Monday Moan 36

 

Latest from Sainsbury's on wasting food

I have received a response from Sainsbury's to my question about why their staff were throwing away good food rather than trying to sell it or give it away to a charity for needy people (see Moan 34).

 

“Thanks for your email.  We’re always happy to answer customer enquiries regarding our stores and services.   I can understand your concerns regarding food waste in our [XXX] store as you saw our staff in the process of clearing everything off the shelves and putting them into plastic bags marked for waste. I would therefore be happy to explain what we have in place to help reduce waste.

 

To implement our groundbreaking ground zero food waste to landfill programme we work to a clear hierarchy of reduce, reuse and recycle to divert food waste from landfill. We view waste as a valuable resource that can be treated in ways that both generate energy and reduce environmental impacts.

 

Our landfill diversion hierarchy starts with good stock control to reduce the generation of food waste. We also donate food that is within its 'use by' date to charity.

 

Our landfill diversion hierarchy then sets out the preferred options for the treatment of the remaining food waste. Our preferred choice is anaerobic digestion, which breaks down the food waste into fertiliser and methane gas, used to generate electricity. Each store or depot evaluates whether there is a suitable anaerobic digestion plant within practical distance. Our second tier of preferred waste treatment methods are In-Vessel Composting (IVC), Fluidised Bed Combustor (FBC) or Pyrolysis. Our third choice is incineration. We use 'backhauling' - using lorries on return journeys - to divert food waste to waste treatment.

 

We periodically revaluate our food waste processing choices. And as new anaerobic digestors are built we move towards this solution.

 

Now, I don’t know about you, but I think that response amounts to not much more than blowing a lot of hot air through a living waste disposal unit. It’s just a load of guff.

 

I have, of course, thanked them for it but put in a request that they actually address the issues I raised in my note to them.

 

Watch this space for any response.

 

Oscar comedy show

In a major breaking story today, the Government has announced that ‘Honest’ Harry Redknapp is to be asked to lead an inquiry into tax evasion.  It has also emerged that the Government has decided that the recent Leveson Inquiry was deeply flawed and it has appointed Rupert Murdoch to review it and come up with his own recommendations for action.

Unlikely, you might think.  But surely no more unlikely than asking a policeman facing attempted murder charges to run the investigation into the death of Reeva Steenkamp in the home she shared with Oscar Pistorius.

Yet this is exactly what happened in that case.  And it seems that every time I read about the case fresh lunacy has been uncovered.

The police case, widely leaked through the press, included such things as the victim having been beaten before being shot, of banned drugs being found at the scene and of a neighbour having heard shouting for an hour before the shooting.  In court it emerged that all three of these elements of the prosecution’s case were either wrong or dubious. The victim’s body showed no signs of any abuse apart from the gunshot wounds; the ‘banned’ drugs turned out to be herbal remedies; and the neighbour who heard “two people talking loudly at each other” appears to have been that rare person who can hear things clearly from huge distances, as their house was somewhere between 300 and 600 metres away, depending on which part of the police evidence you choose to believe.

Perhaps we ought to skip over ‘minor’ errors such as the chief investigating officer forgetting to wear protective covers on his shoes whilst trampling all over the murder scene, since he, Hilton Botha, was possibly distracted by thoughts of the charges of attempted murder that he was facing.  But is it just coincidence that the police have now said that Carl Pistorius, brother of Oscar, is to face charges of culpable homicide, relating to a road accident in 2010?  Or is this a rather pathetic case of tit-for-tat “we can drag up embarrassing things too” retaliation?

The whole thing is descending into farce, which is an insult to the victim and to thoughts of getting to the truth in the name of justice.

 

Lord Who is charged with being a bit creepy

So, Lord Rennard (who?) is accused of behaving inappropriately towards some of his female colleagues a few years ago.  Serious accusations, of course, and they should be investigated.  But, but, but …… was this really the most important news of the weekend, justifying the lead position on the BBC News and in many newspapers?  Did it really require Nick Clegg and his Liberal Democratic Party to be put in the stocks as if they were an affront to human decency?

 

Or is this perhaps related to an important by-election this week, where the Lib Dems are facing an uphill battle to retain Chris Huhne’s Eastleigh seat?  A succession of Labour politicians have called for an independent investigation rather than the internal Lib Dem investigations that have been announced.  Why?  Apart from political opportunism it is hard to think why they are getting involved in this.

 

Lord Rennard’s name sits on a different list from that of most of the famous people who have found themselves accused since the Jimmy Savile revelations first emerged - Max Clifford, Stuart Hall, Jim Davidson, Freddie Starr, Garry Glitter, Dave Lee Travis, and others.  But there appears to be an insatiable appetite for further names to be dragged through the dirt, so the list will grow.  As a non-watcher of TV soaps I had no idea who Michael Le Vell was until he was arrested recently, but I’m sure his will not be the last name in the entertainment industry to be exposed to the glare of unwelcome publicity. 

 

Then we have the case of Britain's most senior Roman Catholic cleric, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, who is to step down as Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, following allegations, which he denies, of inappropriate behaviour towards priests dating back over 30 years. Cue inevitable jokes asking for clarification of what exactly inappropriate might mean in this case.   I'm not sure I can take much more.

 

Finally, is there an email ‘black hole’ or is it just me?

I am getting a little concerned about the number of people I know who seem to have disappeared from the face of the email earth.  And not just people I know, but people I class as friends who I have known for many years.  The first time I realised I was writing to someone and getting no response I put it down to my perhaps having the wrong email address.  But it keeps happening.  I have now resorted on a couple of occasions to that old-fashioned way of communicating – sending a handwritten letter.  But still no responses.  I am begining to get a complex about this and wonder if I have, inadvertently, so offended these people that they no longer wish to acknowledge my existence.

 

But before you jump to conclusions, I should add that none of them were on the Moan’s distribution list, so this cannot have been the cause of the problem.

 

Fingers crossed that I hear from them soon – no offence was ever intended and I miss not knowing what is happening in their lives.

Monday Moan 35

 

OK, so we backed him when he was a winner, but now ……

Ed Miliband made his way up through the ranks of Labour Party as a close advisor, both economic and political, to Gordon Brown. He was a special advisor to Brown from 1997-2002 and after a period in the USA, was appointed by Brown as Chairman of the Treasury’s Council of Economic Advisors.  After getting elected to a safe Labour seat in 2005, Miliband found himself appointed to the Cabinet by Brown in 2007.

Ed Balls was another economic advisor, political advisor and, alongside Miliband, cheerleader for Gordon Brown in the latter’s long-running battle to oust and then replace Tony Blair in the Prime Minister’s office. Balls had been Chairman of the Treasury’s Council of Economic Advisors prior to Ed Miliband being appointed to that role.  Like Miliband, Balls was rewarded with a Cabinet position once Brown became Prime Minister.

 

That was then, but life moves on and the political world allows anybody to denounce their previous friends and their previous positions if it appears opportune to do so. Thus, Miliband and Balls have now been able to promise to reintroduce the 10p tax band, originally introduced and then scrapped in the Budget of 2007 by Gordon Brown.  In making their policy announcement, Miliband and Balls did not hold back in their criticism of Brown and his decision to scrap the rate – conveniently forgetting their own positions at the time as Labour Ministers.

 
With friends like this ……….

 

Breaking news ……… 85 year-old man decides to retire

I tread carefully here, of course, but isn’t there something odd about expecting a man to take on a position which really is a ‘job for life’ – for that is what being the Pope has meant.  Get elected and then stay in the job until you are carted off this earth and can be replaced by someone else who has a plenty of miles on the clock.

Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to resign, at the age of 85 for goodness sake, is a break with tradition.  Apparently he’s not the first Pope to resign rather than serve his full term, although the last resignation, almost 600 years ago, seems to have been made under pressure. The last ‘voluntary’ resignation was another 200 years earlier. Curiously, that Pope also appears to have been 85 years old.   

It is fair to say, therefore, that such resignations are rare.   No doubt that’s why the BBC decided to despatch a crack squad to stand outside the Vatican to bring us live coverage of events.  Stand by for wall-to-wall coverage of the election of a replacement Pope, from an electorate of (at the moment) the 118 Cardinals eligible to vote.  Apparently, Cardinals find themselves disenfranchised beyond the age of 80.  Wonder how that age limit came into being and why it was not extended to other things?

 

And the Oscar goes to …….

The annual extravanagza that is the ceremony Academy Awards – or the Oscars – takes place this coming weekend.  The first such ceremony was held in 1929 and this year's promises to be a long evening, with 24 categories of winners to be negotiated before everyone can go home. I think I am looking forward most to discovering who the Academy decides to honour in the Makeup and Hairstyling category.

But, of course, the real Oscar story this week is much more interesting, sad and hard to fathom – the arrest of Oscar Pistorius for the alleged murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.

 

It’s hard to see what kind of defence Pistorius can have, but I’ll not comment on any of that until I hear what is said in court.  Millions of people around the world will be hoping there is some kind of explanation which can leave them still in awe of the man who has come to be such a symbol of hope to disabled people, and who has brought such pleasure to people through his achievements.  I count myself lucky to have seen him in the flesh in this year’s Paralympics, running a semi-final in world record time, holding 80,000 people in his grip just by being there. 

How many of us stopped to think that beneath the glitz and glamour this superstar, like any other, was also just a human being. All humans have complicated lives and are subject to different pressures, temptations and worries every single day.  I don’t know whether those things are easier or harder for superstars to handle, nor whether they are more intense because of being in the public’s eye. All I know is that everyone snaps from time to time – it’s part of the human condition. It’s a reality check for us all when that person is also a wealthy and apparently enviable superstar. If they are actually just like the rest of us, are we wasting our time dreaming of wealth and happiness?

  

That’s not what I meant

I have a new phone.  Like all new gadgets it is taking me a while to get used to how it works, and its various idiosyncracies.  OK, that reference to idiosyncracies is just my excuse for when it doesn’t do as I expect.  Last week, for example, I sent a text message as I do on countless occasions every day.  I don’t have a ‘signature’ saved for use each time, so I duly just added my name at the end of the message.  Only my phone decided to auto-correct whatever it was that I had typed and so my text was sent under the signature of “Probing”.

Actually, I quite like that and might use it in future.  But I will also pledge to take learning how my phone works a little more seriously now.

 

Latest from Sainsbury’s following last week’s piece on waste

…………………

Monday Moan 34



Strip away the veneer and they are all the same

There are those who fondly imagine that there are different types of politicians; those we know all too well from the experience of many years, who are on the make, who get seduced by the status of their office or the power of responsibility, and those who are not like them, who have some scruples, who are not out for themselves and who genuinely want to do the right thing.

 

The dawn of the Coalition government promised a new beginning, with the coming to power of a party and a group of politicians who had not been corrupted by office and who had the opportunity to put into practice the line they had put forward in opposition – open government, honesty, acting for the common good.

 

How sad. How naïve.
 

Chris Huhne now faces jail for lying and thereby perverting the course of justice. Sympathy for him will be in short supply because he’s a politician, he comes across as arrogant, he has been exposed as a liar, and not just a small time liar, but one who has brazenly and repeatedly fronted up before the cameras to repeat his lies.

 

Yet, curiously, the other main protagonist in this sad affair does not engender any public sympathy either. We are not granted the usual luxury of siding with the ‘victim’. Vicky Pryce’s attempts to portray herself as the vulnerable woman, unable to withstand the demands of her overbearing husband, do not sit well with everything else we know about this hugely successful woman.  She is a highly respected economist with a great CV, working for top-rated private sector companies before landing very senior positions in the Government. In her personal life she seems to have a thing for men of some standing. 

What we learn from this is simply that, as we ought to have known all along, people in such positions are actually just like the rest of us. They have private lives that are as complicated as ours, they lie when they feel the need, they are vindictive against people who they think have wronged them.

How dispiriting.

 

Unloved politicians

Talking of unloved politicians, it was good to see Michael Gove so apologetic and humble over his U-turn on his plans to reform the examination system through the introduction of the English Baccalaureate and scrapping of GCSEs.  Obviously I am being economical with the truth about the apologetic and humble bit.

The man has form as far as the Moan is concerned (see Moan 3) but the thing that has really surprised me is that he, and it seems others, think he has been doing a splendid job in Government and that he is a serious contender to lead his party one day.  If it was April I would assume this was a joke but, sadly, it might actually be true.

Cue more sadness.

 

What an unjustified waste

Walking around our local Sainsbury’s yesterday afternoon about an hour and a quarter before closing, we thought we’d see what they still had for sale in their bakery area.  From a distance it did not look very hopeful as the shelves seemed to be almost empty, but we carried on anyway.  When we got nearer we saw that the shelves were, indeed, empty.  But it was also clear that they were only empty because the staff were in the process of removing everything that was there and throwing it into a waste bag, very clearly marked as ‘not for consumption’.

The staff were as bemused as the customers who were asking why they were doing this.  ‘Orders’ seemed to be the best way of describing their response to questions.  Yet the shop was open for another 75 minutes, and they were throwing away perfectly good food rather than reducing it in price in order to encourage sales, or making it available to a charity that might offer it to the homeless or needy.

What kind of crazy logic is at work here?  I have no idea, but I have written to the store manager and will let you know his response.  Maybe I'll be referred to their company values and environmental credentials - maybe they need to be updated or followed?

 

And another beef

Talking of food, I have difficulty with so many aspects of the horsemeat ‘scandal’.  

As a confirmed member of the ‘never touch beef’ club I realise I am on potentially shaky ground, but here goes ………

At the outset of the revelations I imagine many people were not only surprised to discover that cheap beefburgers contained horsemeat, but were equally surprised, and probably pleasantly so, to discover that they contained any form of meat at all. 

Since then the scale of the scandal (deception?) has grown to the point where even the French have started to withdraw products from their shelves.  Yes France, the home of horse steaks for the unwary British traveller, has taken the opportunity to remove some British products from its shelves.  Nothing new in that, really.

I am told that horse meat is safe, that it is quite tasty, but that it is virtually unobtainable in the UK (at least, under its proper description), mainly because we are a sentimental lot when it comes to animals and which of them we want to see served on our dinner plates. Horse meat is one of the few 'horrible foreign foods' left, allowing us to feel superior and civilised in comparison with those places that eat such things. France, for example.  Music to the ears of UKIP and the Tory right I expect.

Monday Moan 33

Righteous indignation – or puffed up nonsense?

OK, I was asking for trouble reading the Daily Mail and I then compounded this error by reading the column by Quentin Letts - parliamentary sketchwriter, theatre critic, freelance writer, anonymous gossip-supplier to the media industry and all round pompous ass.

 

Almost anything written by Letts can be guaranteed to upset a large part of the population – inevitable really, since it will at the same time appeal hugely to most readers of the Daily Mail.  He can be humourous, of course, but he also peddles the kind of stuff you would expect in that paper – bombastic, little-Englander, anti-liberal, anti-socialist, pro-conservative (all with small capital letters), etc.

 

His recent piece bemoaning the defeat for the Conservatives over boundary changes for Parliamentary seats was a classic of its kind – the world is doomed by the actions of Labour and Lib Dem politicians being unfair to the Tories, aided by the Tories themselves not being firm with them.  The very foundations of our democratic way of life are threatened by what has happened.

 

Letts sees a left-wing conspiracy around every corner, including this one.  He puffs and splutters about corruption, cheating and outrage.  He works himself into a lather about the unfairness of it all and how the defeat for the Tories will result in that worst of all nightmares for him and those like him – “the Left will now be in power after 2015 — with all the repercussions for our national sovereignty that could bring.”

 

The poor man looks likely to explode if he’s not careful.  But can you really feel any sympathy for someone who not only uses the phrase ‘bien pensant’ in his article, but who is a repeat offender in this regard, having used the same words at least twice in recent months (1 November 2012 and 28 December 2012).  A good writer will not use words or phrases that cause readers to wonder what he or she is trying to say, either because the words are not commonly used or because their meaning is not always clear.  Letts fails on both grounds. Bad or smug writers, on the other hand, may use words and phrases they believe show how much better educated and clever they are than their readers.

Tony Pulis – the right man for the job

For those who don’t know, Tony Pulis manages Stoke City football club.  He has the demeanour of someone with a major chip on his shoulder. His gripe is that he represents a small club that is struggling to be treated fairly by the world, the football authorities, and specifically by referees. He believes that the rich clubs get favourable treatment and he has a particular issue with Arsenal for some reason.

 

He is, in fact, the perfect man to manage Stoke City.  Gritty, dour, unfashionable, committed to surviving by the principle of the ends justifying the means.  A marriage made in heaven.

 

On Saturday Pulis’s Stoke team faced Arsenal and, as usually happens, they lost.  Every football manager worth his salt can explain in great detail how it is that whenever they lose it was caused by the perpetration of some significant wrong against them. You really can’t be a manager if you don’t have this ability.

 

Arsenal’s winning goal was awarded only after the referee had consulted with a linesman (sorry, ‘referee’s assistant’) who had raised his flag for reasons known only to him, but assumed to be because he thought there had been an Arsenal player offisde.  Pulis started his after-match tv interview by saying “I haven’t got a clue what offside is now”.

 

The Monday Moan is glad to offer some help to him. A player is in an offside position if they are nearer to the opponent’s goal than both the ball and the second-last opponent – including the goalkeeper. You cannot be offside in your own half, if you are level with the second-last opponent or if you are behind the ball. However, being in an offside position is not itself an offence. A player is only penalized for being in an offside position if he is interfering with play, interfering with an opponent or gaining an advantage by being in that position.

 

So, with that tutorial, what happened in the game?  Well Arsenal took a free-kick, at which point the only player who might arguably have been offside was Theo Walcott, their no.14 – although as the picture shows, he is also arguably level with the last Stoke defender. 

 

The ball ended up in the opposite side of the goal to which Walcott was standing – he hadn't moved, he wasn't in the golakepper's line of vision, so clearly he cannot have been interfering with play.

 

All quite simple really – and now Tony Pulis will have no excuse for not knowing what offside is in the future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wrong, wrong and wrong again

We all make mistakes from time to time, but mostly they are not serious and very few people get to know about them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately, some people are not so lucky with their mistakes.

 

The person responsible for the captions on the BBC News on Sunday will be blushing today:-

 

  

 

The Herts Advertiser copywriter who forgot to use spellcheck for the photo caption below probably realises their mistake:-

 

 

However, although I am confident that most people would see the Newcastle supporter’s display (above and on this link) as a mistake, I am not convinced that the fan himself will agree.

 

 

 

Parts in a machine

And finally, not a moan but an observation.  Sitting here and writing this blog I can picture you and other readers at your desks, or on the way to meetings and it suddenly seems very strange to me that I no longer have to do any of this, that I don't have to get up to work each day, and that the good ship ‘Ex-employer’ sails merrily on without my assistance.  It is a sobering thought that we are but replaceable components in machines that can function perfectly well without our being there, no matter how important our efforts and presence might once have seemed.

 

But it is also comforting to realise that the world won't end if you don't get that paper written or that email sent. There is time enjoy yourself and do other things.