What a mess!

As I wrote the other day, allegedly the nation’s children are starving. But is that really true, or are they just in want of the right type of food?

A discussion on Twitter the other night brought back fond memories. Said discussion centred on an age-old Royal Navy favourite - the cheesyhammyeggy. The name is practically Germanic in its efficiency - a noun that includes the formula for its construction - cheese and ham on toast, topped off with an egg. Naturally there are variants - brown sauce or red? mustard or black pepper? Or all four? - but in an ever changing world the cheesyhammyeggy remains steadfastly, resolutely cheese and ham and egg. If only economies were that stable or governments that reliable.

It got me thinking about the price of eggs (and cheese and ham,naturally) and the armed forces' daily messing rate (DMR). The link explains the principle and as you can see, the cost to feed fighting men is around £3 per day. That's per day, mind, not per meal. Obviously forces catering takes advantage of bulk buying but two things are for certain - soldiers sailors and airmen don't starve and within that budget they get a varied, interesting and balanced diet. (Although they'll go for cheesyhammyeggy every day if given the choice!)

Every time the subject of childhood obesity is raised we get the same tired old complaints that mothers can't afford 'proper food'. This ignorance coupled with sloth and the inexorable rise of greasy takeaways that blight our streets blinds a whole class of people to the possibility of not only being able to afford, but being able to really enjoy 'proper food'. Jamie Oliver tried hard to convince schools and individuals, crippled by poor nutrition and low aspirations to at least find some pleasure in food. He seems to have failed because as Paul Weller wrote “the public gets what the public wants”.

The trouble is, the public doesn’t really know what it wants, but it’s been duped into thinking it wants more and more processed fat and sugar, rather than the stuff it needs. On the nutrition front it’s time more people took a leaf out of the book Clare Harper (Follow her on Twitter) is compiling to pass on to her boys as they leave home – all mum’s recipes from quick and easy to complex and impressive (now also including cheesyhammyeggy) – so, like generations before them they can cook from scratch, rather than rely on ready-made offerings of dubious provenance.

Part of being a proper student, surely, is the simple joy of hunting down the cheapest cuts of meat and veg and experimenting with bubbling pots of spag-bol, curries and stews – wholesome, filling, peasant food - cooked with passion and eaten with friends and hilarity. But unless somebody enthuses them with the possibilities, what chance do they have of finding out for themselves?

The nation is hungry all right. It's hungry for some decisive leadership and some new recipes – meaningful welfare reform, sensible taxation, effective justice (social and criminal) Euro-arse-kicking and getting back a grip on our own affairs. Instead we get the same old unimaginative, feeble, high-fat, high-sugar, lethargy-inducing fare of pointless Lords reform, useless posturing and nobody daring to upset the status quo. Isn’t it time we cooked up a storm and unleashed it on Whitehall?

Any old iron

Sitting at my desk I can hear bird song. Bird song and the assorted rattles and coughs of the bin men and neighbours stumbling into the day. Bird song and bin men and - hark!- what's that? I am transported back to my youth when, for a few bits of scrap, the Rag and Bone Man would hand over a balloon. Heaven only knows what he did with our offerings, but he and his horse seemed happy enough to plod through the day, collecting other people's junk. Noble scavengers, recycling our rubbish aeons before it became fashionable, politically correct and environmentally unsound.

Nowadays several 'scrappies' come round every day, not once, not twice, but - it seems - all bloody day long! Not content with a dobbin and cart they patrol the streets with a loud-hailer and a tuneless "Scrap-eye-earn" on an endless, amplified loop. No balloons either - turn your back for five minutes and anything metallic disappears into the cavernous maw of their truck: unwanted tat, discarded tools, old cookers, garden gates, drain covers, railway track, signal cable... you name it, they can sell it on for cash through a network of illegal, under the radar, scrap merchants.

Where there's muck there's brass and if you don't keep your eye on your belongings they won't belong to you much longer. It's not beyond the crafty tinkers to employ diversionary tactics either; while one knocks at your front door, another is in the back garden, hunting down anything of value to flog off. Which is much the same as the government appears to be doing this week...

Reduced to scavenging the diminishing national savings pile for any scrap of worth, the squabbling over [probably] unconstitutional Lords reform is diverting attention away from the rich pickings in your back yard. Just when you've finished pouring money into the pot and picked up the meagre pension you've paid for all your life. Just when you thought you had nothing of value to give away, look what they've found behind the greenhouse. Nick Boles wants to means-test the little extras that make life bearable for many senior citizens.

Of course, 'means-testing' doesn't mean that such small comforts will be taken away entirely from those who most need them. Yet. But it's a step on the way. As individuals learn the state can not be trusted to spend our taxes wisely - giving away a fortune to Europe, welfare dependency and NHS bureaucracy - those who are able will protect what they've got, while the rest will see their pitiful belongings scavenged by the rag and bone man of socialism, to recycle into votes.

Isn't it time to stand up to those who want to put the British virtues of thrift and fair play on the scrap heap? Do we really want it to be every man for himself? At this rate we'll all be saddling up Hercules and hitting the streets. (Baggsy I get to be Albert!)

Reet Elite

It's school sports day once again and in the last race of the day - the whole school hundred metre dash - all the children are neck and neck. Parents watch with baited breath as they near the finish line. Then, one child starts to edge ahead. The crowd lean forward in their seats and, as one, urge "Slow down! Slow down!" But it is too late and Johnny's mother hangs her head in shame as Fast Johnny breasts the tape ahead of the field.

She'd brought him up to  be equal. She'd been fierce in her determination for him not to excel in any endeavour. What mattered to her most in life was bringing up the perfect, equal child. After all her efforts, she just knew he had to be the ultimate - more equal than all the rest put together. But, despite her best efforts he'd shown himself up to be - she spat the word - elite!

The word 'elite' has recently gained new currency as the number one pejorative hate-label for anybody looking to lay blame for perceived injustice. Here it is levelled, probably correctly in this case, against bankers. But it is tossed around freely to refer to political and religious elitism whenever an argument needs to be won (or at least drawn!). In education, so corrosive a term has it become that we end up with today's story about 29-Resit-Boy and a pitiful indictment of the blind rejection of anything so repugnant as individual excellence - all must have prizes.

Conspiracy theories abound regarding shadowy groups like the Freemasons, Opus Dei and the sinister-sounding New World Order. Today's Lords reform debate originates from the same fear of the power of elites. The Left frequently conjoin the words to mint the phrase 'power-elite', making it sound all the scarier.

So, where where do you want to stop your elitism? Were you ever a Sixer in the cubs? Is a 'Team Leader' a symbol of an oppressive hierarchical society? How dare households have a head? How would 'first past the post' voting work? Or PR for that matter? And - this is crucial - who would lead the fluffy little ducklings all in a row to swim in the park pond?

We've just had Wimbledon. And footie's Euro 2012. Yesterday was the F1 British Grand Prix and this month London hosts the Olympics - the most blatant worship of elitism.in the world.

You want equality? Really?

Solar, so good.

A certain Mr Hitler knew the benefits of propaganda; say something often enough and emphatically enough and it becomes true. So it is with the Greens. Yes, you heard me, I'm comparing the Greens to Hitler. So fervently do they believe their claims that they never question their validity, so sure are they of their mission that they never think for a moment of the suffering they cause. To the ecology warriors, individual pain is nothing when you're saving the world.

But does the world need saving? And from whom? In my lifetime I have lived with the promised threat of nuclear Armageddon, rising sea levels wiping out whole countries and oil running out by nineteen-ninety. I watched as the predictions of wholesale skin cancer caused by the depletion of the ozone layer failed to come to pass and I observe, with wry amusement the roller-coaster of contradictions on nutrition; I forget now, is fat/sugar/coffee/chocolate/wine/etc good or bad for you this week?

So, if we can't say with any certainty whether or not Cadbury's might kill you, how is it likely that anybody knows what's really happening on a planetary level? It was called Global Warming for a long time and then, when predictions failed to fruit, it all of a sudden became Climate Change. (Notice any similarity with the equally unfathomable, name-changing European Confidence Trick?) So, come on The Greens, is the temperature getting higher or lower (good game, good game!)

But it doesn't matter, does it? With the incredible power of modern-day minority lobbying they have infiltrated the minds of a generation and infected the politicosphere and just as with welfare, the NHS and fluffy kittens, created a criticism-free zone. That is, feel free to criticise, but expect to be labelled a right-wing, frothing loon for having the temerity to challenge heir touchy-feely, all-join-hands doctrine.

So, back to Hitler, by which of course I mean back to the German Solution [<LINK]. It's because of Nazi Green propaganda that Merkel's minions have been coerced into paying through the nose for solar photovoltaic microgeneration on  a scale which is anything but micro. As the article itself says, "Photovoltaics are fundamentally incapable of replacing any other type of power plant." and "From a climate standpoint, every solar plant is a bad investment," and yet it is climate change that is the stated reason behind every one of these expensive mistakes.

The moral of the story? Stop looking for international solutions to problems we don't have and just help yourself. You'll do more for your planet (and your pocket) simply by switching off unused equipment, not running heating with all your doors and windows open and wearing a jumper instead of wearing out the thermostat. Oh and voting for a party - any party - with a healthy level of scepticism for any form of political intervention in social issues. Good luck with that!

PS: Especially for Rachel - because of her comment below:

I'm Starving Here!

Starving children? Have we gone stark, staring mad? At the same time as an increasing proportion of children are being diagnosed as clinically - in some cases, morbidly - obese, others are said to be starving. But hey, hang on a minute, starving means dying from lack of food, not being malnourished by an over-reliance on sugary, starchy, so-sweet-and-fat-they-can't-be-found-in-nature food. So, actually starving or just poorly fed? Either way it is scandalous.

'Chaotic parenting' is blamed. Chaotic sounds like they're a bit woolly; well-meaning but d'oh! Chaotic sounds like, "What am I like?" as they 'accidentally' go on a bender, leaving the two-year-old in the care of the family Rottweiler. Why do we have to dress it up in forgiving language when it is nothing short of criminally irresponsible parenting?

Or let's get to the nub of this because it is really about undeserving parents, isn't it? Some people do not have the wit, the morals or the capability to be decent parents. Some people will only ever be able to breed clones of their unworthy selves - welfare dependent, criminally inclined, social misfits who will live their entire lives as a drain on the state. They'll take up proportionately more resources - education, healthcare, prison - than all of those who have to pay for them and that is simply untenable.

Of course we should look after those who are old or young, sick or dying. We should also have the compassion to offer help for those who truly need it in times of hardship. But we can't go on ignoring a major failing of our age - attempting to grant to all that which they wish. It might make the middle classes feel less guilty about their own successes but it will ultimately drag us all down. It is not compassionate to allow the unfit to breed; all you're doing is perpetuating the problem, creating more needy (and un-needed) children and bringing more hand-wringing dilemmas to your door.

But the solution is simple. Do away, entirely, with 'child benefit'. It doesn't benefit the child, but it does encourage the feckless to breed. Get rid of the supposed entitlement of all woman to have children. Some must simply never be allowed to reproduce and the biggest benefit you could hand to their children is never to be born in the first place. Make having children too expensive and difficult for the undeserving and be prepared, as a society, to swiftly remove the accidental progeny of their unthinking liaisons. Make having children important, as you all believe, not casual as it is right now.

Some starving children, yesterday.

There are no non-selfish reasons for having children - they don't ask to be born. Isn't it about time we abandoned the freakish notion that it is a noble purpose to become a state-sponsored breeding machine. And what do I say to these kids, who grow up with a sense of entitlement and believe I am their mate? I say, "Fuck off, it's 'Sir' to you" as they hand me my change.