The worrying thing is that removing the joy from people’s lives makes them bitter and resentful. Bitter and resentful people come up with policies like these, it’s a vicious cycle.
Did you read Mary Harrington’s article about the farmer who I was grassed up to the HSE by his neighbour for taking his grandson for a ride on the tractor? Remember the stats on covid lockdowns? Huge numbers of people wanted lockdowns to be permanent, night clubs closed forever…. These bitter woke-scolds are running everything these days. “I don’t smoke so ban smoking” “I don’t eat Freybentos pies so tax them” “I don’t drive a car so get them off the roads” etc etc.. Live and let live? My arse.
The problem is not just the government, there’s a significant minority who lap all this stuff up..Get used to it, it’s going to get a lot worse.
Absolutely spot on Tom. I tried not to make this post too downbeat but I share your contempt for these scolds. The ‘I don’t like it, so you can’t have it’ crowd. The level of narcissism revealed by that attitude speaks to the self regard of the ruling class.
Yes. I read about that farmer. The same attitude that had people snitching on their neighbours during lockdown.
We’re empowering some very grim and nasty people indeed. And of course they all ride around on their high horses. Acting, and maybe even believing, that they are the good guys. Awful. And as you say. It’s only going to get worse.
Having learned to drive at 9, when I was about 14 I was driving a tractor and trailer load of bales along a road around the perimeter of our farm when the local bobby pulled me over on his Norton.
"Does your Dad know you are driving this on the road?" he asked, I replied truthfully that Dad had sent me to fetch the bales and PC Coles, universally known as Perce said "Well, I'd better go and have a word with him then", and off he rode.
When I got back to the farm Dad said he had received a ticking off. He was not prosecuted nor was I taken into care. Hard to imagine what consequences would follow today.
A different world Hugh. I remember waiting for the bus to school. I guess I was about 14. When a car pulled up. One of my classmates had ‘borrowed’ his dad’s car. And was picking up his mates on the way to school. I think he got in trouble but the fact I can’t remember exactly what sort shows it wasn’t considered the worst crime. Thinking back though, it was pretty bad. 🤣
Oh yes. We all bought smokes in our uniforms. My Nan used to leave out a half ounce of old Holborn for me in the morning, so I had enough for school. 🤣 I guess I was 15. She was the absolute best.
One of my mother's friends said that her father started smoking cigarettes when he was 10, and kept going until he died in his mid-90s. (But I have no idea when he started buying them for himself).
Sadly they finished my brother off at the age of 54, but one of my grandfathers lasted until his mid-80’s as a very heavy smoker - and he probably started in his early teens.
I never smoked (always the rebel) but I like people smoking. I grew up in a fug of smoke and I was so annoyed when they stopped smoking in pubs. It created an atmosphere of conviviality somehow. Loved the smell of pipe smoke.....sort of wondering if I could burn it like incense 🤔
This is why the Stasi found it so easy to operate in the old DDR. Some people are only too willing to be complicit in State sanctioned curtain-twitching - and it costs the State not a penny.
Can you imagine what it was like to be that neighbour who called the police to say "There's a grandpa giving his ten-year-old grandson a ride out on his tractor"? Or the policeman who didn't tell her to stop being so ridiculous?
Last week I was re-reading some of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's stuff - as one does when the news hosed hither and yon by the MSM is particularly risible - and came across this gem which may be of interest to other readers. Just about sums up most governments but this one in particular, it seems to me:
“To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.”
Watching Comrade Starmer as he boasted about making difficult choices - and then sniggering as he mentioned pensioners' cancelled Winter Heating Allowance - makes me reach unconsciously for a well-oiled cricket bat.
Fascinating stuff. no-one. Absolutely ignorant of Proudhon until now. So thanks for that. I’d pass on the cricket bat, I’d settle for a life in a bath of beans for Starmer. He’d have to pay the bean tax of course. It’s a levy, VAT rated of course, payable on every bean.
Well written, LSO. There is a category of commodities for which demand is price inelastic. That is, when the price goes up, consumption only changes less than proportionately. When demand is completely inelastic, consumption does not respond at all to any price increase. And guess what - basic foods are price inelastic. The impact of any tax will be to increase Govt coffers rather than reduce consumption to any great extent. A health tax, my arse.
Thank you Jos. It also seems to me that alcohol is inelastic for
most people, and the same for smokes. People might go down a brand, or look to black market. But they won’t readily cut their consumption because of price. That’s why unit prices for alcohol are so hateful. They have never worked. But of course we are told they are a great success in Scotland, just as they aren’t in-I think- Australia.
Yup. The Govt used to produce estimates of these price elasticities for food and drink almost annually from their Food Expenditure Survey, and alcohol was down there on the inelastic level. Cigs were never included in this survey. It was all bread and butter (!) stuff to undergrads in the 60s. However, this analysis seems to have stopped around 2010, partly, I suspect, because the data did not vary much from year to year, and possibly partly due to ludicrous studies such as this (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a759170e5274a545822c86d/defra-stats-foodfarm-food-price-elasticities-120208.pdf) - 214 pages of really obscure and pointless analysis and thousands of results. The authors were so lost in their numbers they forgot what they were supposed to be doing. And they had no idea about communicating with a reader.
I remember a statistic from a few years back, which was that, when households were surveyed about their consumption of different goods, they reported buying only half as much tobacco and alcohol as was being sold by supermarkets and other vendors.
Since booze and cigarettes are not especially perishable goods, then it is unlikely that households were buying lots of these items and then throwing half of them away. Instead, it was likely that people were being economical with the truth when answering the surveys, so as to appear more virtuous than they really were.
This introduced me to two terms in economics: "stated preferences" (what people say) vs "revealed preferences" (what they actually do).
Great stuff LSO. The joy is indeed being sucked out of our lives. Not for underage vapers though, with their watermelon and strawberry poison darts! Admittedly, it is shocking when you read (or see on tv) mothers who never cook, relying on takeout for their children most nights. Those people will always find a way though, it'shuman nature.
. It's as if all the things the hard left want to impose on us is coming down the line.
Hi Giulia, I’m (not quite) hard left but I am not aware of any differences in eating habits beneath left and right. I’m as shocked as you are though about the mothers who don't cook and rely on takeout though.
My understanding is that it’s international corporations who want to impose horrible eating on people — not the hard left.
I’m with you on all the evil of the little taxes and the charities that cheer for them. I don’t think anything good comes of them. I’ve just come back from 20 years in California and my family checks the ingredients of every drink before we quaff it to make sure it doesn’t contain non-sugars that will poison us. We don’t need governments to be fiddling with Bingo Taxes and Sugar Taxes. They could do a better job of keeping us safe on the streets though.
As far as Keir Starmer’s miserable Labour government goes, I just got through The Rest is History’s story about Wilson taking over in the Distaster of 1974:
Things were much worse economically back then with strikes and closures and garbage on the streets. One major difference was that Wilson’s government really was lefty and Labour didn’t shutdown the lefties for quite a long time. Starmer’s government is about as middle-y as they come and you can expect any remaining lefties to be got rid of quite quickly. I think he deserves to be given a little bit of a chance. And it’s better that he take over the mess with a frown on his face than pretend that everything is sunshine and roses. Maybe we’ll have sunshine and roses soon.
It’s important to eat something that’s recognisable as food. Food-like things that come in tubes or cardboard packets or plastic bags from Deliveroo are ultra-processed and ultra-processed food is certainly passed through the machine twice. The biggest crime is that it keeps you hungry all the time so you eat more. Proper food doesn’t do that. Fried chicken is not ultra-processed. It’s definitely food. I enjoy meat so I eat a lot of that but, still, “eat mostly food” is good advice. We’ve covered before how those skinny 17 year olds on the beach in 1976 were skinny because the food wasn’t ultra-processed and they didn’t eat too much. We could have sexy 17-year-olds again if we fed them properly.
I wonder how it is that the lower orders have such a preference for really crappy foods. It’s not price — my family eats fresh foods everyday and fresh foods are certainly cheaper than ultra-processed foods. Could it be that no one ever showed them how to cook? It doesn’t need to be anything fancy. Make some pasta and tomato sauce. Or fry some chicken.
Thanks Ragged. Hope you’re keeping well. A lot to unpack there.
Ultimately I don’t think the government should be in our kitchens any more than it should make an appearance in the bedroom. Or even on our Deliveroo bikes. Though how people can afford to eat only takeaway is beyond me. The idea, as you say, that healthy food is somehow more expensive, is a nonsense.
As I say to a different commenter there’s an issue with our schizophrenic masters. Is it an obesity epidemic? Or are we healthy at any size? It can’t be both. Frankly I think people should be left alone. I have a lot to say about the ‘burden’ our self indulgence Starmer claims we place on the NHS. But that’s for another day. Suffice to say. Fat people pay taxes too.
The difference from the seventies, as you and I both remember, was that food, though more often home made, was not always healthy. I remember lots of fatty foods and white bread and jam. I think the difference might come down, in a large part to snacking. Back then it seemed we only really ate at mealtimes. Have I remembered that wrong? I’m not so sure. Now people seem to graze all day long. Set meal times is discipline (I’m very much not living what I’m preaching here) and discipline is very much out of fashion.
As for this government. Sorry Ragged. I respect your hopeful optimism, but it is already proving itself absolutely god awful.
Just finished round three of chemo last night! I am doing OK, thanks.
I think you are right about the food from those days. Yes, we had bread and jam too. But only at meal times! It's all the junk food that people eat all day long that are the problem.
1974? To put in context, we had a Labour government from 1964 to 1970, then briefly the Heath Conservative Govt which fought the unions non-stop, with strikes and nationwide power cuts, whipped us into the EEC with out even bothering to ask us what we wanted, saw inflation increase to 25 per cent, and then collapsed at the beginning of 1974, when Labour returned. So don't blame any event of 1974 on Labour - it was already in train.
But was it so bad? Not in small towns or villages. Life went on as normal, just as today the nearest one will get to normality is in the less populated parts of the country. Small wonder there is a population movement of white people out of cities to these areas.
PS. Nearly all the girls in the 60s and 70s were slim and could wear a mini. Not a fat thigh amongst 'em, unlike today where I have to avert my eyes from the horrors many females subject us to.
Yes Jos. It’s a point that Dominic Sandbrook makes in his books. Though looking back a lot of the raw figures are quite bad, at the time things seemed to be jogging along OK for a lot of people. I know it felt like that for me.
I think a lot of it was to do with some things getting materially better, or at least the pace of change. I remember my nan having a twin tub, but we upgraded to a drum washer-still a top loader. I remember TV slowly going colour and adverts being colourful and flash, lots of brand names. Plus the music. It felt like what it was I think, a time of great upheaval, not all of it bad.
Ha ha the difference now is that they all think they can wear a mini. And do. And not to be accused of being sexist, the boys are not much better….
It's a mistake to judge the conditions of the past from those of today. Fifty years have passed, materially most people are far far better off than they were then because of the general increase in prosperity and the natural increase from having lived a life, climbed the ladder and getting richer from one's own exertions. We bought our first washing machine in 1974 and that was our first major domestic purchase, before even a TV. We thought it wonderful, my wife especially, after six years of handwashing for a family. And then I had a pay rise the following Easter - 25 per cent - to cover the recent inflation, so the next thing we bought was a cine camera to record the precious moments of a young family. We thought we were well off! (And still we had no TV)
Right. I wasn't blaming 1974 no Labour, Jos. I meant to say that Labour came in to a country in a terrible state. It was appropriate for them to be miserable for a while like the current lot are. Let's hope the current lot don't stay miserable for quite as long!
I suppose it’s also a case of government doing for us what we won’t do for ourselves. We can’t make our own (generally) wise decisions so the state must make them for us. It’s just the nationalisation of morality.
In the low status world, we would all respect God’s handiwork in our bodies. To enjoy gratefully but respectfully. We would care for our neighbours and apply some social stigma. We could pay farmers to produce good food. We could promote the greengrocer over the fast food shop. We could help our breweries and vineyards without taxing them out of business. We could teach our children to cook and look after themselves as producers rather than consumers. And we could then really enjoy some processed crap from time to time. There’s a lot we could do, but don’t.
Agreed Martin. But even ‘junk food’ is a loaded term. Intentionally so of course. A lot of this is simple snobbery. The object of the critics ire isn’t really the food. It’s the ‘junk’ people who eat it.
I know, guilty of hypocrisy here as don't approve of junk food, but enjoy it too. The deeper point here is that the luxury belief class can create a free market for food, knowing they can have their cake and eat it, as it were, while the plebs suffer the consequences.
When I hear the word charity, I reach for my gun. Modern charity is not about giving to those in need, but about a feeding a monster of virtue-signalling busybodies, headed by the plutocrats of today, kept fat on taxpayer's subsidies or the automatic direct debits of millions who have given up on thinking. And they cover every conceivable subject from the African poor to national heritage and the environment. A tax dodge, certainly, and the path to influence and income for those at the top. I am sure, LSO, you could turn your invective on this well-deserved subject.
I largely agree Jos. All charities get a blanket ‘no’ from me. But that is a shame. Because I firmly believe that charity, especially small charity, has a role to play in helping people. But now it has been co-opted to become a ‘sector’ it is no longer really ‘charity’ as us older folk think of it.
Not sure where I mentioned this before. So apologies if it was on this thread. But before covid I was working in a central London coffee shop. I recognised a neighbour who was having a meeting about the charity she worked for. That sort of made me aware of the fact that literally everyone else around me also worked for some charity or another, and were all discussing ways to ‘increase engagement’. It’s just become a huge industry.
Obviously whenever I mention any of this in polite company. People look at me like I’m a monster.
White bread, for centuries, was an expensive, elite, highly-prized food. After it became cheaply available to the masses experts "discovered" that white bread is without nutritional value, unhealthy and tasteless in every sense. Curious. You might reasonably conclude that their health advice is agenda-driven and class is the biggest item on the menu.
Absolutely Rachel. That true of so much. Cheap clothes. Low cost travel. All become a problem when the working classes gain access. The uk pub opening hours were only mandated to keep munitions workers in the factories during WW1. (Maybe anecdotal)
Having said that. ‘White bread’ as it is today is not the same as the posh stuff from the old days. I believe the us food industry had the law changed in the 70s so they could actually get away with calling it ‘bread’! 🤣 thanks for commenting!
I know, there is some truly awful white bread around but also brown and wholemeal bread that is no better. Nothing like a nice handmade old-fashioned loaf from a local bakery used to be. (Parker’s bakery in Ealing, of beloved memory, was one of the last!) Those bakers have mostly disappeared and now there is only supermarket bread or an “artisan” bakery with sourdough at incredible prices.
You know how the government could improve my health? Leave me alone and stop interfering in my life. I'd be much more relaxed and have lower blood pressure. I'm still fuming about the sugary drinks tax, six years after it was introduced.
Absolutely Chris. I wish they’d concentrate on the big stuff. We actually expect them to do. Police our borders. Keep crooks in prison. Dont waste our money. Sort that out bosses. And maybe I’ll listen to you when you moan about my dinner.
Everything the health food lobby has forced on people in the past fifty years has made everyone fat and sick.
I put myself on a very low sugar, high fat diet with zero seed oils nd the weight has dropped off with no exercise. Here I am mixing double cream into Greek yoghurt and having a great time.
Yes Sathanas. The advice keeps changing. None of it good. The idea that ‘three slices of ham a week will give you cancer’ or suchlike, is unhelpful. Eat food. And not too much of it. That’s the only guideline most people need.
A testament to the flaws of humanity - we have the "curtain twitchers" too, but we refer to them as the HOA Karens (apologies to Karens). Tedious busy bodies.
We seem to have handed over all responsibility to them AMP. We are no longer even responsible for feeding ourselves, and certainly not our kids. And the scariest part is that most people seem to want them to intervene even more.
The worrying thing is that removing the joy from people’s lives makes them bitter and resentful. Bitter and resentful people come up with policies like these, it’s a vicious cycle.
Did you read Mary Harrington’s article about the farmer who I was grassed up to the HSE by his neighbour for taking his grandson for a ride on the tractor? Remember the stats on covid lockdowns? Huge numbers of people wanted lockdowns to be permanent, night clubs closed forever…. These bitter woke-scolds are running everything these days. “I don’t smoke so ban smoking” “I don’t eat Freybentos pies so tax them” “I don’t drive a car so get them off the roads” etc etc.. Live and let live? My arse.
The problem is not just the government, there’s a significant minority who lap all this stuff up..Get used to it, it’s going to get a lot worse.
Absolutely spot on Tom. I tried not to make this post too downbeat but I share your contempt for these scolds. The ‘I don’t like it, so you can’t have it’ crowd. The level of narcissism revealed by that attitude speaks to the self regard of the ruling class.
Yes. I read about that farmer. The same attitude that had people snitching on their neighbours during lockdown.
We’re empowering some very grim and nasty people indeed. And of course they all ride around on their high horses. Acting, and maybe even believing, that they are the good guys. Awful. And as you say. It’s only going to get worse.
Thanks for commenting!
Having learned to drive at 9, when I was about 14 I was driving a tractor and trailer load of bales along a road around the perimeter of our farm when the local bobby pulled me over on his Norton.
"Does your Dad know you are driving this on the road?" he asked, I replied truthfully that Dad had sent me to fetch the bales and PC Coles, universally known as Perce said "Well, I'd better go and have a word with him then", and off he rode.
When I got back to the farm Dad said he had received a ticking off. He was not prosecuted nor was I taken into care. Hard to imagine what consequences would follow today.
A different world Hugh. I remember waiting for the bus to school. I guess I was about 14. When a car pulled up. One of my classmates had ‘borrowed’ his dad’s car. And was picking up his mates on the way to school. I think he got in trouble but the fact I can’t remember exactly what sort shows it wasn’t considered the worst crime. Thinking back though, it was pretty bad. 🤣
My brother and his friends used to buy single cigarettes from the newsagent with their lunch money - aged 12 and 13 - in their school uniform!
Oh yes. We all bought smokes in our uniforms. My Nan used to leave out a half ounce of old Holborn for me in the morning, so I had enough for school. 🤣 I guess I was 15. She was the absolute best.
One of my mother's friends said that her father started smoking cigarettes when he was 10, and kept going until he died in his mid-90s. (But I have no idea when he started buying them for himself).
That’s dedication!
Sadly they finished my brother off at the age of 54, but one of my grandfathers lasted until his mid-80’s as a very heavy smoker - and he probably started in his early teens.
Yes. My grandad died from it too. Awful habit. But it definitely had its upsides. I loved smoking.
I never smoked (always the rebel) but I like people smoking. I grew up in a fug of smoke and I was so annoyed when they stopped smoking in pubs. It created an atmosphere of conviviality somehow. Loved the smell of pipe smoke.....sort of wondering if I could burn it like incense 🤔
This is why the Stasi found it so easy to operate in the old DDR. Some people are only too willing to be complicit in State sanctioned curtain-twitching - and it costs the State not a penny.
Yes. And closer to home the mask fascists and curtain twitchers of covid. Unforgivable.
We could say that slaves need tyrants just as much as tyrants need slaves.
Can you imagine what it was like to be that neighbour who called the police to say "There's a grandpa giving his ten-year-old grandson a ride out on his tractor"? Or the policeman who didn't tell her to stop being so ridiculous?
Yes exactly. Both as bad as each other.
Last week I was re-reading some of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's stuff - as one does when the news hosed hither and yon by the MSM is particularly risible - and came across this gem which may be of interest to other readers. Just about sums up most governments but this one in particular, it seems to me:
“To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.”
Watching Comrade Starmer as he boasted about making difficult choices - and then sniggering as he mentioned pensioners' cancelled Winter Heating Allowance - makes me reach unconsciously for a well-oiled cricket bat.
Fascinating stuff. no-one. Absolutely ignorant of Proudhon until now. So thanks for that. I’d pass on the cricket bat, I’d settle for a life in a bath of beans for Starmer. He’d have to pay the bean tax of course. It’s a levy, VAT rated of course, payable on every bean.
Well written, LSO. There is a category of commodities for which demand is price inelastic. That is, when the price goes up, consumption only changes less than proportionately. When demand is completely inelastic, consumption does not respond at all to any price increase. And guess what - basic foods are price inelastic. The impact of any tax will be to increase Govt coffers rather than reduce consumption to any great extent. A health tax, my arse.
Thank you Jos. It also seems to me that alcohol is inelastic for
most people, and the same for smokes. People might go down a brand, or look to black market. But they won’t readily cut their consumption because of price. That’s why unit prices for alcohol are so hateful. They have never worked. But of course we are told they are a great success in Scotland, just as they aren’t in-I think- Australia.
Yup. The Govt used to produce estimates of these price elasticities for food and drink almost annually from their Food Expenditure Survey, and alcohol was down there on the inelastic level. Cigs were never included in this survey. It was all bread and butter (!) stuff to undergrads in the 60s. However, this analysis seems to have stopped around 2010, partly, I suspect, because the data did not vary much from year to year, and possibly partly due to ludicrous studies such as this (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a759170e5274a545822c86d/defra-stats-foodfarm-food-price-elasticities-120208.pdf) - 214 pages of really obscure and pointless analysis and thousands of results. The authors were so lost in their numbers they forgot what they were supposed to be doing. And they had no idea about communicating with a reader.
I remember a statistic from a few years back, which was that, when households were surveyed about their consumption of different goods, they reported buying only half as much tobacco and alcohol as was being sold by supermarkets and other vendors.
Since booze and cigarettes are not especially perishable goods, then it is unlikely that households were buying lots of these items and then throwing half of them away. Instead, it was likely that people were being economical with the truth when answering the surveys, so as to appear more virtuous than they really were.
This introduced me to two terms in economics: "stated preferences" (what people say) vs "revealed preferences" (what they actually do).
Great stuff LSO. The joy is indeed being sucked out of our lives. Not for underage vapers though, with their watermelon and strawberry poison darts! Admittedly, it is shocking when you read (or see on tv) mothers who never cook, relying on takeout for their children most nights. Those people will always find a way though, it'shuman nature.
. It's as if all the things the hard left want to impose on us is coming down the line.
Thanks Giulia, It seems to me that it’s not so much the food that they have a the real objection to, it’s the people they suppose who are eating it.
Hi Giulia, I’m (not quite) hard left but I am not aware of any differences in eating habits beneath left and right. I’m as shocked as you are though about the mothers who don't cook and rely on takeout though.
My understanding is that it’s international corporations who want to impose horrible eating on people — not the hard left.
Well done, Mr LSO!
I’m with you on all the evil of the little taxes and the charities that cheer for them. I don’t think anything good comes of them. I’ve just come back from 20 years in California and my family checks the ingredients of every drink before we quaff it to make sure it doesn’t contain non-sugars that will poison us. We don’t need governments to be fiddling with Bingo Taxes and Sugar Taxes. They could do a better job of keeping us safe on the streets though.
As far as Keir Starmer’s miserable Labour government goes, I just got through The Rest is History’s story about Wilson taking over in the Distaster of 1974:
Britain in 1974: State of Emergency
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/britain-in-1974-state-of-emergency-part-1/id1537788786?i=1000643911801
Things were much worse economically back then with strikes and closures and garbage on the streets. One major difference was that Wilson’s government really was lefty and Labour didn’t shutdown the lefties for quite a long time. Starmer’s government is about as middle-y as they come and you can expect any remaining lefties to be got rid of quite quickly. I think he deserves to be given a little bit of a chance. And it’s better that he take over the mess with a frown on his face than pretend that everything is sunshine and roses. Maybe we’ll have sunshine and roses soon.
It’s important to eat something that’s recognisable as food. Food-like things that come in tubes or cardboard packets or plastic bags from Deliveroo are ultra-processed and ultra-processed food is certainly passed through the machine twice. The biggest crime is that it keeps you hungry all the time so you eat more. Proper food doesn’t do that. Fried chicken is not ultra-processed. It’s definitely food. I enjoy meat so I eat a lot of that but, still, “eat mostly food” is good advice. We’ve covered before how those skinny 17 year olds on the beach in 1976 were skinny because the food wasn’t ultra-processed and they didn’t eat too much. We could have sexy 17-year-olds again if we fed them properly.
I wonder how it is that the lower orders have such a preference for really crappy foods. It’s not price — my family eats fresh foods everyday and fresh foods are certainly cheaper than ultra-processed foods. Could it be that no one ever showed them how to cook? It doesn’t need to be anything fancy. Make some pasta and tomato sauce. Or fry some chicken.
Eat food. Mostly Plants. Not too much.
Thanks Ragged. Hope you’re keeping well. A lot to unpack there.
Ultimately I don’t think the government should be in our kitchens any more than it should make an appearance in the bedroom. Or even on our Deliveroo bikes. Though how people can afford to eat only takeaway is beyond me. The idea, as you say, that healthy food is somehow more expensive, is a nonsense.
As I say to a different commenter there’s an issue with our schizophrenic masters. Is it an obesity epidemic? Or are we healthy at any size? It can’t be both. Frankly I think people should be left alone. I have a lot to say about the ‘burden’ our self indulgence Starmer claims we place on the NHS. But that’s for another day. Suffice to say. Fat people pay taxes too.
The difference from the seventies, as you and I both remember, was that food, though more often home made, was not always healthy. I remember lots of fatty foods and white bread and jam. I think the difference might come down, in a large part to snacking. Back then it seemed we only really ate at mealtimes. Have I remembered that wrong? I’m not so sure. Now people seem to graze all day long. Set meal times is discipline (I’m very much not living what I’m preaching here) and discipline is very much out of fashion.
As for this government. Sorry Ragged. I respect your hopeful optimism, but it is already proving itself absolutely god awful.
Yes. Eat only food! ATB
Just finished round three of chemo last night! I am doing OK, thanks.
I think you are right about the food from those days. Yes, we had bread and jam too. But only at meal times! It's all the junk food that people eat all day long that are the problem.
Just eaten a stack of white bread toast, butter and jam. Damn, I'm common.
1974? To put in context, we had a Labour government from 1964 to 1970, then briefly the Heath Conservative Govt which fought the unions non-stop, with strikes and nationwide power cuts, whipped us into the EEC with out even bothering to ask us what we wanted, saw inflation increase to 25 per cent, and then collapsed at the beginning of 1974, when Labour returned. So don't blame any event of 1974 on Labour - it was already in train.
But was it so bad? Not in small towns or villages. Life went on as normal, just as today the nearest one will get to normality is in the less populated parts of the country. Small wonder there is a population movement of white people out of cities to these areas.
PS. Nearly all the girls in the 60s and 70s were slim and could wear a mini. Not a fat thigh amongst 'em, unlike today where I have to avert my eyes from the horrors many females subject us to.
Yes Jos. It’s a point that Dominic Sandbrook makes in his books. Though looking back a lot of the raw figures are quite bad, at the time things seemed to be jogging along OK for a lot of people. I know it felt like that for me.
I think a lot of it was to do with some things getting materially better, or at least the pace of change. I remember my nan having a twin tub, but we upgraded to a drum washer-still a top loader. I remember TV slowly going colour and adverts being colourful and flash, lots of brand names. Plus the music. It felt like what it was I think, a time of great upheaval, not all of it bad.
Ha ha the difference now is that they all think they can wear a mini. And do. And not to be accused of being sexist, the boys are not much better….
It's a mistake to judge the conditions of the past from those of today. Fifty years have passed, materially most people are far far better off than they were then because of the general increase in prosperity and the natural increase from having lived a life, climbed the ladder and getting richer from one's own exertions. We bought our first washing machine in 1974 and that was our first major domestic purchase, before even a TV. We thought it wonderful, my wife especially, after six years of handwashing for a family. And then I had a pay rise the following Easter - 25 per cent - to cover the recent inflation, so the next thing we bought was a cine camera to record the precious moments of a young family. We thought we were well off! (And still we had no TV)
Right. I wasn't blaming 1974 no Labour, Jos. I meant to say that Labour came in to a country in a terrible state. It was appropriate for them to be miserable for a while like the current lot are. Let's hope the current lot don't stay miserable for quite as long!
I Read this in conjunction with a tub of ice cream ...possibly gst free. Enjoyed both :)
Wow. Now that’s what I call a breakfast. Still Phish Food is full of Omega 3 I expect 😂
I suppose it’s also a case of government doing for us what we won’t do for ourselves. We can’t make our own (generally) wise decisions so the state must make them for us. It’s just the nationalisation of morality.
In the low status world, we would all respect God’s handiwork in our bodies. To enjoy gratefully but respectfully. We would care for our neighbours and apply some social stigma. We could pay farmers to produce good food. We could promote the greengrocer over the fast food shop. We could help our breweries and vineyards without taxing them out of business. We could teach our children to cook and look after themselves as producers rather than consumers. And we could then really enjoy some processed crap from time to time. There’s a lot we could do, but don’t.
Ha ha Martin. Are you sure that what you’re describing isn’t just what we used to call ‘The Past?’
Indeed! I don’t want to be seen as pro-junk food, which is the obvious take-away (geddit?) from the issue - it’s a deeper problem we all face.
Agreed Martin. But even ‘junk food’ is a loaded term. Intentionally so of course. A lot of this is simple snobbery. The object of the critics ire isn’t really the food. It’s the ‘junk’ people who eat it.
I know, guilty of hypocrisy here as don't approve of junk food, but enjoy it too. The deeper point here is that the luxury belief class can create a free market for food, knowing they can have their cake and eat it, as it were, while the plebs suffer the consequences.
Excellent rant! You are the David Mitchell de nos jours. Please keep up the good work.
Thanks jim!
There are few, if any, things that are more evil than societal coercion
Presumably Lucy Powell will stand up and tell us that all these taxes will be necessary to avoid a "run on the pound."
🤣
When I hear the word charity, I reach for my gun. Modern charity is not about giving to those in need, but about a feeding a monster of virtue-signalling busybodies, headed by the plutocrats of today, kept fat on taxpayer's subsidies or the automatic direct debits of millions who have given up on thinking. And they cover every conceivable subject from the African poor to national heritage and the environment. A tax dodge, certainly, and the path to influence and income for those at the top. I am sure, LSO, you could turn your invective on this well-deserved subject.
I largely agree Jos. All charities get a blanket ‘no’ from me. But that is a shame. Because I firmly believe that charity, especially small charity, has a role to play in helping people. But now it has been co-opted to become a ‘sector’ it is no longer really ‘charity’ as us older folk think of it.
Not sure where I mentioned this before. So apologies if it was on this thread. But before covid I was working in a central London coffee shop. I recognised a neighbour who was having a meeting about the charity she worked for. That sort of made me aware of the fact that literally everyone else around me also worked for some charity or another, and were all discussing ways to ‘increase engagement’. It’s just become a huge industry.
Obviously whenever I mention any of this in polite company. People look at me like I’m a monster.
Presumably then, if the Government put a tax on knives that would discourage people from buying them to stab other people with.
You’d think. 🤔
White bread, for centuries, was an expensive, elite, highly-prized food. After it became cheaply available to the masses experts "discovered" that white bread is without nutritional value, unhealthy and tasteless in every sense. Curious. You might reasonably conclude that their health advice is agenda-driven and class is the biggest item on the menu.
Absolutely Rachel. That true of so much. Cheap clothes. Low cost travel. All become a problem when the working classes gain access. The uk pub opening hours were only mandated to keep munitions workers in the factories during WW1. (Maybe anecdotal)
Having said that. ‘White bread’ as it is today is not the same as the posh stuff from the old days. I believe the us food industry had the law changed in the 70s so they could actually get away with calling it ‘bread’! 🤣 thanks for commenting!
I know, there is some truly awful white bread around but also brown and wholemeal bread that is no better. Nothing like a nice handmade old-fashioned loaf from a local bakery used to be. (Parker’s bakery in Ealing, of beloved memory, was one of the last!) Those bakers have mostly disappeared and now there is only supermarket bread or an “artisan” bakery with sourdough at incredible prices.
You know how the government could improve my health? Leave me alone and stop interfering in my life. I'd be much more relaxed and have lower blood pressure. I'm still fuming about the sugary drinks tax, six years after it was introduced.
Absolutely Chris. I wish they’d concentrate on the big stuff. We actually expect them to do. Police our borders. Keep crooks in prison. Dont waste our money. Sort that out bosses. And maybe I’ll listen to you when you moan about my dinner.
Everything the health food lobby has forced on people in the past fifty years has made everyone fat and sick.
I put myself on a very low sugar, high fat diet with zero seed oils nd the weight has dropped off with no exercise. Here I am mixing double cream into Greek yoghurt and having a great time.
Yes Sathanas. The advice keeps changing. None of it good. The idea that ‘three slices of ham a week will give you cancer’ or suchlike, is unhelpful. Eat food. And not too much of it. That’s the only guideline most people need.
A testament to the flaws of humanity - we have the "curtain twitchers" too, but we refer to them as the HOA Karens (apologies to Karens). Tedious busy bodies.
We seem to have handed over all responsibility to them AMP. We are no longer even responsible for feeding ourselves, and certainly not our kids. And the scariest part is that most people seem to want them to intervene even more.