Crap Cooking on the Telly

Pardon my French!

As I was stumbling through the television channels last night I came across a “cookery” programme called Eating with the Enemy. The theme of the programme is that some amateur “cooks” are supposed to prepare food of restaurant quality and have their efforts assessed by some “experts”.

The host of the programme is James Martin. To my mind, Martin is a very poor cook, although he calls himself a chef. He peppers his words with lovely, nice, my grandmother and so on. For example, I am going to prepare a nice dish of garlic mushrooms using a recipe I got from my grandmother. Lovely! Why should he qualify it by saying nice? After all, we don’t expect crap do we: although invariably that’s what we see. Grossly unhealthy food laced with fat, salt, carbohydrates … rubbish really.

It’s a bit like the signs you’ll see outside the average Pub in England now, Good Food … same applies: we don’t expect bad food do we and wouldn’t pay if they served it!

Anyway, it turns out that Martin is the creative genius behind the main dish these “cooks” have to prepare. Last night he asked them to make a burger. For crying out loud: how many people who go to a proper restaurant, not one of those non restaurants where they serve “fast food”; but a real restaurant, want to eat a burger. You can see what I mean about the quality of the host!

So these “cooks” all nanced around “cooking”. Only one contestant was any good and he was a middle aged Jock. He did well in my opinion. Not like the one who couldn’t even cook a burger all the way through. Then there was the one who rested her burger on a rosti bed. Now, a rosti is shredded or grated potato out of which the liquid is squeezed and then shallow fried until crisp. Note the operative word, CRISP. So this “cook” had also prepared some mushrooms in a white wine sauce. Of course, she poured gallons of sauce all over the burgers and drowned it and the rosti underneath. Meaning there was nothing but soggy rosti.

There was a “cook” who was presented as someone who could prepare excellent choux pastry but for some reason she decided to prepare a dish with shortcrust pastry this time and it was rubbish: she had no idea of what to do. In the middle of her pastry nonsense, Martin shuffled up and showed her a “Chef’s trick” of how to roll out pastry between two sheets of cling film: a tip he got from Gary Rhodes but never admitted to!

I hate to be sizist but one of the “Enemy” was morbidly obese: I missed the start of the programme but I think he is a journalist. He is a good advert for this programme as the food was unbalanced and astonishingly high in fat and calories. However, I really do not think someone who is morbidly obese should be allowed to take part in a food programme.

DW

Magical TV Moment

There was a magical moment on the television last night. It was the day in the year when children are given the chance to present the news and act as reporters for a day.

Some children were given the chance to interview Robert Peston, the BBC’s business correspondent. One child put to Peston a fantastic point:

My mum thinks you are going to be the next Mr Darcy …

The look on Peston’s face was absolutely priceless!

Classic reporting and classic moment.

Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings …

DW

Osbourne Gaffe

George Osbourne, a British politician, said yesterday that he wanted a Conservative government to borrow its way out of debt.

Hey, George, such an insight, such a policy. Where can I vote for you?

Not!

DW

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Lighten Everyone’s Life

An article in this week’s Economist is rather illuminating! Pun intended.

I had a discussion with my neighbour Malcolm recently just after the news broke that the European Commission was going to outlaw incandescent light bulbs in favour of the much more energy efficient compact fluourescent light (CFL). Malcolm told me the things that his friends were saying about the new bulbs: expensive, low quality light, civil liberties and how some of them were hoarding the incandescent bulbs.

In my living room there are six CFL bulbs and one incandescent bulb. The incandescent bulb is in a socket that is attached to a dimmer switch that CFLs can’t cope with!

I was able to demonstrate to Malcolm that six CFLs cost around the same as the ONE incandescent bulb in my living room when operated at full power. I also showed Malcolm the difference in quality of light as between the one incandescent bulb and just two CFL bulbs (my wall lights have two bulbs in each and they cannot be dontrolled independently).

Malcolm was so surprised at what I was able to demonstrate and I can only hope that he shared his new found knowledge with his friends! I will ask him at our weekly coffee and chocolate biscuit session this week!

Well, things are marching on apace in the world of the light bulb apparently:

http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13315818&source=hptextfeature

Light emitting diodes (LEDs) are moving in the direction of our living rooms. Currently very expensive at around £40 a bulb they are said to have a life of 45,000 hours: as opposed to the average 1,000 hours for an incandescent bulb and 10,000 hours or so for a CFL bulb.

In my living there are six CFLs and one incandescent bulb. I can put them on in various combinations:

incandescent only

two CFLs … plus the incandescent

four CFLs … plus the incandescent

In my case, by cutting out the incandescent bulb and having just two CFLs I save £24.966 a year in electricity costs assuming I have the lights on for 12 hours a day for 365 days a year. Multiply that the number of bulbs and so on throughout your house and you will quickly appreciate the savings you make, the savings in electricity you make and how the Economist article says that by using LEDs in the ways suggested in the article, 130 power stations in the USA alone would no longer be required.

Here are a few more calculations to help you just in case you think that CFLs are ECONOMICALLY a bad idea: the number at the top of each column is the number of bulbs in use

 

Costs and Savings	1	2	3	4	5
Incandescent 100 Watt	32.85	65.7	98.55	131.4	164.25
CFL 12 Watt bulbs	3.942	7.884	11.83	15.77	19.71
Savings	28.908	57.82	86.72	115.63	144.54

DW

The Fly in the Urinal

This is boy talk: you have probably seen those urinals in various places which have a picture of a house fly glazed into them.

Well it’s interesting what one just accepts without questioning why. I have seen these flies in bogs many times and have often meant to ask why they were there; but who does one ask such things? Well, today I discovered an answer.

On a radio discussion programme today an Economist reported seeing the flies at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam (yes, they are there too!) and he said they are there to capture the concentration of the boys and men using those urinals. The main purpose of those flies, however, is that we see these flies as a challenge and will aim to widdle all over them … rather than spraying in the urinal, the floor, the wall, our neighbour’s shoes ...

The result is that floor widdling has been reduced by 80%. Consequently, the floors in the toilets in Schipol and elsewhere are cleaner and less smelly. Whoever thought of that deserves a medal.

It’s a pity this hasn’t caught on here in the UK as we have what rank as some of the smelliest public toilets in the developed and much of the developing world.

Is there an equivalent for girls I wonder? Over to you ladies!! Not necessarily toilets either, ladies.

DW

Let them be Furious

I have just read this in today's Financial Times:

Bankers on Wall Street and in Europe have struck back against moves by US law makers to slap punitive taxes on bonuses paid to high earners at bailed out institutions.

Senior executives on both sides of the Atlantic on Friday warned of an exodus of talent from some of the biggest names in US finance, saying the “anti American” measures smacked of “a McCarthy witch hunt” that would send the country “back to the stone age”.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4ff2f77e-1584-11de-b9a9-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

My responses are as follows:

• the banking industry has demonstrated a dearth of talent over the last five years
• where are these bankers thinking of going
• who would want them to do what they do so badly
• what makes them persist in the notion that they are any good

To paraphrase WS Gilbert

As some day it may happen that a victim must be found,

I've got a little list, I've got a little list

Of society offenders who might well be underground,

And who never would be missed, who never would be missed!

There's the pestilential bankers who contract for bonuses

All financiers who have grubby hands and act like callouses

...

The operative part of that quip from The Mikado is that these bankers "never would be missed".

I would like a few bankers to write here and explain why they feel they deserve their massive salaries and bonuses ON THE BASIS OF THEIR PERFORMANCE. I also want them to exclude any reference to contractual obligations. After all, I am sure I am right in saying that no contract exists which includes the phrase, in the event of the collapse of the bank, no bonus is due or even, in the event of a forced Government bail out of the bank, no bonus is due.

Plonkers they are!

DW

Air Ambulance or not?

What I am about to say is controversial on the one hand and simple and straightforward on the other.

There has just been an article on the radio that came from mid Wales: on the unofficial border between North and South Wales, they said. Sorry but because of my unfamiliarity with the Principality and the accent, I didn't catch the name of the place.

Anyway, the point of this post is that they discussed the air ambulance service. This community is remote and they said that even by the fastest possible car, it would take an hour to get from the town/village to the nearest Accident and Emergency (A&E) Hospital.

I think this is something that now needs to be asked: merely because an air ambulance can be provided, should it be? By the same token, merely because very complicated microsurgery and its attendant after care can be provided, should it be?

Some of the arguments, rehearsed in the radio programme, include that without the air ambulance service, someone, say, suffering a stroke or heart attack would miss the golden hour opportunity. Therefore, if a victim of a stroke takes more than an hour to get to A&E, their chances of survival are significantly reduced. Alternatively, if they survive the golden hour they might have a poorer quality of life than otherwise.

The lady in the radio article argued as if there is a right to the air ambulance service. I don't agree: I don't agree that the air ambulance can be provided just because it can be. Why do I say this? I say it because of the opportunity costs: that is, if we provide an air ambulance service then, in the context of finite and limited budgets, something else is either not provided or is provided to a lesser extent than otherwise.

The extreme situation here is that I firmly believe that the National Health Service (NHS) should provide a preventive and primary care service first and foremost. The expensive additional services such as an air ambulance and microsurgery can appear fantastic and can save lives and limbs. However, without a major rationalisation of the budgeting system, the basic services that I have always expected to be provided may no longer be available to me.

I grew up with a General Practitioner service in which my parents could call the GP at any time of the day or night and that GP would attend us at home if necessary or would guarantee an appointment at his surgery. This type and level of service is no longer available.

I have had a limited number of conversations with a GP who defends his resistance to carrying out calls to patients' homes because some patients are perfectly ambulant and should make the effort to get to the surgery. To what extent is the GP here justified in his approach that it should be the GP who makes the assessment of whether to attend a patient on the basis that they can afford the time and effort to get to the surgery? One of the GP's arguments is based on the opportunity cost concept: that he could visit old and infirm people at their homes rather than "wasting his time" attending someone who could get to the surgery under his own steam.

Well, there you are: some of the arguments that came to me as I was listening to that radio programme.

DW

Wacky Phone Names

In an idle moment at Riyadh airport last night I asked my phone to see who it could find via Bluetooth. Just find, not to hack and not to pester.

I found 15 other phones. Most phones were called Phone! One phone had an alphanumeric name and a couple had very ordinary names, like Rebecca.

Three names stood out:

Cinderella
Black Dragon
Old fart! (The ! Was part of the name)

Hey ho!

DW

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Face the Jib

Not to like the cut of someone's jib is to take a dislike to them or not to trust them. It's official: you can tell a lot about someone by the cut of their jib.

An experiment with a very large sample has shown that your creditworthiness is found in your face.

Bankers etc will either not lend to you or they will charge you an average of an extra 1.82% interest on a loan if your face doesn't fit.

There you are.

DW
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miB (anag)

I am about to fly with my least favourite airline. Splew tri raza. At check in I presented my frequent flyer card (I am at level two with this lot) thinking it would count for something.

As is my wont, I asked for maximum leg room (remember, I am 1.91 m tall) and at least an aisle seat. As he turned his back on me to attend to something else, cleary more important than me, he retorted with a muttered, I can't promise maximum leg room.

He tapped away at his keyboard and then handed me my boarding card.

Being the old cove that I am I said with a lilt, is that a good seat? With sneer he replied, it's an aisle.

I waited for the boarding pass for the second leg of my journey home. Nothing. Not even, have a nice flight as he parried my request for that pass with, you'll get that in London.

Thank you. Goodbye. I said.

I will be interested to see who got the extra legroom seats as I was only about the tenth passenger to check in.

I thought frequent flyer schemes were two way affairs:

Someone flies frequently, in a loyal way, with an airline
The airline is grateful

Apparently not. This sort of treatment rankles.

DW

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Britain's Health Problems

Two worrying articles on the BBC web site concerning the health of British people.

The first article shows the findings of a survey from Britain's fire service. It reveals hundreds and hundreds of cases where firemen have been called out to help to move grossly obese people from home to hospital because ambulance crews cannot cope with them.

Read http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7939630.stm 

The second article discusses the feelings of a GP in Scotland who believes that there ought to be a tax on chocolate because of the effect its over consumption is having on the nation's girth.

Read http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/7938282.stm

I have responded to this second article by saying that chocolate is the tip of the iceberg. Just take a look at the tens of thousands of rubbish food items on sale in all supermarkets. Processed food, food high in fat, food high in salt and artificial additives and preservatives. Food low in fibre. And so on. Then take a look at the trolleys being pushed around the shop and finally look at the size of the people pushing them. It's a disease now. We really do need our corner shops back: shops that cannot afford to stock massive amounts of the nonsense WE DO NOT NEED. Shops that are owned and managed by people who know what they are talking about and selling.

With proper shops back on the high street, we will spend so much less and all of our savings can be channelled into further enhancing our life styles. We will spend less because we will not buy so many things that we don't need because they will not be available. We will eat less and be slimmer and healthy.

DW

Won't Somebody Stop Me?

(Which film did that come from?)

The sixth form common room brigade, aka the Conservative Party, is at it again. They have set up a web site which has the sole purpose of writing and sending a letter of apology that purports to have been written by Gordon Brown.

I wonder what these people, who, don't forget, may well be in government before too long, are thinking with their jolly japes.

If Prime Ministers and Ministers were ever required to apologise for their transgressions, we would hear nothing else from them. That is predicated on them being able to tell the truth, of course.

Are we meant to believe that Conservative governments and Prime Ministers have nothing to apologise for? Churchill? (Read Roy Jenkins' dreadful but extensive biography of Churchill for a LOT of evidence. read my review of that book here). Thatcher? From the days when Thatcher was Education Secretary and deprived many poor people of their main source of nutrition in school dining rooms (Maggie Thatcher Milk Snatcher still resonates) all the way to her dreadful and divisive economic and industrial relations policies while she was PM.

What we are seeing here is a bankrupt political party being led by a marketing man who in turn is leading a group of people who have never done a real day's work in their lives.

Even if you think you are a died in the wool conservative, please think very carefully about voting for this lot. On the other hand, my previous post on GCSE and A Level examinations is a warning to anyone who is thinking about voting back in Brown's Hiberno centric champagne socialists.

DW

A Level Exams and GCSE Exams for Sale

Want to gain an unfair advantage in your GCSE and A Level Examinations here in the UK? It’s official now, you can pay a Chief Examiner to come to help you to pass his/her examination.

I have been in correspondence with two MPs over the last three or four years and the upshot is that they have told me that it is official UK Government policy to allow Chief and other examiners to sell their services to anyone for personal private gain.

This means that these examiners can hold private revision sessions with anyone who is about to take one of their examinations.

Imagine the luxury and advantage: the very person in charge of your exam will tell you exactly what you need to do in order to pass his/her exam. Don’t worry, it’s all done behind closed doors and all you have to do is to pay the examiner a fee.

What happens if you can’t afford to pay? Sorry, you’re on your own.

Never mind, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair before him, have presided over this system for years now. The two MPs I have been writing to are Evan Harris, Lib Dem MP for Oxford West and Abingdon and Linda Riordan, Labour MP for Halifax. The final approval for this elitist system came from Sarah McCarthy Fry who is a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Schools and Learners.

My view of this system? In the letter I have just sent to Mrs Riordan I say this:

On behalf of honest and hard working teachers, parents and pupils I feel unable to support any government, any MP and any examinations system that essentially is supporting the following approach:

• Elitism in education:
• Exclusivity in education;
• Encouraging examiners to work ex officio for personal private gain;
• Encouraging students and candidates for examination to expect that they may meet examiners for their chosen subjects for personal private directed guidance in order to gain an advantage in an examination;
• Cheating;
• Immoral behaviour;
• Unprofessional behaviour.

It is obvious that there is nothing more for me to say to you on this matter since it is clear that the government is fostering lower and lower standards. Moreover Secretaries of State, Under Secretaries of State, Members of Parliament and those in a position to gain financially from this situation are all quite happy to ensure that the privileged few who can afford to pay will receive a better standard of preparation for an examination than those who can't I cannot see the socialist approach in this system.

While the standard of UK examinations and so on plummet, you are perfectly free to buy your way through the examinations system. I wonder how many people think this is a good approach to end of compulsory education and pre university examinations? I wonder how many people believe that the UK’s schools examination system is now of third world standard? A Professor of an overseas University said that to me, by the way, on hearing about my campaign.

Shocking!

DW

Sport and Politics

Well, I hope these people who march under a political banner to sports events are satisfied.

Now that we have had those 12 year olds trying to sabotage the Beijing Olympics and so on, there are murderers in Pakistan who feel that they can target a cricket team with a view to murder. Tragically, some of the people whose job it is to protect the Sri Lankan cricket team have died as a result of a gun attack.

I appreciate that this is an extreme example of political demonstration but then again those Anti Chinese demonstrators were pretty violent in some of the actions they took.

I said last year and I’m saying it again, keep your poxy political hands off our sport: whoever you are. Go and find another politician to fight with not an innocent sports person or team or organisation.

DW

Inflationary Journalism

Last week I heard two separate assessments of the UK's unemployment level.

Laurie Taylor correctly said the there are currently around 2,000,000 people unemployed in the UK.

On the same day some clown BBC News reporter related the situation as unemployment heading to 3,000,000.

Dear Clown Reporter, you have, at a stroke, inflated the level of inflation by 50%. Even if unemployment does reach 3,000,000 it is going to take some time to get there. Moreover, I wonder who it was at the BBC who allowed you to make a forecast that might well have been spurious, ill founded or even malicious.

Won't someone protect us from the lowering of standards of journalism at the BBC and elsewhere in the media?

DW



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Fat Cat Pay

Sir Fred Goodwin is the UK pariah of the moment. I sincerely hope he gets his come uppance and that they take all of that nonsense pension off him. As they said yesterday, it’s not a pension, it’s severance pay. Very generous pay too. I wonder how he has the gall even to think that he deserves that vast amount of money?

There is an excellent article in the Washington Post that’s well worth a read, URL below. A couple of points of interest from that article.

Note the comments about John Thain … a couple of months ago, Wall St Wallahs were saying that Thain deserved his $10 million bonus but the wind has changed now:

Take the now infamous example of the recently ousted Merrill Lynch chief John Thain, who not only splurged on his office decor but also had the audacity to propose a $10 million bonus for himself. In recognition of what? A year's work in which the company continued to make bad business decisions, lost about 80 percent of its value, sold itself to Bank of America to stave off possible collapse and appears to have seriously damaged its buyer's franchise? After a less than heroic performance, Thain's grasping for $10 million,  presumably because he thought it could be had, represents what has come to be expected from America's business leaders.

The author makes two more good points worthy of note:

In 1960, the ratio of CEO pay at large companies to that of the President of the United States was about 2 to 1. In 2007, it was more than 20 to 1. In 1980, executives at large companies made about 40 times what the average worker made. Last year, CEOs made about 360 times more than the average worker.

And maybe here is the most telling statistic that possibly underlies everything that has happened in the financial world and at the C level in many companies:

On the NYSE today, the average share is held for less than a year, as compared to about five years in 1960 and two years in 1990.

There’s more, in this well written article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/06/AR2009020602794.html

DW

Water, water everywhere …

Can you complete that line from what is possibly one of the most famous poems in the English language?

Well, take a look at this page on the Economist web site and think about your role in man’s consumption of water http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13176056&CFID=44501457&CFTOKEN=26124267

You might find it shocking reading and I recommend you take a look at the comments that follow the article too as they make some interesting additional points. Some of the additional points are healthily sceptical and you should take them into account.

DW

The Dog Whisperer

If you've got a dog and it doesn't seem to behave properly, you need to realise one thing: it's your fault!

Take a look at the programme The Dog Whisperer on National Geographic Wild to see how Cesar Millan deals with dogs via their owners.

My favourite programme at the moment.

DW


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Duncadoodle do!

I am now going to take a potentially huge risk as I bare my soul to the world.

I have just finished a lengthy telephone conversation and during that call I did a lot of doodling … as you can see in the graphic that follows. I have hidden the original material on that page because it is someone’s personal contact details.

Any doodle psychologists care to let me know what is going on in my tiny mind?

PLEASE, I know cheap remarks are easy to make but you ought to refrain from making them. Seriousness only is the order of the day.

DW

Andy Gray During the Penalty Shoot out at Wembley

He said, "You see, that's football", when the goalie saved a penalty!!

I'm surprised he didn't say, "That's what you've got to do"!

DW


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