Exaggeration for rhetorical effect? Or an actual physical desire? You decide:
Some supermarkets are also experimenting with ideas to boost supply. Sainsbury’s shoppers in Kent have been introduced to 2.4kg tins of baked beans supplied by Brakes Group. Until recently, Brakes was one of a number of national wholesalers that provided up to a third of food eaten in the UK as suppliers to Britain’s work canteens, cafés, pubs and restaurants. Brakes was valued at £2.2 billion when it was sold to Sysco of the United States in 2016, but such companies have seen their businesses models crushed since the government closed down the hospitality trade and many people started working from home.
With a corresponding spike in demand at supermarkets, it makes sense for them to start supplying retailers…
Yes, this makes sense. We’ve still – minus what is it, a couple of thousand? – the same number of people in the country eating the same number of meals a day. So, we’ve a food collection, preparation and delivery system that can cope with pushing that many calories a day through the system.
However, it is specialised into at least two different systems, those feeding us through cafeterias and those of us who prepare our own at home. Given that we’ve the same available calories, the same demand for calories, we should indeed divert that now redundant cafeteria capacity into the at home one.
Cool, all very sensible. Then we meet government:
…although supplies have been curtailed by stricter labelling rules for food sold directly to the public. The Federation of Wholesale Distributors has been in talks with the government this week about relaxing these rules amid fears huge amounts of food could go to waste.
Do we get to shoot them or not?
For why is there even a discussion about whether said rules are to be relaxed right now? If government actually is efficient then why didn’t it, three weeks back, shout, loudly, to all concerned that such rules were not applicable right now?
Sure, there’s the idea that we’re about to find out all sorts of regulations that we don’t need in extremis and therefore don’t need at all. But for those who tout government’s ability to, umm, well, govern, observing what it actually does is a useful antidote.
We’re in the middle of a pandemic. We have panic buying. We have plenty of food. The food can’t meet the buyers because bureaucrats are mumbling about whether the packaging meets standards.
Shoot them, shoot them all.
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Our parish council is required to have a physical meeting to approve payments to suppliers, and by law must have an annual meeting in May. We looked forward to the 300+page Corvid Bill giving leeway, but nothing. We've shut up shop and made what facilities we have available to the local Little Platoons, but I'm breaking the law by emailing the clerk and telling her to pay the bills, and we will be breaking the law by not having an AGM.
I'm reminded of "Zulu Dawn" (yes, I know a movie, dramatic license & all that, but still) - the British are being overrun by Zulus in part because the quartermasters had all the ammo locked up tight. On the plus side, they had great inventory control.
Someone at Derbyshire Police has been given a drone and some new powers to boss people around. And he's not afraid to use them.
https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1243259636360372225
Here in Rockingham County, whether having received Coronavirus stimulus or anticipating it, there are lots of cruisers out with radar guns and probably pads full of traffic citation forms.
I read a blog yesterday about armed National Guard (in Georgia, I think) advising supermarket shoppers to be in and out in ten minutes.
At least they haven't equipped the damn thing with a weapon so it can strafe the "miscreants". Drones usually aren't flying very fast. A good shot ought to be able to bring it down.
Being a petty little tin god demanding to control every aspect of peoples' lives is heady stuff. The government types won't give it up easily when this is over.
I’m not sure what you would do with a 2.4kg tin of Brakes baked beans. You would certainly be advised not to eat them.
You could invite a lot of your neighbours around for breakfast.
Oh, wait...
The can will keep until opened; thereafter cook enough for one meal and put the can in the fridge; repeat each meal until it is empty.
Will there be room enough with all the other 2,4kg open tins of food?
You bathe in them to wash the coronavirus off after being outside. :-)
The Who really were ahead of their time (see cover of The Who Sell Out).
I understand (from rumour) that the issue of labelling is that commercial bulk food complies with all applicable health/acceptability standards, but comes in bulk containers.
These do not have to have mandatory guidelines printed on the label, such as recycling instructions, and encouragements to 'eat 5 a day'.
It is probably worth starving yourself to death to avoid this continual hectoring...