Cont: Brexit: Now What? Magic 8 Ball's up
- Thread starter Dave Rogers
- Start date
-
- Tags
- brexit
- Status
If Brexit does result in an election on 14 October, it turns out that it would have the effect of disenfranchising observant Jews*
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49561792
And here's me thinking that Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party were the raging anti-Semites
In truth this is almost certainly an oversight, but had had it been Labour calling the election date, the right wing press would have been up in arms.
* - well unless they choose to vote by post
Don't you have early voting in UK? We usually have for up to ten days in the two preceeding weeks, for precisely such situations, when a voter might be unable to cast a vote on election day due to prior arrangements.
McHrozni
Whether the General Election is called sufficiently early to prevent a vote on whether to rule out a no-deal Brexit or not makes no difference IMO. If the Conservative Party is returned with a working majority then we're bound to get a no-deal Brexit.
With Jeremy Corbyn in charge of a Labour Party whose Brexit strategy is equally fanciful as the Conservatives' I think that Boris Johnson is assured of success.
IMO the only solution would be to have some kind of "Party of National Unity To Prevent No Deal" which would mean that of Labour, LibDem, SNP, Tiggers, Greens et al. only one stands in each constituency. This is IMO completely impossible, because even if everyone agrees that the SNP gets free rein in Scotland (and that itself is a huge if), and Northern Ireland does what Northern Ireland does, then how are the seats in England and Wales split ?
Meanwhile we may soon have the bizarre situation where the Labour Party reintroduces Theresa May's deal for a vote - and the Conservatives would be whipped into opposing it.
I know that it's pointless torturing oneself but occasionally I have a fantasy that the Labour Party is led by a halfway competent Remainer and that the result of the next general election is a nailed-on certainty.
Labour would IMO be best served voting against the government if it asks for a General Election - better for Parliament to have the whip hand for now - which may in turn have the government calling a vote of no confidence in itself (possibly via the DUP) to force an election with the opposition parties voting against the vote of no confidence.
Vixen
Penultimate Amazing
I am ashamed to say, that coming from good farming stock, I was once penniless, lying in the gutter and staring at the stars, and knew not how to cook. I was forced to learn during my days of carefree youth and I am so glad I did. From barely knowing how to boil an egg, an Italian showed me how to cook a proper meal from scratch just by chopping up some veg, frying it and chucking over some pasta.
After that, it was Good Housekeeping cookery book and now I can cook almost anything under the sun. I would do well on Masterchef.
Despite being quite well-off these days, I cannot understand why anyone would regularly buy ready-meals: full of saturated fat, unsatisfying and grossly overpriced at >£3 or so. Plus only enough for one, so you have to buy two or three if there are several of you.
I'll buy ready soup and sometimes salad but apart from that I am happy to boil up potatoes and throw things in a frying pan or shove it in the oven. An onion: <£0.11, carrots and peas, ditto. Mushrooms about £0.99. All lasting two or three meals between two people.
Whilst the supermarket aisles in England are crammed full of ready meals, here in Finland there are aisles and aisles devoted to sausages of all shapes and sizes (I have some 'cheesy' sausages in the fridge), different cheeses (a bit like in France) and fish: shelf loads of Baltic herring (think Marina brand, in Waitrose, then quadruple the size of the jars and multiply the number of shelves by six dozen). One good thing here, a decent sized portion of salmon is incredibly cheap as compared to the tiny little steaklets from the Scottish salmon farm back in the UK. Plus LOTS of different coffees.
UK imports? There are Heinz baked beans, usually stuck on the bottom shelf and incredibly pricey, but a great favourite of my Brit late-stepfather for breakfast, and little jars of Nescafé Gold instant coffee, which nobody appears to touch so they are in a little huddle by themselves on a lower shelf.
Last edited:
Labour would IMO be best served voting against the government if it asks for a General Election - better for Parliament to have the whip hand for now - which may in turn have the government calling a vote of no confidence in itself (possibly via the DUP) to force an election with the opposition parties voting against the vote of no confidence.
UK is two, at most three steps away from founding a Ministry of Funny Walks.
McHrozni
Many reasons:
- Time - many people think they don't have time to shop for, and cook, meals from scratch
- Resources - Not everyone has a well equipped kitchen, or indeed any kind of kitchen, they may only have a microwave
- Skills - you're fortunate to be a self-proclaimed excellent chef who would do well on Masterchef, many people wouldn't know how to chop an egg, much less boil an onion
- Opportunity - these days it seems that a lot of families don't sit down to dinner together, either because their schedules don't align
- Demand - in some families, each person has their own dietary requirements (real and/or imagined), cooking five separate meals simply isn't an option
By the way, if you go for cheaper ready meals, you can eat (badly) for comfortably under £1.50 a head.
Andy_Ross
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Jun 2, 2010
- Messages
- 69,289
Rees-Mogg showing his contempt for fellow MPs.
He's supposed to be leader of the house
Telling off fromother MPs, look at his slimy expression in the BBC coverage
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-49573630/jacob-rees-mogg-told-to-sit-up-man
He's supposed to be leader of the house
Telling off fromother MPs, look at his slimy expression in the BBC coverage
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-49573630/jacob-rees-mogg-told-to-sit-up-man
This is a cultural difference between Brits (and their American offspring) and run of the mill Europeans. Most of us have proper kitchens that are intended to be used most days of the week. Some people have a narrow array of cooking skills and will only prepare 3-4 different meals and rotate them through the week, some will make something different every day, but the ready meals are limited to an occasional ... what's the opposite of a treat? Punishment? Their use is dictated by convenience of a specific day, travel arrangements and the like.
The last option you mention is false. Dietary regimens are rarely friendly to ready meals. You can obtain ready meals suitable for some common dietary conditions, but your choices will be sharply limited.
McHrozni
Well Christmas Dinner this year may be Blaireau a la Navet but at least the kiddies will have some presents:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49563758
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49563758
Vixen
Penultimate Amazing
But surely, these factors would apply to the whole of Europe? It doesn't explain British popularity of these products. You can get cheapo ready meals from Iceland such as Ocean Pie or Macaroni Cheese, which is quite nice, but before long you'll feel fatigue and run down if it's your regular staple. Iceland is the ready-meal store but it's pretty horrid stuff.
In Finland, the staple ready meal is meatballs (which comes in a tin) or an awful concoction called maksulaattikko - liver casserole, made up of rice, liver and raisins. It always takes me back to my childhood. You can buy it in a ready prepared tin foil casing. There's also something which looks like little sticks of potatoes mixed in with minced meat.
Other than there isn't the same sheer range as in the UK. It is becoming trendy but they are seen as novelty one-offs rather than regular diet.
Wudang
BOFH
[quote not working again]
What the Don said plus: There's a BBC show called Eat Well for Less (available on iPlayer) which has "experts" visit families to help with their food budget. You see families who think that you roast a chicken, slice off the breast and drumsticks and dump the rest. For me that's a risotto waiting to happen. If you can watch it you'll get an insight. Often it's just that families fall into a pattern and ready meals become the new normal.
A propos of nothing Opera browser has a built in vpn so you can appear to be in different countries.
What the Don said plus: There's a BBC show called Eat Well for Less (available on iPlayer) which has "experts" visit families to help with their food budget. You see families who think that you roast a chicken, slice off the breast and drumsticks and dump the rest. For me that's a risotto waiting to happen. If you can watch it you'll get an insight. Often it's just that families fall into a pattern and ready meals become the new normal.
A propos of nothing Opera browser has a built in vpn so you can appear to be in different countries.
By my last point I mean that Little Johnny only eats pizza, while Jane became vegan last week (before that she was gluten intolerant), Dad wants a Chinese and Mum wants a salad.
Cooking a single meal to meet all those expectations is impossible and these days just telling everyone to stfu and eat what's on their plate is apparently not the done thing.
Regarding actual dietary restrictions, ready meals are pretty good at accommodating the more common dietary restrictions, especially those which are the most popular and faddish. Certainly if I had the kind of food intolerance that would result in anaphylaxis and death then I wouldn't trust any kind of pre-prepared food (including top-end restaurants) but if I decided I was gluten intolerant this week because some celebrity was, then ready meals would be just fine.
Vixen
Penultimate Amazing
The toy market was one of my case studies and the manufacturers - who are all in China - usually have the toys ready produced by March or April as specified by the US owners (Mattel, Hasbro, Leapfrog).
I popped along to Hamleys toy store in Regent Street to interview the floor managers for my case study, in early November, and was told because of unexpected demand they had been out of Leapfrog items several times, despite seasonal planning nine months' in advance. That's every toy manufacturer's dream, to be the sought-after toy at Christmas.
LEGO of Denmark will have similar production times. Their stock and availability for this Christmas will already have been done and dusted by Spring for this Christmas season. Next year's products will already be on the US drawing boards with the Chinese manufacturers ready and waiting for the specs to start coming in by February 2020.
It may very well be that the UK is different in this regard. I only have anecdotal evidence but it does seem that families on the continent do make more of an effort to eat together but even then, it seems like things are changing, albeit slowly.
Maybe the UK is 10-20 years "ahead" of the rest of Western Europe in terms of people feeling more time constrained and families operating less as a unit and more as independent individuals under the same roof.
Vixen
Penultimate Amazing
That still doesn't explain the popularity in the UK as compared to the EU.
These programmes are all about saving money but it should be about more than that. It should be about teaching people how to have gourmet taste. The French know this. The Italians know this. Italy used to be the poor man of Europe but it always knew how to cook.
I think the term for that is "bad parenting". As far as I'm concerned the choice "eat or be hungry, it's you choice" goes. The only exception should be made for genuine medical reasons.
Yea, but that's because gluten intolerance is all the rage nowadays and if you consent to possible traces of gluten (up to 20 ppm is acceptable to those with the genuine celiac disease) and because gluten is relatively easy to eliminate from most dishes. Corn can do most of the things wheat can for sauces, the only real difficulty lies in bread and pastries, where alternatives are more difficult.
What about phenylketonurea (PKU)? It's not all that uncommon and quite a bit harder to cook for. Or diabetes? Those are just the most common ones, the real fun begins when you need to accomodate two or more of these in a single dish - and celiac disease is associated with (juvenile) diabetes, if you have one of these two you're more likely to suffer from the other as well than a randomly selected member of the general populace.
I doubt the ready meal industry accomodates all those.
McHrozni
Last edited:
Vixen
Penultimate Amazing
Vixen
Penultimate Amazing
You would be wrong. The scandinavian/nordic countries - who apart from Norway are all in the EU - have the highest number of people living alone (>50% iirc). In these countries it is normal for people to leave home at 18 and live by themselves.
So your explanation, 'they are more likely to eat together as a family' doesn't quite explain it, although they do like their family food traditions, especially at Christmas. But then so do the Brits.
I couldn't disagree more. I've known parents who used that approach and their kids have grown up to be very picky eaters, to put it mildly. We worked out that both of ours were happy with peas, broccoli, cauliflower and carrots (and a few other things) , so that's what they got for cooked veg. If we parents really fancied sprouts then it was no trouble to chuck some frozen peas for the kids in a pan of water. And, in time, they developed and broadened their own tastes.
Wudang
BOFH
I wonder if it's related to the fact that UK has the longest working hours in the EU? The perception of having no time between getting home and the kids needing food? The belief that it takes a long time to cook a meal even though so many watch programmes like Jamie's 15 minute meals? There's an old joke that the typical UK person eats a microwaved sherpherd's pie while watching Masterchef.
There is a disjoint and I'm not sure it can be pinned down to one factor. I suspect it's a combination : people work longer hours so are a but more likely to get a ready meal. This creates a slightly bigger market and supermarkets are always looking for the next niche to expand into so produce more ready meals. People see more ready meals so are more likely to get them. Competition between supermarkets for that market increases quality for price in one part of the market and more bargain basement options.
There is a disjoint and I'm not sure it can be pinned down to one factor. I suspect it's a combination : people work longer hours so are a but more likely to get a ready meal. This creates a slightly bigger market and supermarkets are always looking for the next niche to expand into so produce more ready meals. People see more ready meals so are more likely to get them. Competition between supermarkets for that market increases quality for price in one part of the market and more bargain basement options.
- Status