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The more voters are educated the more likely they are to be negative about Johnson – politicalbettin

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  • felixfelix Posts: 15,124
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517
    TOPPING said:

    eek said:

    I agree that he is not robbing the south to favour the north. It is clear that housing needs to be provided in the south, and that voters in Chesham and Amersham A) Never wanted HS2 to ruin their affluent million £ homes without having the benefit , namely a station, and B) Don't want to hand green belt land to new developers especially if that land is used for beyond the pale Council house tenants. As someone whose family benefited from the forward thinking of Ebenezer Howard (a Bank Clerk who incredibly somehow built Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City on what I assume to be green belt land), I can say we need to shoot this Nimbyism in the foot. Disregard those people in the south who don't want Council Houses to sully their homes.

    So let us all condemn the LD local party who put aside their support for HS2 nationally and for adequate housing to be provided for all regardless of income.

    On the North, I live here now and can say that the problem is not housing but jobs. The fact is that you can rent easily for £400 PCM (2 bed house) and actually easily pay just £50,000 for a 2 bed house. So home ownership is very possible on just a little bit more than the minimum wage, and for a couple easy peasy. Are homes mortgageable, definitely in some cases. Maybe not in the cheapest of areas (in my area you can buy for only £25,000 and rent that out for £250 PCM). But that for me was not cost effective because of letting agent fees. But the previous owner had a mortgage and I bought for £49,000 which was probably a couple of thousand too much. Are homes investments, not at this moment, meaning they won't go up like they do in the south. Still I bought a 2nd home for just £37,000 in quite a good area, letting agent says worth over £70,000. So money can be made.

    Anyway Boris has support up here, regardless of what southerners say. You only have to look at Durham Council, who is now in the hands of a Coalition of parties and independents for I think the first time ever. Where Tories stood, they had a big chance of a Councillor. They didn't stand everywhere, in my Town Council they didn't stand in my area, independents won but Tories would have won if they stood. So stand by for a further hand over of power to Tories next time in the north, specifically in Durham and Yorkshire. In rural or semi rural areas, where Labour really should not have won anyway. If the South goes over to LD temporarily then OK, but for LD to hang on to that Nimbyism vote they will have to take a pro nimbyism policy nationally meaning no new houses or next to none and oppose HS2. I don't expect them to do so, because they that is against what they want to achieve. They want housing for the low waged, we all want that. How to achieve it, in places like Chesham and Amersham, that is the question.

    I pulled up some data earlier today for Eek Jr who needs to do a report.

    In 2019 - 20% of house sales in Darlington were new build properties.
    In South Cambridgeshire the figure is 12%

    Add on the fact that immigrants are far more likely to head south rather than north (as that was where the jobs were) and you can see why house prices down south continue to increase faster than up North.
    You need to check out Cambourne West to the West of Cambridge. That will even the stats out a bit.

    https://static1.cambourneparishcouncil.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/18905_taylor-wimpeybovis-homes-exhibition-boards-v4.pdf

    My parish. ;)

    There's lots more building going on: Wintringham in nearby St Neots, and a massive number of new homes on the Oakington barracks site.. It looks as though there's some going to be going up beside Loves Farm as well. Then there's the despicable architecture of Cambridge NW (Eddington).

    As for Cambourne; the airfield site to the east is also under consideration (unless they drive a railway line through it...), as is a putative new village to the north.

    The chances are there's eventually going to be one long linear town from just west of Cambridge to St Neots...
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,184
    Sco/Wal/NI Positives/deaths (Positives last week /deaths last week):

    Sco: 2086 / 19 (2802 / 2)

    Wal 861 / 0 (701 / 0)

    NI 1083 / 0 (701 / 0)

    Scotland continues encouragingly downards; Wales approaches the peak, NI continues to climb. But look at deaths in Scotland! 19! That's going to have quite an impact on today's UK deaths.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    Appetite surely depends upon your family but my daughters are five and seven so only have a small amount of meat plus their vegetables etc no we don't devour an entire chicken in one sitting.

    A family with some teenage boys their mileage may vary.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    As long as your kids are small, you can have roast chicken on day one, chicken risotto on day two, and soup on day three (or for lunch).

  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,765
    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    Absolutely. With that chicken (£2.66 1.2-1.6kg - a "few days" for a family?!) you need some veg and some pots and pans and an oven and perhaps some spuds and some oil or butter and a chopping board and knife and some space and perhaps some herbs maybe not and some greaseproof paper or kitchen foil maybe even gravy. And then you need to stick the chicken in the oven at the right time for an hour or so and then prepare the potatoes and the vegetables and then cook those and then have it all on the plate for your family. And then do the same thing or differently for the next "few days".

    You are an exemplar in that you think nothing of doing this and all that suffers is a few dozen posts you might otherwise enlighten PB with.

    Not everyone is in the same position and the thought of "cooking" really is quite a psychological, physical and practical hurdle.
    I think the issue is that British people have been conditioned to think of cooking as a chore when it isn't. It also doesn't help that British cuisine is generally pretty awful and tastes in this country have moved to prefer Asian or Southern European flavours which many find impenetrably difficult to cook for themselves. There was little motivation for a generation of Brits to learn to cook because all we had was British food, but now that the skills are lost it's difficult to retrain a society into cooking properly again. Hence shows like that stupid 15 minute meals by Jamie Oliver or other shows that try and teach "tricks" of how to cook quickly etc...
    Yes that's true but on another level, when I am feeling up and happy with life, I might think nothing of creating some great culinary feast, perhaps I'll try pork belly or slow cooked shoulder of lamb, using those once every six months herbs, and preparing everything in neat little bowls before I cook it all, perhaps with a glass of fino sherry to hand and listening to some nice music. Me time in the kitchen.

    That is very far from every day for a family.

    When I am knacked and have had a shitty day I think fuck that let's get a MickeyDs/Dominos/out to the supermarket for something that I literally have to think no longer than 3 minutes about.

    And I would class myself as relatively (to the median income receiver) quite well off, etc.
    I find cooking quite relaxing.
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,072
    TOPPING said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    I bloody love that "use the bones for stock" total bollocks from esp. TV chefs.

    I doubt there are more than 10 people in the country who ever do that.
    I tried to do it once. Didn’t work and have never bothered again.
  • contrariancontrarian Posts: 5,818

    I do genuinely respect Thatcher though, at least she had an ideology. Even if I think it terribly misguided

    Being in your 20s during the Thatcher years was a terrible double edged sword.

    On the upside, I had a wonderful time which has stayed with me ever since.

    On the downside, everything since has been an enormous disappointment.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950

    TOPPING said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    Absolutely. With that chicken (£2.66 1.2-1.6kg - a "few days" for a family?!) you need some veg and some pots and pans and an oven and perhaps some spuds and some oil or butter and a chopping board and knife and some space and perhaps some herbs maybe not and some greaseproof paper or kitchen foil maybe even gravy. And then you need to stick the chicken in the oven at the right time for an hour or so and then prepare the potatoes and the vegetables and then cook those and then have it all on the plate for your family. And then do the same thing or differently for the next "few days".

    You are an exemplar in that you think nothing of doing this and all that suffers is a few dozen posts you might otherwise enlighten PB with.

    Not everyone is in the same position and the thought of "cooking" really is quite a psychological, physical and practical hurdle.
    Everyone is in the same position if they want to be. Cooking may be a psychological hurdle for some people but its entirely doable if you want to do it. Its even more doable if you need to do it.

    If you want to be lazy then its entirely possible to do it without much 'skill'. Frozen prepared vegetables are available that can be popped into a microwave again for much cheaper than a takeaway.
    Mate. "Lazy" you say. I love you and your posts but you are on here 23.6hrs a day. When you go for a leg stretch and knock up something fantastic in the kitchen then that is great. Even the magic expanding (had a shitty life but still) chicken.

    But what if you are working X hours a day actually working. Perhaps doing a shitty job. As is your partner. And you come home at whatever time to be met by your smiling and hungry children who you have managed not to feed sugary snacks intravenously.

    What about those people?
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited July 2021
    Meal prep used to be what poorer people did to make meals stretch the week.....now meal prep is the trendy thing health obsessed and richer people do.

    I always used to chuckle in my gym at the number of young guys in their early 20s talking about doing their meal prep on a Sunday night. Good on them, but they talked about it in a really serious way, counting the macros, exact weighing of ingredients etc.
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    TOPPING said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    I bloody love that "use the bones for stock" total bollocks from esp. TV chefs.

    I doubt there are more than 10 people in the country who ever do that.
    It was what Elizabeth David hated most about English cooking. If a Frenchman wants chicken stock he takes one whole fresh chicken, boils it up with onions and celery,and throws away the carcase. What's the point of bone-flavoured water?
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    As long as your kids are small, you can have roast chicken on day one, chicken risotto on day two, and soup on day three (or for lunch).

    Yeah risotto is one of the easier things to cook.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    Sean_F said:

    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    Absolutely. With that chicken (£2.66 1.2-1.6kg - a "few days" for a family?!) you need some veg and some pots and pans and an oven and perhaps some spuds and some oil or butter and a chopping board and knife and some space and perhaps some herbs maybe not and some greaseproof paper or kitchen foil maybe even gravy. And then you need to stick the chicken in the oven at the right time for an hour or so and then prepare the potatoes and the vegetables and then cook those and then have it all on the plate for your family. And then do the same thing or differently for the next "few days".

    You are an exemplar in that you think nothing of doing this and all that suffers is a few dozen posts you might otherwise enlighten PB with.

    Not everyone is in the same position and the thought of "cooking" really is quite a psychological, physical and practical hurdle.
    I think the issue is that British people have been conditioned to think of cooking as a chore when it isn't. It also doesn't help that British cuisine is generally pretty awful and tastes in this country have moved to prefer Asian or Southern European flavours which many find impenetrably difficult to cook for themselves. There was little motivation for a generation of Brits to learn to cook because all we had was British food, but now that the skills are lost it's difficult to retrain a society into cooking properly again. Hence shows like that stupid 15 minute meals by Jamie Oliver or other shows that try and teach "tricks" of how to cook quickly etc...
    Yes that's true but on another level, when I am feeling up and happy with life, I might think nothing of creating some great culinary feast, perhaps I'll try pork belly or slow cooked shoulder of lamb, using those once every six months herbs, and preparing everything in neat little bowls before I cook it all, perhaps with a glass of fino sherry to hand and listening to some nice music. Me time in the kitchen.

    That is very far from every day for a family.

    When I am knacked and have had a shitty day I think fuck that let's get a MickeyDs/Dominos/out to the supermarket for something that I literally have to think no longer than 3 minutes about.

    And I would class myself as relatively (to the median income receiver) quite well off, etc.
    I find cooking quite relaxing.
    How perfectly charming.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    Absolutely. With that chicken (£2.66 1.2-1.6kg - a "few days" for a family?!) you need some veg and some pots and pans and an oven and perhaps some spuds and some oil or butter and a chopping board and knife and some space and perhaps some herbs maybe not and some greaseproof paper or kitchen foil maybe even gravy. And then you need to stick the chicken in the oven at the right time for an hour or so and then prepare the potatoes and the vegetables and then cook those and then have it all on the plate for your family. And then do the same thing or differently for the next "few days".

    You are an exemplar in that you think nothing of doing this and all that suffers is a few dozen posts you might otherwise enlighten PB with.

    Not everyone is in the same position and the thought of "cooking" really is quite a psychological, physical and practical hurdle.
    I think the issue is that British people have been conditioned to think of cooking as a chore when it isn't. It also doesn't help that British cuisine is generally pretty awful and tastes in this country have moved to prefer Asian or Southern European flavours which many find impenetrably difficult to cook for themselves. There was little motivation for a generation of Brits to learn to cook because all we had was British food, but now that the skills are lost it's difficult to retrain a society into cooking properly again. Hence shows like that stupid 15 minute meals by Jamie Oliver or other shows that try and teach "tricks" of how to cook quickly etc...
    Yes that's true but on another level, when I am feeling up and happy with life, I might think nothing of creating some great culinary feast, perhaps I'll try pork belly or slow cooked shoulder of lamb, using those once every six months herbs, and preparing everything in neat little bowls before I cook it all, perhaps with a glass of fino sherry to hand and listening to some nice music. Me time in the kitchen.

    That is very far from every day for a family.

    When I am knacked and have had a shitty day I think fuck that let's get a MickeyDs/Dominos/out to the supermarket for something that I literally have to think no longer than 3 minutes about.

    And I would class myself as relatively (to the median income receiver) quite well off, etc.
    When I'm knackered and had a shitty day then I'll typically be lazy and use frozen food. Prepared frozen veg, in the microwave. Frozen meat, pop that in our Airfryer. Frozen chips in the airfryer too. About 12-15 minutes for the airfryer to cook the meat and the meal is done.

    Lazy meal, quicker, cheaper and easier than going out for any takeaway.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 14,912

    Unlike so many on the left it seems, I want a functioning Tory Party, just as I want a functioning Labour Party. I even think the Tory Party has done a few good things - and I respect hugely Thatcher despite my misgivings about her policies.

    I've just cut up my Labour membership card

    There will always be a functioning Tory party, as long as there are powerful interests to protect. I don't think you need to worry about that! It'd be nice if they functioned a bit better in office, and a bit worse at election time, though.
  • rural_voterrural_voter Posts: 2,038
    Leon said:

    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Posted a link to this Atlantic article yesterday, but worth reposting.

    What it's like to live through a modern genocide. Right now, in our own time, not in history books, not in a movie.
    https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1415427928171634688

    Some beautiful writing in there

    A salt lake shines ‘like a mirror tossed into the desert’
    This bit got to me.
    ...“I’m going to ask you something,” I said to Merhaba, “and you have to promise me you’ll do it.”

    “What is it? Tell me first,” she said.

    “I’m serious. Promise me first,” I said firmly.

    “All right,” she replied quietly.

    “If they arrest me, don’t lose yourself. Don’t make inquiries about me, don’t go looking for help, don’t spend money trying to get me out. This time isn’t like any time before. They are planning something dark. There is no notifying families or inquiring at police stations this time. So don’t trouble yourself with that. Keep our family affairs in order, take good care of our daughters, let life go on as if I were still here. I’m not afraid of prison. I am afraid of you and the girls struggling and hurting when I’m gone. So I want you to remember what I’m saying.”...
    It’s a sobering and sometimes lyrical essay. Thanks for the link

    The parallels with Nazi Germany grow eerier by the day. And here it is, happening in plain sight, again

    The difference is that this time there is nothing we can do. We can’t fight China. It is the world’s dominant trading power and will soon be the biggest economic power, then comes Chinese military superiority. Meanwhile China (often via Russia) divides us and roils us with our own social media, along racial and political fault-lines

    They are winning. I see very few signs of meaningful western resistance
    The disease that they unleashed upon the world, negligently or not, has so far killed over 4m people worldwide officially and almost certainly many, many more. And yet we do nothing. It's cowardice, really.
    Yes, I didn’t even mention Covid

    I used to dismiss the coronavirus-as-bioweapon hypothesis as mad, paranoid nonsense. I’ve always thought it likely came from a lab, but I always presumed it was just a hideous accidental release of a naturally evolved bug

    Now, I am not so sure. The Wuhan lab was doing gain-of-function research. Accepted fact. It was making viruses nastier. The lab has strong links with the Chinese military. We know the Chinese army has taken an interest in coronaviruses as a potential bio-weapon

    ‘EXCLUSIVE: Chinese military scientists discussed the weaponisation of SARS coronaviruses five years before the COVID-19 pandemic https://theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/chinese-military-scientists-discussed-weaponising-sars/news-story/850ae2d2e2681549cb9d21162c52d4c0@SharriMarkson’

    https://www.indiatoday.in/world/china/story/china-investigated-weaponising-coronavirus-2015-media-reports-1800608-2021-05-10

    Step back and look at what China is already doing to its own minorities, and it does not seem so impossible it might launch a bioweapon on the world. Or inadvertently leak one.
    It's worse than that, given the 73 coronavirus patents uncovered by Dr. David Martin. They seem to be evidence of 20 years of malpractice under Fauci's control.

    However on PB I've been called childish names for the past 14 months for questioning any of the official narrative ... I perhaps stupidly believed it for 2 months, then a few sceptical friends said '*****, do you think we're being played?'

    Someone once said 'After eliminating the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is likely to be the truth.' Lawyers are working away on this, incl Fuellmich, who won cases against VW and Deutsche Bank.

    It's such a malevolent plot that I think you should change the main names and write a novel on it before the truth comes out ... if it ever does.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 14,912
    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    As long as your kids are small, you can have roast chicken on day one, chicken risotto on day two, and soup on day three (or for lunch).

    Yeah risotto is one of the easier things to cook.
    You can do risotto in the microwave, it's about the easiest thing to make.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670

    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    Absolutely. With that chicken (£2.66 1.2-1.6kg - a "few days" for a family?!) you need some veg and some pots and pans and an oven and perhaps some spuds and some oil or butter and a chopping board and knife and some space and perhaps some herbs maybe not and some greaseproof paper or kitchen foil maybe even gravy. And then you need to stick the chicken in the oven at the right time for an hour or so and then prepare the potatoes and the vegetables and then cook those and then have it all on the plate for your family. And then do the same thing or differently for the next "few days".

    You are an exemplar in that you think nothing of doing this and all that suffers is a few dozen posts you might otherwise enlighten PB with.

    Not everyone is in the same position and the thought of "cooking" really is quite a psychological, physical and practical hurdle.
    I think the issue is that British people have been conditioned to think of cooking as a chore when it isn't. It also doesn't help that British cuisine is generally pretty awful and tastes in this country have moved to prefer Asian or Southern European flavours which many find impenetrably difficult to cook for themselves. There was little motivation for a generation of Brits to learn to cook because all we had was British food, but now that the skills are lost it's difficult to retrain a society into cooking properly again. Hence shows like that stupid 15 minute meals by Jamie Oliver or other shows that try and teach "tricks" of how to cook quickly etc...
    Yes that's true but on another level, when I am feeling up and happy with life, I might think nothing of creating some great culinary feast, perhaps I'll try pork belly or slow cooked shoulder of lamb, using those once every six months herbs, and preparing everything in neat little bowls before I cook it all, perhaps with a glass of fino sherry to hand and listening to some nice music. Me time in the kitchen.

    That is very far from every day for a family.

    When I am knacked and have had a shitty day I think fuck that let's get a MickeyDs/Dominos/out to the supermarket for something that I literally have to think no longer than 3 minutes about.

    And I would class myself as relatively (to the median income receiver) quite well off, etc.
    When I'm knackered and had a shitty day then I'll typically be lazy and use frozen food. Prepared frozen veg, in the microwave. Frozen meat, pop that in our Airfryer. Frozen chips in the airfryer too. About 12-15 minutes for the airfryer to cook the meat and the meal is done.

    Lazy meal, quicker, cheaper and easier than going out for any takeaway.
    Of course, an Air Fryer. Let's keep piling up the capital expenses.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950

    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    Absolutely. With that chicken (£2.66 1.2-1.6kg - a "few days" for a family?!) you need some veg and some pots and pans and an oven and perhaps some spuds and some oil or butter and a chopping board and knife and some space and perhaps some herbs maybe not and some greaseproof paper or kitchen foil maybe even gravy. And then you need to stick the chicken in the oven at the right time for an hour or so and then prepare the potatoes and the vegetables and then cook those and then have it all on the plate for your family. And then do the same thing or differently for the next "few days".

    You are an exemplar in that you think nothing of doing this and all that suffers is a few dozen posts you might otherwise enlighten PB with.

    Not everyone is in the same position and the thought of "cooking" really is quite a psychological, physical and practical hurdle.
    I think the issue is that British people have been conditioned to think of cooking as a chore when it isn't. It also doesn't help that British cuisine is generally pretty awful and tastes in this country have moved to prefer Asian or Southern European flavours which many find impenetrably difficult to cook for themselves. There was little motivation for a generation of Brits to learn to cook because all we had was British food, but now that the skills are lost it's difficult to retrain a society into cooking properly again. Hence shows like that stupid 15 minute meals by Jamie Oliver or other shows that try and teach "tricks" of how to cook quickly etc...
    Yes that's true but on another level, when I am feeling up and happy with life, I might think nothing of creating some great culinary feast, perhaps I'll try pork belly or slow cooked shoulder of lamb, using those once every six months herbs, and preparing everything in neat little bowls before I cook it all, perhaps with a glass of fino sherry to hand and listening to some nice music. Me time in the kitchen.

    That is very far from every day for a family.

    When I am knacked and have had a shitty day I think fuck that let's get a MickeyDs/Dominos/out to the supermarket for something that I literally have to think no longer than 3 minutes about.

    And I would class myself as relatively (to the median income receiver) quite well off, etc.
    When I'm knackered and had a shitty day then I'll typically be lazy and use frozen food. Prepared frozen veg, in the microwave. Frozen meat, pop that in our Airfryer. Frozen chips in the airfryer too. About 12-15 minutes for the airfryer to cook the meat and the meal is done.

    Lazy meal, quicker, cheaper and easier than going out for any takeaway.
    Shitty day for you = being bested by @HYUFD about who is more a genuine Tory.

    Not sure what Mr Dimbleby has to say about frozen food.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,575
    TOPPING said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    I bloody love that "use the bones for stock" total bollocks from esp. TV chefs.

    I doubt there are more than 10 people in the country who ever do that.
    I used to until the rest of my family went vegetarian.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    As long as your kids are small, you can have roast chicken on day one, chicken risotto on day two, and soup on day three (or for lunch).

    Yeah risotto is one of the easier things to cook.
    You can do risotto in the microwave, it's about the easiest thing to make.
    How? You mean those packets of microwaveable 2mins rice?

    Don't breathe a word of what you just said to @Cyclefree I'm guessing.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    Nigelb said:

    TOPPING said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    I bloody love that "use the bones for stock" total bollocks from esp. TV chefs.

    I doubt there are more than 10 people in the country who ever do that.
    I used to until the rest of my family went vegetarian.
    Could the two be related?

    "Please dad, no more broth and bread"
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 14,912

    I do genuinely respect Thatcher though, at least she had an ideology. Even if I think it terribly misguided

    Being in your 20s during the Thatcher years was a terrible double edged sword.

    On the upside, I had a wonderful time which has stayed with me ever since.

    On the downside, everything since has been an enormous disappointment.
    Too much coke?
  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    Alistair said:

    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    Absolutely. With that chicken (£2.66 1.2-1.6kg - a "few days" for a family?!) you need some veg and some pots and pans and an oven and perhaps some spuds and some oil or butter and a chopping board and knife and some space and perhaps some herbs maybe not and some greaseproof paper or kitchen foil maybe even gravy. And then you need to stick the chicken in the oven at the right time for an hour or so and then prepare the potatoes and the vegetables and then cook those and then have it all on the plate for your family. And then do the same thing or differently for the next "few days".

    You are an exemplar in that you think nothing of doing this and all that suffers is a few dozen posts you might otherwise enlighten PB with.

    Not everyone is in the same position and the thought of "cooking" really is quite a psychological, physical and practical hurdle.
    I think the issue is that British people have been conditioned to think of cooking as a chore when it isn't. It also doesn't help that British cuisine is generally pretty awful and tastes in this country have moved to prefer Asian or Southern European flavours which many find impenetrably difficult to cook for themselves. There was little motivation for a generation of Brits to learn to cook because all we had was British food, but now that the skills are lost it's difficult to retrain a society into cooking properly again. Hence shows like that stupid 15 minute meals by Jamie Oliver or other shows that try and teach "tricks" of how to cook quickly etc...
    Yes that's true but on another level, when I am feeling up and happy with life, I might think nothing of creating some great culinary feast, perhaps I'll try pork belly or slow cooked shoulder of lamb, using those once every six months herbs, and preparing everything in neat little bowls before I cook it all, perhaps with a glass of fino sherry to hand and listening to some nice music. Me time in the kitchen.

    That is very far from every day for a family.

    When I am knacked and have had a shitty day I think fuck that let's get a MickeyDs/Dominos/out to the supermarket for something that I literally have to think no longer than 3 minutes about.

    And I would class myself as relatively (to the median income receiver) quite well off, etc.
    When I'm knackered and had a shitty day then I'll typically be lazy and use frozen food. Prepared frozen veg, in the microwave. Frozen meat, pop that in our Airfryer. Frozen chips in the airfryer too. About 12-15 minutes for the airfryer to cook the meat and the meal is done.

    Lazy meal, quicker, cheaper and easier than going out for any takeaway.
    Of course, an Air Fryer. Let's keep piling up the capital expenses.
    Very handy for flash drying psilocybin mushrooms, so they do earn their keep.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,284
    edited July 2021

    Unlike so many on the left it seems, I want a functioning Tory Party, just as I want a functioning Labour Party. I even think the Tory Party has done a few good things - and I respect hugely Thatcher despite my misgivings about her policies.

    I've just cut up my Labour membership card

    Why have you cut up your Labour membership card? (Apologies if you mentioned it earlier in the thread. I had a look but couldn't see anything).
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,749
    Opinions about food are like arseholes etc

    https://twitter.com/mickjagger/status/1415663842726584331?s=21
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 14,912
    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    As long as your kids are small, you can have roast chicken on day one, chicken risotto on day two, and soup on day three (or for lunch).

    Yeah risotto is one of the easier things to cook.
    You can do risotto in the microwave, it's about the easiest thing to make.
    How? You mean those packets of microwaveable 2mins rice?

    Don't breathe a word of what you just said to @Cyclefree I'm guessing.
    No, regular risotto rice. I think it's a Delia recipe. It's very easy and delicious.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,674

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    Must be some chicken at 2.50 though, I thought you could get cheap one's for a Fiver but must be either a sparrow or radioactive.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    MaxPB said:

    Nigelb said:

    TOPPING said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    I bloody love that "use the bones for stock" total bollocks from esp. TV chefs.

    I doubt there are more than 10 people in the country who ever do that.
    I used to until the rest of my family went vegetarian.
    Could the two be related?

    "Please dad, no more broth and bread"
    LOL
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    Alistair said:

    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    Absolutely. With that chicken (£2.66 1.2-1.6kg - a "few days" for a family?!) you need some veg and some pots and pans and an oven and perhaps some spuds and some oil or butter and a chopping board and knife and some space and perhaps some herbs maybe not and some greaseproof paper or kitchen foil maybe even gravy. And then you need to stick the chicken in the oven at the right time for an hour or so and then prepare the potatoes and the vegetables and then cook those and then have it all on the plate for your family. And then do the same thing or differently for the next "few days".

    You are an exemplar in that you think nothing of doing this and all that suffers is a few dozen posts you might otherwise enlighten PB with.

    Not everyone is in the same position and the thought of "cooking" really is quite a psychological, physical and practical hurdle.
    I think the issue is that British people have been conditioned to think of cooking as a chore when it isn't. It also doesn't help that British cuisine is generally pretty awful and tastes in this country have moved to prefer Asian or Southern European flavours which many find impenetrably difficult to cook for themselves. There was little motivation for a generation of Brits to learn to cook because all we had was British food, but now that the skills are lost it's difficult to retrain a society into cooking properly again. Hence shows like that stupid 15 minute meals by Jamie Oliver or other shows that try and teach "tricks" of how to cook quickly etc...
    Yes that's true but on another level, when I am feeling up and happy with life, I might think nothing of creating some great culinary feast, perhaps I'll try pork belly or slow cooked shoulder of lamb, using those once every six months herbs, and preparing everything in neat little bowls before I cook it all, perhaps with a glass of fino sherry to hand and listening to some nice music. Me time in the kitchen.

    That is very far from every day for a family.

    When I am knacked and have had a shitty day I think fuck that let's get a MickeyDs/Dominos/out to the supermarket for something that I literally have to think no longer than 3 minutes about.

    And I would class myself as relatively (to the median income receiver) quite well off, etc.
    When I'm knackered and had a shitty day then I'll typically be lazy and use frozen food. Prepared frozen veg, in the microwave. Frozen meat, pop that in our Airfryer. Frozen chips in the airfryer too. About 12-15 minutes for the airfryer to cook the meat and the meal is done.

    Lazy meal, quicker, cheaper and easier than going out for any takeaway.
    Of course, an Air Fryer. Let's keep piling up the capital expenses.
    They can be bought for the same price as a microwave and almost every home I know has a microwave. An alternative at no capital expense is an oven since almost every home has one of those. But an airfryer is a good expense I'd recommend to anyone.

    My wife and I got our first one for £60 more than a decade ago and we use it most days of the week for a decade. We've just replaced that with a bigger one that can do rotisseries that cost £120 but that's great value for money when compared to buying takeaways etc.

    Plus its cheaper, quicker and easier to operate than an oven that costs a lot more to run and to heat up etc. We rarely use our oven nowadays.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,261

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    As long as your kids are small, you can have roast chicken on day one, chicken risotto on day two, and soup on day three (or for lunch).

    Yeah risotto is one of the easier things to cook.
    You can do risotto in the microwave, it's about the easiest thing to make.
    Here’s one you do in the oven. It is magnificent. But the comments are right, the flavouring needs punch - add garlic, white wine, mucho pepper, Parmesan at the end. Use rocket instead of spinach

    Mwah!

    https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/smoked-haddock-leek-risotto
  • BromBrom Posts: 3,760

    I don't know, it just looks like churn from which lefty / left of centre party, lefties / left of centre like.

    Westminster Voting Intention:

    CON: 44% (-1)
    LAB: 31% (-1)
    LDM: 12% (+4)
    GRN: 4% (-2)
    REF: 1% (-1)

    Via
    @Kantar_UKI
    , 7-12 July
    Changes w/ 7 June

    Tories still defying gravity. I just find it mind blowing they are still on ~42% (as an average of the past 4-5 polls). Huge scandal of Hancock, COVID cases rising, all the divisive culture war stuff, and 44% in this poll.

    The big thing in all these polls, Labour don't seem to be benefitting at all. I am guessing Stamer's approach of government are reckless, useless, waste of space, but I would basically do the same isn't helping Labour.
    Look forward to the header on this...!
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    malcolmg said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    Must be some chicken at 2.50 though, I thought you could get cheap one's for a Fiver but must be either a sparrow or radioactive.
    https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/292278149

    My local Tesco always has this available at £2.50 with a clubcard. 🤷‍♂️
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    Appetite surely depends upon your family but my daughters are five and seven so only have a small amount of meat plus their vegetables etc no we don't devour an entire chicken in one sitting.

    A family with some teenage boys their mileage may vary.
    When my daughter hit 13 and my son 11, it was like throwing a switch: you went from them eating like fleas to being able to devour an entire adult portion, grab an extra bowl of cornflakes, and then scour the freezer for ice cream.

    So there is definitely a YMMV element here.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,674
    TOPPING said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    I bloody love that "use the bones for stock" total bollocks from esp. TV chefs.

    I doubt there are more than 10 people in the country who ever do that.
    My wife uses the carcass to make stock and then soup every time. We only eat organic chicken and always
    use all that is left for stock.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,674

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    Absolutely. With that chicken (£2.66 1.2-1.6kg - a "few days" for a family?!) you need some veg and some pots and pans and an oven and perhaps some spuds and some oil or butter and a chopping board and knife and some space and perhaps some herbs maybe not and some greaseproof paper or kitchen foil maybe even gravy. And then you need to stick the chicken in the oven at the right time for an hour or so and then prepare the potatoes and the vegetables and then cook those and then have it all on the plate for your family. And then do the same thing or differently for the next "few days".

    You are an exemplar in that you think nothing of doing this and all that suffers is a few dozen posts you might otherwise enlighten PB with.

    Not everyone is in the same position and the thought of "cooking" really is quite a psychological, physical and practical hurdle.
    I think the issue is that British people have been conditioned to think of cooking as a chore when it isn't. It also doesn't help that British cuisine is generally pretty awful and tastes in this country have moved to prefer Asian or Southern European flavours which many find impenetrably difficult to cook for themselves. There was little motivation for a generation of Brits to learn to cook because all we had was British food, but now that the skills are lost it's difficult to retrain a society into cooking properly again. Hence shows like that stupid 15 minute meals by Jamie Oliver or other shows that try and teach "tricks" of how to cook quickly etc...
    Oliver's 15 minute meals is an absolute massive con trick.
    Complete bollox for sure
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,284

    I don't know, it just looks like churn from which lefty / left of centre party, lefties / left of centre like.

    Westminster Voting Intention:

    CON: 44% (-1)
    LAB: 31% (-1)
    LDM: 12% (+4)
    GRN: 4% (-2)
    REF: 1% (-1)

    Via
    @Kantar_UKI
    , 7-12 July
    Changes w/ 7 June

    Tories still defying gravity. I just find it mind blowing they are still on ~42% (as an average of the past 4-5 polls). Huge scandal of Hancock, COVID cases rising, all the divisive culture war stuff, and 44% in this poll.

    The big thing in all these polls, Labour don't seem to be benefitting at all. I am guessing Stamer's approach of government are reckless, useless, waste of space, but I would basically do the same isn't helping Labour.
    Not surprised by these figures. Labour won't recover with the non-metropolitan working-classes unless it stops being so Woke, which is very unlikely to happen because it would upset their members in the big cities.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    As long as your kids are small, you can have roast chicken on day one, chicken risotto on day two, and soup on day three (or for lunch).

    Yeah risotto is one of the easier things to cook.
    You can do risotto in the microwave, it's about the easiest thing to make.
    How? You mean those packets of microwaveable 2mins rice?

    Don't breathe a word of what you just said to @Cyclefree I'm guessing.
    No, regular risotto rice. I think it's a Delia recipe. It's very easy and delicious.
    Are you talking about "rice" which happens to be arborio rice?

    A risotto and microwaving risotto rice might be different things.
  • Alphabet_SoupAlphabet_Soup Posts: 2,703

    Leon said:

    DavidL said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Leon said:

    Nigelb said:

    Posted a link to this Atlantic article yesterday, but worth reposting.

    What it's like to live through a modern genocide. Right now, in our own time, not in history books, not in a movie.
    https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1415427928171634688

    Some beautiful writing in there

    A salt lake shines ‘like a mirror tossed into the desert’
    This bit got to me.
    ...“I’m going to ask you something,” I said to Merhaba, “and you have to promise me you’ll do it.”

    “What is it? Tell me first,” she said.

    “I’m serious. Promise me first,” I said firmly.

    “All right,” she replied quietly.

    “If they arrest me, don’t lose yourself. Don’t make inquiries about me, don’t go looking for help, don’t spend money trying to get me out. This time isn’t like any time before. They are planning something dark. There is no notifying families or inquiring at police stations this time. So don’t trouble yourself with that. Keep our family affairs in order, take good care of our daughters, let life go on as if I were still here. I’m not afraid of prison. I am afraid of you and the girls struggling and hurting when I’m gone. So I want you to remember what I’m saying.”...
    It’s a sobering and sometimes lyrical essay. Thanks for the link

    The parallels with Nazi Germany grow eerier by the day. And here it is, happening in plain sight, again

    The difference is that this time there is nothing we can do. We can’t fight China. It is the world’s dominant trading power and will soon be the biggest economic power, then comes Chinese military superiority. Meanwhile China (often via Russia) divides us and roils us with our own social media, along racial and political fault-lines

    They are winning. I see very few signs of meaningful western resistance
    The disease that they unleashed upon the world, negligently or not, has so far killed over 4m people worldwide officially and almost certainly many, many more. And yet we do nothing. It's cowardice, really.
    Yes, I didn’t even mention Covid

    I used to dismiss the coronavirus-as-bioweapon hypothesis as mad, paranoid nonsense. I’ve always thought it likely came from a lab, but I always presumed it was just a hideous accidental release of a naturally evolved bug

    Now, I am not so sure. The Wuhan lab was doing gain-of-function research. Accepted fact. It was making viruses nastier. The lab has strong links with the Chinese military. We know the Chinese army has taken an interest in coronaviruses as a potential bio-weapon

    ‘EXCLUSIVE: Chinese military scientists discussed the weaponisation of SARS coronaviruses five years before the COVID-19 pandemic https://theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/chinese-military-scientists-discussed-weaponising-sars/news-story/850ae2d2e2681549cb9d21162c52d4c0@SharriMarkson’

    https://www.indiatoday.in/world/china/story/china-investigated-weaponising-coronavirus-2015-media-reports-1800608-2021-05-10

    Step back and look at what China is already doing to its own minorities, and it does not seem so impossible it might launch a bioweapon on the world. Or inadvertently leak one.
    It's worse than that, given the 73 coronavirus patents uncovered by Dr. David Martin. They seem to be evidence of 20 years of malpractice under Fauci's control.

    However on PB I've been called childish names for the past 14 months for questioning any of the official narrative ... I perhaps stupidly believed it for 2 months, then a few sceptical friends said '*****, do you think we're being played?'

    Someone once said 'After eliminating the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is likely to be the truth.' Lawyers are working away on this, incl Fuellmich, who won cases against VW and Deutsche Bank.

    It's such a malevolent plot that I think you should change the main names and write a novel on it before the truth comes out ... if it ever does.
    If I were going to develop a genocidal bioweapon I'd make sure I had a fully functioning vaccine in the fridge before releasing it. But there again, I tend to think like a project manager rather than a homicidal maniac.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149
    edited July 2021

    TOPPING said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    I bloody love that "use the bones for stock" total bollocks from esp. TV chefs.

    I doubt there are more than 10 people in the country who ever do that.
    I tried to do it once. Didn’t work and have never bothered again.
    How very odd. I boil up the bones, skin, fat and an onion and have great jelly-like stock for a risotto, with as many bits of meat as I haven't eaten, and/or scraped off thje carcass. Been doing it for decades. And I've never got beyond the Scottish bourgeois c. 1920 plus Delia Smith level.

    Edit: but TUD has got in before me.

    Anecdata, but as with Brexit, maybe the Scots really are different ... that '10 people in the country' is absolutely astounding. Do you think they mean the Republic of Sealand or something?
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950

    malcolmg said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    Must be some chicken at 2.50 though, I thought you could get cheap one's for a Fiver but must be either a sparrow or radioactive.
    https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/292278149

    My local Tesco always has this available at £2.50 with a clubcard. 🤷‍♂️
    As I said not sure that would have had the best life (look at the tiny legs) but if it helps with the outgoings.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771
    edited July 2021
    Ummm... if Coronavirus was designed as a weapon by the Chinese, wouldn't the first step have been able to treat it? Yet, the Chinese vaccines have been late and crap. Their case fatality rates have been five times those in the West. And they've had to go to extreme measures (welding people in homes) to stop it killing hundreds of millions of their own citizens.

    Also, if you were going to design a weapon, the very last thing you'd want is something that could be hosted by over 200 mammalian species - because that basically guarantees you'll never be able to be rid of the bloody thing.

    Edit to add:

    There are certain characteristics you want for a good bioweapon:

    1. You don't want a long period from infection to being able to detect it, because then you'll never be able to stop it entering your country.
    2. You want a virus that isn't able to mutate, so that it won't be able to evade the vaccines you've prepared for your own citizens.
    3. You want it to take out or disable the young, while (ideally) leaving the old to their own devices.
    4. You want it to affect humans only.

    Covid 19 is a *terrible* bioweapon, that culls the old from places with terrible dependency ratios. That is hard to keep from your country. And which is hosted by hundreds of other species, and therefore will never be truly eliminated.
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,284
    edited July 2021
    "Dutch crime reporter Peter R de Vries dies from shooting"

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-57853004
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    edited July 2021
    malcolmg said:

    TOPPING said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    I bloody love that "use the bones for stock" total bollocks from esp. TV chefs.

    I doubt there are more than 10 people in the country who ever do that.
    My wife uses the carcass to make stock and then soup every time. We only eat organic chicken and always
    use all that is left for stock.
    Blimey you and @Theuniondivvie showing the way culinarily north of the border. I wonder who are the other eight people who do it?

    Edit: and @Carnyx.

    The Magnificent Seven are out there somewhere (and seemingly north of Coldstream).
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 14,912
    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    As long as your kids are small, you can have roast chicken on day one, chicken risotto on day two, and soup on day three (or for lunch).

    Yeah risotto is one of the easier things to cook.
    You can do risotto in the microwave, it's about the easiest thing to make.
    How? You mean those packets of microwaveable 2mins rice?

    Don't breathe a word of what you just said to @Cyclefree I'm guessing.
    No, regular risotto rice. I think it's a Delia recipe. It's very easy and delicious.
    Are you talking about "rice" which happens to be arborio rice?

    A risotto and microwaving risotto rice might be different things.
    Whatever, it works and is delicious (and winds up food snobs into the bargain so what's not to like).
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149
    TOPPING said:

    malcolmg said:

    TOPPING said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    I bloody love that "use the bones for stock" total bollocks from esp. TV chefs.

    I doubt there are more than 10 people in the country who ever do that.
    My wife uses the carcass to make stock and then soup every time. We only eat organic chicken and always
    use all that is left for stock.
    Blimey you and @Theuniondivvie showing the way culinarily north of the border. I wonder who are the other eight people who do it?
    Given the numbers of regular Caledonian commenters, and Malky quite rightly expressing his own suspicion of cheap chooks, maybe I could suggest it;s a different 'country'?
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,257

    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    Absolutely. With that chicken (£2.66 1.2-1.6kg - a "few days" for a family?!) you need some veg and some pots and pans and an oven and perhaps some spuds and some oil or butter and a chopping board and knife and some space and perhaps some herbs maybe not and some greaseproof paper or kitchen foil maybe even gravy. And then you need to stick the chicken in the oven at the right time for an hour or so and then prepare the potatoes and the vegetables and then cook those and then have it all on the plate for your family. And then do the same thing or differently for the next "few days".

    You are an exemplar in that you think nothing of doing this and all that suffers is a few dozen posts you might otherwise enlighten PB with.

    Not everyone is in the same position and the thought of "cooking" really is quite a psychological, physical and practical hurdle.
    I think the issue is that British people have been conditioned to think of cooking as a chore when it isn't. It also doesn't help that British cuisine is generally pretty awful and tastes in this country have moved to prefer Asian or Southern European flavours which many find impenetrably difficult to cook for themselves. There was little motivation for a generation of Brits to learn to cook because all we had was British food, but now that the skills are lost it's difficult to retrain a society into cooking properly again. Hence shows like that stupid 15 minute meals by Jamie Oliver or other shows that try and teach "tricks" of how to cook quickly etc...
    Yes that's true but on another level, when I am feeling up and happy with life, I might think nothing of creating some great culinary feast, perhaps I'll try pork belly or slow cooked shoulder of lamb, using those once every six months herbs, and preparing everything in neat little bowls before I cook it all, perhaps with a glass of fino sherry to hand and listening to some nice music. Me time in the kitchen.

    That is very far from every day for a family.

    When I am knacked and have had a shitty day I think fuck that let's get a MickeyDs/Dominos/out to the supermarket for something that I literally have to think no longer than 3 minutes about.

    And I would class myself as relatively (to the median income receiver) quite well off, etc.
    When I'm knackered and had a shitty day then I'll typically be lazy and use frozen food. Prepared frozen veg, in the microwave. Frozen meat, pop that in our Airfryer. Frozen chips in the airfryer too. About 12-15 minutes for the airfryer to cook the meat and the meal is done.

    Lazy meal, quicker, cheaper and easier than going out for any takeaway.
    I have sympathy with your viewpoint (and in our family of four, we also can make a chicken, probably a bit bigger than the £2.50 one linked, last three days - one day roast, two days in a pie, with lots of other stuff - we normally work on three adult servings when using a recipe, so 8-9 adult servings equivalent).

    But there is a valid point (Topping, was it?) about investment. Your air fryer sounds great, but I expect it costs at least a few supermarket ready meals to buy one and why would you if you don't have any idea what to do with it? We have a slow cooker which is great for easy and big batch meals (not 'quick', obviously!) and they can be picked up for £30-£40, but we only got one, despite enjoying cooking, when a relative bought one for us - we hadn't realised the possibilities before.

    In our house, a quick really can't be arsed meal is omelette (bacon, cheese, mushroom) with spiced wedges and some frozen veg if there's nothing handy in the garden. Half an hour start to finish with only about ten minute of semi-intensive effort at the end. But an awful lot of people simply don't know how to do that and even using those few pans/trays can be a blocker.

    It's very easy for those of us with a little know-how, a reasonably well equipped basic kitchen and cupboards/freezers filled with basic ingredients to rustle up something tasty in no time for very little money. But it's know-how and time. Before I had a work-provided laptop, my last four laptops were fairly recent thinkpads bought broken on ebay, repaired by me with the aid of the thinkpad hardware maintenance manuals and all for less than the crappiest laptops in Currys. But most people don't do that - they go to Currys and, if on a budget, get something 'cheap' that is both poor quality, won't last, is hard to repair and is expensive for what it is. It's the same with food.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    As long as your kids are small, you can have roast chicken on day one, chicken risotto on day two, and soup on day three (or for lunch).

    Yeah risotto is one of the easier things to cook.
    You can do risotto in the microwave, it's about the easiest thing to make.
    How? You mean those packets of microwaveable 2mins rice?

    Don't breathe a word of what you just said to @Cyclefree I'm guessing.
    No, regular risotto rice. I think it's a Delia recipe. It's very easy and delicious.
    Are you talking about "rice" which happens to be arborio rice?

    A risotto and microwaving risotto rice might be different things.
    Whatever, it works and is delicious (and winds up food snobs into the bargain so what's not to like).
    Yep go for it. If it works it works.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    malcolmg said:

    TOPPING said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    I bloody love that "use the bones for stock" total bollocks from esp. TV chefs.

    I doubt there are more than 10 people in the country who ever do that.
    My wife uses the carcass to make stock and then soup every time. We only eat organic chicken and always
    use all that is left for stock.
    Blimey you and @Theuniondivvie showing the way culinarily north of the border. I wonder who are the other eight people who do it?
    Given the numbers of regular Caledonian commenters, and Malky quite rightly expressing his own suspicion of cheap chooks, maybe I could suggest it;s a different 'country'?
    I edited my post to include you (and presumably countless others up there...).
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,257
    rcs1000 said:

    Ummm... if Coronavirus was designed as a weapon by the Chinese, wouldn't the first step have been able to treat it? Yet, the Chinese vaccines have been late and crap. Their case fatality rates have been five times those in the West. And they've had to go to extreme measures (welding people in homes) to stop it killing hundreds of millions of their own citizens.

    Also, if you were going to design a weapon, the very last thing you'd want is something that could be hosted by over 200 mammalian species - because that basically guarantees you'll never be able to be rid of the bloody thing.

    Edit to add:

    There are certain characteristics you want for a good bioweapon:

    1. You don't want a long period from infection to being able to detect it, because then you'll never be able to stop it entering your country.
    2. You want a virus that isn't able to mutate, so that it won't be able to evade the vaccines you've prepared for your own citizens.
    3. You want it to take out or disable the young, while (ideally) leaving the old to their own devices.
    4. You want it to affect humans only.

    Covid 19 is a *terrible* bioweapon, that culls the old from places with terrible dependency ratios. That is hard to keep from your country. And which is hosted by hundreds of other species, and therefore will never be truly eliminated.

    Well, that's obviously what they want you to think... :wink:
  • GallowgateGallowgate Posts: 19,072

    malcolmg said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    Must be some chicken at 2.50 though, I thought you could get cheap one's for a Fiver but must be either a sparrow or radioactive.
    https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/292278149

    My local Tesco always has this available at £2.50 with a clubcard. 🤷‍♂️
    I’ve started buying chicken from a local farm shop. Admittedly it’s much more expensive but it tastes much better and more ‘dense’.

    It also smells nice raw, unlike supermarket chicken.
  • MexicanpeteMexicanpete Posts: 24,587

    MaxPB said:

    Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.

    Dominic Cummings agrees with you. Guess who the ‘Clown Prince of shit pundits’ is.

    https://twitter.com/dominic2306/status/1415633761337757699

    “When even the Clown Prince of shit pundits doesn't know what dictation he's supposed to be taking, you know your slogan, speech & execution are really really bad”
    Hold on. Cummings quotes Hodges quotes Guido. If Boris has lost Guido, what's going on?
    Fortunately for Johnson the BBC will substitute Boris' earlier levelling up train wreck for "his" wartime fight them on the beaches speech (as with the Cenotaph car crash in 2019) so no one will notice.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149
    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    As long as your kids are small, you can have roast chicken on day one, chicken risotto on day two, and soup on day three (or for lunch).

    Yeah risotto is one of the easier things to cook.
    You can do risotto in the microwave, it's about the easiest thing to make.
    How? You mean those packets of microwaveable 2mins rice?

    Don't breathe a word of what you just said to @Cyclefree I'm guessing.
    No, regular risotto rice. I think it's a Delia recipe. It's very easy and delicious.
    Are you talking about "rice" which happens to be arborio rice?

    A risotto and microwaving risotto rice might be different things.
    Naah.

    Fry onion till soft in a thick based pan, chuck in rice and dollop of stock and water, plus X, simmer without burning till cooked and liquid absorbed to taste. That's it.

    Basic approach to kedgeree, risotto, etc. Paella too. Only difference is X.

    Kedgeree - bit of curry with the onion. X = frozen peas and sultanas and (at end) separately boiled Finnan haddock and/or frozen NA prawns, and/or boiled egg.

    Risotto - red pepper fried with the onion. X= mushrooms, peas, carrots, plus chicken, egg, prawn, whatever.

    Paella - not too sure ...
  • gealbhangealbhan Posts: 2,362

    gealbhan said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    eek said:

    gealbhan said:

    The usual incoherent ramble from Bozo. Good grief.

    I’m surprised minders have let him say no one will be feeling pinch in their pocket next couple of years.

    In the years leading up to next election people are going to feel pinch in the housekeeping pot, why make big promise they won’t be?
    Boris has just told you the next election is in May 2023 - did you not pick that up.
    What makes you say that?

    July or August 2023 makes much more sense since the new boundaries will be in place by then.
    The fact people won't be feeling poorer due to rises. If the new boundaries are in July 2023 then it's going to be October 2023 - the one thing we do know is that Boris (or any other leader) won't risk waiting until May 2024.
    What makes you think people will be feeling poorer in 2024?

    We seem well set now for an economic boom and a good few years of wages rising and full employment.
    I don't - but you don't leave an election to the last second because "events, dear boy, events".
    So neither of you think it’s a tricky economic period? You don’t think we are all going to be hit in our pockets very soon now?

    The whole world economy’s had an economic shock. UK economy is rewriting itself post Brexit. Green taxes were always coming in this period that alone hits our pocket, Covid debt repayment is coming at same time, especially if inflation leaps meaning the debt cost rises.

    Add to government take increasing, cuts, as government draws back spend. That quite likely means job losses. Inflation means things we pay for cost more, particularly things you can’t say no to, food, energy.

    Nor has globalisation gone away with exit from EU. Neither has balancing economy and society from industrial to post industrial. And the rise of automation.

    Difficult couple of years ahead for a government promising sun lit uplands, levelling up for everyone and no pinch in any pocket.
    That presumes this conservative government acts likes a traditional conservative government.

    The US have said they don't think inflation is going to be a problem, treat covid as a one off, going to borrow big and continue to do so, worry about it all in 10-15 years. Interests rates are low, good time to make big investment in state backed transition to green tech, infrastructure building etc etc etc.

    Now the above statement concerns me, but that is their stated position, as saying inflation isn't a problem is rather Brown I've abolished boom and bust. Who says this current government doesn't follow the same path. I mean who would have thought a conservative government would have done half the times they have in the past 2 years.
    I agree with you Francis. I think US gov are entering into a risky economic plan without a back up plan if things like inflation become a problem. The example that comes to my mind is Labour 74-79. They came in with expensive spending idea’s (promises) into a situation already a bit hot and going for growth, the economic humiliation which followed (removing them from power for a generation) was direct result of doing the wrong thing, spending so much, in their first couple of years back in power. The new US government, and Boris over here both keen keen to print, borrow and spend regardless.

    I think Philip Thompson supports them in this. And he is an economist. Maybe we can ask him what a back up plan would be if it becomes too inflationary and heated say two years down the line?
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149

    malcolmg said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    Must be some chicken at 2.50 though, I thought you could get cheap one's for a Fiver but must be either a sparrow or radioactive.
    https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/292278149

    My local Tesco always has this available at £2.50 with a clubcard. 🤷‍♂️
    I’ve started buying chicken from a local farm shop. Admittedly it’s much more expensive but it tastes much better and more ‘dense’.

    It also smells nice raw, unlike supermarket chicken.
    Same here - only it's pheasant and partridge (and admittedly pork and lamb aand proper mutton and hoggett).
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,284
    edited July 2021
    "South Africa is on the brink
    For the first time, people appear afraid for the future
    By Brian Pottinger"

    https://unherd.com/2021/07/south-africa-is-on-the-brink
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    TOPPING said:

    malcolmg said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    Must be some chicken at 2.50 though, I thought you could get cheap one's for a Fiver but must be either a sparrow or radioactive.
    https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/292278149

    My local Tesco always has this available at £2.50 with a clubcard. 🤷‍♂️
    As I said not sure that would have had the best life (look at the tiny legs) but if it helps with the outgoings.
    To be brutally honest I don't particularly care about the birds 'life' as long as its reasonable. Its got the red tractor mark and that's good enough for me. 🤷‍♂️

    If others want to pay more for a birds life journey on an organic farm then they can do that.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,674
    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    As long as your kids are small, you can have roast chicken on day one, chicken risotto on day two, and soup on day three (or for lunch).

    Yeah risotto is one of the easier things to cook.
    Also easy to make a rubbery mess of it as well, you have to get it just at the correct consistency or it is horrible.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,261
    rcs1000 said:

    Ummm... if Coronavirus was designed as a weapon by the Chinese, wouldn't the first step have been able to treat it? Yet, the Chinese vaccines have been late and crap. Their case fatality rates have been five times those in the West. And they've had to go to extreme measures (welding people in homes) to stop it killing hundreds of millions of their own citizens.

    Also, if you were going to design a weapon, the very last thing you'd want is something that could be hosted by over 200 mammalian species - because that basically guarantees you'll never be able to be rid of the bloody thing.

    Edit to add:

    There are certain characteristics you want for a good bioweapon:

    1. You don't want a long period from infection to being able to detect it, because then you'll never be able to stop it entering your country.
    2. You want a virus that isn't able to mutate, so that it won't be able to evade the vaccines you've prepared for your own citizens.
    3. You want it to take out or disable the young, while (ideally) leaving the old to their own devices.
    4. You want it to affect humans only.

    Covid 19 is a *terrible* bioweapon, that culls the old from places with terrible dependency ratios. That is hard to keep from your country. And which is hosted by hundreds of other species, and therefore will never be truly eliminated.

    Sean T, ex of this same manor, outlined one possibility here


    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/how-Id-write-covid-the-thriller

    Tl;dr: the virus IS a bioweapon, but it was in utero, and it leaked by accident, long before China was ready or willing to use it
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625
    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    I bloody love that "use the bones for stock" total bollocks from esp. TV chefs.

    I doubt there are more than 10 people in the country who ever do that.
    I tried to do it once. Didn’t work and have never bothered again.
    How very odd. I boil up the bones, skin, fat and an onion and have great jelly-like stock for a risotto, with as many bits of meat as I haven't eaten, and/or scraped off thje carcass. Been doing it for decades. And I've never got beyond the Scottish bourgeois c. 1920 plus Delia Smith level.

    Edit: but TUD has got in before me.

    Anecdata, but as with Brexit, maybe the Scots really are different ... that '10 people in the country' is absolutely astounding. Do you think they mean the Republic of Sealand or something?
    Likewise, I do it fairly regularly - how can you miss? Pile everything in a pot, simmer for a couple of hours??
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149

    TOPPING said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    I bloody love that "use the bones for stock" total bollocks from esp. TV chefs.

    I doubt there are more than 10 people in the country who ever do that.
    Eh? Maybe it’s tight Jock syndrome but I’ve done it with every chicken I’ve roasted as an adult.
    Indeed. Now doing it with pheasant (as we can't get chooks proper in the local community shop, but pheasant and partridge are available). Only thing to watch out for is the shot obvs so strainijng is important.
  • ClippPClippP Posts: 1,667
    felix said:

    eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    MaxPB said:

    Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.

    Rubbish, the main reason the Tories have a majority of 80 and seats in white working class former Labour heartlands in the North and Midlands is down to Boris.

    Anyway, even if the Tories saw a 10% swing to the LDs in the South in 2023/24 the LDs would still only pick up about 25 seats, which would still give a narrow Tory majority of 30 if Boris held the Red Wall.

    Boris is the most successful Tory election winner since Thatcher and when they got rid of her it did not end well. The Tories then proceeded to lose 3 out of the next 4 general elections and even when they returned to power in 2010 it was without a majority
    Careful now, tiger - dismissing me yesterday and @MaxPB today (both of whom, I'm guessing, voted Cons in 2019) is making your "who cares" work even harder.

    What would Oscar say in such a situation...
    I live in a three way marginal seat. If the Lib Dems prove themselves to be a serious party (stop laughing) by 2023/24 I know where my vote is going. If not I'll sit on my hands, I can't vote for the Tories led by Boris. The guy is a complete numpty.
    But he has an 80-seat majority...
    I honestly don't see how the Tories hold on to Finchley and Golders Green next time. Unless they can make the Lib Dems and Labour fight it out the Lib Dems will walk it.
    +1 - I don't see why Labour would bother fighting that sort of seat in London - if they don't already have it there are better seats to fight in the next election.
    Labour will paper candidate. Starmer and Davey are not idiots
    They kind of are. In a GE they will not stand aside to help each other out. The membership won't put up with it. And if they do try it watch the voters respond.
    I think the Spanish sun is getting to poor old Felix. In the Chesham and Amersham byelection, Labour threw their Deputy Leader and hundreds of their MPs into the fight - hardly "standing aside" - and even so they lost their deposit. The voters did indeed respond. Definitely not the Conservative Party, as it has now evolved.

  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149
    malcolmg said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    As long as your kids are small, you can have roast chicken on day one, chicken risotto on day two, and soup on day three (or for lunch).

    Yeah risotto is one of the easier things to cook.
    Also easy to make a rubbery mess of it as well, you have to get it just at the correct consistency or it is horrible.
    Might I ask, what rice do you use?
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,789
    Andy_JS said:

    "South Africa is on the brink
    For the first time, people appear afraid for the future
    By Brian Pottinger"

    https://unherd.com/2021/07/south-africa-is-on-the-brink

    There's a tragicomic interview with a looter who says it made him feel "free":

    https://twitter.com/pine_tree_riots/status/1415362917256646668
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    I bloody love that "use the bones for stock" total bollocks from esp. TV chefs.

    I doubt there are more than 10 people in the country who ever do that.
    I tried to do it once. Didn’t work and have never bothered again.
    How very odd. I boil up the bones, skin, fat and an onion and have great jelly-like stock for a risotto, with as many bits of meat as I haven't eaten, and/or scraped off thje carcass. Been doing it for decades. And I've never got beyond the Scottish bourgeois c. 1920 plus Delia Smith level.

    Edit: but TUD has got in before me.

    Anecdata, but as with Brexit, maybe the Scots really are different ... that '10 people in the country' is absolutely astounding. Do you think they mean the Republic of Sealand or something?
    Likewise, I do it fairly regularly - how can you miss? Pile everything in a pot, simmer for a couple of hours??
    Excellent. That's 4 out of the 10 already, 3 in Scotland. What was that abotu subsamples again?
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,261

    malcolmg said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    Must be some chicken at 2.50 though, I thought you could get cheap one's for a Fiver but must be either a sparrow or radioactive.
    https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/292278149

    My local Tesco always has this available at £2.50 with a clubcard. 🤷‍♂️
    Don’t wave to toil the point, but that chicken provides 2300 calories. The idea it could ‘feed a family for days’ is a stretch, unless you are feeding Rishi Sunak and his leprechaun sister
  • gealbhangealbhan Posts: 2,362
    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    As long as your kids are small, you can have roast chicken on day one, chicken risotto on day two, and soup on day three (or for lunch).

    Yeah risotto is one of the easier things to cook.
    You can do risotto in the microwave, it's about the easiest thing to make.
    How? You mean those packets of microwaveable 2mins rice?

    Don't breathe a word of what you just said to @Cyclefree I'm guessing.
    No, regular risotto rice. I think it's a Delia recipe. It's very easy and delicious.
    Are you talking about "rice" which happens to be arborio rice?

    A risotto and microwaving risotto rice might be different things.
    Naah.

    Fry onion till soft in a thick based pan, chuck in rice and dollop of stock and water, plus X, simmer without burning till cooked and liquid absorbed to taste. That's it.

    Basic approach to kedgeree, risotto, etc. Paella too. Only difference is X.

    Kedgeree - bit of curry with the onion. X = frozen peas and sultanas and (at end) separately boiled Finnan haddock and/or frozen NA prawns, and/or boiled egg.

    Risotto - red pepper fried with the onion. X= mushrooms, peas, carrots, plus chicken, egg, prawn, whatever.

    Paella - not too sure ...
    Sounds like a Pilaf.

    I tend to soften the onion in butter, stir in rice and turmeric and cardamom before adding stock, and soften, not fry, tomatoes in evol and tarragon in a separate pan.

    so simple. The mix of buttery rice and grassy oil tomatoes creates a taste sensation.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,184
    Netherlands-watch: 10976 positives today, up from 5431 last week. Weekly increase down from six-fold to two-fold.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    It wouldn't be the Tour de Drugs unless....

    French prosecutors have opened a preliminary investigation into doping allegations against Bahrain-Victorious after their team hotel was searched.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,261
    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    I bloody love that "use the bones for stock" total bollocks from esp. TV chefs.

    I doubt there are more than 10 people in the country who ever do that.
    I tried to do it once. Didn’t work and have never bothered again.
    How very odd. I boil up the bones, skin, fat and an onion and have great jelly-like stock for a risotto, with as many bits of meat as I haven't eaten, and/or scraped off thje carcass. Been doing it for decades. And I've never got beyond the Scottish bourgeois c. 1920 plus Delia Smith level.

    Edit: but TUD has got in before me.

    Anecdata, but as with Brexit, maybe the Scots really are different ... that '10 people in the country' is absolutely astounding. Do you think they mean the Republic of Sealand or something?
    Likewise, I do it fairly regularly - how can you miss? Pile everything in a pot, simmer for a couple of hours??
    Excellent. That's 4 out of the 10 already, 3 in Scotland. What was that abotu subsamples again?
    My sister and my ex regularly make stock. 2 more
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625
    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    I bloody love that "use the bones for stock" total bollocks from esp. TV chefs.

    I doubt there are more than 10 people in the country who ever do that.
    I tried to do it once. Didn’t work and have never bothered again.
    How very odd. I boil up the bones, skin, fat and an onion and have great jelly-like stock for a risotto, with as many bits of meat as I haven't eaten, and/or scraped off thje carcass. Been doing it for decades. And I've never got beyond the Scottish bourgeois c. 1920 plus Delia Smith level.

    Edit: but TUD has got in before me.

    Anecdata, but as with Brexit, maybe the Scots really are different ... that '10 people in the country' is absolutely astounding. Do you think they mean the Republic of Sealand or something?
    Likewise, I do it fairly regularly - how can you miss? Pile everything in a pot, simmer for a couple of hours??
    Excellent. That's 4 out of the 10 already, 3 in Scotland. What was that abotu subsamples again?
    My sister and my ex regularly make stock. 2 more
    My brother does this as well.....
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149
    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    Must be some chicken at 2.50 though, I thought you could get cheap one's for a Fiver but must be either a sparrow or radioactive.
    https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/292278149

    My local Tesco always has this available at £2.50 with a clubcard. 🤷‍♂️
    Don’t wave to toil the point, but that chicken provides 2300 calories. The idea it could ‘feed a family for days’ is a stretch, unless you are feeding Rishi Sunak and his leprechaun sister
    In other words, it needs to be extended with cheap calories ... like a chicken nugget, only superior one hopes.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772
    TOPPING said:

    malcolmg said:

    TOPPING said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    I bloody love that "use the bones for stock" total bollocks from esp. TV chefs.

    I doubt there are more than 10 people in the country who ever do that.
    My wife uses the carcass to make stock and then soup every time. We only eat organic chicken and always
    use all that is left for stock.
    Blimey you and @Theuniondivvie showing the way culinarily north of the border. I wonder who are the other eight people who do it?

    Edit: and @Carnyx.

    The Magnificent Seven are out there somewhere (and seemingly north of Coldstream).
    We do it too, and did so before we moved north of the border. It probably helps that we don't pick the carcass clean before boiling it, so it's not just the bones contributing to the stock.

    I wouldn't do it with a £2.50 chicken though.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149
    gealbhan said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    As long as your kids are small, you can have roast chicken on day one, chicken risotto on day two, and soup on day three (or for lunch).

    Yeah risotto is one of the easier things to cook.
    You can do risotto in the microwave, it's about the easiest thing to make.
    How? You mean those packets of microwaveable 2mins rice?

    Don't breathe a word of what you just said to @Cyclefree I'm guessing.
    No, regular risotto rice. I think it's a Delia recipe. It's very easy and delicious.
    Are you talking about "rice" which happens to be arborio rice?

    A risotto and microwaving risotto rice might be different things.
    Naah.

    Fry onion till soft in a thick based pan, chuck in rice and dollop of stock and water, plus X, simmer without burning till cooked and liquid absorbed to taste. That's it.

    Basic approach to kedgeree, risotto, etc. Paella too. Only difference is X.

    Kedgeree - bit of curry with the onion. X = frozen peas and sultanas and (at end) separately boiled Finnan haddock and/or frozen NA prawns, and/or boiled egg.

    Risotto - red pepper fried with the onion. X= mushrooms, peas, carrots, plus chicken, egg, prawn, whatever.

    Paella - not too sure ...
    Sounds like a Pilaf.

    I tend to soften the onion in butter, stir in rice and turmeric and cardamom before adding stock, and soften, not fry, tomatoes in evol and tarragon in a separate pan.

    so simple. The mix of buttery rice and grassy oil tomatoes creates a taste sensation.
    Thanks - that's interesting. Will explore that.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    As long as your kids are small, you can have roast chicken on day one, chicken risotto on day two, and soup on day three (or for lunch).

    Yeah risotto is one of the easier things to cook.
    You can do risotto in the microwave, it's about the easiest thing to make.
    How? You mean those packets of microwaveable 2mins rice?

    Don't breathe a word of what you just said to @Cyclefree I'm guessing.
    No, regular risotto rice. I think it's a Delia recipe. It's very easy and delicious.
    Are you talking about "rice" which happens to be arborio rice?

    A risotto and microwaving risotto rice might be different things.
    Naah.

    Fry onion till soft in a thick based pan, chuck in rice and dollop of stock and water, plus X, simmer without burning till cooked and liquid absorbed to taste. That's it.

    Basic approach to kedgeree, risotto, etc. Paella too. Only difference is X.

    Kedgeree - bit of curry with the onion. X = frozen peas and sultanas and (at end) separately boiled Finnan haddock and/or frozen NA prawns, and/or boiled egg.

    Risotto - red pepper fried with the onion. X= mushrooms, peas, carrots, plus chicken, egg, prawn, whatever.

    Paella - not too sure ...
    You lost me at "fry onion...."
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149
    gealbhan said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    TOPPING said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    As long as your kids are small, you can have roast chicken on day one, chicken risotto on day two, and soup on day three (or for lunch).

    Yeah risotto is one of the easier things to cook.
    You can do risotto in the microwave, it's about the easiest thing to make.
    How? You mean those packets of microwaveable 2mins rice?

    Don't breathe a word of what you just said to @Cyclefree I'm guessing.
    No, regular risotto rice. I think it's a Delia recipe. It's very easy and delicious.
    Are you talking about "rice" which happens to be arborio rice?

    A risotto and microwaving risotto rice might be different things.
    Naah.

    Fry onion till soft in a thick based pan, chuck in rice and dollop of stock and water, plus X, simmer without burning till cooked and liquid absorbed to taste. That's it.

    Basic approach to kedgeree, risotto, etc. Paella too. Only difference is X.

    Kedgeree - bit of curry with the onion. X = frozen peas and sultanas and (at end) separately boiled Finnan haddock and/or frozen NA prawns, and/or boiled egg.

    Risotto - red pepper fried with the onion. X= mushrooms, peas, carrots, plus chicken, egg, prawn, whatever.

    Paella - not too sure ...
    Sounds like a Pilaf.

    I tend to soften the onion in butter, stir in rice and turmeric and cardamom before adding stock, and soften, not fry, tomatoes in evol and tarragon in a separate pan.

    so simple. The mix of buttery rice and grassy oil tomatoes creates a taste sensation.
    I forgot to say we use arborio or 'risotto' rice for the risotto and Basmati for the kedgeree. What's in your pilaf?
  • FF43FF43 Posts: 15,545
    edited July 2021
    IshmaelZ said:

    TOPPING said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    I bloody love that "use the bones for stock" total bollocks from esp. TV chefs.

    I doubt there are more than 10 people in the country who ever do that.
    It was what Elizabeth David hated most about English cooking. If a Frenchman wants chicken stock he takes one whole fresh chicken, boils it up with onions and celery,and throws away the carcase. What's the point of bone-flavoured water?
    The flavour, such as it is, is in the bones, not the flesh.

    Which brings me to a mini-bugbear. The WHOLE POINT of soup is the meat stock. Whether it's flavoured water or a hearty broth. Vegetarian soup is like frozen yoghurt. Sort of OK if for reasons, you can't have the real thing.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,184
    malcolmg said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    Absolutely. With that chicken (£2.66 1.2-1.6kg - a "few days" for a family?!) you need some veg and some pots and pans and an oven and perhaps some spuds and some oil or butter and a chopping board and knife and some space and perhaps some herbs maybe not and some greaseproof paper or kitchen foil maybe even gravy. And then you need to stick the chicken in the oven at the right time for an hour or so and then prepare the potatoes and the vegetables and then cook those and then have it all on the plate for your family. And then do the same thing or differently for the next "few days".

    You are an exemplar in that you think nothing of doing this and all that suffers is a few dozen posts you might otherwise enlighten PB with.

    Not everyone is in the same position and the thought of "cooking" really is quite a psychological, physical and practical hurdle.
    I think the issue is that British people have been conditioned to think of cooking as a chore when it isn't. It also doesn't help that British cuisine is generally pretty awful and tastes in this country have moved to prefer Asian or Southern European flavours which many find impenetrably difficult to cook for themselves. There was little motivation for a generation of Brits to learn to cook because all we had was British food, but now that the skills are lost it's difficult to retrain a society into cooking properly again. Hence shows like that stupid 15 minute meals by Jamie Oliver or other shows that try and teach "tricks" of how to cook quickly etc...
    Oliver's 15 minute meals is an absolute massive con trick.
    Complete bollox for sure
    Why? Is it one of those cookbooks whose timings are based on the assumption that you have already prepped everything?
  • gealbhangealbhan Posts: 2,362
    Andy_JS said:

    I don't know, it just looks like churn from which lefty / left of centre party, lefties / left of centre like.

    Westminster Voting Intention:

    CON: 44% (-1)
    LAB: 31% (-1)
    LDM: 12% (+4)
    GRN: 4% (-2)
    REF: 1% (-1)

    Via
    @Kantar_UKI
    , 7-12 July
    Changes w/ 7 June

    Tories still defying gravity. I just find it mind blowing they are still on ~42% (as an average of the past 4-5 polls). Huge scandal of Hancock, COVID cases rising, all the divisive culture war stuff, and 44% in this poll.

    The big thing in all these polls, Labour don't seem to be benefitting at all. I am guessing Stamer's approach of government are reckless, useless, waste of space, but I would basically do the same isn't helping Labour.
    Not surprised by these figures. Labour won't recover with the non-metropolitan working-classes unless it stops being so Woke, which is very unlikely to happen because it would upset their members in the big cities.
    Or it might just be Covid/vaccine related, and the true gap if any between the parties not possible for polling companies to get right until things return to normal?
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,124
    ClippP said:

    felix said:

    eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    MaxPB said:

    Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.

    Rubbish, the main reason the Tories have a majority of 80 and seats in white working class former Labour heartlands in the North and Midlands is down to Boris.

    Anyway, even if the Tories saw a 10% swing to the LDs in the South in 2023/24 the LDs would still only pick up about 25 seats, which would still give a narrow Tory majority of 30 if Boris held the Red Wall.

    Boris is the most successful Tory election winner since Thatcher and when they got rid of her it did not end well. The Tories then proceeded to lose 3 out of the next 4 general elections and even when they returned to power in 2010 it was without a majority
    Careful now, tiger - dismissing me yesterday and @MaxPB today (both of whom, I'm guessing, voted Cons in 2019) is making your "who cares" work even harder.

    What would Oscar say in such a situation...
    I live in a three way marginal seat. If the Lib Dems prove themselves to be a serious party (stop laughing) by 2023/24 I know where my vote is going. If not I'll sit on my hands, I can't vote for the Tories led by Boris. The guy is a complete numpty.
    But he has an 80-seat majority...
    I honestly don't see how the Tories hold on to Finchley and Golders Green next time. Unless they can make the Lib Dems and Labour fight it out the Lib Dems will walk it.
    +1 - I don't see why Labour would bother fighting that sort of seat in London - if they don't already have it there are better seats to fight in the next election.
    Labour will paper candidate. Starmer and Davey are not idiots
    They kind of are. In a GE they will not stand aside to help each other out. The membership won't put up with it. And if they do try it watch the voters respond.
    I think the Spanish sun is getting to poor old Felix. In the Chesham and Amersham byelection, Labour threw their Deputy Leader and hundreds of their MPs into the fight - hardly "standing aside" - and even so they lost their deposit. The voters did indeed respond. Definitely not the Conservative Party, as it has now evolved.

    You missed that I said GE not BE. Something for you to ponder.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    https://order-order.com/2021/07/15/sadiq-khans-u-turn-on-controversial-statues/

    Will there be a plaque with this statue explaining his past actions?
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,674
    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    I bloody love that "use the bones for stock" total bollocks from esp. TV chefs.

    I doubt there are more than 10 people in the country who ever do that.
    I tried to do it once. Didn’t work and have never bothered again.
    How very odd. I boil up the bones, skin, fat and an onion and have great jelly-like stock for a risotto, with as many bits of meat as I haven't eaten, and/or scraped off thje carcass. Been doing it for decades. And I've never got beyond the Scottish bourgeois c. 1920 plus Delia Smith level.

    Edit: but TUD has got in before me.

    Anecdata, but as with Brexit, maybe the Scots really are different ... that '10 people in the country' is absolutely astounding. Do you think they mean the Republic of Sealand or something?
    3 of us so far all do it, wonder where the other 7 live.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712
    MaxPB said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    MaxPB said:

    Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.

    Rubbish, the main reason the Tories have a majority of 80 and seats in white working class former Labour heartlands in the North and Midlands is down to Boris.

    Anyway, even if the Tories saw a 10% swing to the LDs in the South in 2023/24 the LDs would still only pick up about 25 seats, which would still give a narrow Tory majority of 30 if Boris held the Red Wall.

    Boris is the most successful Tory election winner since Thatcher and when they got rid of her it did not end well. The Tories then proceeded to lose 3 out of the next 4 general elections and even when they returned to power in 2010 it was without a majority
    Careful now, tiger - dismissing me yesterday and @MaxPB today (both of whom, I'm guessing, voted Cons in 2019) is making your "who cares" work even harder.

    What would Oscar say in such a situation...
    I live in a three way marginal seat. If the Lib Dems prove themselves to be a serious party (stop laughing) by 2023/24 I know where my vote is going. If not I'll sit on my hands, I can't vote for the Tories led by Boris. The guy is a complete numpty.
    I like and respect you hugely Max. Some principles, perhaps you can be one of the people who can put the Tories back into the mainstream, as a party I might vote one day vote for (again)
    Unlikely given that I'm not in the party and tbh, I don't think I'll be tempted to join until the likes of HYFUD are made to feel unwelcome and move to some other party or go independent.
    Given we are on 40%+ in every poll you will be waiting a long time for that, I am actually on the moderate end of the current Tory Party
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    edited July 2021
    OK OK SO EVERY FUCKER ON HERE EITHER USES CHICKEN BONES FOR STOCK OR KNOWS/IS RELATED TO SOMEONE WHO DOES.

    Did you all really not read my post properly?? I said there are only 10 people in the country who _don't_ "use the bones for stock".

    Sheesh.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    Must be some chicken at 2.50 though, I thought you could get cheap one's for a Fiver but must be either a sparrow or radioactive.
    https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/292278149

    My local Tesco always has this available at £2.50 with a clubcard. 🤷‍♂️
    Don’t wave to toil the point, but that chicken provides 2300 calories. The idea it could ‘feed a family for days’ is a stretch, unless you are feeding Rishi Sunak and his leprechaun sister
    You don't have vegetables with your meal? And I meant one of three meals a day not breakfast, lunch and dinner.

    ~250 calories of protein per adult, ~100 per child for your meat and that's ~700 calories per day. So 2300 can cover three days.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,922
    Leon said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Ummm... if Coronavirus was designed as a weapon by the Chinese, wouldn't the first step have been able to treat it? Yet, the Chinese vaccines have been late and crap. Their case fatality rates have been five times those in the West. And they've had to go to extreme measures (welding people in homes) to stop it killing hundreds of millions of their own citizens.

    Also, if you were going to design a weapon, the very last thing you'd want is something that could be hosted by over 200 mammalian species - because that basically guarantees you'll never be able to be rid of the bloody thing.

    Edit to add:

    There are certain characteristics you want for a good bioweapon:

    1. You don't want a long period from infection to being able to detect it, because then you'll never be able to stop it entering your country.
    2. You want a virus that isn't able to mutate, so that it won't be able to evade the vaccines you've prepared for your own citizens.
    3. You want it to take out or disable the young, while (ideally) leaving the old to their own devices.
    4. You want it to affect humans only.

    Covid 19 is a *terrible* bioweapon, that culls the old from places with terrible dependency ratios. That is hard to keep from your country. And which is hosted by hundreds of other species, and therefore will never be truly eliminated.

    Sean T, ex of this same manor
    Who? Never 'eard of 'im!!!
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772
    Cookie said:

    malcolmg said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    Absolutely. With that chicken (£2.66 1.2-1.6kg - a "few days" for a family?!) you need some veg and some pots and pans and an oven and perhaps some spuds and some oil or butter and a chopping board and knife and some space and perhaps some herbs maybe not and some greaseproof paper or kitchen foil maybe even gravy. And then you need to stick the chicken in the oven at the right time for an hour or so and then prepare the potatoes and the vegetables and then cook those and then have it all on the plate for your family. And then do the same thing or differently for the next "few days".

    You are an exemplar in that you think nothing of doing this and all that suffers is a few dozen posts you might otherwise enlighten PB with.

    Not everyone is in the same position and the thought of "cooking" really is quite a psychological, physical and practical hurdle.
    I think the issue is that British people have been conditioned to think of cooking as a chore when it isn't. It also doesn't help that British cuisine is generally pretty awful and tastes in this country have moved to prefer Asian or Southern European flavours which many find impenetrably difficult to cook for themselves. There was little motivation for a generation of Brits to learn to cook because all we had was British food, but now that the skills are lost it's difficult to retrain a society into cooking properly again. Hence shows like that stupid 15 minute meals by Jamie Oliver or other shows that try and teach "tricks" of how to cook quickly etc...
    Oliver's 15 minute meals is an absolute massive con trick.
    Complete bollox for sure
    Why? Is it one of those cookbooks whose timings are based on the assumption that you have already prepped everything?
    That you have a sous-chef to do the prep for you.

    The first couple of times my daughter cooked dinner we didn't end up eating until about 9pm. She was very careful when chopping an onion, say, and everything was unfamiliar, so took her much longer.

    I can sympathise with people who find it intimidating. I remember what it was like when I used to try to follow recipes exactly - using exactly half an onion, etc.
  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149
    edited July 2021
    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    Must be some chicken at 2.50 though, I thought you could get cheap one's for a Fiver but must be either a sparrow or radioactive.
    https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/292278149

    My local Tesco always has this available at £2.50 with a clubcard. 🤷‍♂️
    Don’t wave to toil the point, but that chicken provides 2300 calories. The idea it could ‘feed a family for days’ is a stretch, unless you are feeding Rishi Sunak and his leprechaun sister
    Further to that, some good ideas for feeding the poor here.

    http://www.workhouses.org.uk/life/food.shtml

    Look at the Abingdon workus menu.

    Dinner (some days): cooked meat with veg, 5 oz. That chicken wouldn't go far if that 5 oz (about 130g) included only meat with veg extra. Or if veg and water are included then that's more like being able to provide 'a family for a few days'. Not much of a comparison is it?
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,625
    TOPPING said:

    OK OK SO EVERY FUCKER ON HERE EITHER USES CHICKEN BONES FOR STOCK OR KNOWS/IS RELATED TO SOMEONE WHO DOES.

    Did you all really not read my post properly?? I said there are only 10 people in the country who _don't_ "use the bones for stock".

    Sheesh.

    11 billion SeanTs do as well, apparently...
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    Cookie said:

    malcolmg said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    Absolutely. With that chicken (£2.66 1.2-1.6kg - a "few days" for a family?!) you need some veg and some pots and pans and an oven and perhaps some spuds and some oil or butter and a chopping board and knife and some space and perhaps some herbs maybe not and some greaseproof paper or kitchen foil maybe even gravy. And then you need to stick the chicken in the oven at the right time for an hour or so and then prepare the potatoes and the vegetables and then cook those and then have it all on the plate for your family. And then do the same thing or differently for the next "few days".

    You are an exemplar in that you think nothing of doing this and all that suffers is a few dozen posts you might otherwise enlighten PB with.

    Not everyone is in the same position and the thought of "cooking" really is quite a psychological, physical and practical hurdle.
    I think the issue is that British people have been conditioned to think of cooking as a chore when it isn't. It also doesn't help that British cuisine is generally pretty awful and tastes in this country have moved to prefer Asian or Southern European flavours which many find impenetrably difficult to cook for themselves. There was little motivation for a generation of Brits to learn to cook because all we had was British food, but now that the skills are lost it's difficult to retrain a society into cooking properly again. Hence shows like that stupid 15 minute meals by Jamie Oliver or other shows that try and teach "tricks" of how to cook quickly etc...
    Oliver's 15 minute meals is an absolute massive con trick.
    Complete bollox for sure
    Why? Is it one of those cookbooks whose timings are based on the assumption that you have already prepped everything?
    Or have a pot of some obscure spice that you have never heard of from which you need a pinch.
  • turbotubbsturbotubbs Posts: 14,884

    Scottish Covid numbers well down again

    Can't be right, everyone keeps telling me that we'll be having 100,000 cases a day soon etc etc etc
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,257
    TOPPING said:

    OK OK SO EVERY FUCKER ON HERE EITHER USES CHICKEN BONES FOR STOCK OR KNOWS/IS RELATED TO SOMEONE WHO DOES.

    Did you all really not read my post properly?? I said there are only 10 people in the country who _don't_ "use the bones for stock".

    Sheesh.

    I, for one, do not boil up the bones.* Any more? :tongue:

    *Might try it though, my gran used to do it and she was a very fine cook...
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,184
    Leon said:

    Carnyx said:

    Carnyx said:

    TOPPING said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    I don’t know why you’d lie about this but ‘a few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken is ridiculous

    Let’s say a family is four hungry mouths. They will devour an entire roast chicken in one sitting, easily. And they might still be hungry

    You’re then left with a few bones which you could boil down for stock (with vegetables) and make a HYUFDy hot broth which could furnish lunch I guess (with bread). That’s it
    I bloody love that "use the bones for stock" total bollocks from esp. TV chefs.

    I doubt there are more than 10 people in the country who ever do that.
    I tried to do it once. Didn’t work and have never bothered again.
    How very odd. I boil up the bones, skin, fat and an onion and have great jelly-like stock for a risotto, with as many bits of meat as I haven't eaten, and/or scraped off thje carcass. Been doing it for decades. And I've never got beyond the Scottish bourgeois c. 1920 plus Delia Smith level.

    Edit: but TUD has got in before me.

    Anecdata, but as with Brexit, maybe the Scots really are different ... that '10 people in the country' is absolutely astounding. Do you think they mean the Republic of Sealand or something?
    Likewise, I do it fairly regularly - how can you miss? Pile everything in a pot, simmer for a couple of hours??
    Excellent. That's 4 out of the 10 already, 3 in Scotland. What was that abotu subsamples again?
    My sister and my ex regularly make stock. 2 more
    I make stock once a year, after Christmas dinner. Because it's part of the routine. It's nice to do, but from a purely cost/benefit assessment it's a massive use of time to get a product you could buy for almost nothing.
    If you quite enjoy it or get satisfaction from using everything, fair enough. I find it a bit of a pain in the arse, to be honest.
    My mum and my mother-in-law make stock, of course. That generation do. And my mum's cooking is, of course, the standard to which everything else I taste needs to aspire.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,771
    Selebian said:

    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    Absolutely. With that chicken (£2.66 1.2-1.6kg - a "few days" for a family?!) you need some veg and some pots and pans and an oven and perhaps some spuds and some oil or butter and a chopping board and knife and some space and perhaps some herbs maybe not and some greaseproof paper or kitchen foil maybe even gravy. And then you need to stick the chicken in the oven at the right time for an hour or so and then prepare the potatoes and the vegetables and then cook those and then have it all on the plate for your family. And then do the same thing or differently for the next "few days".

    You are an exemplar in that you think nothing of doing this and all that suffers is a few dozen posts you might otherwise enlighten PB with.

    Not everyone is in the same position and the thought of "cooking" really is quite a psychological, physical and practical hurdle.
    I think the issue is that British people have been conditioned to think of cooking as a chore when it isn't. It also doesn't help that British cuisine is generally pretty awful and tastes in this country have moved to prefer Asian or Southern European flavours which many find impenetrably difficult to cook for themselves. There was little motivation for a generation of Brits to learn to cook because all we had was British food, but now that the skills are lost it's difficult to retrain a society into cooking properly again. Hence shows like that stupid 15 minute meals by Jamie Oliver or other shows that try and teach "tricks" of how to cook quickly etc...
    Yes that's true but on another level, when I am feeling up and happy with life, I might think nothing of creating some great culinary feast, perhaps I'll try pork belly or slow cooked shoulder of lamb, using those once every six months herbs, and preparing everything in neat little bowls before I cook it all, perhaps with a glass of fino sherry to hand and listening to some nice music. Me time in the kitchen.

    That is very far from every day for a family.

    When I am knacked and have had a shitty day I think fuck that let's get a MickeyDs/Dominos/out to the supermarket for something that I literally have to think no longer than 3 minutes about.

    And I would class myself as relatively (to the median income receiver) quite well off, etc.
    When I'm knackered and had a shitty day then I'll typically be lazy and use frozen food. Prepared frozen veg, in the microwave. Frozen meat, pop that in our Airfryer. Frozen chips in the airfryer too. About 12-15 minutes for the airfryer to cook the meat and the meal is done.

    Lazy meal, quicker, cheaper and easier than going out for any takeaway.
    I have sympathy with your viewpoint (and in our family of four, we also can make a chicken, probably a bit bigger than the £2.50 one linked, last three days - one day roast, two days in a pie, with lots of other stuff - we normally work on three adult servings when using a recipe, so 8-9 adult servings equivalent).

    But there is a valid point (Topping, was it?) about investment. Your air fryer sounds great, but I expect it costs at least a few supermarket ready meals to buy one and why would you if you don't have any idea what to do with it? We have a slow cooker which is great for easy and big batch meals (not 'quick', obviously!) and they can be picked up for £30-£40, but we only got one, despite enjoying cooking, when a relative bought one for us - we hadn't realised the possibilities before.

    In our house, a quick really can't be arsed meal is omelette (bacon, cheese, mushroom) with spiced wedges and some frozen veg if there's nothing handy in the garden. Half an hour start to finish with only about ten minute of semi-intensive effort at the end. But an awful lot of people simply don't know how to do that and even using those few pans/trays can be a blocker.

    It's very easy for those of us with a little know-how, a reasonably well equipped basic kitchen and cupboards/freezers filled with basic ingredients to rustle up something tasty in no time for very little money. But it's know-how and time. Before I had a work-provided laptop, my last four laptops were fairly recent thinkpads bought broken on ebay, repaired by me with the aid of the thinkpad hardware maintenance manuals and all for less than the crappiest laptops in Currys. But most people don't do that - they go to Currys and, if on a budget, get something 'cheap' that is both poor quality, won't last, is hard to repair and is expensive for what it is. It's the same with food.
    What an excellent comment.

    If you know what you're doing, and have a well equipped kitchen, it's easy to eat well cheaply: a portion of risotto is perhaps 40p, an omelette maybe only sightly more.

    But most people don't know what they're doing.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,674
    Cookie said:

    malcolmg said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    Absolutely. With that chicken (£2.66 1.2-1.6kg - a "few days" for a family?!) you need some veg and some pots and pans and an oven and perhaps some spuds and some oil or butter and a chopping board and knife and some space and perhaps some herbs maybe not and some greaseproof paper or kitchen foil maybe even gravy. And then you need to stick the chicken in the oven at the right time for an hour or so and then prepare the potatoes and the vegetables and then cook those and then have it all on the plate for your family. And then do the same thing or differently for the next "few days".

    You are an exemplar in that you think nothing of doing this and all that suffers is a few dozen posts you might otherwise enlighten PB with.

    Not everyone is in the same position and the thought of "cooking" really is quite a psychological, physical and practical hurdle.
    I think the issue is that British people have been conditioned to think of cooking as a chore when it isn't. It also doesn't help that British cuisine is generally pretty awful and tastes in this country have moved to prefer Asian or Southern European flavours which many find impenetrably difficult to cook for themselves. There was little motivation for a generation of Brits to learn to cook because all we had was British food, but now that the skills are lost it's difficult to retrain a society into cooking properly again. Hence shows like that stupid 15 minute meals by Jamie Oliver or other shows that try and teach "tricks" of how to cook quickly etc...
    Oliver's 15 minute meals is an absolute massive con trick.
    Complete bollox for sure
    Why? Is it one of those cookbooks whose timings are based on the assumption that you have already prepped everything?
    I only saw it a few times on the telly. You would need a day to go buy the list of ingredients and then it was edited to hell as no way would it be done in 15 mins, lots of preparation etc. eg


    Ingredients out • Kettle boiled • Medium lidded pan, medium-high heat • Food processor (bowl blade) • Large frying pan, high heat
    START COOKING
    Put the quinoa into the pan and generously cover with boiling water and the lid.
    Put the chilli, spinach, trimmed spring onions and coriander (reserving a few leaves) into the processor, tear in the top leafy half of the mint, then blitz until finely chopped.
    On a large sheet of greaseproof paper, toss the chicken with sea salt, black pepper, the allspice and paprika. Fold over the paper, then bash and flatten the chicken to 1.5cm thick with a rolling pin.
    Put into the frying pan with 1 tablespoon of olive oil, turning after 3 or 4 minutes, or until blackened and cooked through.
    Deseed the peppers, cut each one into 8 strips and add to the frying pan, tossing regularly. Peel and cut the mango into chunks.
    Drain the quinoa and rinse under the cold tap, then drain well again and tip on to a serving board or platter. Toss with the blitzed spinach mixture, squeeze over the lime juice, add the extra virgin olive oil, mix well and season to taste.
    Sprinkle the mango chunks and cooked peppers over the quinoa. Halve and destone the avocado, then use a teaspoon to scoop curls of it over the salad.
    Slice up the chicken, toss the slices in any juices and add to the salad. Crumble over the feta, scatter over the remaining coriander leaves and snip over the cress. Serve with dollops of yoghurt.

  • CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 39,149

    Leon said:

    malcolmg said:

    Leon said:

    Listening to Dimbleby Jnr talk about his food report. One thing that stuck out was basically him saying high quality meat such a steak and roast chicken is fine, but need to cut right down on processed cheap meat based products from our diets.

    This highlights the crux of the problem.

    I, as much of PB I would think, can and probably already do this. £6-7 for a decent steak is fine for my tea, but then we know that the richer you are now the less likely you are to be massive overweight, eat better etc.

    Those on low income are never paying £30-40 for one family meal of decent steak or a good quality whole chicken, hence why its chicken nug nugs etc.

    I don't know how you square that circle.

    I don't see why chicken is an issue.

    I can get a whole chicken from Tesco for £2.50, less than the cost of a single Happy Meal, and get a few days worth of meals from that chicken for the whole family.

    Again it comes more down to the willingness, desire, inclination and ability to cook than it does the affordability.
    You can get a ‘few days of family meals’ from one £2.50 chicken?! Impressive. Also unbelievable
    Yes I can. I don't know why you think I'd lie about that.

    But even if you just get one family meal from a whole chicken, its just as cheap as buying crap food and far cheaper than buying a McDonalds or other takeaways.
    Must be some chicken at 2.50 though, I thought you could get cheap one's for a Fiver but must be either a sparrow or radioactive.
    https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/292278149

    My local Tesco always has this available at £2.50 with a clubcard. 🤷‍♂️
    Don’t wave to toil the point, but that chicken provides 2300 calories. The idea it could ‘feed a family for days’ is a stretch, unless you are feeding Rishi Sunak and his leprechaun sister
    You don't have vegetables with your meal? And I meant one of three meals a day not breakfast, lunch and dinner.

    ~250 calories of protein per adult, ~100 per child for your meat and that's ~700 calories per day. So 2300 can cover three days.
    Bit of news for ytou.

    Chickens have fat and skin. That's some of the calories unuseable.
    Lots of calories in the bone. Are you a lammergeier or a hyena?
    And how big are the hypothetical bairns?
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,712
    edited July 2021
    MaxPB said:

    eek said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    MaxPB said:

    TOPPING said:

    HYUFD said:

    MaxPB said:

    Boris is trash. His speech was bullshit and the pretence that he isn't robbing the south to bribe voters in the north is no longer credible. Honestly, it's time for the toy party to pull the trigger and get rid.

    Rubbish, the main reason the Tories have a majority of 80 and seats in white working class former Labour heartlands in the North and Midlands is down to Boris.

    Anyway, even if the Tories saw a 10% swing to the LDs in the South in 2023/24 the LDs would still only pick up about 25 seats, which would still give a narrow Tory majority of 30 if Boris held the Red Wall.

    Boris is the most successful Tory election winner since Thatcher and when they got rid of her it did not end well. The Tories then proceeded to lose 3 out of the next 4 general elections and even when they returned to power in 2010 it was without a majority
    Careful now, tiger - dismissing me yesterday and @MaxPB today (both of whom, I'm guessing, voted Cons in 2019) is making your "who cares" work even harder.

    What would Oscar say in such a situation...
    I live in a three way marginal seat. If the Lib Dems prove themselves to be a serious party (stop laughing) by 2023/24 I know where my vote is going. If not I'll sit on my hands, I can't vote for the Tories led by Boris. The guy is a complete numpty.
    But he has an 80-seat majority...
    I honestly don't see how the Tories hold on to Finchley and Golders Green next time. Unless they can make the Lib Dems and Labour fight it out the Lib Dems will walk it.
    +1 - I don't see why Labour would bother fighting that sort of seat in London - if they don't already have it there are better seats to fight in the next election.
    Chipping Barnet which borders on it will probably fall to the red team. My parents live in Enfield Southgate which is demographically perfect for the Tories as a leafy suburban area with average property prices in the high six figure range and an oversized proportion of City workers, it's now solid Labour, actually impenetrably so despite the MP being a complete joker.
    Enfield Southgate may have high average property prices but it is also a Remain seat with lots of renters.

    The most solid Tory seats now under Boris voted Leave and have high levels of home owners even if only average house prices ie more Harlow and less Enfield Southgate
This discussion has been closed.