Looking forward to the fluffers of the right demanding that this be put into context as they will inevitably do. There will always be a place for Mr Anderson in Douglas Ross's SCons if he feels he has to move on again.
That Ash Sarkar tweet exemplifies how out of touch the metropolitan luvviedom is with the Red Wall.
"Good on him" would be a common response.
Not that many traveller encampments in Islington, I suspect.
Many round your bit?
The east end of Glasgow probably has the highest concentration of travelling folk in Scotland if not the UK, mainly of the showpeople & fairground variety. They keep themselves to themselves and are suspicious of authority but aren't any detriment to the wider community afaics. As ever there is plenty of variety within a loose definition of what is a group of people.
Edit: 'Housing an estimated 80% of all showfamilies Glasgow is believed to have the largest concentration of Showmen quarters in Europe, centred mostly in Shettleston, Whiteinch and Carntyne.'
Must be the worst 1.00 News yet if you are a Tory.
...............100 FPN's in Downing Street and more to come....... The Rave Centre of the UK....The Allegra moment (long version)........... Economy collapsing and getting worse....heading for a recession....... Two businessmen from Stoke (from STOKE!!) 'things have never been worse' ......' Imports have gone through the roof......we could go under'............ President Biden 'breaking international law over Ireland is a No! No! ...........The NHS have more people on their waiting list for operations than ever in their history......
On food banks. Those most in favour of them are, of course, those who are fortunate enough never to have to use them.
As for those who do use them. Well, they are of course very grateful that they exist. But many people who use them find it deeply humiliating to do so; using them is dehumanising, though not as much as begging.
I'm not persuaded that having world-beating food banks is something that we, as one of the richest countries in the world, should be particularly proud of. Rather, I see it as a badge of shame that poor people have to receive charity while so many of our citizens find that food constitutes a very small proportion of their outgoings. But I guess that's why I'm a leftie.
You must be livid that they started under Labour. Can you list the european countries from example which do not have food banks? In fact they are supported by the EU.
EU food banks good. UK food banks bad.
To you and Felix - I never mentioned the EU. Food banks are bad wherever they are in the 'rich' world - UK, EU and USA. I didn't make the distinction that is in your imagination. Not everything's to do with fucking Brexit, you know.
Food banks are brilliant, the embodiment of the Big Society at work. Why does so much of the modern left have such a problem with local charities helping out the disadvantaged in society?
(Sorry, but if there was a Labour government, food banks would be seen as brilliant by those who currently denounce them).
Not by me they wouldn't. If food bank usage increased under a Labour government I'd be furious.
Because they would be competing with the Labour party as a source of handouts?
Pathetic. No, because it would be evidence that Labour hadn't done enough to reduce the gross inequalities of income and life chances that prevail in this country.
No, its not.
Providing a safety net to support people is doing something to reduce the gross inequalities of chances. That's what Labour are supposed to believe in.
The fact that a safety net of charity replaced the predatory loan sharks is something that should be supported, not sneered at.
2014 is the year that is typically quoted as the year food bank use exploded, which is claimed to be a failure rather than a success and why it was made an issue in the 2015 election.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/54ebb03bed915d0cf7000014/Payday_investigation_Final_report.pdf In 2014 the market contracted, and both payday lending revenue and the volume of new loans issued fell year on year by around 27% for the period January to September 2014. Four of the 11 major lenders identified at the start of our investigation, as well as some smaller ones, decided to stop issuing payday loans during 2014.
A 27% fall in volume of new loans issued and a 54% fall in problems reported to Citizens Advice is proof that the loanshark industry took a major blow in the same year as the usage of food banks exploded.
Prior to then, people didn't have access to foodbanks so they were forced to turn to loan sharks. This is something to be celebrated that they exist now and that people are turning to food banks instead of loan sharks is unambiguously, unequivocally, positively a great thing.
I can't wrap my head around how anyone could sneer or consider a safety net to be a bad thing?
I can't see food banks any where in the CAB article, they cite:
New evidence from the national charity reveals a steady decline in payday loan problems from April 2014 as new regulations were introduced by the Financial Conduct Authority and the regulator took enforcement action against lenders. It also shows a further drop when the Government introduced the cap on payday loans on 2 January 2015.
Nothing to do with food but regulation of an industry filled with shysters.
There's no mention of food banks in the government report either.
You're conflating the two issues.
Your argument is bollocks.
Its not bollocks. Desperate people were previously forced to go to loan sharks as the food bank infrastructure wasn't there.
From 2014, following deregulation of the charities by David Cameron as part of his Big Society reforms, the infrastructure was there and people were able to go there instead.
Usage of food banks went up, usage of loan sharks went down.
Which would you rather have, the 2014 onwards situation of food banks busy, but loan sharks down, or the 2013 and prior situation of food banks not in use (as the infrastructure wasn't there), but loan sharks busy?
You've invented the correlation.
Yes they both happened in 2014. None of your citations claim food banks had any effect on pay day lending, do they?
(You forget its much harder to falsely cite long articles as ctrl-f exists.)
Looking at decade long lower quartile wage stagnation might be more relevant.
No the false correlation is that of yourself and others claiming that food bank usage is symptomatic of a problem.
Food bank usage is symptomatic of big society charities providing a safety net. Safety nets are a good thing.
I say that loan shark usage is symptomatic of a problem, not safety nets.
I'm claiming nothing regarding the prior comments. Only that your argument and your evidence is bollocks.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
I feel like somewhere between the Industrial Revolution to the hang ups from WW2 rationing and the homogenisation of species/supermarket offerings, the country forgot what culinary gifts it was blessed with. We now have world class meat produce too, not just sea food, and some fabulous traditional ways of seasoning it. Same for fruit.
The war is the biggest single recipient of blame for destroying the British diet. Powdered eggs. Everything tinned. Horrendous food trends that linger to this day. Look at the photos of the winning England team in 1966 - the teeth (or lack of). That's a legacy of the WW2 diet.
Its more the post war diet isn't it? didn't rationing last for years after the end of hostilities?
Problem is he's doubling down on his nonsense and obscuring any legitimate points he's trying to make. "Use is exaggerated". I've worked in a food bank. We kept scrupulous records. The Trussell Trust requires referrals. He's implying widespread fraud. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
Yes he is playing politics with it all, as are much of the left on the opposite side in response.
The better response from Labour would be along the lines of:
We do not agree with how you have framed it but thanks for raising the importance of better food and personal finance education. What funding is the government willing to allocate to address this nationally?
Nah, it's easier for them to say "look evul torys, vote for us" despite this same tactic failing in 2015.
The reason this has had such a furious reaction from the left is because there is a recognisable grain of truth in what he's saying. Lots of people in food poverty spend far, far too much money on fast food. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been to McDonald's this year or any other fast food place. Go to any council estate and take a look at their spending, I can guarantee the average will be far higher than it is in a leafy suburb.
Wait til your offspring arrives. You will find McDonalds an amazingly useful place to feed and quieten the kid/s, I guarantee
And this is an important point. A hard pressed single mum hasn’t got time or energy to whip up home made pasta with arrabiata sauce and a green salad, her kids probably wouldn’t eat it anyway. So, Maccie D’s it is. Again. I can empathise
I can empathise but I have never taken my kids to McDonald's.
I can’t say I’ve been the best Dad in history but I did manage to inculcate a love of food into my daughters - despite the inevitable visits to McDonalds
My older daughter, 15, loves seafood restaurants. We sit down and earnestly discuss the bouillabaisse. Too much fennel? Maybe some more banana shallots? It’s great
On food banks. Those most in favour of them are, of course, those who are fortunate enough never to have to use them.
As for those who do use them. Well, they are of course very grateful that they exist. But many people who use them find it deeply humiliating to do so; using them is dehumanising, though not as much as begging.
I'm not persuaded that having world-beating food banks is something that we, as one of the richest countries in the world, should be particularly proud of. Rather, I see it as a badge of shame that poor people have to receive charity while so many of our citizens find that food constitutes a very small proportion of their outgoings. But I guess that's why I'm a leftie.
You must be livid that they started under Labour. Can you list the european countries from example which do not have food banks? In fact they are supported by the EU.
EU food banks good. UK food banks bad.
To you and Felix - I never mentioned the EU. Food banks are bad wherever they are in the 'rich' world - UK, EU and USA. I didn't make the distinction that is in your imagination. Not everything's to do with fucking Brexit, you know.
Food banks are brilliant, the embodiment of the Big Society at work. Why does so much of the modern left have such a problem with local charities helping out the disadvantaged in society?
(Sorry, but if there was a Labour government, food banks would be seen as brilliant by those who currently denounce them).
Not by me they wouldn't. If food bank usage increased under a Labour government I'd be furious.
Because they would be competing with the Labour party as a source of handouts?
Pathetic. No, because it would be evidence that Labour hadn't done enough to reduce the gross inequalities of income and life chances that prevail in this country.
No, its not.
Providing a safety net to support people is doing something to reduce the gross inequalities of chances. That's what Labour are supposed to believe in.
The fact that a safety net of charity replaced the predatory loan sharks is something that should be supported, not sneered at.
2014 is the year that is typically quoted as the year food bank use exploded, which is claimed to be a failure rather than a success and why it was made an issue in the 2015 election.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/54ebb03bed915d0cf7000014/Payday_investigation_Final_report.pdf In 2014 the market contracted, and both payday lending revenue and the volume of new loans issued fell year on year by around 27% for the period January to September 2014. Four of the 11 major lenders identified at the start of our investigation, as well as some smaller ones, decided to stop issuing payday loans during 2014.
A 27% fall in volume of new loans issued and a 54% fall in problems reported to Citizens Advice is proof that the loanshark industry took a major blow in the same year as the usage of food banks exploded.
Prior to then, people didn't have access to foodbanks so they were forced to turn to loan sharks. This is something to be celebrated that they exist now and that people are turning to food banks instead of loan sharks is unambiguously, unequivocally, positively a great thing.
I can't wrap my head around how anyone could sneer or consider a safety net to be a bad thing?
I can't see food banks any where in the CAB article, they cite:
New evidence from the national charity reveals a steady decline in payday loan problems from April 2014 as new regulations were introduced by the Financial Conduct Authority and the regulator took enforcement action against lenders. It also shows a further drop when the Government introduced the cap on payday loans on 2 January 2015.
Nothing to do with food but regulation of an industry filled with shysters.
There's no mention of food banks in the government report either.
You're conflating the two issues.
Your argument is bollocks.
Its not bollocks. Desperate people were previously forced to go to loan sharks as the food bank infrastructure wasn't there.
From 2014, following deregulation of the charities by David Cameron as part of his Big Society reforms, the infrastructure was there and people were able to go there instead.
Usage of food banks went up, usage of loan sharks went down.
Which would you rather have, the 2014 onwards situation of food banks busy, but loan sharks down, or the 2013 and prior situation of food banks not in use (as the infrastructure wasn't there), but loan sharks busy?
You've invented the correlation.
Yes they both happened in 2014. None of your citations claim food banks had any effect on pay day lending, do they?
(You forget its much harder to falsely cite long articles as ctrl-f exists.)
Looking at decade long lower quartile wage stagnation might be more relevant.
No the false correlation is that of yourself and others claiming that food bank usage is symptomatic of a problem.
Food bank usage is symptomatic of big society charities providing a safety net. Safety nets are a good thing.
I say that loan shark usage is symptomatic of a problem, not safety nets.
I'm claiming nothing regarding the prior comments. Only that your argument and your evidence is bollocks.
Its not bollocks.
If the rise of food banks was because of desperation why did payday lending FALL instead of rise?
Would you prefer we had fewer food banks and more payday lenders?
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
Quite simply, calories are cheaper now than at any time in human history. In living memory, we have stories of food (quite ordinary food) as a treat or luxury.
There's plenty of food culture in the UK. It has been deprecated by cheap-is-better.
The obesity epidemic is an artefact of this - our culture and society is not well adapted for a situation where too many calories is the problem.
Too many calories isn't the problem. The wrong type of food is the problem.
On food banks. Those most in favour of them are, of course, those who are fortunate enough never to have to use them.
As for those who do use them. Well, they are of course very grateful that they exist. But many people who use them find it deeply humiliating to do so; using them is dehumanising, though not as much as begging.
I'm not persuaded that having world-beating food banks is something that we, as one of the richest countries in the world, should be particularly proud of. Rather, I see it as a badge of shame that poor people have to receive charity while so many of our citizens find that food constitutes a very small proportion of their outgoings. But I guess that's why I'm a leftie.
You must be livid that they started under Labour. Can you list the european countries from example which do not have food banks? In fact they are supported by the EU.
EU food banks good. UK food banks bad.
To you and Felix - I never mentioned the EU. Food banks are bad wherever they are in the 'rich' world - UK, EU and USA. I didn't make the distinction that is in your imagination. Not everything's to do with fucking Brexit, you know.
Food banks are brilliant, the embodiment of the Big Society at work. Why does so much of the modern left have such a problem with local charities helping out the disadvantaged in society?
(Sorry, but if there was a Labour government, food banks would be seen as brilliant by those who currently denounce them).
Not by me they wouldn't. If food bank usage increased under a Labour government I'd be furious.
Because they would be competing with the Labour party as a source of handouts?
Pathetic. No, because it would be evidence that Labour hadn't done enough to reduce the gross inequalities of income and life chances that prevail in this country.
No, its not.
Providing a safety net to support people is doing something to reduce the gross inequalities of chances. That's what Labour are supposed to believe in.
The fact that a safety net of charity replaced the predatory loan sharks is something that should be supported, not sneered at.
2014 is the year that is typically quoted as the year food bank use exploded, which is claimed to be a failure rather than a success and why it was made an issue in the 2015 election.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/54ebb03bed915d0cf7000014/Payday_investigation_Final_report.pdf In 2014 the market contracted, and both payday lending revenue and the volume of new loans issued fell year on year by around 27% for the period January to September 2014. Four of the 11 major lenders identified at the start of our investigation, as well as some smaller ones, decided to stop issuing payday loans during 2014.
A 27% fall in volume of new loans issued and a 54% fall in problems reported to Citizens Advice is proof that the loanshark industry took a major blow in the same year as the usage of food banks exploded.
Prior to then, people didn't have access to foodbanks so they were forced to turn to loan sharks. This is something to be celebrated that they exist now and that people are turning to food banks instead of loan sharks is unambiguously, unequivocally, positively a great thing.
I can't wrap my head around how anyone could sneer or consider a safety net to be a bad thing?
I can't see food banks any where in the CAB article, they cite:
New evidence from the national charity reveals a steady decline in payday loan problems from April 2014 as new regulations were introduced by the Financial Conduct Authority and the regulator took enforcement action against lenders. It also shows a further drop when the Government introduced the cap on payday loans on 2 January 2015.
Nothing to do with food but regulation of an industry filled with shysters.
There's no mention of food banks in the government report either.
You're conflating the two issues.
Your argument is bollocks.
Its not bollocks. Desperate people were previously forced to go to loan sharks as the food bank infrastructure wasn't there.
From 2014, following deregulation of the charities by David Cameron as part of his Big Society reforms, the infrastructure was there and people were able to go there instead.
Usage of food banks went up, usage of loan sharks went down.
Which would you rather have, the 2014 onwards situation of food banks busy, but loan sharks down, or the 2013 and prior situation of food banks not in use (as the infrastructure wasn't there), but loan sharks busy?
You've invented the correlation.
Yes they both happened in 2014. None of your citations claim food banks had any effect on pay day lending, do they?
(You forget its much harder to falsely cite long articles as ctrl-f exists.)
Looking at decade long lower quartile wage stagnation might be more relevant.
No the false correlation is that of yourself and others claiming that food bank usage is symptomatic of a problem.
Food bank usage is symptomatic of big society charities providing a safety net. Safety nets are a good thing.
I say that loan shark usage is symptomatic of a problem, not safety nets.
I'm claiming nothing regarding the prior comments. Only that your argument and your evidence is bollocks.
Its not bollocks.
If the rise of food banks was because of desperation why did payday lending FALL instead of rise?
Would you prefer we had fewer food banks and more payday lenders?
Read your own citations.
The CAB:
New evidence from the national charity reveals a steady decline in payday loan problems from April 2014 as new regulations were introduced by the Financial Conduct Authority and the regulator took enforcement action against lenders. It also shows a further drop when the Government introduced the cap on payday loans on 2 January 2015.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
I completely agree that TV shows have really helped get people engaged. The best seem to be the TV competitions where people see that Everyday Joes and Ordinary Janes (and Ed Balls!) can be great cooks and indeed win prizes.
They also teach great techniques almost by osmosis.
Yes, I had this epiphany during an Anthony Bourdain episode when he goes to Melbourne and eats great food everywhere and he asks them “What happened, you guys used to be known for pie floaters and fish and chips”? And the chef comes back without batting an eyelid: “Masterchef”
I immediately realised this is what has happened in Britain, too. We did, after all, invent Masterchef (my agent represents the guy who devised the format, he is now obscenely rich). if you watch three series of Masterchef that’s a pretty good cookery course you are receiving, without even realising
Add in Jamie and Delia and the Hairy Bikers and the rest, and there is the answer to our much improved cuisine. Plus immigration and more money. That helps, too
I really enjoy Raymond Blanc, his appreciation for British produce is more than any TV chef and his recipes are deceptively simple, I've done plenty of them at home and not been left with a pile of washing up or 97g of some random ingredient I'll never use again. His latest book is excellent and the polar opposite of someone like Ottolenghi who uses all sorts of random stuff that even I struggle to find and will never use again.
Completely agree. Ottolenghi is the most overrated chef out there.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
One recent observations I heard, either on Farming Today or the Food Programme:
Government monopolies after WW2 caused a loss of suppliers, eg Government Cheddar which was used nationally during cheese rationing up to 1954.
While Government Cheddar helped to get Britain through the war, it also practically wiped out all farmhouse and artisanal manufacture of cheese. Cheeses such as Wensleydale almost disappeared. In the south-west of England before the war, 514 farms were making a vast variety of cheddars. In 1974, just 33 farms were making cheddar, mostly of uniform taste and quality. https://www.cooksinfo.com/government-cheddar-cheese
The UK cheese renaissance did not begin properly until the 1980s.
Must be the worst 1.00 News yet if you are a Tory.
...............100 FPN's in Downing Street and more to come....... The Rave Centre of the UK....The Allegra moment (long version)........... Economy collapsing and getting worse....heading for a recession....... Two businessmen from Stoke (from STOKE!!) 'things have never been worse' ......' Imports have gone through the roof......we could go under'............ President Biden 'breaking international law over Ireland is a No! No! ...........The NHS have more people on their waiting list for operations than ever in their history......
On food banks. Those most in favour of them are, of course, those who are fortunate enough never to have to use them.
As for those who do use them. Well, they are of course very grateful that they exist. But many people who use them find it deeply humiliating to do so; using them is dehumanising, though not as much as begging.
I'm not persuaded that having world-beating food banks is something that we, as one of the richest countries in the world, should be particularly proud of. Rather, I see it as a badge of shame that poor people have to receive charity while so many of our citizens find that food constitutes a very small proportion of their outgoings. But I guess that's why I'm a leftie.
You must be livid that they started under Labour. Can you list the european countries from example which do not have food banks? In fact they are supported by the EU.
EU food banks good. UK food banks bad.
To you and Felix - I never mentioned the EU. Food banks are bad wherever they are in the 'rich' world - UK, EU and USA. I didn't make the distinction that is in your imagination. Not everything's to do with fucking Brexit, you know.
Food banks are brilliant, the embodiment of the Big Society at work. Why does so much of the modern left have such a problem with local charities helping out the disadvantaged in society?
(Sorry, but if there was a Labour government, food banks would be seen as brilliant by those who currently denounce them).
Not by me they wouldn't. If food bank usage increased under a Labour government I'd be furious.
Because they would be competing with the Labour party as a source of handouts?
Pathetic. No, because it would be evidence that Labour hadn't done enough to reduce the gross inequalities of income and life chances that prevail in this country.
No, its not.
Providing a safety net to support people is doing something to reduce the gross inequalities of chances. That's what Labour are supposed to believe in.
The fact that a safety net of charity replaced the predatory loan sharks is something that should be supported, not sneered at.
2014 is the year that is typically quoted as the year food bank use exploded, which is claimed to be a failure rather than a success and why it was made an issue in the 2015 election.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/54ebb03bed915d0cf7000014/Payday_investigation_Final_report.pdf In 2014 the market contracted, and both payday lending revenue and the volume of new loans issued fell year on year by around 27% for the period January to September 2014. Four of the 11 major lenders identified at the start of our investigation, as well as some smaller ones, decided to stop issuing payday loans during 2014.
A 27% fall in volume of new loans issued and a 54% fall in problems reported to Citizens Advice is proof that the loanshark industry took a major blow in the same year as the usage of food banks exploded.
Prior to then, people didn't have access to foodbanks so they were forced to turn to loan sharks. This is something to be celebrated that they exist now and that people are turning to food banks instead of loan sharks is unambiguously, unequivocally, positively a great thing.
I can't wrap my head around how anyone could sneer or consider a safety net to be a bad thing?
I can't see food banks any where in the CAB article, they cite:
New evidence from the national charity reveals a steady decline in payday loan problems from April 2014 as new regulations were introduced by the Financial Conduct Authority and the regulator took enforcement action against lenders. It also shows a further drop when the Government introduced the cap on payday loans on 2 January 2015.
Nothing to do with food but regulation of an industry filled with shysters.
There's no mention of food banks in the government report either.
You're conflating the two issues.
Your argument is bollocks.
Its not bollocks. Desperate people were previously forced to go to loan sharks as the food bank infrastructure wasn't there.
From 2014, following deregulation of the charities by David Cameron as part of his Big Society reforms, the infrastructure was there and people were able to go there instead.
Usage of food banks went up, usage of loan sharks went down.
Which would you rather have, the 2014 onwards situation of food banks busy, but loan sharks down, or the 2013 and prior situation of food banks not in use (as the infrastructure wasn't there), but loan sharks busy?
You've invented the correlation.
Yes they both happened in 2014. None of your citations claim food banks had any effect on pay day lending, do they?
(You forget its much harder to falsely cite long articles as ctrl-f exists.)
Looking at decade long lower quartile wage stagnation might be more relevant.
No the false correlation is that of yourself and others claiming that food bank usage is symptomatic of a problem.
Food bank usage is symptomatic of big society charities providing a safety net. Safety nets are a good thing.
I say that loan shark usage is symptomatic of a problem, not safety nets.
I'm claiming nothing regarding the prior comments. Only that your argument and your evidence is bollocks.
Its not bollocks.
If the rise of food banks was because of desperation why did payday lending FALL instead of rise?
Would you prefer we had fewer food banks and more payday lenders?
Read your own citations.
The CAB:
New evidence from the national charity reveals a steady decline in payday loan problems from April 2014 as new regulations were introduced by the Financial Conduct Authority and the regulator took enforcement action against lenders. It also shows a further drop when the Government introduced the cap on payday loans on 2 January 2015.
Nothing to do with displacing the weekly shop.
Food banks don't provide the weekly shop either you muppet.
There is a very strong link between food banks and payday loans too.
Just found a leaflet from a V&A exhibition called China Design Now (from 2008).
"Shanghai Dream City
Following its redevelopment in 1992, Shanghai's fortunes have revived and it has now surpassed the early-starter Shenzhen. Many emigrants and their descendants have returned and are taking part in the city's cultural renaissance.
With the economic transformation of China has come a new consumer society and an urban middle class. Trendsetters, taste-makers and designers are constructing a new dream. But at the same time, some creative individuals are questioning this consumerism, striving to balance commercial pressures with a unique creative vision."
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
Quite simply, calories are cheaper now than at any time in human history. In living memory, we have stories of food (quite ordinary food) as a treat or luxury.
There's plenty of food culture in the UK. It has been deprecated by cheap-is-better.
The obesity epidemic is an artefact of this - our culture and society is not well adapted for a situation where too many calories is the problem.
Too many calories isn't the problem. The wrong type of food is the problem.
Indeed. A truth the French and Italians understand and that we do not. Hence the raft of processed "low fat" shite in our supermarkets which is packed full of additives and, often, sugar.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
I completely agree that TV shows have really helped get people engaged. The best seem to be the TV competitions where people see that Everyday Joes and Ordinary Janes (and Ed Balls!) can be great cooks and indeed win prizes.
They also teach great techniques almost by osmosis.
Yes, I had this epiphany during an Anthony Bourdain episode when he goes to Melbourne and eats great food everywhere and he asks them “What happened, you guys used to be known for pie floaters and fish and chips”? And the chef comes back without batting an eyelid: “Masterchef”
I immediately realised this is what has happened in Britain, too. We did, after all, invent Masterchef (my agent represents the guy who devised the format, he is now obscenely rich). if you watch three series of Masterchef that’s a pretty good cookery course you are receiving, without even realising
Add in Jamie and Delia and the Hairy Bikers and the rest, and there is the answer to our much improved cuisine. Plus immigration and more money. That helps, too
I really enjoy Raymond Blanc, his appreciation for British produce is more than any TV chef and his recipes are deceptively simple, I've done plenty of them at home and not been left with a pile of washing up or 97g of some random ingredient I'll never use again. His latest book is excellent and the polar opposite of someone like Ottolenghi who uses all sorts of random stuff that even I struggle to find and will never use again.
Completely agree. Ottolenghi is the most overrated chef out there.
His cookbooks are fun tho. I see them as more ideas to spark off, rather than actual recipes you might do. Tho the constant use of sweet ingredients in savoury dishes can get annoying (I know this is his thing, from the Levant, but still)
The must useful cook book I’ve ever used is, yes, Delia. The famous Complete Cookery. It gave you everything, and it is still highly useful for classic Franco-Italian standards like Coq au Vin, proper Minestrone, Boeuf Bourgignon, if you do exactly what she says it is really hard to get it wrong
Rick Stein is unsurprisingly good for fish dishes. I also like Raymond Blanc, from time to time
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
I completely agree that TV shows have really helped get people engaged. The best seem to be the TV competitions where people see that Everyday Joes and Ordinary Janes (and Ed Balls!) can be great cooks and indeed win prizes.
They also teach great techniques almost by osmosis.
Yes, I had this epiphany during an Anthony Bourdain episode when he goes to Melbourne and eats great food everywhere and he asks them “What happened, you guys used to be known for pie floaters and fish and chips”? And the chef comes back without batting an eyelid: “Masterchef”
I immediately realised this is what has happened in Britain, too. We did, after all, invent Masterchef (my agent represents the guy who devised the format, he is now obscenely rich). if you watch three series of Masterchef that’s a pretty good cookery course you are receiving, without even realising
Add in Jamie and Delia and the Hairy Bikers and the rest, and there is the answer to our much improved cuisine. Plus immigration and more money. That helps, too
I really enjoy Raymond Blanc, his appreciation for British produce is more than any TV chef and his recipes are deceptively simple, I've done plenty of them at home and not been left with a pile of washing up or 97g of some random ingredient I'll never use again. His latest book is excellent and the polar opposite of someone like Ottolenghi who uses all sorts of random stuff that even I struggle to find and will never use again.
Completely agree. Ottolenghi is the most overrated chef out there.
He's a great restaurant chef, some of the stuff I've had at his restaurants has been great, but replicating that at home is a non-starter. The skill level isn't the issue it's just all the washing up it generates along with needing loads of odd ingredients that are either expensive and can only be bought in large quantities or just impossible to find even in the Indian shop (which usually has everything).
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
I completely agree that TV shows have really helped get people engaged. The best seem to be the TV competitions where people see that Everyday Joes and Ordinary Janes (and Ed Balls!) can be great cooks and indeed win prizes.
They also teach great techniques almost by osmosis.
Yes, I had this epiphany during an Anthony Bourdain episode when he goes to Melbourne and eats great food everywhere and he asks them “What happened, you guys used to be known for pie floaters and fish and chips”? And the chef comes back without batting an eyelid: “Masterchef”
I immediately realised this is what has happened in Britain, too. We did, after all, invent Masterchef (my agent represents the guy who devised the format, he is now obscenely rich). if you watch three series of Masterchef that’s a pretty good cookery course you are receiving, without even realising
Add in Jamie and Delia and the Hairy Bikers and the rest, and there is the answer to our much improved cuisine. Plus immigration and more money. That helps, too
I really enjoy Raymond Blanc, his appreciation for British produce is more than any TV chef and his recipes are deceptively simple, I've done plenty of them at home and not been left with a pile of washing up or 97g of some random ingredient I'll never use again. His latest book is excellent and the polar opposite of someone like Ottolenghi who uses all sorts of random stuff that even I struggle to find and will never use again.
Completely agree. Ottolenghi is the most overrated chef out there.
His cookbooks are fun tho. I see them as more ideas to spark off, rather than actual recipes you might do. Tho the constant use of sweet ingredients in savoury dishes can get annoying (I know this is his thing, from the Levant, but still)
The must useful cook book I’ve ever used is, yes, Delia. The famous Complete Cookery. It gave you everything, and it is still highly useful for classic Franco-Italian standards like Coq au Vin, proper Minestrone, Boeuf Bourgignon, if you do exactly what she says it is really hard to get it wrong
Rick Stein is unsurprisingly good for fish dishes. I also like Raymond Blanc, from time to time
Raymond Blanc's dishes from his mother are excellent. Especially her mousse.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
One recent observations I heard, either on Farming Today or the Food Programme:
Government monopolies after WW2 caused a loss of suppliers, eg Government Cheddar which was used nationally during cheese rationing up to 1954.
While Government Cheddar helped to get Britain through the war, it also practically wiped out all farmhouse and artisanal manufacture of cheese. Cheeses such as Wensleydale almost disappeared. In the south-west of England before the war, 514 farms were making a vast variety of cheddars. In 1974, just 33 farms were making cheddar, mostly of uniform taste and quality. https://www.cooksinfo.com/government-cheddar-cheese
The UK cheese renaissance did not begin properly until the 1980s.
Yes, absolutely
The same happened to beer, cider, apples, gin, so many things. All now being happily revived
One recent observations I heard, either on Farming Today or the Food Programme:
Government monopolies after WW2 caused a loss of suppliers, eg Government Cheddar which was used nationally during cheese rationing up to 1954.
While Government Cheddar helped to get Britain through the war, it also practically wiped out all farmhouse and artisanal manufacture of cheese. Cheeses such as Wensleydale almost disappeared. In the south-west of England before the war, 514 farms were making a vast variety of cheddars. In 1974, just 33 farms were making cheddar, mostly of uniform taste and quality. https://www.cooksinfo.com/government-cheddar-cheese
The UK cheese renaissance did not begin properly until the 1980s.
Yes, it was direct government action 1945 - 1990 which killed off much that was good about British produce. As well as near-totally wrecking our cheese, they also wiped out our wonderful apple orchards - formerly the best in the world, bar none - by insisting on farmers growing just a handful of varieties, mostly of poor quality, especially the abominable Golden Delicious.
Our cheese industry has now more than recovered (I think we have more top-quality cheeses than even France now), but the apple orchards seem to have been lost forever.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
I completely agree that TV shows have really helped get people engaged. The best seem to be the TV competitions where people see that Everyday Joes and Ordinary Janes (and Ed Balls!) can be great cooks and indeed win prizes.
They also teach great techniques almost by osmosis.
Yes, I had this epiphany during an Anthony Bourdain episode when he goes to Melbourne and eats great food everywhere and he asks them “What happened, you guys used to be known for pie floaters and fish and chips”? And the chef comes back without batting an eyelid: “Masterchef”
I immediately realised this is what has happened in Britain, too. We did, after all, invent Masterchef (my agent represents the guy who devised the format, he is now obscenely rich). if you watch three series of Masterchef that’s a pretty good cookery course you are receiving, without even realising
Add in Jamie and Delia and the Hairy Bikers and the rest, and there is the answer to our much improved cuisine. Plus immigration and more money. That helps, too
I really enjoy Raymond Blanc, his appreciation for British produce is more than any TV chef and his recipes are deceptively simple, I've done plenty of them at home and not been left with a pile of washing up or 97g of some random ingredient I'll never use again. His latest book is excellent and the polar opposite of someone like Ottolenghi who uses all sorts of random stuff that even I struggle to find and will never use again.
Completely agree. Ottolenghi is the most overrated chef out there.
His cookbooks are fun tho. I see them as more ideas to spark off, rather than actual recipes you might do. Tho the constant use of sweet ingredients in savoury dishes can get annoying (I know this is his thing, from the Levant, but still)
The must useful cook book I’ve ever used is, yes, Delia. The famous Complete Cookery. It gave you everything, and it is still highly useful for classic Franco-Italian standards like Coq au Vin, proper Minestrone, Boeuf Bourgignon, if you do exactly what she says it is really hard to get it wrong
Rick Stein is unsurprisingly good for fish dishes. I also like Raymond Blanc, from time to time
Raymond Blanc's dishes from his mother are excellent. Especially her mousse.
Yes! That’s the one book of his I actually use. Pretty simple, generally excellent
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
Quite simply, calories are cheaper now than at any time in human history. In living memory, we have stories of food (quite ordinary food) as a treat or luxury.
There's plenty of food culture in the UK. It has been deprecated by cheap-is-better.
The obesity epidemic is an artefact of this - our culture and society is not well adapted for a situation where too many calories is the problem.
Too many calories isn't the problem. The wrong type of food is the problem.
Indeed. A truth the French and Italians understand and that we do not. Hence the raft of processed "low fat" shite in our supermarkets which is packed full of additives and, often, sugar.
Yes, a simple step we could take is to phase out the sale of margarine entirely or have a huge public health campaign to prefer butter and ban the advertising of any perceived health benefits of margarine over butter (simply, there aren't any).
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
You'd never guess this from the number of cooking shows on TV and other media. The percentage of people who watch these programmes and never actually cook anything must be very high.
Prof Pagel et al. must have been spitting feathers when they took a took at today's Guardian.
That's a brilliant article. And yes – one wonders how it went down in Zerocovidian Towers. Many on PB were also making the same arguments as Pagel et al, by the way, at the time. They, too, were proved wrong.
Must be the worst 1.00 News yet if you are a Tory.
...............100 FPN's in Downing Street and more to come....... The Rave Centre of the UK....The Allegra moment (long version)........... Economy collapsing and getting worse....heading for a recession....... Two businessmen from Stoke (from STOKE!!) 'things have never been worse' ......' Imports have gone through the roof......we could go under'............ President Biden 'breaking international law over Ireland is a No! No! ...........The NHS have more people on their waiting list for operations than ever in their history......
Where's that Red Bus when you need it?
Thank God for Emma Vardy!
To be fair only one conclusion can be confidently drawn from this. Starmer must go!
One recent observations I heard, either on Farming Today or the Food Programme:
Government monopolies after WW2 caused a loss of suppliers, eg Government Cheddar which was used nationally during cheese rationing up to 1954.
While Government Cheddar helped to get Britain through the war, it also practically wiped out all farmhouse and artisanal manufacture of cheese. Cheeses such as Wensleydale almost disappeared. In the south-west of England before the war, 514 farms were making a vast variety of cheddars. In 1974, just 33 farms were making cheddar, mostly of uniform taste and quality. https://www.cooksinfo.com/government-cheddar-cheese
The UK cheese renaissance did not begin properly until the 1980s.
Yes, it was direct government action 1945 - 1990 which killed off much that was good about British produce. As well as near-totally wrecking our cheese, they also wiped out our wonderful apple orchards - formerly the best in the world, bar none - by insisting on farmers growing just a handful of varieties, mostly of poor quality, especially the abominable Golden Delicious.
Our cheese industry has now more than recovered (I think we have more top-quality cheeses than even France now), but the apple orchards seem to have been lost forever.
I know someone from Sainsbury's who is involved with resurrecting a lot of lost apple varieties, his project will, err, bear fruit at some point in the next 20 years so it could be a long wait.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
I feel like somewhere between the Industrial Revolution to the hang ups from WW2 rationing and the homogenisation of species/supermarket offerings, the country forgot what culinary gifts it was blessed with. We now have world class meat produce too, not just sea food, and some fabulous traditional ways of seasoning it. Same for fruit.
The war is the biggest single recipient of blame for destroying the British diet. Powdered eggs. Everything tinned. Horrendous food trends that linger to this day. Look at the photos of the winning England team in 1966 - the teeth (or lack of). That's a legacy of the WW2 diet.
The war greatly improved health for a lot of people who ate better than otherwise. Brown bread, vitamins, British Restaurants, and so on. Perhaps more the relapse into peace. I don't think cooking changed greatly from before the war.
No, I'm afraid that's simply a myth, espoused by those who back low fat and other discredited diet methodologies. Have you seen the allowances for butter, milk and cheese in the rations? Those nutrient dense foods cannot be replaced by munching on a home grown carrot, laudible though the effort is. Sugar rationing was probably the only beneficial part of it.
There were foods off the ration - especially the British Restaurants and workplace canteens and so on . So don't take those scales too literally. (Also the points system for other foods, in addition, but that varied as to what was available.)
Edit: I didn't say it improved the diet for everyone, but a lot of people shifted eg from white bread to wholemeal.
One recent observations I heard, either on Farming Today or the Food Programme:
Government monopolies after WW2 caused a loss of suppliers, eg Government Cheddar which was used nationally during cheese rationing up to 1954.
While Government Cheddar helped to get Britain through the war, it also practically wiped out all farmhouse and artisanal manufacture of cheese. Cheeses such as Wensleydale almost disappeared. In the south-west of England before the war, 514 farms were making a vast variety of cheddars. In 1974, just 33 farms were making cheddar, mostly of uniform taste and quality. https://www.cooksinfo.com/government-cheddar-cheese
The UK cheese renaissance did not begin properly until the 1980s.
Yes, it was direct government action 1945 - 1990 which killed off much that was good about British produce. As well as near-totally wrecking our cheese, they also wiped out our wonderful apple orchards - formerly the best in the world, bar none - by insisting on farmers growing just a handful of varieties, mostly of poor quality, especially the abominable Golden Delicious.
Our cheese industry has now more than recovered (I think we have more top-quality cheeses than even France now), but the apple orchards seem to have been lost forever.
You’re too despondent!
“British apple boom brings back hundreds of forgotten varieties”
Delia 1.01 is indeed an absolute classic. Say what you like about her, but her recipes are absolutely bombproof, tested to destruction, and great. I still use her books today as a reference when I can't remember a detail but they are required reading for anyone who wants to learn to cook (which should be everybody).
Steven Swinford @Steven_Swinford · 4h Sir Howard Davies, chairman of Natwest, says the poorest will need to reduce their discretionary spending by *20%* to cope with soaring inflation and energy prices
He says the Government should focus on increasing benefits rather than across the board tax cuts
This coming recession is going to devastate our hospitality industry.
I was reading a thread on twitter from a guy who runs a chippie who has said his veg oil has gone (for a 20L drum) from £20 to £50 overnight from the wholesalers.
They will have to pass these costs on.
To people who have less and less discretionary spend.
The coming recession is going to be another disastrous Tory recession. They are good at them.
The chippy we use when my sister and I visit Dad on a Friday for lunch has just put a quid on all fish due to Ukraine and inflation. In terms of the crisis Any solution that tackles all the underlying issues will be completely unacceptable to the cosseted and do nothing to lift those at the bottom (at best stick foundation and support under them) The country wants to wish away what's coming, Labour want to Toryblame it away and the Tories want it to just go somewhere else or put on a disguise so nobody notices it. Catastrophe incoming.
Far more worrying than the inevitable recession in the OECD countries, is the very real prospect of Famine in the “Global South”, and what generally comes with that - unrest, strife, war, you name it
Sri Lanka is already wobbling badly. If the Ukraine war grinds on, God help all of us, everywhere
The enormity hasn't quite entered western consciousness yet, it's a shadow on the edge of a restless dream. It stands a chance of reshaping everything. America is probably done and will sink into massive civil unrest and possible split, the fundamental differences there between the young and the radical democrats and the Bible belt and De Santis/Trump republicanism are irreconcilable currently being played out in the Roe vs Wade miasma
“A SHADOW ON THE EDGE OF A RESTLESS DREAM”
That’s excellent. And exactly right. A kind of nameless, formless, distant dread. The world seems like it is returning to normal, and yet - the darkness at the edge of town… the booms of faraway cannon, maybe getting nearer
Auden caught the mood in his quintessential poem of the 1930s. He even mentions the flu in the last two genius stanzas
The Fall of Rome
W H Auden
The piers are pummelled by the waves; In a lonely field the rain Lashes an abandoned train; Outlaws fill the mountain caves.
Fantastic grow the evening gowns; Agents of the Fisc pursue Absconding tax-defaulters through The sewers of provincial towns.
Private rites of magic send The temple prostitutes to sleep; All the literati keep An imaginary friend.
Cerebrotonic Cato may Extol the Ancient Disciplines, But the muscle-bound Marines Mutiny for food and pay.
Caesar's double-bed is warm As an unimportant clerk Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK On a pink official form.
Unendowed with wealth or pity, Little birds with scarlet legs, Sitting on their speckled eggs, Eye each flu-infected city.
Altogether elsewhere, vast Herds of reindeer move across Miles and miles of golden moss, Silently and very fast.
Yes indeedy. Or the excellent description of the everyday goings on as the cylinders land in War of the Worlds. Obviously we do not face an existential crisis but 'normality' most certainly does
Well, we’re closer to nuclear war than we’ve been since…. Ever?
That is literally existential. It could destroy human civilisation as we know it
This sense of The End of Rome is one reason I am getting a lot of traveling done now. Just in case the world takes an even darker turn. I’m not convinced it will, not like I was in Early Covid, but i do note the shadow at the edge of the restless dream. And so: just in case
I'm unconvinced nukes loom larger than '50 to '90 but yeah nearer than 90 to 2020! Although I think the bulk of the Russian arsenal is probably useless anyway due to lack of maintenance and tritium theft etc They'd still have enough to make it messy of course
Is there much of a market for second hand Tritium of dubious origin on ebay or similar?
In mother Russia? Everything has a market, but yes tritium would be hard to shift.. people have been caught with quantities of it however
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
Quite simply, calories are cheaper now than at any time in human history. In living memory, we have stories of food (quite ordinary food) as a treat or luxury.
There's plenty of food culture in the UK. It has been deprecated by cheap-is-better.
The obesity epidemic is an artefact of this - our culture and society is not well adapted for a situation where too many calories is the problem.
Too many calories isn't the problem. The wrong type of food is the problem.
Indeed. A truth the French and Italians understand and that we do not. Hence the raft of processed "low fat" shite in our supermarkets which is packed full of additives and, often, sugar.
Yes, a simple step we could take is to phase out the sale of margarine entirely or have a huge public health campaign to prefer butter and ban the advertising of any perceived health benefits of margarine over butter (simply, there aren't any).
We could just ban the fake colouring of margerine, and see how people like it in its natural grey.
Delia 1.01 is indeed an absolute classic. Say what you like about her, but her recipes are absolutely bombproof, tested to destruction, and great. I still use her books today as a reference when I can't remember a detail but they are required reading for anyone who wants to learn to cook (which should be everybody).
I am surprised they haven't moved to forcibly making every over 60 get a full course of vaccinations. Its a bit weird as start of COVID they had apps which everybody had to have and you couldn't go into your office, shop, restaurant etc without it. I am surprised they didn't deploy vaccine passports++++.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
Italian food is just pasta and pizza. French food is butter, wine and garlic in everything. It is too easy to stereotype other nations' food cultures.
Italian food is so much more then pasta and pizza. Thats just the bits that the rest of the world has adopted. Elizabeth David is a good source for Italian regional food.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
One recent observations I heard, either on Farming Today or the Food Programme:
Government monopolies after WW2 caused a loss of suppliers, eg Government Cheddar which was used nationally during cheese rationing up to 1954.
While Government Cheddar helped to get Britain through the war, it also practically wiped out all farmhouse and artisanal manufacture of cheese. Cheeses such as Wensleydale almost disappeared. In the south-west of England before the war, 514 farms were making a vast variety of cheddars. In 1974, just 33 farms were making cheddar, mostly of uniform taste and quality. https://www.cooksinfo.com/government-cheddar-cheese
The UK cheese renaissance did not begin properly until the 1980s.
Yes, absolutely
The same happened to beer, cider, apples, gin, so many things. All now being happily revived
And wine. Don't forget English wine. When I worked in a 'licensed chemists' for a few days in the early 60's there was noxious looking product called 'British Wine'. It was, apparently a blend of something or other.
Looking forward to the fluffers of the right demanding that this be put into context as they will inevitably do. There will always be a place for Mr Anderson in Douglas Ross's SCons if he feels he has to move on again.
That Ash Sarkar tweet exemplifies how out of touch the metropolitan luvviedom is with the Red Wall.
"Good on him" would be a common response.
Not that many traveller encampments in Islington, I suspect.
Well she of course espouses 'Luxury Communism' whatever that means. I assume she thinks in her communist utopia she will be one of the elite shopping in the special shops as was the case in the Eastern Block between 1945 and the fall of the Berlin wall.
On food banks. Those most in favour of them are, of course, those who are fortunate enough never to have to use them.
As for those who do use them. Well, they are of course very grateful that they exist. But many people who use them find it deeply humiliating to do so; using them is dehumanising, though not as much as begging.
I'm not persuaded that having world-beating food banks is something that we, as one of the richest countries in the world, should be particularly proud of. Rather, I see it as a badge of shame that poor people have to receive charity while so many of our citizens find that food constitutes a very small proportion of their outgoings. But I guess that's why I'm a leftie.
You must be livid that they started under Labour. Can you list the european countries from example which do not have food banks? In fact they are supported by the EU.
EU food banks good. UK food banks bad.
To you and Felix - I never mentioned the EU. Food banks are bad wherever they are in the 'rich' world - UK, EU and USA. I didn't make the distinction that is in your imagination. Not everything's to do with fucking Brexit, you know.
Food banks are brilliant, the embodiment of the Big Society at work. Why does so much of the modern left have such a problem with local charities helping out the disadvantaged in society?
(Sorry, but if there was a Labour government, food banks would be seen as brilliant by those who currently denounce them).
Not by me they wouldn't. If food bank usage increased under a Labour government I'd be furious.
Because they would be competing with the Labour party as a source of handouts?
Pathetic. No, because it would be evidence that Labour hadn't done enough to reduce the gross inequalities of income and life chances that prevail in this country.
No, its not.
Providing a safety net to support people is doing something to reduce the gross inequalities of chances. That's what Labour are supposed to believe in.
The fact that a safety net of charity replaced the predatory loan sharks is something that should be supported, not sneered at.
2014 is the year that is typically quoted as the year food bank use exploded, which is claimed to be a failure rather than a success and why it was made an issue in the 2015 election.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/54ebb03bed915d0cf7000014/Payday_investigation_Final_report.pdf In 2014 the market contracted, and both payday lending revenue and the volume of new loans issued fell year on year by around 27% for the period January to September 2014. Four of the 11 major lenders identified at the start of our investigation, as well as some smaller ones, decided to stop issuing payday loans during 2014.
A 27% fall in volume of new loans issued and a 54% fall in problems reported to Citizens Advice is proof that the loanshark industry took a major blow in the same year as the usage of food banks exploded.
Prior to then, people didn't have access to foodbanks so they were forced to turn to loan sharks. This is something to be celebrated that they exist now and that people are turning to food banks instead of loan sharks is unambiguously, unequivocally, positively a great thing.
I can't wrap my head around how anyone could sneer or consider a safety net to be a bad thing?
I can't see food banks any where in the CAB article, they cite:
New evidence from the national charity reveals a steady decline in payday loan problems from April 2014 as new regulations were introduced by the Financial Conduct Authority and the regulator took enforcement action against lenders. It also shows a further drop when the Government introduced the cap on payday loans on 2 January 2015.
Nothing to do with food but regulation of an industry filled with shysters.
There's no mention of food banks in the government report either.
You're conflating the two issues.
Your argument is bollocks.
Its not bollocks. Desperate people were previously forced to go to loan sharks as the food bank infrastructure wasn't there.
From 2014, following deregulation of the charities by David Cameron as part of his Big Society reforms, the infrastructure was there and people were able to go there instead.
Usage of food banks went up, usage of loan sharks went down.
Which would you rather have, the 2014 onwards situation of food banks busy, but loan sharks down, or the 2013 and prior situation of food banks not in use (as the infrastructure wasn't there), but loan sharks busy?
You've invented the correlation.
Yes they both happened in 2014. None of your citations claim food banks had any effect on pay day lending, do they?
(You forget its much harder to falsely cite long articles as ctrl-f exists.)
Looking at decade long lower quartile wage stagnation might be more relevant.
That is loads of great British produce, I think the criticism would be that it is now high price "niche" category, and staples have been replaced by inferior varieties (because they can be grown somewhere cheaper, higher yields etc).
During first lockdown a number of farms around my neck of the woods partnered with a local pub to create a home delivery service. Myself and Mrs U eat incredibly well.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
One recent observations I heard, either on Farming Today or the Food Programme:
Government monopolies after WW2 caused a loss of suppliers, eg Government Cheddar which was used nationally during cheese rationing up to 1954.
While Government Cheddar helped to get Britain through the war, it also practically wiped out all farmhouse and artisanal manufacture of cheese. Cheeses such as Wensleydale almost disappeared. In the south-west of England before the war, 514 farms were making a vast variety of cheddars. In 1974, just 33 farms were making cheddar, mostly of uniform taste and quality. https://www.cooksinfo.com/government-cheddar-cheese
The UK cheese renaissance did not begin properly until the 1980s.
Yes, absolutely
The same happened to beer, cider, apples, gin, so many things. All now being happily revived
And wine. Don't forget English wine. When I worked in a 'licensed chemists' for a few days in the early 60's there was noxious looking product called 'British Wine'. It was, apparently a blend of something or other.
I dimly remember this. Still available ... wonder what it tastes like?
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
Quite simply, calories are cheaper now than at any time in human history. In living memory, we have stories of food (quite ordinary food) as a treat or luxury.
There's plenty of food culture in the UK. It has been deprecated by cheap-is-better.
The obesity epidemic is an artefact of this - our culture and society is not well adapted for a situation where too many calories is the problem.
Too many calories isn't the problem. The wrong type of food is the problem.
Indeed. A truth the French and Italians understand and that we do not. Hence the raft of processed "low fat" shite in our supermarkets which is packed full of additives and, often, sugar.
Yes, a simple step we could take is to phase out the sale of margarine entirely or have a huge public health campaign to prefer butter and ban the advertising of any perceived health benefits of margarine over butter (simply, there aren't any).
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
You'd never guess this from the number of cooking shows on TV and other media. The percentage of people who watch these programmes and never actually cook anything must be very high.
@kinabalu is another of the puritan PB-ers with, he admits, absolutely no interest in food or cooking or restaurants, and no experience in this arena
Educated intelligent men who just don’t give a toss. Food is one of THE great human pleasures, along with sex and, shall we say, “intoxication” - from wine to beer to ayahuasca and heroin
How can you not be interested in such a pleasurable and endlessly interesting thing? it is also, by the by, how you survive, and absolutely crucial to your good health. Not caring what you shovel down your mouth is not only bizarrely joyless, it is very bad for you
Prof Pagel et al. must have been spitting feathers when they took a took at today's Guardian.
That's a brilliant article. And yes – one wonders how it went down in Zerocovidian Towers. Many on PB were also making the same arguments as Pagel et al, by the way, at the time. They, too, were proved wrong.
Didn't Keir Starmer call the decision 'reckless?'
Conflating restrictions with 'safety' was one of the biggest propaganda coups ever in this country.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
I completely agree that TV shows have really helped get people engaged. The best seem to be the TV competitions where people see that Everyday Joes and Ordinary Janes (and Ed Balls!) can be great cooks and indeed win prizes.
They also teach great techniques almost by osmosis.
Yes, I had this epiphany during an Anthony Bourdain episode when he goes to Melbourne and eats great food everywhere and he asks them “What happened, you guys used to be known for pie floaters and fish and chips”? And the chef comes back without batting an eyelid: “Masterchef”
I immediately realised this is what has happened in Britain, too. We did, after all, invent Masterchef (my agent represents the guy who devised the format, he is now obscenely rich). if you watch three series of Masterchef that’s a pretty good cookery course you are receiving, without even realising
Add in Jamie and Delia and the Hairy Bikers and the rest, and there is the answer to our much improved cuisine. Plus immigration and more money. That helps, too
I really enjoy Raymond Blanc, his appreciation for British produce is more than any TV chef and his recipes are deceptively simple, I've done plenty of them at home and not been left with a pile of washing up or 97g of some random ingredient I'll never use again. His latest book is excellent and the polar opposite of someone like Ottolenghi who uses all sorts of random stuff that even I struggle to find and will never use again.
Completely agree. Ottolenghi is the most overrated chef out there.
He's a great restaurant chef, some of the stuff I've had at his restaurants has been great, but replicating that at home is a non-starter. The skill level isn't the issue it's just all the washing up it generates along with needing loads of odd ingredients that are either expensive and can only be bought in large quantities or just impossible to find even in the Indian shop (which usually has everything).
I'd say 75% of what I cook is either an Ottolenghi dish or a variation therefore. After a few goes of each I can generally replicate what I've eaten at the Spitalfields branch....
I'm a reasonably competent cook - but his books are very good guides....
I know someone from Sainsbury's who is involved with resurrecting a lot of lost apple varieties, his project will, err, bear fruit at some point in the next 20 years so it could be a long wait.
I don't hold out much hope on that, supermarkets are abysmal on apples, and even when they stock decent varieties the quality is generally low, because they prioritise appearance over flavour.
Still, maybe they'll get better. The improvement in tomatoes (if you look carefully you can even buy ripe ones now!!), potatoes, and strawberries has been remarkable. But supermarkets have weird blind spots: it's becoming harder and harder to find decent mandarins, tangerines etc because they are obsessed with those dreadful 'easy peelers', by which they mean fruits which have dried out so much that they've shrunk inside and become tasteless and mushy. On the other hand. supermarkets should also be prosecuted by the trading standards people for their so-called 'ripe and ready to eat' avocados, by which they mean avocados which are hard as old boots and which need to be kept for a week or two in a warmish place, in the (often forlorn) hope that they will ripen before they rot.
One recent observations I heard, either on Farming Today or the Food Programme:
Government monopolies after WW2 caused a loss of suppliers, eg Government Cheddar which was used nationally during cheese rationing up to 1954.
While Government Cheddar helped to get Britain through the war, it also practically wiped out all farmhouse and artisanal manufacture of cheese. Cheeses such as Wensleydale almost disappeared. In the south-west of England before the war, 514 farms were making a vast variety of cheddars. In 1974, just 33 farms were making cheddar, mostly of uniform taste and quality. https://www.cooksinfo.com/government-cheddar-cheese
The UK cheese renaissance did not begin properly until the 1980s.
Yes, it was direct government action 1945 - 1990 which killed off much that was good about British produce. As well as near-totally wrecking our cheese, they also wiped out our wonderful apple orchards - formerly the best in the world, bar none - by insisting on farmers growing just a handful of varieties, mostly of poor quality, especially the abominable Golden Delicious.
Our cheese industry has now more than recovered (I think we have more top-quality cheeses than even France now), but the apple orchards seem to have been lost forever.
I know someone from Sainsbury's who is involved with resurrecting a lot of lost apple varieties, his project will, err, bear fruit at some point in the next 20 years so it could be a long wait.
With typical commercial rootstocks you should get from grafting to production in 5 or 6 years
I grow a dozen or so traditional but mainstream apple varieties in Devon. There's lots of people growing heritage, local, almost-lost-to-cultivation stuff, and it generally fell out of favour for good reason.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
One recent observations I heard, either on Farming Today or the Food Programme:
Government monopolies after WW2 caused a loss of suppliers, eg Government Cheddar which was used nationally during cheese rationing up to 1954.
While Government Cheddar helped to get Britain through the war, it also practically wiped out all farmhouse and artisanal manufacture of cheese. Cheeses such as Wensleydale almost disappeared. In the south-west of England before the war, 514 farms were making a vast variety of cheddars. In 1974, just 33 farms were making cheddar, mostly of uniform taste and quality. https://www.cooksinfo.com/government-cheddar-cheese
The UK cheese renaissance did not begin properly until the 1980s.
Yes, absolutely
The same happened to beer, cider, apples, gin, so many things. All now being happily revived
And wine. Don't forget English wine. When I worked in a 'licensed chemists' for a few days in the early 60's there was noxious looking product called 'British Wine'. It was, apparently a blend of something or other.
I dimly remember this. Still available ... wonder what it tastes like?
Prof Pagel et al. must have been spitting feathers when they took a took at today's Guardian.
That's a brilliant article. And yes – one wonders how it went down in Zerocovidian Towers. Many on PB were also making the same arguments as Pagel et al, by the way, at the time. They, too, were proved wrong.
Didn't Keir Starmer call the decision 'reckless?'
Conflating restrictions with 'safety' was one of the biggest propaganda coups ever in this country.
And one of the most sinister and bizarre. Training us to see others as an existential threat and clamour for restrictions on them (and thus self) Rather than messaging on safe, safer, safest behaviours
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
One recent observations I heard, either on Farming Today or the Food Programme:
Government monopolies after WW2 caused a loss of suppliers, eg Government Cheddar which was used nationally during cheese rationing up to 1954.
While Government Cheddar helped to get Britain through the war, it also practically wiped out all farmhouse and artisanal manufacture of cheese. Cheeses such as Wensleydale almost disappeared. In the south-west of England before the war, 514 farms were making a vast variety of cheddars. In 1974, just 33 farms were making cheddar, mostly of uniform taste and quality. https://www.cooksinfo.com/government-cheddar-cheese
The UK cheese renaissance did not begin properly until the 1980s.
Yes, absolutely
The same happened to beer, cider, apples, gin, so many things. All now being happily revived
And wine. Don't forget English wine. When I worked in a 'licensed chemists' for a few days in the early 60's there was noxious looking product called 'British Wine'. It was, apparently a blend of something or other.
A dive bar I used to visit about 10 or so years ago had £5 bottles of "British Wine" which had semi legendary status. It was as you said, a blend. I had one sip and then pledged to become a wine snob.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
Quite simply, calories are cheaper now than at any time in human history. In living memory, we have stories of food (quite ordinary food) as a treat or luxury.
There's plenty of food culture in the UK. It has been deprecated by cheap-is-better.
The obesity epidemic is an artefact of this - our culture and society is not well adapted for a situation where too many calories is the problem.
Too many calories isn't the problem. The wrong type of food is the problem.
Calories in/calories out. I'm fed up of people making up all sorts of bollocks to avoid the fact they eat too much.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
One recent observations I heard, either on Farming Today or the Food Programme:
Government monopolies after WW2 caused a loss of suppliers, eg Government Cheddar which was used nationally during cheese rationing up to 1954.
While Government Cheddar helped to get Britain through the war, it also practically wiped out all farmhouse and artisanal manufacture of cheese. Cheeses such as Wensleydale almost disappeared. In the south-west of England before the war, 514 farms were making a vast variety of cheddars. In 1974, just 33 farms were making cheddar, mostly of uniform taste and quality. https://www.cooksinfo.com/government-cheddar-cheese
The UK cheese renaissance did not begin properly until the 1980s.
Yes, absolutely
The same happened to beer, cider, apples, gin, so many things. All now being happily revived
And wine. Don't forget English wine. When I worked in a 'licensed chemists' for a few days in the early 60's there was noxious looking product called 'British Wine'. It was, apparently a blend of something or other.
I dimly remember this. Still available ... wonder what it tastes like?
"Made by the traditional blending of full bodied ruby Fortified British Wine with the special Sanatogen formula to give a unique mellow flavour"
Superb discovery
Surely the person that wrote the copy wore a faint, ironic smile as they wrote this:
“ The name 'Tonic Wine' does not imply health giving or medicinal properties Also available, Sanatogen Tonic Wine 'with added iron' which retains the delightful taste of the original product.”
One recent observations I heard, either on Farming Today or the Food Programme:
Government monopolies after WW2 caused a loss of suppliers, eg Government Cheddar which was used nationally during cheese rationing up to 1954.
While Government Cheddar helped to get Britain through the war, it also practically wiped out all farmhouse and artisanal manufacture of cheese. Cheeses such as Wensleydale almost disappeared. In the south-west of England before the war, 514 farms were making a vast variety of cheddars. In 1974, just 33 farms were making cheddar, mostly of uniform taste and quality. https://www.cooksinfo.com/government-cheddar-cheese
The UK cheese renaissance did not begin properly until the 1980s.
Yes, it was direct government action 1945 - 1990 which killed off much that was good about British produce. As well as near-totally wrecking our cheese, they also wiped out our wonderful apple orchards - formerly the best in the world, bar none - by insisting on farmers growing just a handful of varieties, mostly of poor quality, especially the abominable Golden Delicious.
Our cheese industry has now more than recovered (I think we have more top-quality cheeses than even France now), but the apple orchards seem to have been lost forever.
Golden Delicious likes it warmer and drier than here so tends to be an import. What it is though is a superb pollinator, and I understand some commercial orchards have a couple of trees for that reason, and just don't bother to harvest them
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
One recent observations I heard, either on Farming Today or the Food Programme:
Government monopolies after WW2 caused a loss of suppliers, eg Government Cheddar which was used nationally during cheese rationing up to 1954.
While Government Cheddar helped to get Britain through the war, it also practically wiped out all farmhouse and artisanal manufacture of cheese. Cheeses such as Wensleydale almost disappeared. In the south-west of England before the war, 514 farms were making a vast variety of cheddars. In 1974, just 33 farms were making cheddar, mostly of uniform taste and quality. https://www.cooksinfo.com/government-cheddar-cheese
The UK cheese renaissance did not begin properly until the 1980s.
Yes, absolutely
The same happened to beer, cider, apples, gin, so many things. All now being happily revived
And wine. Don't forget English wine. When I worked in a 'licensed chemists' for a few days in the early 60's there was noxious looking product called 'British Wine'. It was, apparently a blend of something or other.
I dimly remember this. Still available ... wonder what it tastes like?
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
Quite simply, calories are cheaper now than at any time in human history. In living memory, we have stories of food (quite ordinary food) as a treat or luxury.
There's plenty of food culture in the UK. It has been deprecated by cheap-is-better.
The obesity epidemic is an artefact of this - our culture and society is not well adapted for a situation where too many calories is the problem.
Too many calories isn't the problem. The wrong type of food is the problem.
Excuse my scientific illiteracy, but isn't there only one type of calorie? A calorie is a calorie, whether it's to be found in a fried mars bar or in a sea bass.
I know someone from Sainsbury's who is involved with resurrecting a lot of lost apple varieties, his project will, err, bear fruit at some point in the next 20 years so it could be a long wait.
I don't hold out much hope on that, supermarkets are abysmal on apples, and even when they stock decent varieties the quality is generally low, because they prioritise appearance over flavour.
Still, maybe they'll get better. The improvement in tomatoes (if you look carefully you can even buy ripe ones now!!), potatoes, and strawberries has been remarkable. But supermarkets have weird blind spots: it's becoming harder and harder to find decent mandarins, tangerines etc because they are obsessed with those dreadful 'easy peelers', by which they mean fruits which have dried out so much that they've shrunk inside and become tasteless and mushy. On the other hand. supermarkets should also be prosecuted by the trading standards people for their so-called 'ripe and ready to eat' avocados, by which they mean avocados which are hard as old boots and which need to be kept for a week or two in a warmish place, in the (often forlorn) hope that they will ripen before they rot.
Waitrose has got crap tomatoes, I've switched to Natoora deliveries recently as I mentioned earlier today. Truly amazing, though imported from Italy. I've had better luck with some of the Kent grown tomatoes in Sainsbury's. I still refuse to buy the hydroponically grown in a dutch greenhouse ones though when tomatoes grown in Kentish or Italian fields are so much better.
Agree on potatoes, compared to when I was a kid to today the improvement in a maris piper has been incredible, the flavour and quality is just another level.
Delia 1.01 is indeed an absolute classic. Say what you like about her, but her recipes are absolutely bombproof, tested to destruction, and great. I still use her books today as a reference when I can't remember a detail but they are required reading for anyone who wants to learn to cook (which should be everybody).
On top of the fridge downstairs ...
Less chance of a wasp sting than on a table outside...
I know someone from Sainsbury's who is involved with resurrecting a lot of lost apple varieties, his project will, err, bear fruit at some point in the next 20 years so it could be a long wait.
I don't hold out much hope on that, supermarkets are abysmal on apples, and even when they stock decent varieties the quality is generally low, because they prioritise appearance over flavour.
Still, maybe they'll get better. The improvement in tomatoes (if you look carefully you can even buy ripe ones now!!), potatoes, and strawberries has been remarkable. But supermarkets have weird blind spots: it's becoming harder and harder to find decent mandarins, tangerines etc because they are obsessed with those dreadful 'easy peelers', by which they mean fruits which have dried out so much that they've shrunk inside and become tasteless and mushy. On the other hand. supermarkets should also be prosecuted by the trading standards people for their so-called 'ripe and ready to eat' avocados, by which they mean avocados which are hard as old boots and which need to be kept for a week or two in a warmish place, in the (often forlorn) hope that they will ripen before they rot.
Ah a kindred spirit! I have no idea how they have been allowed to get away with 'ripe and ready' for so long. It is a shocking example of misselling in almost all cases.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
Quite simply, calories are cheaper now than at any time in human history. In living memory, we have stories of food (quite ordinary food) as a treat or luxury.
There's plenty of food culture in the UK. It has been deprecated by cheap-is-better.
The obesity epidemic is an artefact of this - our culture and society is not well adapted for a situation where too many calories is the problem.
Too many calories isn't the problem. The wrong type of food is the problem.
Excuse my scientific illiteracy, but isn't there only one type of calorie?
Depends upon how you look at it.
Protein, carb and fat are different macronutrient types of calories - and within those groupings, there's very different types of foods and nutritional ways they interact with our bodies.
I find personally the worst foods for me to eat are carbohydrates high in the glycaemic index.
I know someone from Sainsbury's who is involved with resurrecting a lot of lost apple varieties, his project will, err, bear fruit at some point in the next 20 years so it could be a long wait.
I don't hold out much hope on that, supermarkets are abysmal on apples, and even when they stock decent varieties the quality is generally low, because they prioritise appearance over flavour.
Still, maybe they'll get better. The improvement in tomatoes (if you look carefully you can even buy ripe ones now!!), potatoes, and strawberries has been remarkable. But supermarkets have weird blind spots: it's becoming harder and harder to find decent mandarins, tangerines etc because they are obsessed with those dreadful 'easy peelers', by which they mean fruits which have dried out so much that they've shrunk inside and become tasteless and mushy. On the other hand. supermarkets should also be prosecuted by the trading standards people for their so-called 'ripe and ready to eat' avocados, by which they mean avocados which are hard as old boots and which need to be kept for a week or two in a warmish place, in the (often forlorn) hope that they will ripen before they rot.
Waitrose has got crap tomatoes, I've switched to Natoora deliveries recently as I mentioned earlier today. Truly amazing, though imported from Italy. I've had better luck with some of the Kent grown tomatoes in Sainsbury's. I still refuse to buy the hydroponically grown in a dutch greenhouse ones though when tomatoes grown in Kentish or Italian fields are so much better.
Agree on potatoes, compared to when I was a kid to today the improvement in a maris piper has been incredible, the flavour and quality is just another level.
I know someone from Sainsbury's who is involved with resurrecting a lot of lost apple varieties, his project will, err, bear fruit at some point in the next 20 years so it could be a long wait.
I don't hold out much hope on that, supermarkets are abysmal on apples, and even when they stock decent varieties the quality is generally low, because they prioritise appearance over flavour.
Still, maybe they'll get better. The improvement in tomatoes (if you look carefully you can even buy ripe ones now!!), potatoes, and strawberries has been remarkable. But supermarkets have weird blind spots: it's becoming harder and harder to find decent mandarins, tangerines etc because they are obsessed with those dreadful 'easy peelers', by which they mean fruits which have dried out so much that they've shrunk inside and become tasteless and mushy. On the other hand. supermarkets should also be prosecuted by the trading standards people for their so-called 'ripe and ready to eat' avocados, by which they mean avocados which are hard as old boots and which need to be kept for a week or two in a warmish place, in the (often forlorn) hope that they will ripen before they rot.
Waitrose has got crap tomatoes, I've switched to Natoora deliveries recently as I mentioned earlier today. Truly amazing, though imported from Italy. I've had better luck with some of the Kent grown tomatoes in Sainsbury's. I still refuse to buy the hydroponically grown in a dutch greenhouse ones though when tomatoes grown in Kentish or Italian fields are so much better.
Agree on potatoes, compared to when I was a kid to today the improvement in a maris piper has been incredible, the flavour and quality is just another level.
Waitrose often has crap produce compared to Tesco, Sainsburys, and - especially. - M&S (which generally has the best fruit and veg etc, to my mind)
I wonder if it is simply a function of size. The huge supermarkets can get the best available at a price they like, Waitrose is so much smaller
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
One recent observations I heard, either on Farming Today or the Food Programme:
Government monopolies after WW2 caused a loss of suppliers, eg Government Cheddar which was used nationally during cheese rationing up to 1954.
While Government Cheddar helped to get Britain through the war, it also practically wiped out all farmhouse and artisanal manufacture of cheese. Cheeses such as Wensleydale almost disappeared. In the south-west of England before the war, 514 farms were making a vast variety of cheddars. In 1974, just 33 farms were making cheddar, mostly of uniform taste and quality. https://www.cooksinfo.com/government-cheddar-cheese
The UK cheese renaissance did not begin properly until the 1980s.
Yes, absolutely
The same happened to beer, cider, apples, gin, so many things. All now being happily revived
And wine. Don't forget English wine. When I worked in a 'licensed chemists' for a few days in the early 60's there was noxious looking product called 'British Wine'. It was, apparently a blend of something or other.
I dimly remember this. Still available ... wonder what it tastes like?
"Made by the traditional blending of full bodied ruby Fortified British Wine with the special Sanatogen formula to give a unique mellow flavour"
Superb discovery
Surely the person that wrote the copy wore a faint, ironic smile as they wrote this:
“ The name 'Tonic Wine' does not imply health giving or medicinal properties Also available, Sanatogen Tonic Wine 'with added iron' which retains the delightful taste of the original product.”
A pharmacist I knew (now long deceased) spent one New Years Eve drinking Gin & Lucozade. He only did it on one occasion. Can't recall why he did it at all.
Waitrose has got crap tomatoes, I've switched to Natoora deliveries recently as I mentioned earlier today. Truly amazing, though imported from Italy. I've had better luck with some of the Kent grown tomatoes in Sainsbury's. I still refuse to buy the hydroponically grown in a dutch greenhouse ones though when tomatoes grown in Kentish or Italian fields are so much better.
Agree on potatoes, compared to when I was a kid to today the improvement in a maris piper has been incredible, the flavour and quality is just another level.
As a general rule of thumb, any fruit or veg from Holland should be avoided. It's not an infallible rule, but it's a pretty safe one.
I know someone from Sainsbury's who is involved with resurrecting a lot of lost apple varieties, his project will, err, bear fruit at some point in the next 20 years so it could be a long wait.
I don't hold out much hope on that, supermarkets are abysmal on apples, and even when they stock decent varieties the quality is generally low, because they prioritise appearance over flavour.
Still, maybe they'll get better. The improvement in tomatoes (if you look carefully you can even buy ripe ones now!!), potatoes, and strawberries has been remarkable. But supermarkets have weird blind spots: it's becoming harder and harder to find decent mandarins, tangerines etc because they are obsessed with those dreadful 'easy peelers', by which they mean fruits which have dried out so much that they've shrunk inside and become tasteless and mushy. On the other hand. supermarkets should also be prosecuted by the trading standards people for their so-called 'ripe and ready to eat' avocados, by which they mean avocados which are hard as old boots and which need to be kept for a week or two in a warmish place, in the (often forlorn) hope that they will ripen before they rot.
Supermarkets also insist on stocking those rather bland green/red mangoes rather than the delicious yellow varieties that come from India and Pakistan. Fortunately there is no shortage of independent food shops round here where the good mangoes can be bought.
I didn’t realize earlier but Anderson was also the MP who refused to watch England because of their anti racist protests ,and also made a fake doorstep video to help his election chances .
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
I completely agree that TV shows have really helped get people engaged. The best seem to be the TV competitions where people see that Everyday Joes and Ordinary Janes (and Ed Balls!) can be great cooks and indeed win prizes.
They also teach great techniques almost by osmosis.
Yes, I had this epiphany during an Anthony Bourdain episode when he goes to Melbourne and eats great food everywhere and he asks them “What happened, you guys used to be known for pie floaters and fish and chips”? And the chef comes back without batting an eyelid: “Masterchef”
I immediately realised this is what has happened in Britain, too. We did, after all, invent Masterchef (my agent represents the guy who devised the format, he is now obscenely rich). if you watch three series of Masterchef that’s a pretty good cookery course you are receiving, without even realising
Add in Jamie and Delia and the Hairy Bikers and the rest, and there is the answer to our much improved cuisine. Plus immigration and more money. That helps, too
I really enjoy Raymond Blanc, his appreciation for British produce is more than any TV chef and his recipes are deceptively simple, I've done plenty of them at home and not been left with a pile of washing up or 97g of some random ingredient I'll never use again. His latest book is excellent and the polar opposite of someone like Ottolenghi who uses all sorts of random stuff that even I struggle to find and will never use again.
I enjoy reproducing the Skills' Tests on Masterchef - some excellent quick, simple recipes.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
Quite simply, calories are cheaper now than at any time in human history. In living memory, we have stories of food (quite ordinary food) as a treat or luxury.
There's plenty of food culture in the UK. It has been deprecated by cheap-is-better.
The obesity epidemic is an artefact of this - our culture and society is not well adapted for a situation where too many calories is the problem.
Too many calories isn't the problem. The wrong type of food is the problem.
Indeed. A truth the French and Italians understand and that we do not. Hence the raft of processed "low fat" shite in our supermarkets which is packed full of additives and, often, sugar.
Yes, a simple step we could take is to phase out the sale of margarine entirely or have a huge public health campaign to prefer butter and ban the advertising of any perceived health benefits of margarine over butter (simply, there aren't any).
We could just ban the fake colouring of margerine, and see how people like it in its natural grey.
Wow are we cancelling margarine now? I like margarine, it's much easier to spread than butter.
Ah a kindred spirit! I have no idea how they have been allowed to get away with 'ripe and ready' for so long. It is a shocking example of misselling in almost all cases.
Melons are another blind spot. A friend told me she was looking for a vaguely ripe melon in a supermarket, and eventually found one which didn't seem too badly unripe. When she got to the checkout the cashier called the supervisor because she thought it wasn't rock-hard enough to sell.
Prof Pagel et al. must have been spitting feathers when they took a took at today's Guardian.
That's a brilliant article. And yes – one wonders how it went down in Zerocovidian Towers. Many on PB were also making the same arguments as Pagel et al, by the way, at the time. They, too, were proved wrong.
Didn't Keir Starmer call the decision 'reckless?'
Conflating restrictions with 'safety' was one of the biggest propaganda coups ever in this country.
And one of the most sinister and bizarre. Training us to see others as an existential threat and clamour for restrictions on them (and thus self) Rather than messaging on safe, safer, safest behaviours
The repercussions of restrictions are part of the reason we face a cost of living crisis. Soaring furlough debt and inflation from money printing are casting people into poverty and we know poverty kills.
Quite what is 'safe' about that, I do not know. Having compulsory restrictions was clearly just as reckless as not having them. The only question is whether it was more so.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
One recent observations I heard, either on Farming Today or the Food Programme:
Government monopolies after WW2 caused a loss of suppliers, eg Government Cheddar which was used nationally during cheese rationing up to 1954.
While Government Cheddar helped to get Britain through the war, it also practically wiped out all farmhouse and artisanal manufacture of cheese. Cheeses such as Wensleydale almost disappeared. In the south-west of England before the war, 514 farms were making a vast variety of cheddars. In 1974, just 33 farms were making cheddar, mostly of uniform taste and quality. https://www.cooksinfo.com/government-cheddar-cheese
The UK cheese renaissance did not begin properly until the 1980s.
Yes, absolutely
The same happened to beer, cider, apples, gin, so many things. All now being happily revived
And wine. Don't forget English wine. When I worked in a 'licensed chemists' for a few days in the early 60's there was noxious looking product called 'British Wine'. It was, apparently a blend of something or other.
I dimly remember this. Still available ... wonder what it tastes like?
"Made by the traditional blending of full bodied ruby Fortified British Wine with the special Sanatogen formula to give a unique mellow flavour"
Ugh. Ugh.
The designation “British Wine” as opposed to English Wine, Welsh Wine etc refers to grape concentrate tankered in to the UK and fermented and fortified industrially here. That is why it is the cheapest stuff in the supermarket, stocked next to the sherry.
We really should get rid of it as a legal term: it is confusing, close to misrepresentation.
Waitrose has got crap tomatoes, I've switched to Natoora deliveries recently as I mentioned earlier today. Truly amazing, though imported from Italy. I've had better luck with some of the Kent grown tomatoes in Sainsbury's. I still refuse to buy the hydroponically grown in a dutch greenhouse ones though when tomatoes grown in Kentish or Italian fields are so much better.
Agree on potatoes, compared to when I was a kid to today the improvement in a maris piper has been incredible, the flavour and quality is just another level.
As a general rule of thumb, any fruit or veg from Holland should be avoided. It's not an infallible rule, but it's a pretty safe one.
Agreed, and agree on your easy-peeler comment from before. Our localish Indian shop in Finchley does the best fruit and veg in the area, he only stocks tangerines as well, no easy peelers in sight.
I won’t get thanked on here, but clearly EU membership had a massive impact on the flourishing of UK cuisine.
First by easing import of quality ingredients from France, Italy etc; second by allowing migration of young chefs from Spain etc.
Compare and contrast with the US which outside a few hotspots is fucking dystopian.
I wrote a lyrical list of British foodstuffs on here once; I am a fan. But let’s not pretend it’s where we excel above all nations, and let’s not blame the war or single mothers for poor British cuisine.
Britain is cold, and very early on it both industrialised and decided to import much of its food from the Empire. No further explanation is required.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
Quite simply, calories are cheaper now than at any time in human history. In living memory, we have stories of food (quite ordinary food) as a treat or luxury.
There's plenty of food culture in the UK. It has been deprecated by cheap-is-better.
The obesity epidemic is an artefact of this - our culture and society is not well adapted for a situation where too many calories is the problem.
Too many calories isn't the problem. The wrong type of food is the problem.
Indeed. A truth the French and Italians understand and that we do not. Hence the raft of processed "low fat" shite in our supermarkets which is packed full of additives and, often, sugar.
Absolutely.
I struggled for years with my diet and had all sorts of "low fat" stuff.
Dumping low fat stuff, and reducing carbs instead, really massively improved my diet. "Low fat" stuff is packed full of sugars normally, it is the worst possible thing to do.
Fat got a really bad name for far too long, but fats can be healthy and much better than sugars.
Prof Pagel et al. must have been spitting feathers when they took a took at today's Guardian.
That's a brilliant article. And yes – one wonders how it went down in Zerocovidian Towers. Many on PB were also making the same arguments as Pagel et al, by the way, at the time. They, too, were proved wrong.
Didn't Keir Starmer call the decision 'reckless?'
Conflating restrictions with 'safety' was one of the biggest propaganda coups ever in this country.
And one of the most sinister and bizarre. Training us to see others as an existential threat and clamour for restrictions on them (and thus self) Rather than messaging on safe, safer, safest behaviours
The repercussions of restrictions are part of the reason we face a cost of living crisis. Soaring furlough debt and inflation from money printing are casting people into poverty and we know poverty kills.
Quite what is 'safe' about that, I do not know. Having compulsory restrictions was clearly just as reckless as not having them. The only question is whether it was more so.
Shanghai is currently being destroyed by this zero covid madness, which we only just managed to escape from.
Waitrose has got crap tomatoes, I've switched to Natoora deliveries recently as I mentioned earlier today. Truly amazing, though imported from Italy. I've had better luck with some of the Kent grown tomatoes in Sainsbury's. I still refuse to buy the hydroponically grown in a dutch greenhouse ones though when tomatoes grown in Kentish or Italian fields are so much better.
Agree on potatoes, compared to when I was a kid to today the improvement in a maris piper has been incredible, the flavour and quality is just another level.
As a general rule of thumb, any fruit or veg from Holland should be avoided. It's not an infallible rule, but it's a pretty safe one.
Agreed, and agree on your easy-peeler comment from before. Our localish Indian shop in Finchley does the best fruit and veg in the area, he only stocks tangerines as well, no easy peelers in sight.
One thing we've always found impossible to get in a supermarket and had to go to Eastern European food shops for is cabbages with big enough leaves to make golubtsi. The ones sold in supermarkets are tiny.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
Quite simply, calories are cheaper now than at any time in human history. In living memory, we have stories of food (quite ordinary food) as a treat or luxury.
There's plenty of food culture in the UK. It has been deprecated by cheap-is-better.
The obesity epidemic is an artefact of this - our culture and society is not well adapted for a situation where too many calories is the problem.
Too many calories isn't the problem. The wrong type of food is the problem.
Indeed. A truth the French and Italians understand and that we do not. Hence the raft of processed "low fat" shite in our supermarkets which is packed full of additives and, often, sugar.
Yes, a simple step we could take is to phase out the sale of margarine entirely or have a huge public health campaign to prefer butter and ban the advertising of any perceived health benefits of margarine over butter (simply, there aren't any).
We could just ban the fake colouring of margerine, and see how people like it in its natural grey.
Wow are we cancelling margarine now? I like margarine, it's much easier to spread than butter.
Prof Pagel et al. must have been spitting feathers when they took a took at today's Guardian.
That's a brilliant article. And yes – one wonders how it went down in Zerocovidian Towers. Many on PB were also making the same arguments as Pagel et al, by the way, at the time. They, too, were proved wrong.
Didn't Keir Starmer call the decision 'reckless?'
Conflating restrictions with 'safety' was one of the biggest propaganda coups ever in this country.
And one of the most sinister and bizarre. Training us to see others as an existential threat and clamour for restrictions on them (and thus self) Rather than messaging on safe, safer, safest behaviours
The repercussions of restrictions are part of the reason we face a cost of living crisis. Soaring furlough debt and inflation from money printing are casting people into poverty and we know poverty kills.
Quite what is 'safe' about that, I do not know. Having compulsory restrictions was clearly just as reckless as not having them. The only question is whether it was more so.
I suspect the keenest zealots worldwide from WHO to Ardern, the Chinese, some of the nutjob US governors and mayors, and that wanker in Australia will become loathed beyond their imagination. Arderns figures are dropping at an amusing rate already.
Problem is he's doubling down on his nonsense and obscuring any legitimate points he's trying to make. "Use is exaggerated". I've worked in a food bank. We kept scrupulous records. We know exactly how many people come to visit.The Trussell Trust requires written referrals. He's implying widespread fraud. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
I think "use is exaggerated" relates to the implication that current usage is some sort of societal meltdown, which Anderson is arguing is not supported by the numbers using foodbanks. And by the normal political process of Henny-Political-Penny claiming that the sky is falling in due to XYZ, whatever the reality.
Trussells audit for 2021-22 was 2.2m 3 day emergency packages, which represents 18m meals. That is approx. the equivalent 1% of meals for 3% of the population. Is that a lot?
(Comparing numbers with eg France and Germany suggests that there may be some truth in Anderson's claims - though no numbers are reliable or comparable so anyone can claim whatever they want.)
OTOH food bank usage was down last year according to Trussell - from 2.5m emergency parcels 2020-21 to 2.2m 2021-22, which suggests that the COVID UC boost was significant, and why it could have been better retained. Though we have not seen the impact of the change in the UC taper yet.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
Quite simply, calories are cheaper now than at any time in human history. In living memory, we have stories of food (quite ordinary food) as a treat or luxury.
There's plenty of food culture in the UK. It has been deprecated by cheap-is-better.
The obesity epidemic is an artefact of this - our culture and society is not well adapted for a situation where too many calories is the problem.
Too many calories isn't the problem. The wrong type of food is the problem.
Indeed. A truth the French and Italians understand and that we do not. Hence the raft of processed "low fat" shite in our supermarkets which is packed full of additives and, often, sugar.
Yes, a simple step we could take is to phase out the sale of margarine entirely or have a huge public health campaign to prefer butter and ban the advertising of any perceived health benefits of margarine over butter (simply, there aren't any).
We could just ban the fake colouring of margerine, and see how people like it in its natural grey.
Wow are we cancelling margarine now? I like margarine, it's much easier to spread than butter.
Don't keep your butter in the fridge during the day, we have ours on a butter dish with a nice lid and the first one out of bed just takes it out of the fridge while the coffee machine heats up, by the time the other of us is downstairs it's perfect for spreading on toast. Just need to put half of a small block out at a time. Not looking forwards to making the switch to unsalted though.
First they came for the climate change activists, and I did not speak out…
Ok I appreciate it’s not quite dragging this poor woman to Dachau, but still. Filmed at a peaceful march then the police turn up and arrest her in the middle of the night. And leave her to make her own way home in her nightie on public transport.
I know someone from Sainsbury's who is involved with resurrecting a lot of lost apple varieties, his project will, err, bear fruit at some point in the next 20 years so it could be a long wait.
I don't hold out much hope on that, supermarkets are abysmal on apples, and even when they stock decent varieties the quality is generally low, because they prioritise appearance over flavour.
Still, maybe they'll get better. The improvement in tomatoes (if you look carefully you can even buy ripe ones now!!), potatoes, and strawberries has been remarkable. But supermarkets have weird blind spots: it's becoming harder and harder to find decent mandarins, tangerines etc because they are obsessed with those dreadful 'easy peelers', by which they mean fruits which have dried out so much that they've shrunk inside and become tasteless and mushy. On the other hand. supermarkets should also be prosecuted by the trading standards people for their so-called 'ripe and ready to eat' avocados, by which they mean avocados which are hard as old boots and which need to be kept for a week or two in a warmish place, in the (often forlorn) hope that they will ripen before they rot.
Waitrose has got crap tomatoes, I've switched to Natoora deliveries recently as I mentioned earlier today. Truly amazing, though imported from Italy. I've had better luck with some of the Kent grown tomatoes in Sainsbury's. I still refuse to buy the hydroponically grown in a dutch greenhouse ones though when tomatoes grown in Kentish or Italian fields are so much better.
Agree on potatoes, compared to when I was a kid to today the improvement in a maris piper has been incredible, the flavour and quality is just another level.
Too many people don't think of potatoes as something that has flavour - just something to fill you up alongside the tasty things on the plate or else to be smothered in ketchup or curry sauce.
We get some cracking potatoes in our food boxes. Delicious without the need for any adulteration.
As I've said in the past, Riverford and Abel & Cole kept us fed while we were shielding, so very happy to keep buying fresh organic produce from them, even if it costs a bit more that even a Waitrose supermarket shop.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
I feel like somewhere between the Industrial Revolution to the hang ups from WW2 rationing and the homogenisation of species/supermarket offerings, the country forgot what culinary gifts it was blessed with. We now have world class meat produce too, not just sea food, and some fabulous traditional ways of seasoning it. Same for fruit.
The war is the biggest single recipient of blame for destroying the British diet. Powdered eggs. Everything tinned. Horrendous food trends that linger to this day. Look at the photos of the winning England team in 1966 - the teeth (or lack of). That's a legacy of the WW2 diet.
The war greatly improved health for a lot of people who ate better than otherwise. Brown bread, vitamins, British Restaurants, and so on. Perhaps more the relapse into peace. I don't think cooking changed greatly from before the war.
No, I'm afraid that's simply a myth, espoused by those who back low fat and other discredited diet methodologies. Have you seen the allowances for butter, milk and cheese in the rations? Those nutrient dense foods cannot be replaced by munching on a home grown carrot, laudible though the effort is. Sugar rationing was probably the only beneficial part of it.
Wasn't it simply that rationing meant everyone could afford to eat enough, which wasn't the case in the 1930s? Not that the mix of food was better.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
One recent observations I heard, either on Farming Today or the Food Programme:
Government monopolies after WW2 caused a loss of suppliers, eg Government Cheddar which was used nationally during cheese rationing up to 1954.
While Government Cheddar helped to get Britain through the war, it also practically wiped out all farmhouse and artisanal manufacture of cheese. Cheeses such as Wensleydale almost disappeared. In the south-west of England before the war, 514 farms were making a vast variety of cheddars. In 1974, just 33 farms were making cheddar, mostly of uniform taste and quality. https://www.cooksinfo.com/government-cheddar-cheese
The UK cheese renaissance did not begin properly until the 1980s.
Yes, absolutely
The same happened to beer, cider, apples, gin, so many things. All now being happily revived
And wine. Don't forget English wine. When I worked in a 'licensed chemists' for a few days in the early 60's there was noxious looking product called 'British Wine'. It was, apparently a blend of something or other.
I dimly remember this. Still available ... wonder what it tastes like?
"Made by the traditional blending of full bodied ruby Fortified British Wine with the special Sanatogen formula to give a unique mellow flavour"
Ugh. Ugh.
The designation “British Wine” as opposed to English Wine, Welsh Wine etc refers to grape concentrate tankered in to the UK and fermented and fortified industrially here. That is why it is the cheapest stuff in the supermarket, stocked next to the sherry.
We really should get rid of it as a legal term: it is confusing, close to misrepresentation.
Plus, it gives the sherry a bad name. Emilio Lustau fino, knocked out by Morrisons at a fiver a bottle, drunk from the fridge in proper sized wine glasses, is about the biggest bargain on the UK market.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
Quite simply, calories are cheaper now than at any time in human history. In living memory, we have stories of food (quite ordinary food) as a treat or luxury.
There's plenty of food culture in the UK. It has been deprecated by cheap-is-better.
The obesity epidemic is an artefact of this - our culture and society is not well adapted for a situation where too many calories is the problem.
Too many calories isn't the problem. The wrong type of food is the problem.
Indeed. A truth the French and Italians understand and that we do not. Hence the raft of processed "low fat" shite in our supermarkets which is packed full of additives and, often, sugar.
Yes, a simple step we could take is to phase out the sale of margarine entirely or have a huge public health campaign to prefer butter and ban the advertising of any perceived health benefits of margarine over butter (simply, there aren't any).
We could just ban the fake colouring of margerine, and see how people like it in its natural grey.
Wow are we cancelling margarine now? I like margarine, it's much easier to spread than butter.
You like margarine? Wow, Anabob's going to blow a gasket.
Prof Pagel et al. must have been spitting feathers when they took a took at today's Guardian.
That's a brilliant article. And yes – one wonders how it went down in Zerocovidian Towers. Many on PB were also making the same arguments as Pagel et al, by the way, at the time. They, too, were proved wrong.
Didn't Keir Starmer call the decision 'reckless?'
Conflating restrictions with 'safety' was one of the biggest propaganda coups ever in this country.
And one of the most sinister and bizarre. Training us to see others as an existential threat and clamour for restrictions on them (and thus self) Rather than messaging on safe, safer, safest behaviours
The repercussions of restrictions are part of the reason we face a cost of living crisis. Soaring furlough debt and inflation from money printing are casting people into poverty and we know poverty kills.
Quite what is 'safe' about that, I do not know. Having compulsory restrictions was clearly just as reckless as not having them. The only question is whether it was more so.
Shanghai is currently being destroyed by this zero covid madness, which we only just managed to escape from.
Takes their minds off the worlds supply chains literally collapsing in the queue for the port
Prof Pagel et al. must have been spitting feathers when they took a took at today's Guardian.
That's a brilliant article. And yes – one wonders how it went down in Zerocovidian Towers. Many on PB were also making the same arguments as Pagel et al, by the way, at the time. They, too, were proved wrong.
Didn't Keir Starmer call the decision 'reckless?'
Conflating restrictions with 'safety' was one of the biggest propaganda coups ever in this country.
And one of the most sinister and bizarre. Training us to see others as an existential threat and clamour for restrictions on them (and thus self) Rather than messaging on safe, safer, safest behaviours
The repercussions of restrictions are part of the reason we face a cost of living crisis. Soaring furlough debt and inflation from money printing are casting people into poverty and we know poverty kills.
Quite what is 'safe' about that, I do not know. Having compulsory restrictions was clearly just as reckless as not having them. The only question is whether it was more so.
If you're measuring the government's success or failure by the single metric of "deaths officially attributed to this one specific respiratory virus", then it makes sense.
I know someone from Sainsbury's who is involved with resurrecting a lot of lost apple varieties, his project will, err, bear fruit at some point in the next 20 years so it could be a long wait.
I don't hold out much hope on that, supermarkets are abysmal on apples, and even when they stock decent varieties the quality is generally low, because they prioritise appearance over flavour.
Still, maybe they'll get better. The improvement in tomatoes (if you look carefully you can even buy ripe ones now!!), potatoes, and strawberries has been remarkable. But supermarkets have weird blind spots: it's becoming harder and harder to find decent mandarins, tangerines etc because they are obsessed with those dreadful 'easy peelers', by which they mean fruits which have dried out so much that they've shrunk inside and become tasteless and mushy. On the other hand. supermarkets should also be prosecuted by the trading standards people for their so-called 'ripe and ready to eat' avocados, by which they mean avocados which are hard as old boots and which need to be kept for a week or two in a warmish place, in the (often forlorn) hope that they will ripen before they rot.
Waitrose has got crap tomatoes, I've switched to Natoora deliveries recently as I mentioned earlier today. Truly amazing, though imported from Italy. I've had better luck with some of the Kent grown tomatoes in Sainsbury's. I still refuse to buy the hydroponically grown in a dutch greenhouse ones though when tomatoes grown in Kentish or Italian fields are so much better.
Agree on potatoes, compared to when I was a kid to today the improvement in a maris piper has been incredible, the flavour and quality is just another level.
I grow Maris Pipers in my garden from seed spuds. It takes a bit of patience and care, but its worth it.
The taste of a potato you grow yourself, harvest yourself and eat the day you harvested is unlike anything you can get in a supermarket in my view.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
You'd never guess this from the number of cooking shows on TV and other media. The percentage of people who watch these programmes and never actually cook anything must be very high.
@kinabalu is another of the puritan PB-ers with, he admits, absolutely no interest in food or cooking or restaurants, and no experience in this arena
Educated intelligent men who just don’t give a toss. Food is one of THE great human pleasures, along with sex and, shall we say, “intoxication” - from wine to beer to ayahuasca and heroin
How can you not be interested in such a pleasurable and endlessly interesting thing? it is also, by the by, how you survive, and absolutely crucial to your good health. Not caring what you shovel down your mouth is not only bizarrely joyless, it is very bad for you
Weird
Food is fuel.
Over indulging in wine, beer and pleasures of the flesh (I'm nearly 30 years married) are a dim and distant memory, I can barely remember the amorous constraints posed by the limited ergonomics of the passenger compartment of a Ford Capri. And class A narcotics completely passed me by.
Heart-health I find is better served these days by a 40 minute siesta after a dreary lunch. Not a good look at work mind you.
Coleen Rooney’s lawyer has accused Rebekah Vardy of suggesting using the anniversary of his client’s sister's death as the “peg” to message her.
David Sherborne said that, after she realised she’d been blocked by Mrs Rooney’s Instagram account in January 2019, Mrs Vardy suggested mentioning “Rosie” in a message to Mrs Rooney.
Mr Sherborne said that Mrs Vardy was intending to use the anniversary of Rosie’s death – Mrs Rooney’s sister, who had a brain disorder, died in 2013 aged 14 – as “the peg” to message her.
Mrs Vardy responded that this was “interpreted wrong”.
I won’t get thanked on here, but clearly EU membership had a massive impact on the flourishing of UK cuisine.
First by easing import of quality ingredients from France, Italy etc; second by allowing migration of young chefs from Spain etc.
Compare and contrast with the US which outside a few hotspots is fucking dystopian.
I wrote a lyrical list of British foodstuffs on here once; I am a fan. But let’s not pretend it’s where we excel above all nations, and let’s not blame the war or single mothers for poor British cuisine.
Britain is cold, and very early on it both industrialised and decided to import much of its food from the Empire. No further explanation is required.
It's the lack of sunshine (something you've noted previously as well). Lots of rain and not a lot of sunshine makes for watery and flavourless produce. It's only since global warming that the south of England now has enough annual sunshine and less rain to make such high quality tomatoes, strawberries and other high water content fruits.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
I feel like somewhere between the Industrial Revolution to the hang ups from WW2 rationing and the homogenisation of species/supermarket offerings, the country forgot what culinary gifts it was blessed with. We now have world class meat produce too, not just sea food, and some fabulous traditional ways of seasoning it. Same for fruit.
The war is the biggest single recipient of blame for destroying the British diet. Powdered eggs. Everything tinned. Horrendous food trends that linger to this day. Look at the photos of the winning England team in 1966 - the teeth (or lack of). That's a legacy of the WW2 diet.
The war greatly improved health for a lot of people who ate better than otherwise. Brown bread, vitamins, British Restaurants, and so on. Perhaps more the relapse into peace. I don't think cooking changed greatly from before the war.
No, I'm afraid that's simply a myth, espoused by those who back low fat and other discredited diet methodologies. Have you seen the allowances for butter, milk and cheese in the rations? Those nutrient dense foods cannot be replaced by munching on a home grown carrot, laudible though the effort is. Sugar rationing was probably the only beneficial part of it.
Wasn't it simply that rationing meant everyone could afford to eat enough, which wasn't the case in the 1930s? Not that the mix of food was better.
Very little white bread - shift to wholemeal was a significant improvement. Vitamin enriched stuff for children.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
One recent observations I heard, either on Farming Today or the Food Programme:
Government monopolies after WW2 caused a loss of suppliers, eg Government Cheddar which was used nationally during cheese rationing up to 1954.
While Government Cheddar helped to get Britain through the war, it also practically wiped out all farmhouse and artisanal manufacture of cheese. Cheeses such as Wensleydale almost disappeared. In the south-west of England before the war, 514 farms were making a vast variety of cheddars. In 1974, just 33 farms were making cheddar, mostly of uniform taste and quality. https://www.cooksinfo.com/government-cheddar-cheese
The UK cheese renaissance did not begin properly until the 1980s.
Yes, absolutely
The same happened to beer, cider, apples, gin, so many things. All now being happily revived
And wine. Don't forget English wine. When I worked in a 'licensed chemists' for a few days in the early 60's there was noxious looking product called 'British Wine'. It was, apparently a blend of something or other.
I dimly remember this. Still available ... wonder what it tastes like?
"Made by the traditional blending of full bodied ruby Fortified British Wine with the special Sanatogen formula to give a unique mellow flavour"
Ugh. Ugh.
The designation “British Wine” as opposed to English Wine, Welsh Wine etc refers to grape concentrate tankered in to the UK and fermented and fortified industrially here. That is why it is the cheapest stuff in the supermarket, stocked next to the sherry.
We really should get rid of it as a legal term: it is confusing, close to misrepresentation.
Plus, it gives the sherry a bad name. Emilio Lustau fino, knocked out by Morrisons at a fiver a bottle, drunk from the fridge in proper sized wine glasses, is about the biggest bargain on the UK market.
True. I love how Tio Pepe have to put “Serve Chilled” on the front label for the English market. Do not follow this logic to its extreme though: €2.49 sherry from a newsagent in Jerez is very, very bad, however well chilled.
Mystifyingly, Sherry is not really popular in Spain these days, outside of its native region.
Where Lee Anderson is correct is that a shocking amount of people in this country cannot cook and have no discernible interest in food. But that is certainly not limited to the poor.
Take PB – we have fully grown professional men on here who earn £70k+++ who cannot even find their way around a saucepan, and luxuriate in eating ready meals and assorted other shite in service stations, after starting their day with coffee-flavoured dust and hot water (job done!).
We also have the quasi-hair-shirted PB Northerners who balk at spending even £40 a head in a restaurant, clearly having never done even the most rudimentary analysis of where £40 a head in a good restaurant goes.
Given such a large proportion of the English population continues to refuse to spend a reasonable proportion of its income on what it puts inside its own bodies, one can perhaps forgive (to some extent) the hackneyed stereotype held of us by our continental cousins that we are a nation of potato-faced barbarians.
An Italian colleague was lamenting Londoners calling themselves "foodies" recently, suggesting that in Italy it's just normal life. I think she's right. What we'd call a "foodie" in the UK is simply living normally in lots of European countries (notable exceptions include Germany and the Netherlands which also have the same shit food as the UK).
I defended us on the basis that the UK simply hasn't got a food culture the same as Italy, Spain or France because we have never been able to grow the same quality fruit and veg (lack of sunshine) which means our food is simply lacking in flavour. If you look at traditional British food it is basically warm, beige coloured and slightly salty. It's not easy to build a food culture out of that.
We have amazing produce in the UK, eg possibly the best seafood in the world, so that doesn’t explain it. We can’t grow oranges but English strawberries are superb etc etc
I’ve always understood it as the fault of the Industrial Revolution which disconnected people from rural life and the source of all their food, and of course that happened first in the UK, and in a bigger way in the UK than almost anywhere else
And British food is vastly better now (and much better than Germany or the Netherlands). TV cooking shows are a major reason for this. Maybe THE reason
I feel like somewhere between the Industrial Revolution to the hang ups from WW2 rationing and the homogenisation of species/supermarket offerings, the country forgot what culinary gifts it was blessed with. We now have world class meat produce too, not just sea food, and some fabulous traditional ways of seasoning it. Same for fruit.
The war is the biggest single recipient of blame for destroying the British diet. Powdered eggs. Everything tinned. Horrendous food trends that linger to this day. Look at the photos of the winning England team in 1966 - the teeth (or lack of). That's a legacy of the WW2 diet.
The war greatly improved health for a lot of people who ate better than otherwise. Brown bread, vitamins, British Restaurants, and so on. Perhaps more the relapse into peace. I don't think cooking changed greatly from before the war.
No, I'm afraid that's simply a myth, espoused by those who back low fat and other discredited diet methodologies. Have you seen the allowances for butter, milk and cheese in the rations? Those nutrient dense foods cannot be replaced by munching on a home grown carrot, laudible though the effort is. Sugar rationing was probably the only beneficial part of it.
Wasn't it simply that rationing meant everyone could afford to eat enough, which wasn't the case in the 1930s? Not that the mix of food was better.
The British population got healthier during rationing, partly because poorer people were able to eat more healthily.
LuckyBoy should read up on what authorities discovered during the Boer War sign ups.
Comments
I've seen a few sad looking horses tethered on bits of waste ground around Keighley.
...............100 FPN's in Downing Street and more to come....... The Rave Centre of the UK....The Allegra moment (long version)........... Economy collapsing and getting worse....heading for a recession....... Two businessmen from Stoke (from STOKE!!) 'things have never been worse' ......' Imports have gone through the roof......we could go under'............ President Biden 'breaking international law over Ireland is a No! No! ...........The NHS have more people on their waiting list for operations than ever in their history......
Where's that Red Bus when you need it?
Thank God for Emma Vardy!
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/12/ending-englands-covid-restrictions-was-divisive-but-the-data-shows-we-were-right
Prof Pagel et al. must have been spitting feathers when they took a took at today's Guardian.
Let's hope it's firmer intel than the Admiral Makarov...
My older daughter, 15, loves seafood restaurants. We sit down and earnestly discuss the bouillabaisse. Too much fennel? Maybe some more banana shallots? It’s great
If the rise of food banks was because of desperation why did payday lending FALL instead of rise?
Would you prefer we had fewer food banks and more payday lenders?
The CAB:
New evidence from the national charity reveals a steady decline in payday loan problems from April 2014 as new regulations were introduced by the Financial Conduct Authority and the regulator took enforcement action against lenders. It also shows a further drop when the Government introduced the cap on payday loans on 2 January 2015.
Nothing to do with displacing the weekly shop.
Government monopolies after WW2 caused a loss of suppliers, eg Government Cheddar which was used nationally during cheese rationing up to 1954.
While Government Cheddar helped to get Britain through the war, it also practically wiped out all farmhouse and artisanal manufacture of cheese. Cheeses such as Wensleydale almost disappeared. In the south-west of England before the war, 514 farms were making a vast variety of cheddars. In 1974, just 33 farms were making cheddar, mostly of uniform taste and quality.
https://www.cooksinfo.com/government-cheddar-cheese
The UK cheese renaissance did not begin properly until the 1980s.
There is a very strong link between food banks and payday loans too.
Just found a leaflet from a V&A exhibition called China Design Now (from 2008).
"Shanghai Dream City
Following its redevelopment in 1992, Shanghai's fortunes have revived and it has now surpassed the early-starter Shenzhen. Many emigrants and their descendants have returned and are taking part in the city's cultural renaissance.
With the economic transformation of China has come a new consumer society and an urban middle class. Trendsetters, taste-makers and designers are constructing a new dream. But at the same time, some creative individuals are questioning this consumerism, striving to balance commercial pressures with a unique creative vision."
The must useful cook book I’ve ever used is, yes, Delia. The famous Complete Cookery. It gave you everything, and it is still highly useful for classic Franco-Italian standards like Coq au Vin, proper Minestrone, Boeuf Bourgignon, if you do exactly what she says it is really hard to get it wrong
Rick Stein is unsurprisingly good for fish dishes. I also like Raymond Blanc, from time to time
The same happened to beer, cider, apples, gin, so many things. All now being happily revived
Some lucky Ukrainian tractor managed to haul off a Russian TOS-1A thermobaric MLRS.
Quite a prize, and from previous footage, apparently fully loaded and pretty much perfect condition.🔥🇺🇦
https://t.co/649DubcL5S
https://twitter.com/JimmySecUK/status/1524729431796989955
Our cheese industry has now more than recovered (I think we have more top-quality cheeses than even France now), but the apple orchards seem to have been lost forever.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-61412463
Nupes (Left) 28%
Ensemble (Macron) 27%
National Rally (Le Pen) 22%
Centrists 11%
Reconquest (Zemmour) 6.5%
Debout 2%
Ifop May 11
https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1524748670696001536?s=20&t=mwppBRM0qdLQ0xGNR1-Crg
Edit: I didn't say it improved the diet for everyone, but a lot of people shifted eg from white bread to wholemeal.
“British apple boom brings back hundreds of forgotten varieties”
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/oct/21/british-apple-boom-forgotten-varieties-apple-day?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
A long way to go but the revival is underway
Three men arrested.
Sympathies for her for whatever she's been through, but great that she has been found alive. Hope she gets whatever support she needs going forwards.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-61404082
I am surprised they haven't moved to forcibly making every over 60 get a full course of vaccinations. Its a bit weird as start of COVID they had apps which everybody had to have and you couldn't go into your office, shop, restaurant etc without it. I am surprised they didn't deploy vaccine passports++++.
It was, apparently a blend of something or other.
Yes they both happened in 2014."
Classic
During first lockdown a number of farms around my neck of the woods partnered with a local pub to create a home delivery service. Myself and Mrs U eat incredibly well.
https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/255247732
"Made by the traditional blending of full bodied ruby Fortified British Wine with the special Sanatogen formula to give a unique mellow flavour"
I find it totally perplexing, likewise @NPXMP
Educated intelligent men who just don’t give a toss. Food is one of THE great human pleasures, along with sex and, shall we say, “intoxication” - from wine to beer to ayahuasca and heroin
How can you not be interested in such a pleasurable and endlessly interesting thing? it is also, by the by, how you survive, and absolutely crucial to your good health. Not caring what you shovel down your mouth is not only bizarrely joyless, it is very bad for you
Weird
Conflating restrictions with 'safety' was one of the biggest propaganda coups ever in this country.
I'm a reasonably competent cook - but his books are very good guides....
Still, maybe they'll get better. The improvement in tomatoes (if you look carefully you can even buy ripe ones now!!), potatoes, and strawberries has been remarkable. But supermarkets have weird blind spots: it's becoming harder and harder to find decent mandarins, tangerines etc because they are obsessed with those dreadful 'easy peelers', by which they mean fruits which have dried out so much that they've shrunk inside and become tasteless and mushy. On the other hand. supermarkets should also be prosecuted by the trading standards people for their so-called 'ripe and ready to eat' avocados, by which they mean avocados which are hard as old boots and which need to be kept for a week or two in a warmish place, in the (often forlorn) hope that they will ripen before they rot.
I grow a dozen or so traditional but mainstream apple varieties in Devon. There's lots of people growing heritage, local, almost-lost-to-cultivation stuff, and it generally fell out of favour for good reason.
Training us to see others as an existential threat and clamour for restrictions on them (and thus self)
Rather than messaging on safe, safer, safest behaviours
Surely the person that wrote the copy wore a faint, ironic smile as they wrote this:
“ The name 'Tonic Wine' does not imply health giving or medicinal properties
Also available, Sanatogen Tonic Wine 'with added iron' which retains the delightful taste of the original product.”
Agree on potatoes, compared to when I was a kid to today the improvement in a maris piper has been incredible, the flavour and quality is just another level.
Protein, carb and fat are different macronutrient types of calories - and within those groupings, there's very different types of foods and nutritional ways they interact with our bodies.
I find personally the worst foods for me to eat are carbohydrates high in the glycaemic index.
I wonder if it is simply a function of size. The huge supermarkets can get the best available at a price they like, Waitrose is so much smaller
He only did it on one occasion. Can't recall why he did it at all.
£3.6bn over 9 years is approx 30k per parish per year average.
It's not clear whether that is the total or the increase.
Yorkshire Post implies that it is the total, which is a 30% increase on the previous:
https://www.pressreader.com/uk/yorkshire-post/20220512/281676848503290
Sounds like an utterly odious individual .
Quite what is 'safe' about that, I do not know. Having compulsory restrictions was clearly just as reckless as not having them. The only question is whether it was more so.
We really should get rid of it as a legal term: it is confusing, close to misrepresentation.
First by easing import of quality ingredients from France, Italy etc; second by allowing migration of young chefs from Spain etc.
Compare and contrast with the US which outside a few hotspots is fucking dystopian.
I wrote a lyrical list of British foodstuffs on here once; I am a fan. But let’s not pretend it’s where we excel above all nations, and let’s not blame the war or single mothers for poor British cuisine.
Britain is cold, and very early on it both industrialised and decided to import much of its food from the Empire. No further explanation is required.
I struggled for years with my diet and had all sorts of "low fat" stuff.
Dumping low fat stuff, and reducing carbs instead, really massively improved my diet. "Low fat" stuff is packed full of sugars normally, it is the worst possible thing to do.
Fat got a really bad name for far too long, but fats can be healthy and much better than sugars.
Trussells audit for 2021-22 was 2.2m 3 day emergency packages, which represents 18m meals. That is approx. the equivalent 1% of meals for 3% of the population. Is that a lot?
(Comparing numbers with eg France and Germany suggests that there may be some truth in Anderson's claims - though no numbers are reliable or comparable so anyone can claim whatever they want.)
OTOH food bank usage was down last year according to Trussell - from 2.5m emergency parcels 2020-21 to 2.2m 2021-22, which suggests that the COVID UC boost was significant, and why it could have been better retained. Though we have not seen the impact of the change in the UC taper yet.
https://www.trusselltrust.org/news-and-blog/latest-stats/end-year-stats/
Ok I appreciate it’s not quite dragging this poor woman to Dachau, but still. Filmed at a peaceful march then the police turn up and arrest her in the middle of the night. And leave her to make her own way home in her nightie on public transport.
Because she wants to stop climate change.
Is this what we’ve become?
We get some cracking potatoes in our food boxes. Delicious without the need for any adulteration.
As I've said in the past, Riverford and Abel & Cole kept us fed while we were shielding, so very happy to keep buying fresh organic produce from them, even if it costs a bit more that even a Waitrose supermarket shop.
The taste of a potato you grow yourself, harvest yourself and eat the day you harvested is unlike anything you can get in a supermarket in my view.
Texture, taste, just great.
Over indulging in wine, beer and pleasures of the flesh (I'm nearly 30 years married) are a dim and distant memory, I can barely remember the amorous constraints posed by the limited ergonomics of the passenger compartment of a Ford Capri. And class A narcotics completely passed me by.
Heart-health I find is better served these days by a 40 minute siesta after a dreary lunch. Not a good look at work mind you.
David Sherborne said that, after she realised she’d been blocked by Mrs Rooney’s Instagram account in January 2019, Mrs Vardy suggested mentioning “Rosie” in a message to Mrs Rooney.
Mr Sherborne said that Mrs Vardy was intending to use the anniversary of Rosie’s death – Mrs Rooney’s sister, who had a brain disorder, died in 2013 aged 14 – as “the peg” to message her.
Mrs Vardy responded that this was “interpreted wrong”.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/12/rebekah-vardy-coleen-rooney-trial-news-wagatha-christie-latest/
This is the equivalent of buying a brand new Bugatti and driving it into a wall at 150mph, without a seatbelt.
Mystifyingly, Sherry is not really popular in Spain these days, outside of its native region.
LuckyBoy should read up on what authorities discovered during the Boer War sign ups.