Horses for Courses

There has been a lot of water under the bridge since my last outburst, and I have felt the rage building at story after story until I could no longer hold back, despite my new, joyous 4 hours of daily commuting rather depleting my hours available to blog. Like a hardened con waiting for his 'basic human right' of a conjugal visit, there's rather a lot stored up.

So where to start? Well we should probably go with the story that had the most direct and dire consequences for the public at large - likely widespread criminal behaviour in one of the most important sectors. A vile underbelly of corruption masquerading in a great illusion of quality forced on the unknowing British public. I speak, of course, of the HORSE MEAT SCANDAL! You'd be forgiven for thinking I meant the appalling NHS Mid-Staffs affair - the report detailing the horrific standards of care and indeed lack of basic human compassion reported that led to at least 1,200 deaths. You see, whilst that seems important, it appears we don't care very much about that, based on the column inches. No, we care much more that unscrupulous people have been selling Shergar in place of Daisy the cow.

Not to belittle the affair, but nobody is dead. Horse meat in general is perfectly edible. Clearly the issue is with mis-selling (and making a profit from selling a cheaper meat as a dearer one) and quality (if you don't know what is in it, you don't know how good it is or if it is safe/organic/volunteer beef). Fair enough there's been a bit of a hoo-hah about this, but the perspective is very wrong.

We don't mind eating chicken nuggets (some of us), and having carved a chicken up last Sunday, I certainly didn't find any naturally occuring ones. We knowingly put in our mouths things which are labelled one thing because of a sometimes rather loose connection with one of the ingredients - think turkey twizzlers, beef kebabs and value pork chipolatas. There are all sorts of filler put in cheap meats the world around - to use my favourite quote that I crowbarred into every history A level essay I wrote; "laws are like sausages, it's best not seeing one made".

Otto von Bismarck's erudite point is certainly true of the (no pun intended) ghastly horse trading that today sees 1/2 a Lib dem policy and 1/2 a Tory policy put together to ensure the alienation of both sets of supporters in conjunction with an utterly useless piece of legislation. It is no less true of cheap meats, and has ever been thus. That someone has found that they can pass off selling horse is no surprise considering how much water-blasted shin gristle, 'reclaimed' scampi and sawdust-based fillers we've probably eaten in our time.

Surely there is a suitable legal chain whereby shops have a certain requirement for due diligence in confirming what they are being told they are receiving really is just that (they cannot personally monitor every animal from cradle to gravy, so it has to only be a reasonable level of diligence). If they have done that (as dictated no doubt by the FSA (not the banking one)), they're in the clear and can then sue their suppliers for reputational damage, whilst the courts can prosecute those who intentionally deceived them. If not, they're in hot water too. No matter how many people in the chain, the process works the same. Not surprising, not terribly important in the grand scheme of things and already perfectly well catered for in law. Move on shall we?

The actual big story though, is the elephant in the room. The Tories are so concerned by their lazy but extrmemely adhesive image of the nasty poor-bashing party that they dare not do the right thing over Mid-Staffs. It seems you simply cannot say that there are some useless people in the NHS. You also cannot say there are some nasty people in the NHS. No, every worker in the NHS goes to work wanting to do good.

Quite how everyone is content that every single one of the 0.5 million banking sector employees in this country go to work with greed and class-based hatred in their hearts, yet cannot countenance even one of the 1.5 million NHS employees not being 'an angel' is beyond me. We are a nation of morons, intent on buying into themes, not listening to facts and making sound judgements. It's how Labour are ahead in the polls where everyone thinks the economy is the most important thing but cannot see Labour have not produced a single economic policy in 3 years of Opposition since they totally ruined the country's finances for generations to come.

The Tories refuse to point out that whilst Sir David Nicholson certainly is accountable over all the deaths to a degree, what is far more important is that at least several hundred medical professionals are vastly more culpable in individual cases. No, the "system" and the "culture" wasn't right in many ways, and top management (and all the levels in between) have to take responsibility for that. However, to allow someone to dehydrate to death in bed, to give someone a vase of flowers to drink from, to allow someone to not be moved for days at a time causing fatal bed sores, to fail to monitor properly the care of over a thousand people (and they're only the ones who died - I dread to think how many suffered and survived), that is cold-hearted, even evil, certainly sackable, definitely culpable and probably criminal behaviour. And it must have been perpetrated by hundreds of nurses, doctors, ward sisters, health workers, care assitants etc.

Sod the "we don't learn by blaming" - I don't remember such restraint (still ongoing) regarding 'the bankers' (catch-all for every single person in the financial services, all misanthropic, all went to Eton (they must have big classrooms), all earn £1,000,000 a year, all eat babies and love Jimmy Savile). There are people in this "envy of the world" health system of ours that deserve to go to prison, not just fired and never again allowed to work in healthcare. But no, the Tories don't want to give the Grauniad et al the "nasty Tories turn on the NHS" headline they are dying to print. Which of course is why DC still won't cut their bloated budget despite the damage it is doing to other departments.

And the other reason we are quiet over the hundreds of awful and culpable workers? Because if we convince ourselves only the chief exec who will never have even set eyes on a single one of the victims is to blame, then as he wasn't also the chief exec of all the other hospital trusts, there's no chance this exact behaviour isn't mirrored in all parts of the country. If, however, we admit the NHS is a very sodding long way from perfect and throwing money at it doesn't cure it any more than applying a soothing balm constituted of £50 notes cures cancer, we might have to look under a lot more stones and find a lot more willful neglect and in some cases, outright abuse. And more dead people, naturally. And we wouldn't want that - we'd rather moan about pony arrabiata.

The Lack of Service Industry

I broke the law this weekend. Or to be more specific, the chef who cooked for me at Côte in Sloane Square broke the law. Apparently.

You see my wife and I were staying with friends nearby and had our hearts set on a breakfast of eggs benedict and other usual suspects. But after watching the last session of the test match in India, we were later out of the house than planned and arrived at a cafe on the Kings Road a whole six minutes after midday. The cafe in question was Blushes.

We sat down and were handed lunch menus. Wanting eggs and all that jazz, we asked if they were still serving brunch. Our (naturally) foreign waitress told us that they were not. What a shame, thought I. Nope, they finished serving breakfast at noon.

At this point I still had enough to be annoyed about to write this post. I found it bizarre that in a service industry, where repeat custom and tips are paramount, a little leeway over six minutes was not going to be possible to satisfy four customers who wanted to spend some money in their establishment buying brunch. Nope, there was no "I'll see if the kitchen can do that for you" that I expect and get in my local pub and anywhere that actually knows the value of proper service and that customers have very long memories that will keep them either away or keep them coming back again and again.

But the best was yet to come. You're going to love this. I nearly weed myself it was so good.

The response to my question of whether we could order instead from the breakfast menus she presumably was still in the process of clearing away…?

"It's illegal to serve from two different menus, so we cannot serve you breakfast during lunch"

Absolutely amazing. Illegal. I haven't looked it up. I already know, as do you, it is total and utter bullshit made up on the spot by a fucking moron with an issue with the truth ("Sorry, I can't be fucked to ask the chef"), no grasp of the concept of customer service and a tiny bit of power.

What did she get for her troubles? Well for starters I politely pointed out everything she was saying was pure unadulterated lies and she might want to not utter those words again lest every person in Chelsea come to realise she has the mental capacity of a slug. Then four paying customers got up, left her restaurant and spent their money 100 metres up the road. About £60 if I remember correctly. Nothing enormous, but we are in our early 30s, so in repeat custom I reckon that's going to add up over the next 50 or so years.

So the chef of the next cafe along, who were happy to serve us even after they were taking orders from their lunch menu must have broken the law. Or she was a dunce.

The White Man's Struggle

So I'm going to leave the heavyweight political stuff for a moment - and on a day of such political importance too! I know, I hear you ask "surely you can't be passing up the chance to write about the election of the year?" And I am. Because I couldn't give a fuck. In fact, worse than that, I don't want to vote. No, scratch that; I don't want there to be a vote on sodding police commissioners.

I think it is a shit idea. I don't think accountability is a shit idea. I think politicising the role is a shit idea. A really shit one. What they are really saying is the police service, like other public services is not accountable enough. Once you get high enough, it's hard to get booted out. You have to work really hard at it - you know, start shooting innocent civilians - that sort of thing. But their fix is not to look at the way that the public sector (civil service, police, military et al) promotes, demotes, apportions credit or blame, but instead to put a political figurehead at the helm and get people to vote them in and out.

Now I have no idea for what reason people are going to vote either way today. Some will know of the candidate and like the cut of his jib. Not many I would wager. Others will perhaps vote based on what little propaganda there has been about - and what similar claptrap it all has been. Who was going to put out a leaflet saying they would like to be lenient on crime, on the causes of crime, would like to increase red tape and make the community a less safe place? All total cock. Identical, total cock. No, most likely the Tory supporters will vote for the Tory candidate, the Labour supporters for the Labour candidate and presumably the Lib Dems just think we should all just get along in the shangri-la that exists only in their heads so probably don't need a police force let alone put forward a police commissioner candidate. So the result will have sod all to do with policing, though will have an impact upon it, and everything to do with current political sentiment. Which is pretty stupid if you ask me.

But that's not what I want to talk about today, because it's not really worth the internet paper upon which I have already written it. Nope, today I am gong to bang on for a good paragraph or two about the struggle of the white man - or more specifically the white bread man - against the sandwich Nazis…

I like sandwiches. I like toast. So, it seems do many people. My academic research for this post has been running for a decade or so. As such, it is the most deeply researched topic I have ever written about in this blog by pretty much ten years.

If you were to glance about in the supermarket on your weekly shop (by which I mean the proper, edge-of-town-high-street-murdering-uber-market supermarket that we are all up in arms about but shop at anyway because it's convenient and cheap), you would see almost an entire aisle of bread, I would wager. If you were to take an approximate calculation at the ratio of white to brown bread you would see in the pre-sliced 'Hovis/Kingsmill cuboid of bread in a colourful plastic bag' area, it's about 50:50. By 'brown' I also include granary et al - essentially a nice Nick Griffin-style definition of 'everything not perfectly white and pure'. In the 'fresh out of the in-house bakery' area it's probably 80:20 to the whites (oh, how Mitt Romney would love to see those stats).

I've been doing this for years. The ratios are pretty steady. Brown (or non-white) has been on the rise in the last decade or so as we try to eat more healthily, but it has plateaued. So, it logically follows that demand is about 50:50 at best (for the brown supporters).

Fine. Have your bread any colour you like - very much a personal choice. In a restaurant my wife will always choose the nuts, sun-dried tomatoes, capers and sawdust bread roll on offer (which surely barely makes it bread under advertising standards rules?) whilst I rootle around in the basket looking for something a child would put Dairylee on at lunch break. I have no objection to the healthy stuff. I just think it tastes like old shoes (though new shoes are not on my delicacy list either). I want the one pumped full of sugar and bleached to within an inch of its life. It's like the Coke/Diet Coke idea. If you're going to cheat, cheat big. What's the point of fannying about with Diet Coke? It's still not good for you, but the added bonus is it doesn't even taste good. They do create an amusing line in television advertisements though. Either way, it's pretty clear half the people who want bread want white bread, and half brown.

So why are all the fucking pre-made sandwiches in the world made with brown bread?

Do people who buy white bread only make breadcrumbs or croutons with it? Or toast it and add butter? Or feed it to the ducks? Are only brown bread purchasers turning these bread slices into sandwiches? Surely I cannot be the only person who likes white bread and can't be bothered to make his own sandwiches? Who did this definitive market research? It must be out there, because you can't get a white sandwich for love nor money. Everyone buys into it; supermarkets, petrol stations, newsagents, the lot. Half an aisle of white bread. Half an aisle of brown bread. Brown sandwiches. Bastards. The lot of them.

Every now and again you find a solitary white sandwich in there, probably with a crap filling, like egg and onion. Who is asking for onion in sandwiches? Or salads for that matter, but I digress…?

It upsets me. As you can no doubt tell. We are being discriminated against. We, the proud, unhealthy, white bread eaters of this world. We 50%. Our demographic is being under-represented in the sandwich industry. We need to stand up for our right to a proper pre-made sandwich selection, before it's too late.  I think I know how the suffragettes felt now...