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GUARDIAN Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:01:01 GMT
Come on, everybody's nicked something from work … haven't they?
I used to work for a large American investment bank. No, seriously. Not on the trading floor though, or in mergers and acquisitions. I was in maintenance, a gofer. I wore a white boiler suit, I had a tool kit and an orange trolley. I moved things, I fixed things, I crawled around under the desks of the masters of the universe.
And I nicked things. Not on a grand scale. I wasn't snaffling euro bonds or transferring millions to my offshore account (though I would have if I'd known how). No, I took stuff from the store cupboards. Coffee mainly – catering-size tins of Nescafé, which I gave to my friends (more wealth distribution than theft). And cleaning products. Loo paper, obviously, and stationery. Ink cartridges were probably the most valuable thing I took.
I'm not proud; it was stealing. But nor am I very ashamed. Given the scale of it, the enormous wealth of the company, the salaries of those people (literally) above me, my poverty at the time ... well, was it really so bad?
These are the kind of issues that are explored in Tony Basgallop's Inside Men (BBC1). We're not in a bank here, but a security deposit, a big warehouse full of cash that people are employed to count (do these places exist?). A couple of the guys who work there – a security guard and a warehouse man, both of whom have financial problems (plus these are difficult economic times, we're constantly reminded) – are siphoning a bit off. Fifty grand actually, but that's little compared with the millions there. Still much bigger than my level, but again victimless ...
Except it's not. There is a victim: poor, uptight, number-crunching gamma-male depot manager John (so excellently played by Steven Mackintosh). Very insecure, to be managing a security depot. Up until now, he's covered any losses out of his own pocket (as well as winning manager of the month competition every month). But 50 grand? That's out of the question, especially now with a new adopted daughter. Anyway, he tells the two culprits after catching them, what's the point of putting your hand in the till if you're only going to pull out 50 grand? Why not take the lot?
Whoa, is timid, stuttering John suggesting a heist, on his own depot? In fact, that's where the whole thing starts off – a proper robbery, with men in scary masks, pump-action shotguns, a blown-off knee-cap, screaming staff. John looks like the victim here: they're holding his wife and new daughter hostage at home, he has to help the masked men help themselves, to millions. Then we jump back a few months, and begin to work forwards, through the two employees' thieving, and John's discovery of them. So do they then team up, are they behind the big one? Is this mild-mannered John's master plan?
It looks that way. It also looks as if we've almost caught up with ourselves, the past with the future. Can there really be three more episodes?
There must be more twists and turns. And I'll be tuning in. It's great. A tense, knuckle-gnawing thriller, with a lovely stark industrial quality to it – refreshingly unflashy, unOcean's Eleven. They are great characters – real and believable, not just John but Marcus (Warren Brown) and security guard Chris (Ashley Waters) too. And at its heart there are interesting issues and questions of morality. Perhaps more relevant to some of us than to others ...
Oh, come on, everyone's done stationery, haven't they? No? OK, the coffee and ink cartridges were wrong. And if any of my current bosses are reading, that's obviously all in the past. Just my gym stuff in the bag ...
So how does Raymond Blanc: The Very Hungry Frenchman (BBC2) go? The famous French chef is pottering around France – his own home region of Franche-Comté in this first one – in his 2CV. He tastes, he eats, he cooks, he chuckles and says "Ooh la la". He drops in on his mum, and some old pals, he eats some more, says "Ooh la la" some more. He visits a Comté factory,.....
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GUARDIAN Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:18:00 GMT
Could an edible window box change the world, asks Helen Babbs
All is still quiet in the world of the window boxes and, in a 90cm x 12cm place where nothing much happens, it's tempting to start thinking big. Peering at my plants through the bathroom window, I've started wondering what it's all about. Is a decision to grow things on the ledge of a building I will never call my own, in the chaos that is Holloway, about more than decoration? Is urban growing a kind of activism?
Let's focus on food. An edible window box isn't going to change the world but it could be part of a wider movement that just might. The minute you start growing your own, no matter how small the scale, you become aware of others who are doing the same. Some urban growers are protesting with their produce – a positive kind of protest that explores alternative ways of living and working.
Grow Heathrow has returned a derelict market garden back to its former productive glory, while challenging stereotypes about squatting and highlighting environmental issues. I ask William Ronan from the project if he sees urban growing as activism. "The way in which we meet our basic need to feed ourselves is deeply political, and political movements have a rich history in making food a focus of their organising."
"Instead of lobbying power-holders through methods like petitions, marching and media stunts, urban food growing puts political power in the hands of the community. We remove our reliance on food systems that destroy eco-systems, manipulate workers and enrich the bank balances of corporation shareholders. We don't have to eat vegetables tainted with chemicals, air miles and poverty wages."
In Hackney, Growing Communities actively challenges agribusiness and supermarket dominance by growing tonnes of inner city salad and promoting community led trade. Kerry Rankine from the social enterprise says urban growing "concentrates people's minds on how much effort goes into producing the food we all take for granted. For many, it's a way to start thinking about alternatives".
While Kerry thinks small-scale growing can be a form of activism, she believes as a means of creating change it's not a great lever by itself. Urban growing is part of wider changes that need to be made, including supporting small farmers around cities and mentoring new growers.
So what would an activist's window box look like, if William and Kerry were pushed to indulge me? It would be sown with rare varieties not sold by mainstream companies, and with locally sourced seed. An activist grower would reject the often sterile F1 Hybrid seed that's wiping out old varieties of veg.
Kerry and I even think about window box potatoes, specifically the rare 1918 'Arran Victory'. It's an ambitious plan requiring a deep container and a very sturdy ledge, but one that emphasises that experimenting with heritage edibles is a key way to transform a passive box into an active one. Sounds like an excuse for a Seedy Sunday.
Read more of Helen Babbs' Diary of a window box garden here. Helen is the author of the book My Garden, the City and Me: Rooftop Adventures in the Wilds of London.
Gardens
Helen Babbs
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GUARDIAN Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:25:58 GMT
People are being urged to wash fruit and vegetable as salmonella newport infects 35 people across the UK
Health watchdogs have reminded people to wash fruit and vegetables, as they investigate whether a salmonella outbreak in which 35 people in the UK are known to have been infected is linked to watermelons.
One person has died, although it is understood they had underlying health complications.
Eastern England has been the area most affected by the outbreak of salmonella newport, the Health Protection Agency (HPA) said. Those with the infection ranged from age six months to 85.
Bob Adak, head of the gastrointestinal diseases department at the HPA, which is investigating 30 cases in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, said: "Although it's too soon to say with certainty what the likely cause of infection is, early indications suggest that a number of people became unwell after eating watermelon. This has also been noted in the cases in Scotland and Germany, although further investigation is ongoing.
"It's important to remember that the risk of becoming unwell after eating watermelon is very low. These cases only represent a very small proportion of total consumption. It is always advisable to wash fruits and vegetables – including watermelon – before consumption to reduce the risk of possible illness."
All of the cases in England, Wales and Northern Ireland were reported in December. Health Protection Scotland said none of the five cases there were reported to have needed hospital treatment and no new cases had been reported since early last month.
Infection with salmonella newport causes a similar illness to other forms of salmonella, with symptoms including diarrhoea, vomiting, abdominal pain and fever.
The HPA said it had identified salmonella newport from a ready-to-eat sliced watermelon imported from Brazil, in a local food survey in north-west England in November 2011. Subsequently, a number of people who became unwell were found to be infected with the same strain identified in the survey.
Ten out of 15 cases followed up by telephone interview reported eating watermelon in the three days prior to the onset of their symptoms, although the agency did not know where their fruit had come from.
An agency spokeswoman said: "Further investigations by the FSA [Food Standards Agency] are ongoing and as soon as any particular producer or distributor of infected watermelons has been identified, steps will be put in place to inform the public and remove any affected items from the food chain."
There were two possible routes of infection. Either the melon surface was contaminated and the bug transferred to flesh during the cutting process or it may have transferred through the cut stem while the melons were stored or washed in contaminated water.
The FSA ,which is involved in the investigations, said it was monitoring the situation and working closely with the food industry, the European commission and other countries. Five cases have been reported in Ireland and 15 in Germany.
In a normal year, about 200 people in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are infected with this type of salmonella newport strain. Last year there was a big outbreak in Germany and the Netherlands caused by bean sprouts. Germany also experienced a big E coli outbreak linked to bean sprouts.
Health
Food safety
Food & drink
James Meikle
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GUARDIAN Tue, 31 Jan 2012 10:00:00 GMT
We're looking for the best budget eats in Cheltenham and Gloucester. Can you help? Review our chosen 10, then have your say on the Word of Mouth blog
Calling the Cotswolds! Shout out to Stroud! Big up Stow-on-the-Wold! Yes, the Guardian's crack squad of cheap chow aficionados (that'll be me, then) has been busy running the gastronomic rule over Cheltenham and Gloucester, in a bid to find a variety of venues where visitors can eat well, on a budget, between race meetings and cathedral tours.
Regular Word of Mouth readers will know the drill by now: you need to be able to eat for under £10 a head. That means the list might range from a sensational chippy or sandwich shop to a great gastropub or a good restaurant that does a notably cheap lunch. You can review my choices in Gloucester and Cheltenham here.
But, as ever, this post is more an opportunity to chew over the places that I either missed or couldn't get to. My 10 included Vanilla, El Bahdja, Pepper's, Blue Thai, Svea and the Swan, but what of Cheltenham's Gusto (recommended to me by a couple of in-the-know locals, but they were shutting-up shop at just gone four, on a Thursday, despite what it says on the website) or Gloucester's C&W African Experience? The latter is a reputedly brilliant find, but it was closed at lunch the day I was in town.
In Gloucester, I was also stymied in my attempts to try a Pilgrim's Pie. It sounds great, but the cathedral cafe was having none of my attempt to get them to serve me one before midday. Did I miss out? I recently wrote a tongue-in-cheek preview of how 2012 was going to pan out in food, in which I predicted that the coming together of several key restaurant industry trends (specialisation, austerity, speed) would lead to someone opening a venue that sold nothing but toast. Little did I know that down at Gloucester docks this is already a reality. Kind of. On Toast serves all sorts of gubbins: from cheddar, leeks and tabasco, to (yes, I realise how ridiculous this sounds) Mars Bars and Curly Wurlys, either on or in toast. Frankly, my mackerel, lemon and horseradish didn't work. Lemon juice doesn't react well to being heated in a Breville. But are there better savoury options?
Over in Cheltenham, there were quite a few places that, for a variety of reasons, just failed to make my shortlist. Should sausage and mash specialists the Railway have made the cut? Is the cream tea at the Daffodil one to bear in mind? Is Brosh all it's cracked up to be? I felt it would be squeezing it in, slightly - over other, more useful venues - to include its evening bar menu, from which you would only be able to afford two or three tapas dishes for under £10. Would they satisfy an appetite? If you're picky about what you eat, would it nonetheless be worth visiting Brosh and sticking to tap water?
The Royal Well Tavern has a good rep, but is currently closed for a refurb. Is it one to check next time around? Heading out of town, is the Royal Oak in Prestbury worth visiting at lunch? Has anyone out there tried interesting Ullenwood social enterprise, the Star Bistro? And what of the Cotswolds' hinterland? Can you suggest other competitively priced destinations as good as the deli at Made by Bob in Cirencester?
Food & drink
Tony Naylor
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GUARDIAN Sun, 29 Jan 2012 15:31:37 GMT
Owners play new music and translate menus into Arabic amid surge in visitors from Middle East
In the Turkish restaurants around Taksim Square in Istanbul, the menus are getting a new look. It's not so much the food that is changing but the languages, as more and more restaurateurs choose to include Arabic.
Erkan Ali Karabulut, manager of Cafe Eylül in the touristic Talimhane district near the square, is reprinting his menus this year. "If you speak Arabic with Arabic tourists, they see you as a friend, and feel more comfortable," he said.
"But sometimes I get negative reactions from Turks. 'Why is everything here in Arabic?' they ask. They get very jealous." Pointing to the list of MP3 songs on his laptop, he added: "I now play English music, as a compromise. But in the evenings, it's all Arabic."
Turkey has made much over the past year of its growing influence in the Arab world. Less well documented is the growing Arab influence within Turkey. The Turkish tourism sector, once the preserve of semi-adventurous westerners, is now dominated by Arabs. Last year, there were approximately 3 million visitors from Arab countries.
Abdullah Korun, owner of the Haci Abdullah restaurant in Beyoglu, said about two-thirds of his patrons now came from Arab countries: "This increase started about two years ago," he said.
"I think that Turkey's much improved dialogue and co-operation with Arab countries is the main reason for this development. Turkish businessmen are now profiting from our government's foreign policies."
Arab diners are, moreover, a more generous, Epicurean bunch than their European counterparts.
Ramazan Bingöl, head of the Association of All Restaurants, Eateries and Suppliers and owner of the Ramazan Bingöl Et restaurant, said: "Ten Arab guests spend as much money as 40 guests from a western country. They don't come with tour buses, and do not want to eat fixed menus at a fixed price."
According to numbers published by the Turkish tourism industry, Arab tourists spent approximately £1,700 per person in shops and restaurants, nearly four times as much as western tourists.
Shopping centres, one of the main attractions to many Arab tourists, have started to adapt their marketing strategies: Cevahir mall, where Arabs constitute 80% of all foreign shoppers, has put up a tax-free office at its entrance and organises autograph sessions with Turkish actors, many of whom are very popular in the Arab world, owing to the success of Turkish TV series there.
One restaurant in the Forum Istanbul, another shopping centre popular with Arab tourists, took all pork-based meals off its menu. Several restaurant managers in Cevahir mall said they would add Arabic translations to their menus this year.
Cemil Kahraman, managing director of an Italian restaurant in the shopping centre, said that the display of alcoholic drinks did not keep out diners from Arab countries or from Iran.
"Some ask us to prepare sauces without wine, but that's all. We offer a halal menu as well." He laughed. "But not all of them care, and some are happy to enjoy Italian cuisine, and a good glass of wine at the side."
There is a knock-on benefit for the approximately 1 million ethnic Arabs who live in Turkey, mostly in the south-eastern regions. Their language skills are in ever higher demand in tourism hotspots – and in restaurants.
"[Restaurants] used to look for English-speaking staff, but now Arabic has become more important for many of them," said Bingöl.
In his own restaurant he has noticed a 40% increase of diners from Arabic countries in the last year alone.
"Most of them come from the Gulf countries, from Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates," he said.
"They feel comfortable about travelling in Turkey because we share many things culturally. Taste-wise their own cuisine is very close to that of Turkey, too."
Turkey
Istanbul
Turkey
Europe
Restaurants
Food & drink
Constanze Letsch
guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media......
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GUARDIAN Sun, 29 Jan 2012 21:00:04 GMT
Small children require vitamin D to keep bones strong and healthy, but they rarely get the intake they need from the food they're eating
How could we have forgotten about vitamin D? Suddenly newspapers are reporting that one in four toddlers do not get enough and rickets is emerging again. The chief medical officer in England, Dame Sally Davies, has reminded doctors that children under five are one of a number of groups who need supplements. A recent survey of health professionals found most didn't know this.
Without vitamin D, bones become soft and bend in the middle, giving the typical rickets appearance of bow legs. A deficiency can cause muscle weakness, fatigue and an increased risk of infections because of damage to cells in the immune system, in particular TB.
But why should a healthy child, eating a varied diet, need supplements? Since some of the noise about vitamin D comes from Feeding for Life – sponsored by Cow & Gate, which happens to make milk products with vitamin D in them – isn't this just a push from the industry?
The solution
More than 90% of vitamin D comes from ultraviolet B rays hitting the skin and converting a type of cholesterol into vitamin D. If you have fair skin you need to be outside for only 13 minutes between 10am and 3pm, two to three times a week in summer, to get enough – any longer and you'll need sunscreen. If you have darker skin, you need at least twice as much sun.
The problem with getting vitamin D from food is that most children aren't mad on oily fish, mushrooms and egg yolks. Colin Michie of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health is adamant all children under five need vitamin D supplements: "The diet of the average under-five does not provide enough," he says. They "don't run around and play in the sunshine. Our lifestyles are putting us in the position where we have to buy supplements."
Guidelines from the health watchdog Nice say children under five should have vitamin D supplements. I don't give them to my child and I don't know many doctors who do. But if it's good enough for Nice and the Royal College, then maybe we should all start.
Health & wellbeing
Children
Luisa Dillner
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GUARDIAN Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:44:11 GMT
Despite a quota system to boost female participitation, the gender imbalance is still heavily skewed towards men
If you attended the opening address by Angela Merkel or the private dinner in which Nobel laureate Leymah Gbowee held a group of financiers in thrall with her life story, you might think that fabulous, powerful women dominate Davos. But the fact is, Davos has a woman problem.
The first day, which included honours for the Japanese violinist Midori and a screening of the biopic of Aung San Suu Kyi, may have ended with a party to "honour women innovators" such as the web entrepreneur Arianna Huffington. with guests departing into the snowy darkness of Davos to the rousing sounds of the 1980s disco classic Ladies' Night. And the biggest day of this year's World Economic Forum (WEF) on Friday may include a main room event discussing "women as the way forward".
But while the impact of women this year may be bigger than ever, organisers keen to encourage and then trumpet their success cannot hide the fact that their numbers are still small.
Despite a new quota system demanding that the largest members send one woman for every four men, just 17% of the 2,500 delegates are female. Despite a push to encourage more women on to panels to discuss the issues of the day, just 20% of those invited to do so are women. The majority of panels, especially on key economic topics, are still dominated by (white) men.
Although the days are long gone when one female delegate was asked to leave an event because security assumed she must be a spouse without the required permit, the majority of the women in Davos are not there as participants. Only newcomers to Davos seem to consider this fact remarkable, with the odd feminist exception such as Helen Clark. The former prime minister of New Zealand turned administrator of the United Nations Development Programme called the female participation rate "pathetic". The leader who appointed so many senior women to her cabinet that Benetton ran an airport advertising campaign welcoming visitors to the "women's republic of New Zealand" called for organisers to commit to the millennium development goal of 30% female participation by 2015. "Or why not next year? They should just go and look for the women. In one stroke, participation would go up."
There is little support for such intervention among organisers, who argue that Davos merely reflects a world in which women lead just 3% of the biggest companies in the US and UK and make up 17% of its parliaments. Saadia Zahidi, the WEF's head of constituents who is spearheading the gender programme, calls this the "external glass ceiling" about which an annual meeting of top people can do nothing.
Roger Carr, the chairman of Centrica who is leading efforts to get more women appointed to British boards, agrees. "Davos is a special place populated by the most senior decision makers. The fact is that the number of women in that position is quite small. Davos is just the symptom of something that happened way, way back." Centrica sends just two delegates and both the chief executive and chairman happen to be men.
With the cost of the meeting astronomical – delegates have to pay for five nights' stay as a minimum – not to mention the annual membership fees of about £100,000 for the strategic partners subject to the quota, many companies are happy to talk the talk while hoping that others do the walking.
So why even bother to set a quota? Why not simply accept the status quo at an event which sums up a world governed by just 1% of its population? Is the whole gender parity programme part of a cynical PR exercise to encourage a belief that the most powerful people in the world care about half the world's population?
There are two answers to this from within Davos. The first, that it is not a numbers exercise but good business, is summed up by Carr when he says: "This is nothing to do with PR. It's just good business. I've sat on single gender boards....
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GUARDIAN Fri, 27 Jan 2012 11:08:00 GMT
Alan Connor demystifies each type of cryptic crossword clue for beginners and asks experienced solvers to share their favourite examples. This week: initial letters
In this series, I hope that newcomers can equip themselves with the tools of the solver's trade, while aficionados can enjoy some prime examples of the art of setting.
We've looked at hidden answers, double definitions and soundalikes; now it's time for initial letters.
If you've been following the series, you may be wondering why we haven't yet tackled the staple diet of the setter: the anagram. But the anagram can wait. And nervous newcomers should remember that here we're looking at clues in isolation; in a genuine puzzle environment, you'd have some letters from other clues, considerably lightening the solving load.How it works
So. We're looking at a device which asks you as solver to take the initial letters of a string of words in the clue. Remember, a cryptic clue typically gives you two chances to get the answer: a definition found either at the beginning or the end, and some wordplay; sometimes the wordplay is made up entirely of this process of decapitating words and gathering together the heads.
Here's an example, from Rufus:
12ac Starts to serve time in Russian prison (4)
The start to "serve" - its first letter - is "S". And so the starts to "serve time in Russian" are S, T, I and R for STIR - a synonym for prison and not a word in the clue wasted.
Such clues don't always start with "Starts to..." - and where would be the challenge in that? But you might find "start" slightly hidden somewhere else in the clue, as with Orlando's...
22d Black and white lamb starts to cry (4)
...where if you take the "starts" of the previous four words, you should be having a BAWL.
You should also keep a lookout for variants of "start", as with Brummie's clue...
29d Never offer drunk eggnog starters, bud! (4)
...for NODE and for other words with a similar sense, as with Bunthorne's clue...
23d Does he lead prayer for openers? Is Mohammed a Muslim? (4)
...for IMAM.It's not always that simple
As we explore the types of cryptic clues, we often find at this point that the device we're getting used to might be used backwards. So it is with initial letters and here's a clue from the Times in which the hint that this is happening is wittily concealed:
6ac Face protection racket or swindle in village: heads must roll! (5)
So we're taking the first letters of "racket", "or", "swindle", "in" and "village" and rolling them back to give us VISOR.
And of course, many clues use more than one device to get you to the answer. Here's Philistine:
19ac I forgot to mention at the start, so try and pay attention! (4)
Before we get to the initial letters, we have "I forgot to mention", which you might indicate by writing "PS" at the end of a message. Then we're asked for the starting letters of "so" and "try", S and T. Whack them together and you get an expression for "pay attention": PSST.
I know what you're thinking now: "Hey, perhaps those clues which use more than one device can work in back-to-front way too! Am I right?"
As Paul proves, you are right:
26ac Sporting arenas support all temporary staff, initially, in retirement (6)
The definition comes first this time. Then we take a word for "support", AID and the first letters of "all", "temporary" and "staff", ATS. Finally we "retire" or reverse the lot to give us STADIA.
For the next clue, "macaroni" is an old term for a dandy, by the way, especially one who's travelled abroad and eaten poncy foreign food - but we don't need to worry about that to see how the "initial letters" device works differently here.
So here's another twist: on the basis of what we've seen so far, you'd expect "starts to manage estate" to indicate ME. Not in this Times clue:
17d Old dandy starts to manage estate for example on island (8)
This one should be read as "starts to manage" giving the two letters at the start of "manage"...
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LATIMES Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:00:00 PST
Southern California has three fine locally adapted hybrids at their peak now: Oroblanco, Melogold and Cocktail.Midwinter is prime citrus season for both the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California districts, with an abundance of excellent mandarins, oranges, tangelos and lemons. The one laggard is conventional grapefruit, which, as grown in these two areas will be too sour for most palates for a couple of months or more. By compensation, we have three fine locally adapted grapefruit-like hybrids, Oroblanco, Melogold and Cocktail "grapefruit," which are at their peak right now.
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GUARDIAN Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:05:00 GMT
The UK pork industry makes much of its assertion that welfare standards here are higher than in the rest of the EU. Oliver Thring examines their claims
Red Tractor pork is high welfare pork – or so the adverts say. The UK's pig industry is in the throes of a £2m marketing campaign encouraging people to consider the welfare of British pigs. Around 80% of British pork farms unite under the Red Tractor scheme, which has specific minimum welfare standards. These turn out to be more or less the legal minimums, but there is at least a guarantee that the pork is British.
Supermarkets, which sell most of the pork in this country, care about profits first and are thus happy to sell lower welfare Spanish, Danish or Polish pork to British consumers who often want the cheapest product. This is helping to put many UK pork farmers out of business. The total UK pig herd shrank by 40% in the last decade, while UK pig farmers lost over £100m last year owing to the rising costs of pig feed and because higher welfare standards than many EU countries mean our pork is more expensive to produce.
It's broadly true that British pigs enjoy better living conditions than most of their European counterparts; the British pig industry claims that most of the pork we import from the EU could not be produced legally in this country. In 1999 sow stalls became illegal in the UK, as they are in Sweden: they remain commonplace in much of the continent and some US states. These monstrous cages, which maximise the number of pigs which can be housed in a space, restrict a sow's movement during almost all of her four-month pregnancy to an area little bigger than her own body. (Sows have litters every four months or so, usually with just a few days between pregnancies.) Unable to turn around or even lie down comfortably, she cannot engage in the natural activities of a pig: rootling, exploring, or building a nest for her piglets.
Sow stalls are to be phased out across the EU by 2013, though farmers will still be permitted to use them during the first four weeks of a sow's pregnancy. British pork farmers echo concerns about enforcement of the EU ban on caged hens which came in to force on 1 January, worrying privately that many European farmers will simply ignore the legislation. As one said to me: "We know jolly well they're not going to implement it."
EU farms also tend to use farrowing crates more often and for longer than British farmers do. A farrowing crate is another cage to which the sow is moved after she has given birth. It's theoretically designed to stop her from rolling over and suffocating her piglets, but in 2009 a Swiss study published in the journal Livestock Science found that the mortality rate was the same for piglets born to mothers in farrowing crates as for those whose mothers could move around. (This is because the stress of farrowing crates leads to more stillborn piglets and occasionally to mothers savaging their own piglets to death.)
The important question, however, is not simply whether British pork is produced to higher welfare standards than EU pork, but whether the standards imposed justify Red Tractor's claim that the scheme guarantees "high welfare pork". I asked to visit a farm that complied with the minimum Red Tractor standards. When I visited West End Farm in north Wiltshire, it turned out to be certified under the RSPCA's Freedom Food scheme as well as Red Tractor. Some 29% of British pork farms are Freedom Food-certified: pigs so accredited enjoy considerably higher welfare standards than those specified by Red Tractor.
At West End Farm, the adorable piglets roamed free outdoors with their mothers, moving into straw-rich open-air pens for what you might call their adolescence. They came inside for the second half of their six month lives, living in increasingly crowded indoor pens until slaughter. These had solid floors, which means that the pens had to be cleared out regularly (pigs are often reared on slatted........
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GUARDIAN Thu, 26 Jan 2012 19:30:00 GMT
Nothing unites a community more than the death of a loved one. Yet we often feel the need to shoulder our sorrows alone
Why do we find it so hard to discuss death – or support those who are mourning a loss? My mother died of cancer on Christmas Day 2008, as my father, my two younger brothers and I sat around her. She was 55 and I was 32. Although I knew that she was dying, I was completely unprepared for the reality of her being dead – and for how alone I would feel with my grief.
In the strange days after her death I wondered what I was supposed to do. So did my friends, especially those who had not yet suffered a major loss. One sent flowers but did not call for weeks. Another sent a kind email, saying she hoped I was "well" and asking me to let her know if there was "anything I can do to help". But I wasn't "well". Within a week, people stopped mentioning her name, uncomfortable with the topic. After a month had passed by, I had the distinct feeling that I was supposed to "muscle through it" and move on, as if I were recovering from flu rather than mourning the passing of my mother.
Today, most westerners are uncomfortable around death. As western cultures have become more secular and heterogeneous, the mourning rituals that once guided mourners and communities through the painful currents of this intense time have dropped away. Grief has become more private even as it has been framed more psychologically. Friends talk to you about "getting through it" and "healing". They raise the question of antidepressants – but don't know how to offer the simple help that many mourners need: acknowledgment and recognition of their loss.
We shy away from talking about death, not out of cold-heartedness, but out of fear. Death scares us. No one wants to say the wrong thing. The result is a dysfunctional culture in which we avidly consume news of death on TV and duck away from it in real life. It wasn't always so: until the 20th century, private grief and public mourning were allied in most cultures, and mourning rituals extended over the course of at least a year. If your husband died, the village came to your door, bearing food, perhaps, and you put on special mourning clothes. In many nations – among them China and Greece – death was met with lamentation among family and neighbours. A ceremony usually followed the cleaning of the body; a year later, another marked the first anniversary of a death. During the Victorian era, family members restricted their social lives and adhered to a dress code for up to two years. Even at the turn of the century "the death of a man still solemnly altered the space and time of a social group that could be extended to include the entire community," noted the historian Philippe Ariès.
Then mourning rituals in the west began to disappear, for reasons that are not entirely evident. The anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer, author of Death, Grief, and Mourning, conjectures that the first world war was one cause in Britain: communities were so overwhelmed by the numbers of dead that they dropped the practice of mourning the individual. But clearly broader changes in the culture accelerated the shift. More people, including women, began working outside the home; in the absence of caretakers, death increasingly took place in the protective isolation of the hospital. Psychoanalysis led to a shift from the communal to the individual experience. In 1917, two years after Émile Durkheim wrote about mourning as an essential social process, Freud's Mourning and Melancholia defined it as something fundamentally private; by the 1960s, Gorer would write: "Today it would seem to be believed, quite sincerely, that sensible, rational men and women can keep their mourning under complete control by strength of will and character, so that it need be given no public expression."
In the wake of the Aids crisis and 9/11, the conversation about death in the west has grown more open. Yet we still think of grieving as something...
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GUARDIAN Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:05:01 GMT
Yes, the rainforest has many possibilities – falling down a ravine, leopards, being bitten by a snake …
Meerkats are just so last year. After a YouTube clip of a slow loris stretching went viral, the endangered Indonesian primate has become the new, must-have exotic cute pet. It's the big cartoon eyes that are irresistible apparently. Not that I know anyone with a slow loris – or have ever heard anyone expressing a desire for one – but Natural World – Jungle Gremlins of Java (BBC2) said it was true, so it probably is.
And that's one of the great pleasures of the Natural World strand. I find out a lot of stuff about things I know nothing about; stuff of no immediate importance to me, stuff that will probably only ever be useful as a University Challenge answer and yet stuff that leaves me feeling more enriched for knowing it. Which is more than can be said for the countless other documentaries on subjects I didn't even know I didn't know about.
So what I learned about the slow loris is that it is not as slow as all that – an adult can cover 8km a night, it produces its own insect repellent, it is the only venomous primate and struggles to survive if fed on bits of cake rather than toxic, brightly coloured creepy-crawlies. It also turns out that the slow loris gives off a repulsive smell, which might help to deter anybody thinking of getting one as a pet.
What I didn't learn, but was keen to find out, is why Dr Anna Nekaris, the slow loris expert, goes out of her way to dedicate herself to a single species. Not that I don't admire her focus, or am ungrateful for her work, it's just that I genuinely don't understand the mindset of someone whose idea of a good time is disappearing into a rainforest on her own for months at a time.
"The night is so much more peaceful," she said as she tramped through the dense Javan jungle in pursuit of a slow loris. "There's just you and the animals. There are so many possibilities." Including being attacked by a leopard, bitten by a snake and falling down a ravine. I suspect the failure of imagination is all mine, but I can't rule out the possibility that it's hers. Compared to Nekaris, the slow loris is an open book.
No such problems for Heston Blumenthal, who seems to be making a deliberate effort to become more and more blokey in How to Cook like Heston (Channel 4). Which only goes to show that too much self-revelation is probably a dangerous thing, as what made him such an attractive TV chef was his slight sense of mystery. An odd man with an odd name doing distinctly odd things with food. If you wanted to learn how to cook, you watched Delia or Jamie; if you wanted to be dazzled and entertained, you watched Heston.
So I can't help feeling that this latest series isn't playing to his strengths. I don't expect Heston to talk a hybrid of Nigella cliche and innuendo, such as "a cascade of mouthwatering pleasure" and "chicken-boosting aromas", and I certainly don't want him to do stagey blind-tastings with the Bray women's hockey team. I want him to do something transformative and totally over the top.
In any case, you can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of people who really are going to try to cook like Heston. Let's face it, giving everyone the heads up at the beginning of the programme that all you're going to need is some dry ice and a blow torch was more than enough to encourage me to give up before I had even started. Above all, I don't watch Heston on television for the pleasure of seeing him cook a roast chicken. For while I'm sure his roast chicken is far, far better than any other I've ever tasted, I'm also fairly confident I would never clear 24 hours in my diary to brine the bird overnight before slow cooking it for 90 minutes, taking its temperature, leaving it to stand for 45 minutes and then cooking it for another 10 minutes.
If I'm going to cook to impress – a long shot I know: avoiding giving everyone food poisoning is a more realistic ambition...
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GUARDIAN Tue, 24 Jan 2012 09:30:00 GMT
Catherine Phipps takes stock of the current batch of meat-free cookbooks. Do you trust vegetarian recipes written by meat-eaters?
I love meat but, mainly for economic reasons, I find myself cooking more meals with vegetables at their heart. Eating ethically-reared meat is more and more of a luxury, so almost by default I find myself getting closer to Professor Tim Lang's latest advisory which suggests we eat meat just once a week. More chefs and cookery writers are edging away from meat so there are lots of books around to spice up vegetarian meals.
Of the new releases, the standout is Sally Butcher's Veggiestan which romps through vegetarian dishes from the Middle East. Warm, richly spiced dishes are complemented by cool yoghurt and zing from wonderful preserves such as tomato pickle with nigella seeds. The Paul McCartney-compiled Meat Free Monday Cookbook) has an impressive number of contributing chefs (including Anna Hansen, José Pizarro and Giorgio Locatelli) and gets the balance right between the fresh, healthy and seriously indulgent. However, this is not a book you can follow rigidly unless you have a lot of prep time at your disposal – I would love to be able to whip up a Green Pea Curry or Melon Gazpacho for a Monday afternoon snack, but would never find the time.
Children are often suspicious of food that contains too many visible ingredients; it's better to go for simple dishes. For these turn to River Cottage Veg Every Day! - nothing startlingly original, but lots of hearty, nourishing food – my family loved the stuffed squash and practically everything in the bread section. Simon Hopkinson's The Vegetarian Option has caused controversy by bravely including chicken stock (I also admit to using chicken stock frequently in vegetable based dishes) but don't be put off - the book covers all the vegetarian standards and more with his unerring good taste and attention to detail. The kids in my family particularly loved his savoury tomato or beetroot jellies.
If you need to cook something really impressive, reach first for Maria Elia's The Modern Vegetarian which is a book full of simple yet imaginative ideas. I love the Thai inspired fennel, cardamom and coconut soup (enlivened with a good glug of Pernod) and the ginger-beer battered tofu with Asian mushy peas. You also won't go far wrong with Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty – my favourite dish is the intensely sweet yet savoury caramelised garlic tart.
Cafe Paradiso is an vegetarian restaurant in Cork which many people go out of their way to visit, and proprietor Dennis Cotter has produced a number of beautifully written, thoughtful books about vegetarian food. His first two are particularly cheffy - think complete meals rather than a mix and match approach. The most useful is probably his latest as it strikes more of a balance between everyday and special occasion food.
In this country our love affair with Mediterranean food goes back centuries, and vegetable cookbooks indulge us, covering everything from the specialist, such as the glut-busting Cooking With Courgettes, to the all-encompassing, including Antonio Carluccio's marvellous Vegetables and Viana La Place's Verdura.
A highly entertaining precursor to these is Giacomo Castelvetro's 1614 work The Fruit, Herbs and Vegetables of Italy. Written before tomatoes and chillies became popular, it can be comically outdated (lentils are very bad for you, apparently, and "only eaten by the lowest of the low") but there are some very relevant, simple and intriguing recipe suggestions on everything from broad beans to hop shoots.
Jane Grigson was a fan of Castelvetro, praising his "humorous clarity" something I think that also applies to her Vegetable Book. Again, staunch vegetarians should turn a blind eye to the smattering of meat dishes – it is authoritative on everything from rare and exotic vegetables to the few foraged foods she thinks worthy of attention. It's always the first book I go to for advice on.......
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