Trolleys 763 thru 765

Saturday had been designated a fish chowder day, by which I mean a type of fish stew made by BH involving fish, bacon, onion, potato and milk, so down to town bright and early.

Started with a couple of trolleys from B&M from the passage running down to the Rio Grill (reference 2) from Station Approach.

Followed by an M&S trolley lifted from outside B&M, not far from the bus stops.

While I was in M&S, I picked up some streaky bacon, described as dry cured, but shrink wrapped and cut nearly as thin as the stuff sold by Sainsbury's. Plus the fat wadge of newsprint called the Guardian Weekend. Which I discovered later included a whole lot of guff about how to curate my wardrobe: perhaps they ask their computer to generate it for them.

On to the market, where the meat van man appeared to be selling two large lumps of forerib to the same customer. Not his usual stock in trade at all, but it looked OK from where I was standing.

And the fish man was selling a good bit of stuff to the chap in front of me - who had clearly been a patron of those fish stalls you used to get outside public houses in his day. Including two chunks of octopus leg for £12. Maybe a couple of centimetres thick and four inches long. Looked a bit like crab in colour. I took a rather boring 400g of cod: I meant a bit more, but his cutting was a bit short and I did not think to ask him to top it up a bit. In the event, it was enough.

Followed by a slightly dented Sainsbury's trolley in East Street.

Complete with a little tag on the handle explain where some of the stuff was, under the new arrangements inside the store. Perhaps the noise of all the ladies moaning about how they couldn't find anything anymore had got through to management. So the tag showed willing, even if the print was a bit small for the older eyeball.

As it happened, a correspondent had been telling me about how the big shop was falling away in favour of shop on the way home from work, with the big stores adjusting their plans for big shops accordingly. A story which was supported by the huge supply of large trolleys outside the entrance and the very small supply of small trolleys.

Mine failed to stack properly, although I failed to see why.

And so home, down Middle Lane and through the Screwfix passage, to deliver the fish and bacon to BH. 

While I was waiting for my chowder, I took a look at the front part of the Guardian, that is to say the part which did not go on about my wardrobe. I was intrigued by the front page story (reference 3) about how much junk food is costing us - that is to say food from factories in fancy wrapping which is likely to contain a lot of some or all of sugar, saturated fat & salt (the three esses) and unlikely to contain much fibre. I have now had a peek at the (open access) report on which the story was based, reference 4.

It looks to be a serious and well written report, although I dare say one could spend quality time arguing about the numbers, in particular how one estimates how much of any particular health flavoured cost is reasonably attributable to junk food. There is some discussion of all this from page 19 of the report, 'Assessing the overall cost'.

Nevertheless, I dare say that the conclusions are right enough: we eat far too much and it is all too easy to eat far too much of the junk food which is particularly bad for us. Raw carrots do slow one down.

Jumping to near the end (page 33), I find that Big Food, evil though it might be, only makes about £20bn a year in profit in the UK. So taking a bite out of that profit is not going to pay for a move to healthy food. While putting a seriously deterrent tax on the purchase of unhealthy food would no doubt raise howls of protest. Made all the more difficult by the fact that the benefits of a healthy diet will take years to come through into the numbers above. If I was younger, maybe this is the just sort of issue I ought to take to my local Labour Party and try to fight it through to Conference. Or even to our shiny new Health Minister, the one that does not believe in dignity for the dying. Also rather keen on league tables for hospitals.

PS 1: then today we get a flier for some expensive-looking home sushi from some people called 'Little Fish', to be found at reference 7. They look to be strong in Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire. They can do you a festive platter for £125, but a substantial snack for two for £35. We do not do sushi, but I wonder if it counts as junk food in the context of the report at reference 4? I would guess not: not much fibre and some salt, but not much sugar or saturated fat.

PS 2: not being very happy with resting on Statista for GDP, I tried to dig a bit deeper. A paper from the House of Commons Library (HOC) dated a few days ago says 'In cash terms, GDP was £2,720 billion in 2023', which suggests a typo at Statista. Moving onto National Statistics, they seem to be much more interested in growth than levels - reflecting our (unfortunately) growth driven society - but the statistic I want might be called YBHA. I fail to find a definition, but I do eventually find an annual total which agrees with HOC. Time to try Google's Gemini. He is reasonably helpful, ending by suggesting that one adds together the four most recent quarterly estimates, which he makes £2,420 billion. Which is what I get too, so perhaps his arithmetic has got more reliable since I last tried it, some time ago now. On the other hand, his quarterly figures seem well adrift of those from National Statistics. To which Gemini responds that he 'will strive to be more diligent in the future'. So clearly, one still needs to be careful with his numbers.

I have also been reminded that computing these sorts of interesting economic aggregates is difficult. Much worse than saying 'how many people live in the UK' - which I did used to know something about.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/11/trolleys-761-762.html.

Reference 2: https://www.riogrillepsom.com/.

Reference 3: Addiction to junk food costs UK £268bn  year - Denis Campbell, Guardian - 2024.

Reference 4: The False Economy of Big Food and the case for a new food economy - Tim Jackson, Food Farming & Countryside Commission - 2024

Reference 5: https://ffcc.co.uk/. 'An independent charity, we were set up in 2017 to help shape the future of food and farming, land use and the countryside. Our purpose is to bring together people and ideas from different perspectives to find the practical and radical solutions which also tackle the climate, nature, health and economic crises of our time. We curate the latest research and evidence, involve citizens in deliberations, and tell the inspiring stories of people taking action in their businesses and communities'. Further evidence of the impressive penetration of the word 'curate', unheard of 20 years ago outside of museums.

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Jackson_(economist). Looks like a respectable pedigree. And he writes plays.

Reference 7: https://little-fish.uk/.

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