It's my blogiversary, so consider this, in the immortal words of David Thompson, an 'open thread'.
Your landlady is taking the day off!
Monday 29 April 2024
Sunday 28 April 2024
Do Local News Editors Count On Their Fingers?
"In the early hours of Tuesday morning, October 13, 1914, a train of fifty trucks, filled with goods destined for the London shops and markets, and pulled by the latest pattern engine from the Eastleigh works, crashed headlong into a stationary line of trucks on the same line near Andover Junction."
Mathematicians (no, not you Diane, sit down!) will be quick to spot the glaring error there. Where have 10 years disappeared to?
Aha! Found them and updated the website.
H/T: Ian J via email
Saturday 27 April 2024
We Can't Persuade The Buyers....
...so we'll go to the source:
Healthier ready-to-eat meals could cut EU emissions by 48m tonnes annually and save customers €2.8bn (£2.4bn) each year, as well as reducing disease, a report has found. Fast food and ready meals provide more than a sixth of the EU’s calories but contain far more salt and meat than doctors recommend, according to an analysis from the consultancy Systemiq commissioned by environmental nonprofit organisations Fern and Madre Brava.
So much for the labelling systems - given a choice, customers buy what they like, not what government says they should buy. Are you listening, electric car manufacturers?
“Making ready meals healthier and more sustainable is a no-regrets policy,” said Eduardo Montero Mansilla from the Spanish Consumers and Users’ Federation, one of 10 non-governmental organisations that co-authored the report. “We can improve the health of people and the planet at affordable prices.”
The report explored the effects of making big food companies comply with diets from the World Health Organization, which aims to avoid malnutrition and non-communicable disease, and the EAT-Lancet Commission, which tries to reduce environmental as well as human harm. In both cases, they found that ready-to-eat meals would need to contain about half as many refined grains and two-thirds less meat, on average, as well as “significantly” more legumes.
So at least this will have one good effect if it's ever implimented - people will go back to cooking for themselves, so they can have food with meat and flavour.
“We are currently living in a diet-related health crisis,” said Alba Gil from the European Public Health Alliance, which co-authored the report. “Our dietary habits shape our health, and therefore our future. It makes only sense that policymakers regulate the environments where we consume food to make it healthy and affordable by design.”
It only makes sense to people with a powerful urge to make others conform by crushing their free will. I thought we had a name for people like that?
The NGOs called on the EU to require big food companies to comply with health and sustainability guidelines for ready-made meals sold in the EU. The report did not analyse how consumers would respond to such a proposal.
Because it already knows. It can see how they react in other markets!
And Let's All Hope It's Not The Last...
Marcus is a German citizen with pre-settled status in the UK, where he lives with his family: his partner, Holly Cullen-Davies, and his two stepchildren. Any non-citizen who has been sentenced to at least 12 months in prison is, unless they successfully appeal, automatically deported to their country of origin. According to the immigration charity Settled, this appears to be “the first time in the UK that the power of deportation has been used after a criminal conviction flowing from a protest.”Good. Living in the country isn't a right, it's a privilege. Abuse it, and get sent back where you came from.
Holly, a concert pianist and choir leader, cannot move to Germany: her children need to be close to their dad, and she’s committed to looking after her parents. I met them for the first time last week, and I’ve seldom come across such a devoted couple. But unless Marcus can successfully appeal, their right to family life will be cruelly snatched away.
Actions have consequences, George, boo hoo!
Holly told me: “It’s impossibly sad to face the possibility that we’ll be separated for life. It feels like an intolerable punishment for the whole family.”
This is just one example of the vindictiveness of a flailing political class seeking to snuff out democratic challenge.
He didn't decide to 'offer a democratic challenge' though, did he? He didn't stand for office, or organise a petition - he climbed an important piece of infrastructure and inconvenienced thousands, to try to force his own viewpoint on others. That's the very opposite of democratic,
Climate campaigners have recently been deprived of their right to explain their motives to a jury, so now they are tried as if they were mindless vandals. Those who have sought to explain nonetheless have been imprisoned for contempt of court. The 69-year-old Trudi Warner is being prosecuted at the government’s behest for holding a placard stating an accepted fact of British law: that juries have a right to act according to their conscience.
And it hasn't stopped her, because she was at the side entrance to Snaresbrook Crown Court when I arrived for jury service on Wednesday morning the week before last.
The home secretary could cancel Marcus’s deportation with one stroke. So far, 157,000 people have signed a petition urging him to do so. As injustice is piled upon injustice, a great cruelty is being done. We need our Robin Hoods.
Robin Hood (allegedly) robbed from the rich to give to the poor - he didn't stop the poor earning an honest living.
Friday 26 April 2024
It Should Have Been A Cull, Not A Ban...
“I think people assume that there are really few of these dogs around. I think people think this is generally confined to poorer neighbourhoods but it can happen anywhere.
“I felt sorry for the man. These may be loving pets but he was completely powerless. These dogs are so strong. “It was awful. The smaller dog looked like a rag on the floor not a dog. “Even if these dogs have to wear muzzles in public, they can still escape from their homes. We will see more of these attacks.”
I don'r feel sorry for the man, I reserve that for the small dog owner who - through no fault of her own - has lost her own pet and suffered injury vainly trying to save it.
The two XL bullies were seized by Sussex Police. The force said they are holding them in a secure kennel while an order for their destruction is sought “to ensure the safety of the public”.
The only good thing the ban has done is ensured the police cannot (as they would have done before) fob off victims with 'it's just dog on dog' and they will now put down the doughnuts and turn out. But then they will take the mutts alive and let them soak up taxpayer cash in kennels, instead of shooting them on the spot.
I Don't Think That's What's Meant By 'Traditional'...
The owner of an Indian restaurant which has been given a zero-star rating by council inspectors said the venue "deserves at least a four."
Sounds more like it deserves a closure order! What's the point of a rating like this if you can still carry on serving up platefuls of Delhi belly..?
Spice City in Liverpool city centre has been popular with generations of diners, with the Stanley Street restaurant promising on its website to "tantalise your taste buds in both our classic dishes and our exclusive Spice City Specials."
Council inspectors, though, were less than impressed when they visited last month. They slapped the venue with the lowest possible rating, with the results published on the Food Standards Authority website reflecting the need for "major" and "urgent" improvements in a number of areas.In the most recent inspection, on March 6, inspectors raised concerns over hygienic food handling, the cleanliness and condition of the facilities and building and management of food safety.
Yikes!
When contacted by the ECHO for a response, boss Niz Islam said he did not accept the rating was fair. He said: "I've been here for 18 years. I feel like I'm being unfairly marked. Last time they made me pay 900 quid just to replace a broken fridge."
Why did you have a broken fridge? You should have had a working one.
Speaking to the ECHO in 2019, Mr Islam said: "We find the older generation still love a good, proper curry. We have a lot of loyal regulars who say no matter what, they will always favour a traditional Indian curry."
With traditional Indian food poisoning?
Thursday 25 April 2024
I'm So Glad I Never Clapped For Them...
A retired nurse died after hospital staff mixed her up with a patient on a 'Do Not Resuscitate' notice. Pat Dawson, 73, was fit and healthy and had had no medical treatment in 30 years before suffering a suspected bowel obstruction, her family told an inquest. The widow and grandmother was taken to Royal Blackburn Hospital by ambulance but died after she collapsed and staff stopped attempts to resuscitate her following a look at 'her' notes.
And 'her' is in inverted comments there because the person to whom the DNR was relevant was a man.
By the time medics realised that a mix-up had left them reading a DNR report relating to a 90-year-old man, it was too late to save her. The inquest heard that staff failed to check the NHS number on Mrs Dawson's wristband or even the gender and age on the notes.
The NHS - the place where you can ignore all safeguards and get away with it by pleading 'overwork'.
Emergency consultant Ahmad Alabood called the tragedy an 'honest mistake because [staff] were rushing' when the unit was 'over-stretched and over-crowded'.
Oh, they were rushing? Well, forget the fact someone's dead, eh?
The inquest also heard details from an internal report by the hospital trust, which warned: 'Given the relentless pressure on A&E departments, the investigation is concerned that a similar event could occur in the future.'
Utterly shameless. And why shouldn't they be? In any other industry, say, building or engineering, someone would be going to prison or facing a huge fine at the very least. In the NHS, however...
Mrs Dawson's son, John, told the inquest in Accrington: 'I know that our mum would have been horrified by how the system she gave her life to failed her.
'It is beyond belief the catastrophic way in which she was failed, not only by one individual but by doctors who have sworn the Hippocratic oath to do no harm, and our mum paid the ultimate price.'
Unfortunately, it's not 'beyond belief' at all, and it'll continue not to be until NHS staff face proper consequences.
Maybe Kier Starmer Isn't As Bad As I Thought...
Sir Keir Starmer has been accused of not listening to the Labour party’s adviser on race relations.
Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon, who is the mother of murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence, is reported to have told a private meeting of Labour’s ethnic minority MPs and peers on Tuesday: “I wish Keir listened to me.”
It's to his credit that he doesn't, Frankly, we've all heard rather too much from you. And we've certainly spent far too much taxpayer money on you, yet I see we are about to waste even more.
It is alleged Baroness Lawrence complained of “gatekeepers” around the Labour leader who had prevented her work,The Times reported, and said she no longer knew how to respond to complaints about the party from black and minority ethnic voters.
The way she always responds, I assume - excuse them anything if they are black.
Her remarks — at a behind-closed-doors meeting of the black, Asian and minority ethnic section of the parliamentary Labour Party — come amidmounting disquiet about the treatment of Black and Asian Labour MPs and voters including long-standing investigation into Diane Abbott, Britain’s first black female MP.
She's not being investigated for the colour of her skin, but for the content of her character. A wise man once had something pithy to say about that.
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