuel to get there paid off because of the added gravitas of in person meetings, but I can't for the life of me see any difference between Johnson and Modi being there in person vs Queenie and Xi being remote. If we have had 26 of these things that's ample. If we really need annual COPs three out of four can surely be virtual, with an actual one in Olympic or world Cup years.
BJ wouldn't have been able to have his tiny dick tantrum about plastering the event in Union flags and not wanting to see Sturgeon anywhere near it though.
SNP Types really don't like the Union flag do they? And they've managed to turn the Saltire into a flag of division.
Maybe the socialist utopia that would be indy Scotland will have no flag like IMB's The Culture.
Wonder if they will sell "No Flag" flags, like "No Logo" T-shirts?
I wouldn't put it past them! I really didn't like that book for what it's worth.
Every idea can be turned into a Fascism, it just takes a bit of effort. See Buddhism in WWII era Japan.....
At the moment it looks like a narrow Tory majority or a hung parliament.
Whether Starmer can achieve the latter and get enough seats to become PM with SNP and LD support could depend on whether he can squeeze the Green vote back or not
Normally, you'd expect the opposition to be at ahead at this stage of the parliament. Of course, the combination of Brexit and Covid has thrown off the usual yoyo-ing of parties shares, but if I were Boris I'd be pretty happy with these numbers.
Exactly. We should expect some swingback to the government at the election based on historical trends.
Just because the swingaway hasn't been enough to put Labour into the lead doesn't mean there won't be any swingback. There has been some swing to Labour as your dad notes in the OP, so no reason that can't be comed with swingback is there?
As it seems to me at the moment, the most interesting features of the election landscape is that neither party is offering a coherent vision of the principles on which it stands and neither party is distinguishing itself from the other main party on matters of fundamental interest or importance. Furthermore neither party (this follows really) is making a traditional offering to its traditional voter base.
The other factor is one which we have not really got used to. It is for now structurally baked in that only the Tories have any chance of single party government. So there is an odd imbalance - which at the next election the Tories are going to max out on - the idea of 'The election between centrist, high spending, loyalist, royalist, pro working class Tories and a rainbow alliance of Lab, Green, LD and separatists.'
This is at least a coherent Tory line. ATM Labour have not got one.
I agree it's a strong message. Not sure how you neutralise it to be honest, apart from drawing attention to the Tories' continued dependence on the DUP. Not in votes in the chamber but as bastions of their quixotic campaign to wish away the Irish Sea border. A party influential enough to make the government announce reductions in APD on domestic flights a week before hosting a global climate change conference.
I’ve generally found it bureaucratic, badly-maintained, incurious, but staffed by genuine heroes and there when needed.
I don’t know how it compares globally, but coincidentally I was looking at “perceptions of healthcare quality” across the OECD, and the U.K. tends to come lower down.
France and Switzerland seem to be at the top.
We seem to have given up on reform since Lansley’s ill-fated measures - the only solution is now just to funnel cash into it.
Switzerland has got a fully insurance based system with subsidised access for low income people. Switzerland doesn't have any concept of long term unemployment or living off the welfare state so ultimately the state doesn't need to fund healthcare and welfare for the "won't work" millions we have in the UK claiming ill health.
Swiss healthcare costs are some of the highest in the world.
Swiss government spends $3,100/person vs. $3,400/person in UK.
But then Swiss individuals pay $6,800/person on top of that privately vs. $900/person in the UK.
Pretty meaningless if you don't look at it as a percentage of GDP. All told the Swiss spend 11.3% of their GDP on healthcare. Compared to 11.1% for France and 11.7% for Germany. The US spends 16.8%.
The key thing is that Switzerland spends a lot more than the UK. The figures I have are 11.9% of GDP vs 10.0% for UK.
Wow contrast the Australia figure which is one of the world's best systems and compare its cost to the NHS. Incredible, and that's with nearly two years longer life expectancy too.
We really need someone brave enough to advocate for an Australian style healthcare system.
PS completely unrelated but I don't want to double post ... How do you convert decimal odds to percentage chance? Eg if I have odds of 2.25 then what percentage is that?
(1-(winnings/odds))*100, so in your example (1-(1.25/2.25))*100 ~45%
Why couldn't the climate summit have been conducted online?
I thought until yesterday that the added investment in fuel to get there paid off because of the added gravitas of in person meetings, but I can't for the life of me see any difference between Johnson and Modi being there in person vs Queenie and Xi being remote. If we have had 26 of these things that's ample. If we really need annual COPs three out of four can surely be virtual, with an actual one in Olympic or world Cup years.
BJ wouldn't have been able to have his tiny dick tantrum about plastering the event in Union flags and not wanting to see Sturgeon anywhere near it though.
SNP Types really don't like the Union flag do they? And they've managed to turn the Saltire into a flag of division.
Maybe the socialist utopia that would be indy Scotland will have no flag like IMB's The Culture.
You dopn't get the SG perpetrating this sort of thing in a world heritage site:
In the old days, big events such as coronations had a mix of all three flags (UJ, saltire and Lion Rampant) - now it's almost always solely the UJ in anything which the UKG organizes: the OLympics torch, for instance, was solely UJ plus sponsors).
Which gives very odd overtones given a certain element of Central Belt culture (so to speak). I find myself worrying if it's safe to cross the road.
UJ is a flag of unity. Why is SG flying EU flag?
You've completely missed my point. Utterly and completely.
Anuk Arudpragasam/A Passage North - The book follows Krishan's journey as he travels across Sri Lanka to attend a family funeral and was been described by Jenny Bhatt on NPR as a "tender elegy" to those caught up in the country's civil war where an estimated 100,000 people were killed and 20,000 people remain missing.
Damon Galgut/The Promise - The Promise, explores recent South African history through the wish of a white woman to leave a house to her black woman who had worked for her. Rebecca Jones from BBC News described it as "beautifully written with characters you come to care deeply about".
Patricia Lockwood/No-one Is Talking About This - The stylistically experimental book explores human experiences on social media. Writing in The New York Times, Merve Emre praised the book for transforming "all that is ugly and cheap about online culture into an experience of sublimity".
Nadifa Mohamed/The Fortune Men - While The Fortune Men is a novel, it is based on the true story of the wrongful murder conviction of Mahmood Mattan, the last man to be hanged in Wales in 1952
Richard Powers/Bewilderment - In Bewilderment, Powers tells the story of astrobiologist Theo Byrne who is struggling to raise his son Robin after the death of his wife.
Magge Shipstead/Great Circle - Maggie Shipstead's novel Great Circle weaves together the story of a trailblazing female aviator who disappeared in 1950 with that of a contemporary Hollywood star trying to make a film about her.
Wokeness in literature is insane
Check the short list for the T S Eliot poetry prize
Interesting how people perceive things differently. I was thinking what a nice and varied list of interesting sounding books that was. It never crossed my mind that they were "woke".
I have to agree. I would probably be described as pretty anti-woke but I didn't get any sense of bridling at that list. I thought at least some of them sounded really interesting. And in the end that is what matters.
The danger, of course, is that it becomes a box-ticking exercise, with books chosen because of what they are about, or the background of the author, thus assuring "diversity", rather than the quality of the writing.
I'm sure that during all those decades when 99% of the authors considered to be good were white men telling stories about white men, their race and gender played absolutely no part in that judgement...
Well, all the authors who were "good" went to the same schools or knew each other through family and literary circles. So it was not so much that they were excluding particular groups as they were excluding everyone who wasn't in their "in" group. Breaking in to that was notoriously hard.
I’ve generally found it bureaucratic, badly-maintained, incurious, but staffed by genuine heroes and there when needed.
I don’t know how it compares globally, but coincidentally I was looking at “perceptions of healthcare quality” across the OECD, and the U.K. tends to come lower down.
France and Switzerland seem to be at the top.
We seem to have given up on reform since Lansley’s ill-fated measures - the only solution is now just to funnel cash into it.
Switzerland has got a fully insurance based system with subsidised access for low income people. Switzerland doesn't have any concept of long term unemployment or living off the welfare state so ultimately the state doesn't need to fund healthcare and welfare for the "won't work" millions we have in the UK claiming ill health.
Swiss healthcare costs are some of the highest in the world.
Swiss government spends $3,100/person vs. $3,400/person in UK.
But then Swiss individuals pay $6,800/person on top of that privately vs. $900/person in the UK.
Pretty meaningless if you don't look at it as a percentage of GDP. All told the Swiss spend 11.3% of their GDP on healthcare. Compared to 11.1% for France and 11.7% for Germany. The US spends 16.8%.
The key thing is that Switzerland spends a lot more than the UK. The figures I have are 11.9% of GDP vs 10.0% for UK.
Wow contrast the Australia figure which is one of the world's best systems and compare its cost to the NHS. Incredible, and that's with nearly two years longer life expectancy too.
We really need someone brave enough to advocate for an Australian style healthcare system.
PS completely unrelated but I don't want to double post ... How do you convert decimal odds to percentage chance? Eg if I have odds of 2.25 then what percentage is that?
(1-(winnings/odds))*100, so in your example (1-(1.25/2.25))*100 ~45%
On obesity: as a poster boy of skinniness I can exclusively reveal the secret isn't cooking. It's not caring about food.
I actively disliked it for a time, and it took me decades to realise other people are really into food.
Other people confound me. We'd be so much better governed if people were less interested in pies, and more in the Second Punic War.
I can remember as a child being struck by the disparity between the time it took to cook a meal, and the time it took to consume it. So have sympathy with non-foodies, of which I am one. Just can't get interested. Would rather read a book than flail around in a kitchen.
Nevertheless I think Leon is spot on. Schools should teach cooking. It's an essential life-skill and we really need to do something about obesity in this country.
I think cooking is perhaps like exercise. You either actively enjoy it, in which case you'll do the right thing anyway (and teach yourself if nobody teaches you), or you have no natural interest in which case you need to be taught, or drilled, to do it for your own good. I am in the natural fan camp for cooking and the natural avoider camp for strenuous exercise.
I’ve generally found it bureaucratic, badly-maintained, incurious, but staffed by genuine heroes and there when needed.
I don’t know how it compares globally, but coincidentally I was looking at “perceptions of healthcare quality” across the OECD, and the U.K. tends to come lower down.
France and Switzerland seem to be at the top.
We seem to have given up on reform since Lansley’s ill-fated measures - the only solution is now just to funnel cash into it.
Switzerland has got a fully insurance based system with subsidised access for low income people. Switzerland doesn't have any concept of long term unemployment or living off the welfare state so ultimately the state doesn't need to fund healthcare and welfare for the "won't work" millions we have in the UK claiming ill health.
What happens if a Swiss person can't work then? How do they get by?
They get whatever job they can. There's not really a concept of "can't work". At least not in my experience of living there. The jobs all pay enough that there really isn't very much of a "can't work" attitude. In terms of healthcare there is a provision for low income people but it's a subsidy. Unemployment in Switzerland is mostly incidental rather than structural. They also don't have in working benefits, no housing benefit and generally a very tiny welfare state. Retirement saving is done on an individual basis too and there really isn't a way to avoid it.
It's a very rich and ordered country, and quite a small one, so I can imagine they don't have the poverty issues we do, but there must be people there who, for one reason or another, can't work, or can only work part/time, and who haven't racked up the contributions they need to access state support. Just wondering what happens with such people in a so-called "contributory" benefits system. I've always kind of assumed it's not the whole story. That if you truly haven't a job and have no savings, then regardless of age or employment history, or your attitude, the state will help you out. Or at least there'll be a mechanism for it. In the prosperous West, I mean, of which Switzerland is very much a part. I see hyufd mentioning "emergency support" so maybe that's it.
My recollection is that the Swiss state pays the full contribution if you really have very little income. As Max says, it's unusual, but of course it does happen.
Why couldn't the climate summit have been conducted online?
I thought until yesterday that the added investment in fuel to get there paid off because of the added gravitas of in person meetings, but I can't for the life of me see any difference between Johnson and Modi being there in person vs Queenie and Xi being remote. If we have had 26 of these things that's ample. If we really need annual COPs three out of four can surely be virtual, with an actual one in Olympic or world Cup years.
BJ wouldn't have been able to have his tiny dick tantrum about plastering the event in Union flags and not wanting to see Sturgeon anywhere near it though.
SNP Types really don't like the Union flag do they? And they've managed to turn the Saltire into a flag of division.
Maybe the socialist utopia that would be indy Scotland will have no flag like IMB's The Culture.
You dopn't get the SG perpetrating this sort of thing in a world heritage site:
In the old days, big events such as coronations had a mix of all three flags (UJ, saltire and Lion Rampant) - now it's almost always solely the UJ in anything which the UKG organizes: the OLympics torch, for instance, was solely UJ plus sponsors).
Which gives very odd overtones given a certain element of Central Belt culture (so to speak). I find myself worrying if it's safe to cross the road.
UJ is a flag of unity. Why is SG flying EU flag?
You've completely missed my point. Utterly and completely.
Why couldn't the climate summit have been conducted online?
I thought until yesterday that the added investment in fuel to get there paid off because of the added gravitas of in person meetings, but I can't for the life of me see any difference between Johnson and Modi being there in person vs Queenie and Xi being remote. If we have had 26 of these things that's ample. If we really need annual COPs three out of four can surely be virtual, with an actual one in Olympic or world Cup years.
BJ wouldn't have been able to have his tiny dick tantrum about plastering the event in Union flags and not wanting to see Sturgeon anywhere near it though.
SNP Types really don't like the Union flag do they? And they've managed to turn the Saltire into a flag of division.
Maybe the socialist utopia that would be indy Scotland will have no flag like IMB's The Culture.
You dopn't get the SG perpetrating this sort of thing in a world heritage site:
In the old days, big events such as coronations had a mix of all three flags (UJ, saltire and Lion Rampant) - now it's almost always solely the UJ in anything which the UKG organizes: the OLympics torch, for instance, was solely UJ plus sponsors).
Which gives very odd overtones given a certain element of Central Belt culture (so to speak). I find myself worrying if it's safe to cross the road.
UJ is a flag of unity. Why is SG flying EU flag?
You've completely missed my point. Utterly and completely.
I’ve generally found it bureaucratic, badly-maintained, incurious, but staffed by genuine heroes and there when needed.
I don’t know how it compares globally, but coincidentally I was looking at “perceptions of healthcare quality” across the OECD, and the U.K. tends to come lower down.
France and Switzerland seem to be at the top.
We seem to have given up on reform since Lansley’s ill-fated measures - the only solution is now just to funnel cash into it.
Switzerland has got a fully insurance based system with subsidised access for low income people. Switzerland doesn't have any concept of long term unemployment or living off the welfare state so ultimately the state doesn't need to fund healthcare and welfare for the "won't work" millions we have in the UK claiming ill health.
What happens if a Swiss person can't work then? How do they get by?
They get whatever job they can. There's not really a concept of "can't work". At least not in my experience of living there. The jobs all pay enough that there really isn't very much of a "can't work" attitude. In terms of healthcare there is a provision for low income people but it's a subsidy. Unemployment in Switzerland is mostly incidental rather than structural. They also don't have in working benefits, no housing benefit and generally a very tiny welfare state. Retirement saving is done on an individual basis too and there really isn't a way to avoid it.
Unemployment benefits in Switzerland are more generous than JSA here ie 70% of the average wage earned in the year before you lost your job, 80% if you have children.
Even if you are still not in work after that you can still claim emergency assistance and welfare.
Those in receipt of social assistance also get their housing costs covered
Yes, it's a wholly contributory system that is time limited. It's generous but finite.
It's a genuine safety net which is what ours was supposed to be.
I think we should be looking to move back in this direction. Our welfare system evolved to deal with the mass unemployment and long term unemployment associated with the profound economic shock of deindustrialisation in the 1970s-90s, which was magnified by the coincident working age population bulge of the baby boomer generation. In the mid 1980s you really couldn't get a job in many parts of the country, and so the alternative to long term unemployment benefits was starvation. Today's labour market is quite different, characterised by a shortage of workers. There is no reason for people to be long term unemployed, the system should be more generous but time limited. There are communities (eg the Welsh valleys) still blighted by long term ill health as a legacy of heavy industry and mass unemployment, perhaps what they need are properly funded localised programmes addressing those issues rather than just the drip feed of inadequate amounts of money via the welfare system. I don't want to come over all Norman Tebbit either, but perhaps if people can move to SE England from Poland for a job then they can move from Merthyr or Blackburn too. You don't have a right to a job on your doorstep.
Wow. I can completely agree with you. 😲
Oh dear! 😉
It would be interesting to really understand the micro-factors that prevent people moving from Merthyr to Cardiff (or London) for work.
The U.K. is quite weird in that very poor, deprived areas, exist cheek by jowl with richer ones - and never the twain shall meet.
It's an attitude I struggle to understand too, since I have worked overseas twice and live hundreds of miles (and in a different country) from where I was born. Of course those kinds of moves are easier for well paid professional jobs - everything is easier with money.
Yep. You go where the work is. That also used to be the way in the earlier part of eth 20th Century. Whole communities would up and move from one area to another if that was what the work demanded. I am not necessarily advocating that now but it shows how attitudes have changed post war.
I've moved up and down the country for work so you aren't going to get any arguments from me. Its a lot harder to do if you feel identity with the place you live, have "put down roots", have friends and family close by etc.
Whilst I agree, I have worked all over the world and all over the UK and always come back to the same area in the end. I always knew it was my home and the fact I had to spend so much time away just made it all the sweeter when I was home. Now I can choose where I live so it is not an issue but I never once thought it was unfair or wrong that I had to live away from my hometown to work.
Why couldn't the climate summit have been conducted online?
I thought until yesterday that the added investment in fuel to get there paid off because of the added gravitas of in person meetings, but I can't for the life of me see any difference between Johnson and Modi being there in person vs Queenie and Xi being remote. If we have had 26 of these things that's ample. If we really need annual COPs three out of four can surely be virtual, with an actual one in Olympic or world Cup years.
BJ wouldn't have been able to have his tiny dick tantrum about plastering the event in Union flags and not wanting to see Sturgeon anywhere near it though.
BJ posed for a photo with Sturgeon, Drakeford, Givan and O'Neill earlier to show all areas of the UK are united in fighting climate change
Why couldn't the climate summit have been conducted online?
I thought until yesterday that the added investment in fuel to get there paid off because of the added gravitas of in person meetings, but I can't for the life of me see any difference between Johnson and Modi being there in person vs Queenie and Xi being remote. If we have had 26 of these things that's ample. If we really need annual COPs three out of four can surely be virtual, with an actual one in Olympic or world Cup years.
BJ wouldn't have been able to have his tiny dick tantrum about plastering the event in Union flags and not wanting to see Sturgeon anywhere near it though.
SNP Types really don't like the Union flag do they? And they've managed to turn the Saltire into a flag of division.
Maybe the socialist utopia that would be indy Scotland will have no flag like IMB's The Culture.
Wonder if they will sell "No Flag" flags, like "No Logo" T-shirts?
I wouldn't put it past them! I really didn't like that book for what it's worth.
Every idea can be turned into a Fascism, it just takes a bit of effort. See Buddhism in WWII era Japan.....
Which Banks book?
Shintoism, surely!
No, Buddhism.
You'd think that if you are running a genocidal, fascist, racist empire built on a pyramid of torture and fear (see Nanking etc) that belonging to a religion that suggests even insects lives are valuable would put a bit a downer on your day, yes?
No no no no. No. You see, the Japanese Buddhist masters (well, the ones who were all up for the racists genocide bit, anyway) simply redefined Chinese people as being "lower than lice"
FPT re: obesity. For all that I am a fan of @NickPalmer , I'm fairly shocked and disappointed about his attitude to food. It's worrying enough that a former MP and minister has never bothered to learn to cook. It's more worrying still that a guy who has devoted much of his life to the food and farming sector (and doing great work therein) eats mostly ready meals. Food in a packet is full of shite.
Interestingly, those countries where food and home cookery is prized and children are taught from an early age to eat proper food – namely France and Italy – have among the lowest rates of obesity in the G20. Coincidence? I think not.
A major issue is that many people who don't cook have retreated into a zone of "Cooking means cooking from scratch. Too complicated and I don't have the time."
Start by cheating. I did. Buy sauce in jars, use cans. Some cooking is better than none. Progress where you can and where you have time.
One thing that is completely left out of the cooking books seems to be cooking in bulk, home freezing etc. The myth that every meal has to be 100% hand made and eaten just after cooking......
Imagine if every kid was taught how to make 10 simple, healthy meals.
Th problem is time - what people need to be taught, as well, is how to do quick cheats for cooking.
I have a go-to recipe for doing risotto in the microwave. A delicious meal in about half an hour.
Anything that has been in the microwave for half an hour will be cinders, certainly not edible.
Er, you don't cook it all in one go, 30 mins is total prep/cooking time. There's a lot of water to be absorbed by the rice too. Believe me, it is delicious!
Why not post the recipe, and let us decide for ourselves?
Cut up a leak and a couple of cloves of garlic, add about 1oz butter and some olive oil, put in a large glass bowl, cover and microwave on high for 5 mins. Meanwhile make 1.5 pints stock with boiling water. Stir 10oz risotto rice into bowl to get it well covered with oil and butter, add stock and black pepper, cook on high uncovered for 10 minutes. Meanwhile slice some mushrooms, eg about 6 or 8, after 10 minutes add to bowl, stir briefly and cook another 6 minutes on high. Stir in some grated parmesan and leave for a few minutes before serving. The recipe is in a cookbook we have (I think bbc good food) but can't find it online. Plenty of variations are possible.
Here's mine. 30 minutes to an amazing fish risotto
STEP 1 Heat oven to 200C/180C fan. Lob a large chunk of butter into an ovenproof dish. Put dish on the hob on a medium heat. Chuck in 1 large slicked leek, stirring regularly, until it begins to tenderise, about 3 minutes. Add cracked salt, black pepper, and then some chopped garlic. 1 clove. Stir for another minute. Add about 150ml white wine. Cook another 2 minutes, simmering the booze away. Then add 300g risotto rice, and cook for another 2 minutes, stirring frequently
STEP 2 Throw in 500ml fish stock and about 150ml milk, bring to the boil and bubble for 5 mins, then sit 300g of chopped undyed smoked haddock on top. Cover with a lid or foil ,and bake in the oven for 18 mins, or until the rice is tender.
STEP 3 Fold in 2 table spoons of crème fraîche and a fistful of rocket leaves (or spinach, or steamed cavolo nero), season with plenty of black pepper, then cover the pan again and leave to rest out of the oven for 3 mins before serving – the steam will soften the greens.. Garnish with fresh flaked parmesan and chopped parsley
Serves a hungry 2 or a less hungry 3, simply increase all amounts for more people
That sounds excellent. Do you think it would work with uncooked mackerel? I've got quite a lot of it in the fridge that we need to use, this seems like a perfect recipe for it.
it is great, it's an adaptation of a BBC recipe, which I tried, which is a bit bland - so I read all the comments about making it tastier, and added them to the recipe
Theuniondivve is right, I fear, mackerel is probably too oily for this, and wouldn't work with the cream and milk.
But do try it some day if you can
Milk, cream and fish. Wtf?
Oh man it is divine. Seriously. Comfort food in the extreme. Though as someone has already said, even better with some potato (or for my taste some pearl barley) thrown in.
In Iraq, the initial capture and occupation of Basra, entered into with soft hats and the self-congratulatory confidence of an Army that believed it led the world in peacekeeping and counterinsurgency, ended in a humiliating negotiated withdrawal of British forces to the edge of the city, where, pinned down by constant bombardment by the Shia militias who now ran the city, they lost all capacity to exert their influence.
The Americans, distinctly unimpressed at the failure of the British officers, were forced to help Iraqi forces retake the city in 2008’s Charge of the Knights operation, a humiliation for Britain. “This damaged the reputation of British forces with the US and the Iraqis and inflicted major dents in British military self-confidence,” Barry notes. Akam is less stoic, describing it as ”an acute and lasting humiliation to the British Army”, which “will linger and follow the troops halfway around the world to Afghanistan”.
Barry observes: “The US government’s decision to invade Iraq must stand as the worst military decision of the 21st century. It was a military strategic folly on a level equal to that of Napoleon’s 1812 attack on Russia and Hitler’s 1941 attack on the Soviet Union.” The failure, then, was ultimately a political one, of British politicians blindly following their American patrons into unwinnable wars.
Perhaps the Army’s capacity to win the next war, like the British state’s to weather the next crisis, would be better served by generals finding the courage, when necessary, to tell politicians that some things simply can’t, or shouldn’t be done.
However I disagree with the conclusion, Iraq is now free of Saddam and Iraqis elect their own government
Iraq was a catastrophic blunder. Worse than Suez if not Vietnam.
Polluted the body politic and opened the floodgates to mass distrust in government and from there to QAnon etc.
Just the other day I was reading some crypto “guru” explain that one could not trust fiat currency because it was “brought to you by the same people who said there were WMDs in Iraq”.
Saddam would still be in power if there had been no invasion
Why has someone flagged this as Off Topic? HYUFD is making a perfectly sensible point, in response to someone else, and doing it in a polite way
This Off Topic crap is quite annoying. May I humble suggest the moderators ban, for life, anyone that does it
Be better to have a 'dislike' button. Especially for y ...
No, but seriously, it would. Because with the present set up we're only getting half the story and it can be very misleading. Like, if you look at sites (eg Beeb) where there's a thumbs up and a thumbs down, what you often find is that the most liked post is also the most disliked. It's a marmite affair. Such a post is a totally different animal to one that lots of people like and hardly anybody doesn't. Or to one that lots dislike and absolutely nobody likes. It's not as good as the first and much better than the second.
We're not getting this naunce.
Eg, a Big G oneliner update on Sky News might not get a bunch of likes but neither would it (if we had it) get any dislikes. Who could dislike a oneliner update from Big G on Sky News? Cf a post from hyufd about invading Scotland, also no likes but would (if we had it) have the dislike button well exercised. At present both of these posts will look as if they've had exactly the same response from the community and this is wrong. It's wrong.
Or take one of your "antiwoke" diatribes. There, only the people who get aroused in a positive sense by this sort of thing get the chance to express this quickly and easily via a button. Again it leads to the post being mismarked (in this case looking more popular than it is), but also think of the human rights aspect. The people who like your post are getting their voices heard but the rest of us (a far greater number) are not. We're effectively neutered. Have to suffer in silence. Not to hyperbolize but there are mental health and blood pressure ramifications of having to tolerate such a regime.
So that's my request and it's a formal one. Change the "off topic" button to a "dislike" one.
It rarely bothers me if I get likes or not, it certainly would not bother me if I got dislikes, especially from left liberals on here.
I post what I think not to fall into line with others' views (plus there is no need to invade Scotland as Boris will simply refuse an indyref2 and union matters are reserved to Westminster)
Foodyism is just another way to spit in the face of the poor.
Ha ha you're poor - if only you learnt how to Cook you would be eating much better.
It really isn't snobbery or sneering. Everyone should learn to cook, and/or be taught at school. It is a failure of our education system
I've long held the opinion Gardenwalker espouses: state schools should teach ten recipes - ten basic, tasty, nourishing meals that every British child can learn to do. Some fish, some meat, some curry, some veggie, ten classics. Done.
That way every child will learn about food, about cooking processes, about preparation, about seasoning, about fresh fruit and veg, about nutrition.
It amazes me that we don't do this. It is far more important than science, for the vast majority of kids
Absolutely right. Back to my OP – and one can almost track a perfect correlation on G20 obesity rate with that country's perceived interest in and competence at cookery. France famously has a large alcohol, saturated fat and red meat intake yet has among the lowest obesity rate rate and female BMI index in the G20.
So pace @Morris_Dancer, correlation suggests a causation. Ozcam's razor: teach your population to love food and cookery, and it eats well yet stays thin.
Why couldn't the climate summit have been conducted online?
I thought until yesterday that the added investment in fuel to get there paid off because of the added gravitas of in person meetings, but I can't for the life of me see any difference between Johnson and Modi being there in person vs Queenie and Xi being remote. If we have had 26 of these things that's ample. If we really need annual COPs three out of four can surely be virtual, with an actual one in Olympic or world Cup years.
BJ wouldn't have been able to have his tiny dick tantrum about plastering the event in Union flags and not wanting to see Sturgeon anywhere near it though.
SNP Types really don't like the Union flag do they? And they've managed to turn the Saltire into a flag of division.
Maybe the socialist utopia that would be indy Scotland will have no flag like IMB's The Culture.
You dopn't get the SG perpetrating this sort of thing in a world heritage site:
In the old days, big events such as coronations had a mix of all three flags (UJ, saltire and Lion Rampant) - now it's almost always solely the UJ in anything which the UKG organizes: the OLympics torch, for instance, was solely UJ plus sponsors).
Which gives very odd overtones given a certain element of Central Belt culture (so to speak). I find myself worrying if it's safe to cross the road.
UJ is a flag of unity. Why is SG flying EU flag?
You've completely missed my point. Utterly and completely.
Sorry.
But anyway - Why is SG flying the EU flag?
Because people use flags as a shorthand for displaying their beliefs. The Saltire, the Union Flag, the EU Flag, all of them. People use them as a shorthand for something they think is good.
Just to be clear - I was kidding. A "dislike" button is world's WORST idea.
It’s already been tried & tested - James Kelly used to dislike every post Plato (RIP) made!
Plato was an interesting person, from Blairite Labour voter in the 90s and 00s to hard right conspiracy theorist before she passed away. Quite the journey.
I am amazed by people - usually men of a certain age - who cannot cook
I have older male relatives who are completely helpless in the kitchen. I don't get it. Cooking is healthy, soothing AND pleasurable. You can whip up delicious meals in 30 minutes, Jamie Oliver does not always lie
Perplexing
He doesn't lie, but he does have 15 ingredients already prepped, so its a bit of a con... Your main point is correct though - I love cooking, do all the meals for me and my wife, and am competent.
From the White House pool report on @POTUS journey from Edinburgh to Glasgow: ‘At one point when we were still on smaller country roads, a large, naked Scottish man stood in his front window taking a picture of the motorcade with his phone.’ https://twitter.com/BBCJonSopel/status/1455550297984671747?s=20
Why couldn't the climate summit have been conducted online?
I thought until yesterday that the added investment in fuel to get there paid off because of the added gravitas of in person meetings, but I can't for the life of me see any difference between Johnson and Modi being there in person vs Queenie and Xi being remote. If we have had 26 of these things that's ample. If we really need annual COPs three out of four can surely be virtual, with an actual one in Olympic or world Cup years.
BJ wouldn't have been able to have his tiny dick tantrum about plastering the event in Union flags and not wanting to see Sturgeon anywhere near it though.
SNP Types really don't like the Union flag do they? And they've managed to turn the Saltire into a flag of division.
Maybe the socialist utopia that would be indy Scotland will have no flag like IMB's The Culture.
You dopn't get the SG perpetrating this sort of thing in a world heritage site:
In the old days, big events such as coronations had a mix of all three flags (UJ, saltire and Lion Rampant) - now it's almost always solely the UJ in anything which the UKG organizes: the OLympics torch, for instance, was solely UJ plus sponsors).
Which gives very odd overtones given a certain element of Central Belt culture (so to speak). I find myself worrying if it's safe to cross the road.
UJ is a flag of unity. Why is SG flying EU flag?
You've completely missed my point. Utterly and completely.
Sorry.
But anyway - Why is SG flying the EU flag?
The Scots voted for Europe.
And as for the UJ, the point I was making is that mass displays of the UJ in the Scottish context, without saltires and LRs to add to the bunting and jolliness, were until very recently only seen on sectarian marches - so the UJ en masse is itself a visceral symbol of utter division, in an objective sense.
So its use en masse by HMG clashes - presumably - with its strong sectarian history. Not a very sensible approach, where a more mixed use of flags would be much more sensible.
From the White House pool report on @POTUS journey from Edinburgh to Glasgow: ‘At one point when we were still on smaller country roads, a large, naked Scottish man stood in his front window taking a picture of the motorcade with his phone.’ https://twitter.com/BBCJonSopel/status/1455550297984671747?s=20
How do we know he was Scottish? Could have been Swedish, for instance.
Comments
USA: 16.8%
Germany 11.7%
Switzerland: 11.3%
France: 11.1%
Sweden:10.9%
Canada: 10.8%
Norway: 10.5%
UK: 10.2%
Netherlands 10.2%
Australia: 9.4%
New Zealand: 9.1%
- Basic cooking: not the old style come to school and bake a cake or make a lasagne, but proper basics like how to fry a piece of meat, how to chop an onion, peel a potato, scramble some eggs, steam some veg etc
- Food hygiene and storage
- Budgeting, money management and investment
I don't understand why this isn't absolutely core. It would save the country a lot. Perhaps even send school classes off to the local catering college every week and get them to complete foundation catering skills.
These things are as critical as other forms of personal education that are, fortunately, properly part of the curriculum such as PE, first aid and sex education.
STEP 1
Heat oven to 200C/180C fan. Lob a large chunk of butter into an ovenproof dish. Put dish on the hob on a medium heat. Chuck in 1 large slicked leek, stirring regularly, until it begins to tenderise, about 3 minutes. Add cracked salt, black pepper, and then some chopped garlic. 1 clove. Stir for another minute. Add about 150ml white wine. Cook another 2 minutes, simmering the booze away. Then add 300g risotto rice, and cook for another 2 minutes, stirring frequently
STEP 2
Throw in 500ml fish stock and about 150ml milk, bring to the boil and bubble for 5 mins, then sit 300g of chopped undyed smoked haddock on top. Cover with a lid or foil ,and bake in the oven for 18 mins, or until the rice is tender.
STEP 3
Fold in 2 table spoons of crème fraîche and a fistful of rocket leaves (or spinach, or steamed cavolo nero), season with plenty of black pepper, then cover the pan again and leave to rest out of the oven for 3 mins before serving – the steam will soften the greens.. Garnish with fresh flaked parmesan and chopped parsley
It's utterly delicious. Heavenly aromas. 30 minutes
Serves a hungry 2 or a less hungry 3, simply increase all amounts for more people
There really is no concept of "can't work", the idea of it is an anathema. There simply exists no valid reason other than medically diagnosed disability.
I'm with NPXMP on this one.
Foodyism is just another way to spit in the face of the poor.
Ha ha you're poor - if only you learnt how to Cook you would be eating much better.
I wouldn't worry about it unless it happens an awful lot.
Oh.
Broccoli is cheap though.
Good food - and the skills to prepare it - is a human right!
So the last set of people who were given proper cookery lessons at school are now 50 years old.
How are you, by the way, if it's OK to ask?
I've long held the opinion Gardenwalker espouses: state schools should teach ten recipes - ten basic, tasty, nourishing meals that every British child can learn to do. Some fish, some meat, some curry, some veggie, ten classics. Done.
That way every child will learn about food, about cooking processes, about preparation, about seasoning, about fresh fruit and veg, about nutrition.
It amazes me that we don't do this. It is far more important than science, for the vast majority of kids
Carbs are cheap and make you fat.
We all have our priorities.
There are also plenty of fat rich people and thin poor people, it is about eating the right things not just what you fancy
The original is here for reference:
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/smoked-haddock-leek-risotto
Theuniondivve is right, I fear, mackerel is probably too oily for this, and wouldn't work with the cream and milk.
But do try it some day if you can
It takes quite a bit to push through all of that.
I still remember my astonishment when I went to dine at a French friend’s house.
Dinner:
1 very tasty (probably fennel) sausage.
Lettuce and tomatoes, with a good dressing.
C’est tout.
We complicate everything.
https://www.japancentre.com/en/products/959-shimaya-bonito-dashi-stock-powder
Maybe the socialist utopia that would be indy Scotland will have no flag like IMB's The Culture.
That milk/onion/potato/seafood combination seems ot be universal on the Atlantic seaboards - the French have their own local equivalents.
The other factor is one which we have not really got used to. It is for now structurally baked in that only the Tories have any chance of single party government. So there is an odd imbalance - which at the next election the Tories are going to max out on - the idea of 'The election between centrist, high spending, loyalist, royalist, pro working class Tories and a rainbow alliance of Lab, Green, LD and separatists.'
This is at least a coherent Tory line. ATM Labour have not got one.
We really need someone brave enough to advocate for an Australian style healthcare system.
PS completely unrelated but I don't want to double post ... How do you convert decimal odds to percentage chance? Eg if I have odds of 2.25 then what percentage is that?
I actively disliked it for a time, and it took me decades to realise other people are really into food.
Other people confound me. We'd be so much better governed if people were less interested in pies, and more in the Second Punic War.
To be positive, a couple of years ago I suddenly thought I'd quite like an omelette, so I asked a friend and I now enjoy knocking them off with a minute's work (actually FASTER than a ready meal, gosh), but as with the joke about how many psychiatrists are needed to change a lightbulb - "Only one, but the lightbulb has to want to change"), you need to want it. Cyclefree helped me learn pasta in the same way.
Which Banks book?
https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1455491191139622914?s=20
https://www.google.com/maps/uv?pb=!1s0x4887c7795826e201:0x941e2f966c6d9390!3m1!7e115!4s/maps/place/%22queen+elizabeth+house%22+edinburgh/@55.9520208,-3.1827656,3a,75y,97h,90t/data=*213m4*211e1*213m2*211sa3I9YwRwIN64f1zYn7EiJQ*212e0*214m2*213m1*211s0x4887c7795826e201:0x941e2f966c6d9390?sa=X!5s"queen elizabeth house" edinburgh - Google Search!15sCgIgAQ&imagekey=!1e2!2sa3I9YwRwIN64f1zYn7EiJQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi1qNfR9fnzAhVRyaQKHW0nBjYQpx96BAhQEAg
In the old days, big events such as coronations had a mix of all three flags (UJ, saltire and Lion Rampant) - now it's almost always solely the UJ in anything which the UKG organizes: the OLympics torch, for instance, was solely UJ plus sponsors).
Which gives very odd overtones given a certain element of Central Belt culture (so to speak). I find myself worrying if it's safe to cross the road.
Down with F1
They can then cook them as they want them and also will cut down on the number of ready meals and fastfood eaten.
Nothing to then stop them experimenting with cooking other dishes once they get in the habit
I made enough on Sunday to do lunch for the whole week. I bought a 1kg pack of chicken thigh fillets (£6) and a pack of cheap tomatoes (£1). I had everything else at home - 2 onions (20p), half a bulb of garlic (30p), 2 chilli peppers (20p), a thumb of ginger (20p) and 3 cups of basmati rice (60p), plus garam masala, mustard seeds and cumin seeds (20p), and some chard from my garden. I chopped all the veg up and put in my large oven dish with the thighs and spices with the lid on, into the oven at 150C for 40 minutes. Take it out of the oven to add the rice and 3 cups of boiled water (I usually use 1.5 times the volume of rice if cooking it alone in the rice cooker, but there's plenty of liquid in the veg and meat), then stir well, trying to make sure the rice is all underwater, lid back on and into the oven now turned down to 100C for half an hour more.
So, less than 15 minutes' work cooking, just over an hour cooking time, and less than £9 (and probably could have done it cheaper if it wasn't bought at Waitrose) for 5 decent sized meals. It's a bit samey having it every day for the week, but it's a hell of a lot nicer than sandwiches from the local petrol station, healthier, more filling and considerably cheaper.
I bet most kids would love it, and it would be seen as an easy, relaxing lesson, especially as they get older and GCSEs loom
The more I think of it, the more obvious it becomes. We HAVE to do something like this. We have a massive obesity problem, even in kids, especially with kids, and Covid has taught us we cannot ignore this any more. So we have to teach our children to understand food, and nutrition, and that means learning to cook
No, but seriously, it would. Because with the present set up we're only getting half the story and it can be very misleading. Like, if you look at sites (eg Beeb) where there's a thumbs up and a thumbs down, what you often find is that the most liked post is also the most disliked. It's a marmite affair. Such a post is a totally different animal to one that lots of people like and hardly anybody doesn't. Or to one that lots dislike and absolutely nobody likes. It's not as good as the first and much better than the second.
We're not getting this naunce.
Eg, a Big G oneliner update on Sky News might not get a bunch of likes but neither would it (if we had it) get any dislikes. Who could dislike a oneliner update from Big G on Sky News? Cf a post from hyufd about invading Scotland, also no likes but would (if we had it) have the dislike button well exercised. At present both of these posts will look as if they've had exactly the same response from the community and this is wrong. It's wrong.
Or take one of your "antiwoke" diatribes. There, only the people who get aroused in a positive sense by this sort of thing get the chance to express this quickly and easily via a button. Again it leads to the post being mismarked (in this case looking more popular than it is), but also think of the human rights aspect. The people who like your post are getting their voices heard but the rest of us (a far greater number) are not. We're effectively neutered. Have to suffer in silence. Not to hyperbolize but there are mental health and blood pressure ramifications of having to tolerate such a regime.
So that's my request and it's a formal one. Change the "off topic" button to a "dislike" one.
Nevertheless I think Leon is spot on. Schools should teach cooking. It's an essential life-skill and we really need to do something about obesity in this country.
(not on puddings). I agree it's a strong message. Not sure how you neutralise it to be honest, apart from drawing attention to the Tories' continued dependence on the DUP. Not in votes in the chamber but as bastions of their quixotic campaign to wish away the Irish Sea border. A party influential enough to make the government announce reductions in APD on domestic flights a week before hosting a global climate change conference.
But anyway - Why is SG flying the EU flag?
https://twitter.com/PhantomPower14/status/1455276863186771980?s=20
You'd think that if you are running a genocidal, fascist, racist empire built on a pyramid of torture and fear (see Nanking etc) that belonging to a religion that suggests even insects lives are valuable would put a bit a downer on your day, yes?
No no no no. No. You see, the Japanese Buddhist masters (well, the ones who were all up for the racists genocide bit, anyway) simply redefined Chinese people as being "lower than lice"
Happy Beheading!
I post what I think not to fall into line with others' views (plus there is no need to invade Scotland as Boris will simply refuse an indyref2 and union matters are reserved to Westminster)
So pace @Morris_Dancer, correlation suggests a causation. Ozcam's razor: teach your population to love food and cookery, and it eats well yet stays thin.
Every use of a flag is virtue signalling.
Your main point is correct though - I love cooking, do all the meals for me and my wife, and am competent.
@POTUS
journey from Edinburgh to Glasgow:
‘At one point when we were still on smaller country roads, a large, naked Scottish man stood in his front window taking a picture of the motorcade with his phone.’
https://twitter.com/BBCJonSopel/status/1455550297984671747?s=20
And as for the UJ, the point I was making is that mass displays of the UJ in the Scottish context, without saltires and LRs to add to the bunting and jolliness, were until very recently only seen on sectarian marches - so the UJ en masse is itself a visceral symbol of utter division, in an objective sense.
So its use en masse by HMG clashes - presumably - with its strong sectarian history. Not a very sensible approach, where a more mixed use of flags would be much more sensible.