Spain protests: Young protesters in Madrid and beyond have many different demands, but they are united in opposing the Spanish governmentThis article titled “Spain reveals pain over cuts and unemployment” was written by Giles Tremlett in Madrid, for guardian.co.uk on Saturday 21st May 2011 11.59 UTCThe arrival of the table, a battered piece of formica bashed on top of four rough, oversized legs raised a cry of joy. Never mind that anyone on a normal chair would barely be able to see over the top – here was another small triumph of the new Spanish revolution, the gathering of angry Spaniards of all colours, ages and persuasions that is sweeping across the country and beyond its borders.The table that arrived in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol square was part of the swirl of creative chaos, naive enthusiasm and pent-up frustration that has transformed it into a makeshift camp for thousand of protesters who call themselves los indignados, the indignant ones.Tents and mattresses, armchairs and sofas, a canteen, portaloos and solar panels have sprung up in a remarkable display of organisational prowess. And the mass of people jostling around, each pursuing their own dream or demand, or just watching others doing the same, seemed more like something transported from the Arab spring in North Africa than from Europe.As the protests continued to swell on Friday, with 60,000 people defying authorities to obey the campaign’s “Take over the square!” slogan in dozens of Spanish cities, and with copycat demonstrations across Europe, the question was whether this was the new May 1968 – a youth-led popular revolt against an establishment deemed to have failed an entire generation.Esther Gutierréz, an elfin 26-year-old, wandered through the crowd with a battered shopping cart full of fruit.“We’ve got so much food we don’t know what to do with it. People just bring it to us for free and it’s wonderful stuff,” she said. “We want real democracy. Not just freedom for bankers. You’re not from the Spanish press, are you? We don’t speak to them.”Cynical and ingenuous by turns, the Madrid protesters and those who last week refused to obey orders to budge from the occupied city squares have torn up the rule book of Spanish public politics. The heavyweights of old – political parties, trade unions and media commentators – are not wanted here.“I was sacked when the Madrid regional government closed down a women’s centre last year when it imposed cuts,” explained Beatriz García as she bashed a small frying pan with a wooden spoon. “The unions didn’t even bother to turn up.”The political parties were worse, she said. “There is no renovation. There is nothing new or different, just two parties who take it in turn to govern because our electoral laws favour them.”Just a week ago Spain was known for the passivity of its citizens as they put up with one of the most depressing eras in recent history. Despite unemployment hitting 21%, widespread spending cuts and a socialist government bound to obey the diktats of Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the financial markets, they had refused to show their pain. Marches, sit-ins or riots were for the French – or British students. The real drama, anyway, was in North Africa. Spaniards stayed at home.All that changed this week as demonstrations organised via Facebook and Twitter became static protests in city squares, mushrooming into something that caught politicians, unions and the media by surprise.While journalists were following the dull routine of campaigning for Sunday’s municipal and regional elections, the steam was beginning to escape from a pressure cooker of discontent.Many Spaniards had told pollsters they were tired of the same, well-known political faces – especially those who are due to be re-elected despite being mired in corruption scandals. Politicians have rarely been held in such disregard, with the prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, and opposition leader, Mariano Rajoy, of the conservative People’s party, rating lowest. Rajoy seems set to take over after a general election next March.When police forcibly evicted the Madrid demonstrators on Tuesday morning, they came back in even greater numbers later that day. By Friday night authorities had lost the battle to impose rules banning public politics on the day before elections. Police could only look on. “Join us, police officers!” the demonstrators shouted.By the early hours of Friday, it was already elbow-room only in the Puerta del Sol – the square which prides itself on being Spain’s “kilometre zero”, the spot from which all other distances are measured.On the statue of King Carlos III, somebody had pinned a sign that read: “We are anti-idiots, not anti-politicians.” Other placards read: “We aren’t against the system, we want to change it”, “Democracy, a daily fight”, and “Take your money out of the bank!”“We’ve brought tents, food and even Trivial Pursuit to keep us entertained,” said Pablo Cantó, a fresh-faced 23-year-old journalism student. Like many younger protesters, and the movement as a whole, he had trouble expressing exactly why he was here. “We want change,” he said. “Things just can’t carry on as they are.”The heavy clouds of cannabis smoke suggested others had brought their own form of entertainment.“I’ve been protesting for decades,” said 60-year-old school teacher Rosa Marín. “I’m glad to see so many young people here. The questions is this: Is this another May 1968, or are they just here for the party?”A gang of drunken skinheads, mindlessly chanting football terrace slogans, were there for the latter.But a neat, disciplined circle of people intently debating social reform showed many were here in earnest. They took turns to stand up and make their proposals, the audience listening and using the sign language applause of the deaf – by shaking their hands above their heads – to show approval without drowning the speakers out.The proposals, due to make their way through a laborious process of committees, working parties and general assemblies, varied from calls for less spending on the military to helping businesses. “Because it is not just money for the owners. They are the ones who give people like us jobs,” said one young man.For some younger protesters, it was a political baptism. “I don’t know what will come out of this, but it is enough just to show everyone how upset we are,” explained Javier de Coca by phone from the protest camp in Barcelona’s Plaza de Catalunya, where there was a surprising absence of the nationalist or separatist symbols of protest movements in recent years.“It’s as if they’ve realised they have more serious problems to deal with,” said one protester. One of those problems is 45% youth unemployment.On a wall beside the tarpaulin-covered command centre in what some were calling Madrid’s “Republic of Sol” – home to a press office, an infirmary and a legal centre – a list of needs had been pinned up. Toilet paper and food were scratched off the list. Bookshelves, wood, rubber gloves and bottles of cooking gas were on it. Volunteers were needed for a creche.“We process the proposals and try to turn them into something that makes legal sense,” explained a volunteer at the legal centre.However, the open assemblies are painfully slow. Some last for hours, as everybody is given their turn to speak. After almost a week of protests, the demonstrators have failed to come up with a coherent set of demands.Electoral reform to end the two-party system and action to both punish corrupt politicians and limit their luxuries and privileges were the main areas of agreement.So is the Arab spring spreading to southern Europe? “You can’t really compare us to people who were risking their lives by protesting,” said 23-year-old computer engineer Jaime Viyuela. “But yes, you can say that we are inspired by the courage of the Arab spring.” guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogSpain reveals pain over cuts and unemploymentRelated posts:Zapatero says Spain safe from bailoutProtest march against coalition cuts expected to attract 300,000Anti-cuts campaigners plan to turn Trafalgar Square into Tahrir Square
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Spain reveals pain over cuts and unemployment
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/05/21/spain-reveals-pain-over-cuts-and-unemployment
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May 21 2011, 8:54am | Comments »
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Best in dough! French bakers battle to bag best baguette bounty
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/05/03/best-in-dough-french-bakers-best-baguette-paris
Paris bakers competition. With a punishing criteria and several entries stakes are high at a Parisian contest seeking to identify best stick of bread
This article titled “Best in dough! French bakers battle to bag best baguette bounty” was written by Agnes Poirier in Paris, for The Guardian on Tuesday 3rd May 2011 21.00 UTC They are hot, golden and crispy. Their makers hold them like saints’ relics and the judges in charge of inspecting them wear white gloves. These are the prized entries competing to be named Paris’s best baguette. At the head office of the bakers and pâtissiers’ union in the heart of Paris, young and old bakers queue up to enter the competition, first held in 1994. Pascal Guenard, a baker and pâtissier for more than 20 years is entering a baguette in the contest for the first time. He wears his white uniform and has flour in his hair; his pair of baguettes smell divine. “It’s the first time I’ve competed for best baguette but I came fourth once in the best croissant competition,” he said. “This award is very important for us and for our clients. I want them to be proud and be able to say that their baker makes the best baguette in Paris. It’s also a way for us artisans to fight the big supermarkets which sell crap baguettes for 50 cents. At €1.10, our baguette had better be good.” On the second floor, white-gloved ladies give a number to each pair of baguettes, register every baker’s name and address, and wish them “bonne chance”. Each baguette is then measured and weighed. This is the guillotine moment. Baguettes must measure between 55 and 70cm and weigh between 240g and 310g, criteria that were established 20 years ago. “We had to set up rules,” said Jacques Mabille, president of the bakers union. “During the war, baguette’s crumb was grey. The French grew to hate it. “So after the war, the whiter the crumb, the happier the people were. However, to get a very white crumb, you must compromise on the overall quality of the bread and on its taste. So we chose to return to a more balanced baguette and set up a few rules. … Today, a good baguette has a creamy-looking crumb, a crispy crust, a distinctive flavour and a delicious smell of wheat. And it shouldn’t have more than 18g of salt.” Each year, a third of baguettes are disqualified, usually because they are too heavy and too long. At the end of the queue stands Lahoussaine Damer, 26, a baker and pâtissier since the age of 18. “It’s the third time I’ve competed but I’ve never got into the top 10. This time, I have tried to perfect the cooking. Also, I was careful with the measurement and weight. They are ruthless. My baguette was disqualified last year for one centimetre.” Which French baker does he admire most? “Djibril Bodian.” Bodian, a member of the jury this year, was the winner of last year’s competition. He came to France from Senegal at the age of six, and fell in love with bread through his father, who set up a boulangerie in the Paris suburb of Pantin. After he won, Bodian became the French president’s personal baker, delivering his baguettes every day to the Elysée Palace. “We were never complimented by the Elysée Palace but were told that if nothing was said then it was a good sign, that they liked it” he says. “We have today a whole new generation of bakers in Paris, of African origin, from the Maghreb but also many Japanese and Cambodians,” said Mabille. “Baguettes have universal appeal. Besides, bakers are usually trained in French schools with traditional recipes and savoir faire.” A total of 174 baguettes were entered for the prize, with 38 disqualified. Among the 15 judges was a fromager, a teacher at the boulangerie school of Paris, and a food critic, as well as six Parisians chosen randomly after they entered a lottery. They touched, stroked, chewed, smelled, and even listened to the baguettes, inspecting their backs and bellies. Their colour and holes were closely inspected and intensely debated. Some judges spat out their samples . Three hours later, the verdict was given: after competing for the eighth time, Pascal Barillon, from Montmartre has won the best baguette accolade. As of Wednesday, he will be Carla Bruni-Sarkozy’s official supplier.
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May 3 2011, 5:06pm | Comments »
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Herbal remedies banned as new EU rules take effect
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/05/02/herbal-remedies-banned-as-new-eu-rules-take-effect
Manufacturers and herbal practitioners say strict guidelines aimed at improving safety could force them out of business.
This article titled “Herbal remedies banned as new EU rules take effect” was written by Robin McKie, for The Observer on Saturday 30th April 2011 23.06 UTC New EU rules came into force at the weekend banning hundreds of herbal remedies. The laws are aimed at protecting consumers from potentially damaging “traditional” medicines. Under the directive, herbal medicines will now have to be registered. Products must meet safety, quality and manufacturing standards, and come with information outlining possible side-effects. Herbal practitioners and manufacturers say they fear the new rules could force them out of business. Research conducted for the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in 2009 showed that 26% of adults in the UK had taken a herbal medicine in the last two years, mostly bought over the counter in health food shops and pharmacies. Commonly used ingredients already registered include echinacea, which is used against colds, St John’s wort, used for depression and anxiety, and valerian, which is claimed to ease insomnia. The agency said it hoped to promote a more cautious approach to the use of herbal medicines after a study found that 58% of respondents believed these products were safe because they are “natural”. In fact, herbal remedies can have harmful side-effects. St John’s Wort can stop the contraceptive pill working, while ginkgo and ginseng are known to interfere with the blood-thinning drug warfarin. And in February the MHRA issued a warning about the herbal weight loss product Herbal Flos Lonicerae (Herbal Xenicol) Natural Weight Loss Formula, after tests showed it contained more than twice the prescribed dose of a banned substance. To date, the industry has been covered by the 1968 Medicines Act, drawn up when only a handful of herbal remedies were available and the number of herbal practitioners was very small. From now, manufacturers will have to prove their products have been made to strict standards and contain a consistent and clearly marked dose. Remedies already on sale will be allowed to stay on the shelves until their expiry date. The agency said there had been 211 applications for approval of herbal remedies so far, with 105 granted and the rest still under consideration. Approved remedies will come with a logo marked THR.
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May 2 2011, 9:46am | Comments »
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Angela Hartnett’s roasted pollack with crushed new potatoes and chorizo recipe
This is a wonderful recipe combination of spicy chorizo sausage and meaty sustainable fish. The vinaigrette could be made with apple cider vinegar.
This article titled “Angela Hartnett’s roasted pollack with crushed new potatoes and chorizo recipe” was written by Angela Hartnett, for The Guardian on Wednesday 20th April 2011 16.30 UTC Pollack is a member of the cod family – a greeny-brown carnivore that can grow up to a metre long. It is common off the coast of Britain and Ireland, especially around wrecks, where it is popular with amateur anglers. It has traditionally been less of a hit with cooks, but with the push to eat more sustainable fish, pollack has emerged as a viable alternative to cod and haddock. Most supermarkets stock it, though you may find it labelled, French-style, as colin. Not only is it cheaper than cod; as far as I’m concerned it’s just as tasty. Like all flaky fish, pollack can break up during cooking; a quick solution is to salt it beforehand. Just cover the fish with rock salt and leave it to firm up for 30 minutes, before giving it a quick rinse and patting it dry. If you do this, remember not to salt the fish again before cooking. I love this combination of spicy sausage and meaty fish, but you can leave out the chorizo and finish the dish with extra vinaigrette. Ingredients (Serves 4) 4 100g portions of pollack fillet 12 large new potatoes, washed, with skin on 1tbsp diced black olives ½tbsp chopped basil 50ml vinaigrette 100g chorizo, chopped into lozenges 3tbsp olive oil Rock salt Method Fill a pan with cold water, a little rock salt and the potatoes, and bring to the boil. Cook for about 15 minutes, until just done. Drain the potatoes well, crush with a fork, and mix while still warm with the vinaigrette and olives. This ensures that they take on the full flavour of the vinaigrette. Set aside. Season the pollack with salt (unless you have previously salted it to firm up the flesh). Heat the oil in a non-stick pan (medium heat) and add the pollack, skin side down. Give the pan a quick shake to prevent the fish from sticking. To cook it should take about two minutes each side, depending on the thickness of the fillets. The fish is ready when you can easily push the handle of a spoon through it. Remove the fillets from the pan and place them somewhere warm. Add the chorizo to the now-empty pan and lightly sauté until it starts to release its oil. To serve, dress the potatoes with the chopped basil. Place the fish on top and finish with the chorizo lozenges and the oil from the pan. Any extra potato can be served on the side.
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April 22 2011, 10:23am | Comments »
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Defra delays: why are so many key environment policies overdue?
From protecting the natural environment to badger culling to water bills, key policies are being postponed. Have cuts bitten too deep?
This article titled “Defra delays: why are so many key environment policies overdue?” was written by Damian Carrington, for guardian.co.uk on Wednesday 13th April 2011 10.49 UTC Cutting a 30% of an organisation’s budget before working out how that organisation will actually run on the reduced funds isn’t very clever. But that’s what appears to have happened under Caroline Spelman’s stewardship of the department of the environment, food and rural affairs. How else can we explain the long list of delays which span right across the work of the department, from water bills to badger culls? Not forgetting the humiliating U-turn on the forestry sell-off, the deep cuts to flood defences across the nation and a feeble sustainability vision, here’s a list: Natural environment white paperDue: April 2011Expected: Officially, later this year – before the summer, I’m toldThis flagship policy will, Defra says, protect and enhance the natural environment that “underpins our economic prosperity, our health and our wellbeing” and will be the department’s first environment white paper for 20 years. It is eagerly anticipated by greens across the spectrum – but it will miss its April deadline, as set out in Defra’s business plan. Badger cull consultation: government’s responseDue: Feb 2011Expected: Possibly late MayBovine tuberculosis takes a terrible toll on cattle farmers, but effective culling of badgers in complex and costly and many animal lovers oppose any cull. The proposals – that farmers do the culling themselves – has many flaws, not least being dismissed as “among the worst options” by scientists and likely to cost more than doing nothing. In February, announcing a delay, agriculture minister Jim Paice said: “we need to make sure we get it right.” With emotions running high on both sides, it’s a tough one, but how many more months must we wait? Waste policy reviewReview announced: June 2010Expected: May 2011The government announced their review of waste policies in June 2010 to “ensure we are taking the right steps towards creating a ‘zero waste’ economy.” But, according to stakeholders, its results have been repeatedly delayed. In its absence, the government has said it will ban fines for misuse of dustbins, but is unable to say how refuse will be better dealt with than now, especially ending the UK’s addiction to landfill. Water white paperDue: June 2011Expected: Autumn 2011The white paper will “reform the water industry to ensure more efficient use of water and the protection of poorer households”. It follows the Cave review of competition in the water industry and Walker review of water charging, published in April 2009 and June 2009 respectively. Food policyDue: UnknownThis is not strictly late as there’s no such policy being developed, despite criticism of the government’s plans for feeding a growing population sustainably and healthily being ‘insubstantial”. Banning wild animals from circuses consultation: government’s responseConsultation ended: March 2010Due: UnknownThis issue raise huge passion among animal rights campaigners, but a year on, there’s still no response, though the first moves were made by Labour in 2006, who must share some of the blame for the delay. Dangerous dogs consultation: government’s responseConsultation ended: June 2010Expected: “Later in the year”, I’m toldThis consultation on increasing the protection of the public was launched by the last government after a campaign by post men and women. Parliamentary answers:Thanks to work by Thomas Docherty MP, we can see that Defra has failed to answer 42% of written questions from MPs on time, making them the third worst of the 13 departments Docherty challenged. By contrast, the department of energy and climate change answered 77% of questions on time. Defra refutes my suggestion that the deep budget cuts are taking their toll. “Defra is playing its part in reducing the deficit, but this has no impact on policy development,” said a spokesman. “It is important to address all likely practical issues and ensure the department has properly consulted stakeholders before final decisions are made – which will mean less red tape and more opportunities for business and communities.” Unsurprisingly, Mary Creagh, Labour’s shadow secretary of state for environment, has a different view: “This is a department in special measures. The government’s ideologically driven belief in the small state is sending environmental policy into reverse. Defra’s stop-go approach to policy is creating uncertainty for businesses and communities that want to invest in green jobs and improve the environment.” Perhaps the Defra delays stem from the forestry sell-off fiasco, meaning every policy now has to be examined over and over in order to avoid another disaster. I’d be interested to hear more about that. Whatever the reason for the delays, while we wait, biodiversity continues to decline, cattle continue to contract TB and rubbish continues to be dumped.
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April 13 2011, 6:06am | Comments »
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Nuclear’s green cheerleaders forget Chernobyl at our peril
Pundits who downplay the risks of nuclear radiation are ignoring the casualties of the past such as Chernobyl. Fukushima‘s core meltdown may be worse due to the plutonium in the mixed oxide fuel rods.
This article titled “Nuclear’s green cheerleaders forget Chernobyl at our peril” was written by John Vidal, for The Guardian on Friday 1st April 2011 19.00 UTC Every day there are more setbacks to solving the Japanese nuclear crisis and it’s pretty clear that the industry and governments are telling us little; have no idea how long it will take to control; or what the real risk of cumulative contamination may be. The authorities reassure us by saying there is no immediate danger and a few absolutist environmentalists obsessed with nuclear power because of the urgency to limit emissions repeat the industry mantra that only a few people died at Chernobyl – the worst nuclear accident in history. Those who disagree are smeared and put in the same camp as climate change deniers. I prefer the words of Alexey Yablokov, member of the Russian academy of sciences, and adviser to President Gorbachev at the time of Chernobyl: “When you hear ‘no immediate danger’ [from nuclear radiation] then you should run away as far and as fast as you can.” Five years ago I visited the still highly contaminated areas of Ukraine and the Belarus border where much of the radioactive plume from Chernobyl descended on 26 April 1986. I challenge chief scientist John Beddington and environmentalists like George Monbiot or any of the pundits now downplaying the risks of radiation to talk to the doctors, the scientists, the mothers, children and villagers who have been left with the consequences of a major nuclear accident. It was grim. We went from hospital to hospital and from one contaminated village to another. We found deformed and genetically mutated babies in the wards; pitifully sick children in the homes; adolescents with stunted growth and dwarf torsos; foetuses without thighs or fingers and villagers who told us every member of their family was sick. This was 20 years after the accident but we heard of many unusual clusters of people with rare bone cancers. One doctor, in tears, told us that one in three pregnancies in some places was malformed and that she was overwhelmed by people with immune and endocrine system disorders. Others said they still saw caesium and strontium in the breast milk of mothers living far from the areas thought to be most affected, and significant radiation still in the food chain. Villages testified that “the Chernobyl necklace” – thyroid cancer – was so common as to be unremarkable; many showed signs of accelerated ageing. The doctors and scientists who have dealt directly with the catastrophe said that the UN International Atomic Energy Agency’s “official” toll, through its Chernobyl Forum, of 50 dead and perhaps 4,000 eventual fatalities was insulting and grossly simplistic. The Ukrainian Scientific Centre for Radiation, which estimated that infant mortality increased 20 to 30% after the accident, said their data had not been accepted by the UN because it had not been published in a major scientific journal. Konstantin Tatuyan, one of the “liquidators” who had helped clean up the plant, told us that nearly all his colleagues had died or had cancers of one sort or another, but that no one had ever asked him for evidence. There was burning resentment at the way the UN, the industry and ill-informed pundits had played down the catastrophe. While there have been thousands of east European studies into the health effects of radiation from Chernobyl, only a very few have been accepted by the UN, and there have been just a handful of international studies trying to gauge an overall figure. They range from the UN’s Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation study (57 direct deaths and 4,000 cancers expected) to the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), who estimated that more than 10,000 people had been affected by thyroid cancer alone and a further 50,000 cases could be expected. Moving up the scale, a 2006 report for Green MEPs suggested up to 60,000 possible deaths; Greenpeace took the evidence of 52 scientists and estimated the deaths and illnesses to be 93,000 terminal cancers already and perhaps 140,000 more in time. Using other data, the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences declared in 2006 that 212,000 people had died as a direct consequence of Chernobyl. At the end of 2006, Yablokov and two colleagues, factoring in the worldwide drop in births and increase in cancers seen after the accident, estimated in a study published in the annals of the New York Academy of Sciences that 985,000 people had so far died and the environment had been devastated. Their findings were met with almost complete silence by the World Health Organisation and the industry. So who can we trust when the estimates swing so wildly? Should we believe the empirical evidence of the doctors; or governments and industrialists backed by their PR companies? So politicised has nuclear energy become, that you can now pick and choose your data, rubbish your opponents, and ignore anything you do not like. The fact is we may never know the truth about Chernobyl because the records are lost, thousands of people from 24 countries who cleaned up the site have dispersed across the vast former Soviet Union, and many people have died. Fukushima is not Chernobyl, but it is potentially worse. It is a multiple reactor catastrophe happening within 150 miles of a metropolis of 30 million people. If it happened at Sellafield, there would be panic in every major city in Britain. We still don’t know the final outcome but to hear experts claiming that nuclear radiation is not that serious, or that this accident proves the need for nuclear power, is nothing short of disgraceful.
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April 2 2011, 8:30am | Comments »
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Marks & Spencer makes Paris comeback with Champs Elysées store
New Marks and Spencers shop to open in Paris France 10 years after controversial retreat. Items on offer will include food – by popular demand.
This article titled “Marks & Spencer makes Paris comeback with Champs Elysées store” was written by Kim Willsher in Paris, Dan Milmo and Marie Winckler, for The Guardian on Friday 1st April 2011 17.54 UTC Shortbread and Earl Grey tea are heading back to the Champs Elysées later this year as Marks & Spencer returns to France, a decade after its retreat across the Channel prompted street protests in Paris. The retailer replanted a British flag in the heart of the Gallic retail industry by announcing, 10 years after it quit the capital amid stern criticism from trade unions, politicians and ardent muffin fans, that it would open a shop on Paris’s most famous boulevard before Christmas. The retailer is opening a three-storey outlet on the Champs Elysées, towards the end of this year. What is more, following a clamour by British organisations in France and threats of a boycott, it will be selling not only women’s clothing and lingerie – as first thought – but also food. Thoughts of ready meals and cheddar cheese may still appal a nation that gave the world haute cuisine. But French foodies have a grudging respect for the venerable British retailer, and Parisians were excited about the “grand retour”. Comments on French newspaper websites were overwhelmingly positive. Audrey Guttman, 23-year-old Parisienne arts consultant, said: “Special occasions in my childhood were peppered with Marks and Spencer delights such as Bugs Bunny-shaped fried chicken and Percy Pigs soft candy. I was devastated when they left, and the same items coming in from London just didn’t quite taste the same afterwards.” However, like many she was doubtful about the uncool choice of location: “Really, Marks and Spencer, the Champs-Elysées?! It’s not 1999 anymore!” French blogger Wendy Nourry Breguet, 25, added: “As a Frenchie, Marks & Spencer has always been an Ali Baba’s cave of food, fresh products, spices, foreign foods, which are absent from most French shops.” Pierre Cornette, a 28-year-old gallery owner was less convinced: “M&S plays on its super image in France for quality and tradition, but I can’t really see how it’s going to sell its English products to a Paris clientele, above all in this age of organic produce.” As well as the 1,000 sq metre Champs Elysées shop, there will also be five Simply Food stores at “transport hubs” such as railway stations in Paris and a “handful” of larger shops in and around the French capital. A website, trading in euros, will be launched and will be the group’s first to permit international purchases and deliveries across France. The original idea was for the new store to sell only clothing and home goods, in accordance with the lease on the prestigious Parisian floorspace. But a campaign persuaded executives to change their minds. British-born Pamela Lake, a Parisienne since 1963, who spearheaded the “no food, no go” campaign, said she and her British and French friends were delighted by the company’s apparent change of heart. “It would have been commercial suicide to do otherwise,” she said. “I shall be there for my double cream, bacon, sausages and Indian food.” She added: “I phoned my friends this morning and said ‘we’ve won’. Everyone was so pleased. When M&S closed here it was practically a day of national mourning for us in Paris. Now the company has admitted it was the biggest blunder they ever made.” She said French friends who joined the campaign would be looking forward to getting their Christmas crackers, mince pies and Christmas puddings. “They’ve also missed the Stilton cheese,” she said. All M&S stores in continental Europe were closed as the company battled to turn around its British business. Last year the former boss Sir Stuart Rose said the decision to pull out of Europe was a mistake, calling it “tragic”. The company’s chief executive, Marc Bolland, said the company was “very excited” about its return: “Over the past 10 years the number of demands … from people for us to come back has been enormous.” He added: “Our company has changed in a positive way and France has moved on as well. We want to come back in an extremely positive way.” Bolland has declared he wants to speed up the group’s international expansion and said there was scope for faster growth, particularly in Asian markets. M&S has 358 stores in 42 overseas territories.
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April 1 2011, 4:36pm | Comments »
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Japan fears radioactive contamination of marine life
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/01/japan-fears-radioactive-contamination-of-marine-life
Fukushima coastal waters see high levels of radioactive iodine, which could build up in seaweed commonly eaten in Japan.
This article titled “Japan fears radioactive contamination of marine life” was written by Ian Sample, science correspondent, for The Guardian on Wednesday 30th March 2011 17.57 UTC High levels of radiation in the sea off the coast of Fukushima have raised concerns over harm to local marine life and the risk of contaminated fish, shellfish and seaweed entering the food chain. Tests on seawater near the nuclear power plant showed that levels of radioactive iodine reached 3,355 times the legal limit on Monday, one of several peaks in recent days that have fallen rapidly as radioactive substances decayed and were steadily diluted and dispersed by ocean currents. Officials are watching levels of iodine-131 in seawater because although it has a half-life of eight days, meaning it is half as radioactive after that time, the substance builds up in seaweed, a common food in the Japanese diet. If consumed, radioactive iodine collects in the thyroid and can cause cancer. The International Atomic Energy Agency said iodine-131 in seawater would “soon be of no concern” presuming there are no further discharges of contaminated water from the power station into the sea. The IAEA added that Japanese authorities have released the first analyses of fish, caught at the port of Choshi, in Chiba prefecture south of Fukushima, which found one of five to be contaminated with a detectable level of caesium-137, a far more persistent radioactive substance, though at a concentration that was far below safety limits for consumption. Many countries, including Britain, have begun radiation testing of fish, shellfish and other fresh produce from Japan or have imposed wider bans on imports from the region. Fisheries are not entering waters within the 20km (12-mile) exclusion zone around Fukushima, said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a spokesman for Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. The fate of many local seafood and shellfish farms, including scallops, oysters, sea urchins and sea snails, was sealed more than two weeks ago when the tsunami wiped out beds and destroyed fishing vessels and ports around Fukushima. In Iwate prefecture, authorities say the disaster may have wiped out businesses that account for 80% of the revenue of the region’s fisheries. At the Fukushima power plant, engineers continued the arduous task of trying to pump contaminated water from turbine rooms and trenches, which is hampering work to connect the reactor cooling systems to the national grid. Tepco, the power station operator, plans to spray parts of the site with a resin to stop radioactive dust blowing off the site and is considering shrouding the reactor buildings with sheets to reduce radiation being released into the air. Fish and other sea creatures are unlikely to be seriously harmed by the radioactive leaks, even in the most contaminated areas. After the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, fish in three freshwater lakes within the exclusion zone became contaminated with radioactive caesium but showed no obvious health problems, though some fish were born with reproductive abnormalities which may have been caused by radiation, said James Smith, an environmental physicist at Portsmouth University who studied fish in the area. While fish accumulate radioactive contamination, this happens less in the ion-rich waters of the oceans than in freshwater lakes.
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April 1 2011, 9:46am | Comments »
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Punch Taverns plots another way out of £3bn debt and a pub empire in crisis
An eighth of the UKs pubs are owned bu Punch Taverns, and every time they spend money on re-branding interiors to meet different market segments rather than delivering good quality beer and cider and in a congenial atmosphere, they are slowly failing.
This article titled “Punch Taverns plots another way out of £3bn debt and a pub empire in crisis” was written by Andrew Clark, for The Observer on Sunday 27th March 2011 00.05 UTC There’s no logo above the door of its pubs. No branding, no advertising, not the slightest sign of corporate identity. But an eighth of Britain’s licensed houses are quietly owned by Punch Taverns, a sprawling, anonymous empire of neighbourhood drinking establishments disintegrating under a mountain of £3bn in debt. Punch owns 6,770 of Britain’s 52,000 pubs, an estate built over a decade of frenetic multibillion-pound purchases, sales, mergers and demergers at the height of Britain’s leveraged buyout boom. Its empire stretches from the Quayside Inn in Falmouth, Cornwall, to the Chieftain, in Inverness. But after slashing the balance sheet value of hundreds of struggling pubs, it slid to a £159m loss last year and had to make interest payments on its debts of £260m. Shares have slumped by 95% over four years amid mounting alarm that Punch could default on its debts. Top executives blame external factors – they say drinkers have been lured out of pubs by cheap lager on supermarket shelves and by the Labour government’s 2007 decision to outlaw smoking in pubs. “The dynamics in the market changed and that really started with the smoking ban,” says Roger Whiteside, managing director of Punch’s tenanted pubs division. “There’s been a long-term decline for decades in volume sales of beer. What used to be copeable with – a 2% or 3% drop a year – became 7% or 8%.” Whiteside says ultra-cheap lager in Asda, Sainsbury’s or Tesco has not helped, but blames the smoking ban, swiftly followed by a recession, for an unprecedented cash crunch: “Consumers are drinking more at home. That’s been driven by an ever-widening gap between beer prices in supermarkets and in pubs, exacerbated by the social aspects of banning smoking.” Punch, which narrowly trails Enterprise Inns as Britain’s second-biggest pub owner, briefed the City last week on its strategy for stopping the rot. It plans a demerger to separate Punch Partnerships, its vast rump of quasi-independent tenanted pubs, from its snazzier high-street managed division, known as Spirit, which is doing better because its outlets sell more food. Followers of the industry could be excused a weary sense of deja vu. The history of Punch Taverns reads like a corporate finance catalogue. It has kept lawyers, investment bankers and brokers in clover to a staggering degree since its creation in 1997 by former Pizza Express boss Hugh Osmond. In transactions worth billions, backed by massive bond issues, Punch bought pub estates from Bass, Allied Domecq, Pubmaster, Innspired and Inn Business. It has sold off pubs in dribs and drabs and unsuccessfully attempted a huge merger with Mitchells & Butlers in 2008. It has merged, demerged, remerged – and is demerging again – with Spirit. Along the way, some have made a fortune; former chief executive Giles Thorley, who ran Punch from 2001 until 2010, took home nearly £30m over five years. Investors objected, voting down the company’s remuneration policy in 2009. New boss Ian Dyson’s latest wheeze to split the group in two will cost £30m in advisory fees, prompting derision from certain bondholders, one of whom told the Guardian: “There’s a £30m corporate finance party on the top deck of the Titanic when attention should be focused on urgent engine room repairs.” Many have tired of constant financial engineering and ask why the City has added such spectacular complications to an ostensibly simple business – street-corner boozers. Jonathan Mail, head of policy at the Campaign for Real Ale, says: “Because of the financial engineering and debt companies have taken on, lessees haven’t been able to make sufficient profit to invest so that pubs can evolve and change with the times.” Critics of Punch, and its similarly vast competitor Enterprise Inns, argue that, far from being companies with a passion for pubs, they are property businesses largely concerned with milking tenants for rent. Greg Mulholland, the Liberal Democrat MP who chairs parliament’s all-party “Save the pub” group, says: “The big so-called pub companies are really property companies, and very largely property speculators. Some are playing Monopoly with pubs that mean an awful lot to communities they serve.” As 20 pubs a week close in Britain, Mulholland argues that Punch and its fellow megaliths are follies born on the drawing board of City dealmakers during an era of reckless exuberance prior to the financial crisis: “Apart from the fact their size is unwieldy, it’s bad for both tenants and consumers to have so many pubs in the hands of a couple of big companies. The folly of the business model and some of the bad decisions made by Punch are coming home to roost.” Under the tenanted model favoured by Punch, most of its pubs are franchised out to licensees who pay rent at a level fixed over periods of five years. They are obliged to buy their beer from Punch, which, because of its vast scale, can negotiate steep discounts with brewers. However, disaffected tenants complain that Punch has hiked the price of beer in recent years as it struggles to meet debt repayments. Simply servicing the group’s debt costs each of Punch’s pubs an average of £39,000 last year, a hefty chunk of typical annual takings of £200,000-£250,000. For landlords, profit margins are often wafer-thin; a 2009 report by the Commons business and enterprise committee found that 78% of lessees were dissatisfied with their “tie” to big pub companies. Two-thirds earned less than £15,000 a year. The churn as landlords quit has caused concern; Punch says 13% of its outlets are under temporary management. “The model doesn’t work,” says Steve Corbett, founder of the Fair Pint Campaign. “It’s financial engineering in the extreme, whereby they’ve managed to extract the maximum profit to the detriment of tenants and consumers.” The City has little patience for sentiment about pubs. Nigel Parsons, an analyst at Evolution Securities, says licensed houses ought to be treated as dispassionately as any business: “Pubs don’t deserve a special place in society – they’re only there because they work. The ones that go to the wall deserve to because they don’t offer anything special.” He believes that the tenanted model in not inherently flawed, but that players such as Punch have simply over-reached: “The application of the model works, but they’ve pushed it too aggressively.” Punch plans to halve in size from 6,700 pubs to about 3,000. In addition to spinning off its Spirit estate, it intends to sell 2,200 poorly performing pubs. It reckons two-thirds are likely to stay open as pubs, while a third will go to developers for transformation into shops, care homes or residential developments. The company insists its deal-making has raised the standard of pub life. “The choice of beer has absolutely exploded, we sell more than 700 ales,” says Whiteside. “We’ve been instrumental in investing in pubs, putting food into pubs and creating a more pleasant environment.” The Fair Pint Campaign demurs. Corbett says: “Walk down any street in Britain and you can spot a tied pub a mile off. It’s the one falling apart… and may have had four or five tenants over 10 years.” Timeline 1997 Hugh Osmond establishes Punch Taverns by buying 1,400 pubs from Bass 1999 Buys 688 pubs from Inn Business; 3,000 from Allied Domecq 2002 Spirit Group, its managed estate, demerged; 4,200-strong tenanted estate floats as Punch Taverns 2003 Buys rival Pubmaster for £1.2bn, adding a further 3,115 pubs 2004 Purchases Innspired Group for £335m, gaining 1,064 more pubs 2006 Buys back Spirit for £2.7bn 2007 CEO Giles Thorley is the highest paid in the FTSE 100, earning £11.3m 2008 Merger bid for Mitchells & Butlers is rebuffed; trading begins to falter 2009 Emergency cash call raises £375m; executive pay policy voted down 2010 Recession squeezes pub takings; Thorley quits as chief executive 2011 Shares plunge on fear of default; another demerger of Spirit proposed
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March 27 2011, 5:00am | Comments »
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Bordeaux uncorked
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/23/bordeaux-uncorked
The city of Bordeaux is gleaming after a makeover and the region’s conservative vineyards are casting off their haughty image and welcoming visitors for city breaks in Europe.
This article titled “Bordeaux uncorked” was written by Oliver Thring, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 22nd March 2011 12.30 UTC The English have always liked Bordeaux. It presents them with a neat and nifty range of familiar French staples: old patissiers, echoey churches, pretty cafes with unsmiling waiters, old cobbled streets, and women who swoosh past, helmetless, on bicycles. For a couple of hundred years, this land, Aquitaine, was English, a chivalrous region roamed by troubadours and ravaged by plague and perpetual war. And it’s near the sea, of course, just a few miles over the dunes from the chilly Atlantic breakers. Or perhaps the English see something of themselves in the proud, reserved character of the Bordelais. This is a town that never bothered with tourism, that didn’t have to: it had already made its money on spices, slaves and grapes. In 1855, Napoleon III oversaw a list classifying the “best” Bordeaux estates, a census of allegedly top “growths” that still dictates the hierarchy and prices of specific wines. Twelve bottles of Chateau Lafite 2009, a “premier cru”, are yours today for around £14,000. Whatever else, the 1855 classification was a shrewd piece of marketing. It cemented Bordeaux’s entitled, Gallic haughtiness even as the town itself went to seed. A decade ago, Bordeaux’s buildings were soiled by age and neglect, the town a shabby sump of rotting docks and stagnant industry. Things are visibly changing. Modern trams now purr and whine through scrubbed boulevards; in the main square, the Corinthian columns of Victor Louis’s Grand Théâtre seem to glisten. Over at the Place de la Bourse, they’ve installed the “miroir d’eau” or water mirror, the most beautiful puddle in Europe. We stayed at the renovated Hôtel de Normandie (7 cours du XXX Juillet, +33 (0)5 56 52 16 80, hotel-de-normandie-bordeaux.com, rooms from €95, breakfast €15pp), brilliantly placed in the city centre and near the successful, funky wine school, Ecole du Vin de Bordeaux (3 cours du XXX Juillet, +33 (0)5 56 00 22 85, bordeaux.com, two-day course on Bordeaux wine from €218pp). The city is cleaning up the knackered old cathedral, too, which the Pope consecrated in 1096 in an early example of urban planning. Sweaty local students pedal tourists around the town in flimsy plastic rickshaws, pointing out the sights in broken, demotic English. Food But parts of Bordeaux still seem timeless. The old city is spliced by rue St Catherine, one of the longest shopping streets in Europe, flanked by boutiques and shoe shops. Near the big clock, one of the few surviving landmarks from the medieval period, a spice shop called Dock des Epices (20 rue Saint-James, +33 (0)5 56 44 41 57, dockdesepices.com) fugs the street with the smell of cumin and cassia. I bought some livid purple salt flavoured with local wine – it goes beautifully with fish. A rather grand cafe, Baillardran (55 cours de l’Intendance, +33 (0)5 56 52 92 64, other branches at baillardran.com), serves exquisite canelés, the local delicacy of tiny cakes of caramelised custard. La Tupina (6 rue Porte de la Monnaie, +33 (0)5 56 91 56 37, latupina.com, lunchtime menu from €16, evening tasting menu €60) is a stalwart side-street bistro that’s been open for almost 40 years. It was one of food writer Jonathan Meades‘s favourite restaurants, and it appeals to a very English ideal of French hospitality. Inside, a huge hearth roars and spits, roasting chickens and braising lamb, and there’s a vast board of pink, fat-studded charcuterie. The restaurant is famous for the heavy cooking of south-western France, but my starter was a huge slice of beef tomato, thick as a pack of cards, criss-crossed with padrón peppers, while a main of roast veal with vegetables was similarly light. They play birdsong in the loos, which is somehow a very French conceit. Another fabulous restaurant is Le Petit Commerce (22 rue du Parlement Saint-Pierre, + 33 (0)5 56 79 76 58, le-petit-commerce.com, two-course lunch menu €12), a bijou fish place with rickety tables, brusque service and a refreshing lack of tourists. Wine Bordeaux’s wine industry has been typically slow to welcome visitors. Max Bordeaux (14 cours de l’Intendance, +33 (0)5 57 29 23 81, maxbordeaux.com) is a wine shop with a couple of spartan black and white rooms and almost nowhere to sit down. But you can drink some of the most expensive vintages in the world here on a relative budget: they serve it in 2.5cl thimblefuls. A scant sip of Mouton Rothschild is €15, and Lynch Bages and Château Margaux’s second wine are both only €4. It’s a cracking idea – borne, perhaps, of a sudden realisation that the world is threatening to overtake Bordeaux, that lazy reliance on history and standoffish tradition might no longer do in a future of cheap long-haul and boxed Rioja. Driving through the gnarled and corrugated vineyards of the Médoc, you can feel Bordeaux’s persistent sense of entitlement or noblesse oblige. Prim, privileged chateaux sit like dowager aunts behind forbidding iron railings and old stone walls, staring with miserly joy at the writhing lucre of the vines. Billboards of the most famous names in the wine world flick past: Latour, Lafite, Margaux, Pichon Longueville. The signs could just as easily say “Keep Out: visiting these places is almost impossible for ordinary people”. So it’s exciting that a few of the younger chateau owners are beginning to open up to visitors. The “tasting room” of Château La Tour de Bessan (Route d’Arsac 33460 Cantenac, +33 (0)5 56 58 22 01, marielaurelurton.com) is a rusty old telegraph building that somehow Tardises into a sleek, elegant space. They teach people how wine is blended here, letting visitors mix tannic and complex cabernet sauvignon with hot, boozy merlot. One rather grand chateau, Gruaud-Larose (33250 St-Julien-Beychevelle, +33 (0)5 56 73 15 20, gruaud-larose.com), even holds cookery courses alongside its wine tastings, while a wing of Château Marojallia (marojallia.com) is now a comfortable hotel. Perhaps the most innovative recent development is a place called, in bolshy Franglais, La Winery (Rond-Point des Vendangeurs 33460 Arsac, +33 (0)5 56 39 04 90, winery.fr). It’s run by a family of Algerian winemakers who came to Bordeaux in the 1960s. La Winery is a gigantic greenhouse branded in Trainspotting orange, its crystal panes in stark, intentional contrast with its forbiddingly opaque neighbours. They sit you in a bright room and you answer a series of questions to determine the wines you might prefer. The quiz asks whether you prefer pizza or curry, for instance, or the smell of “honey and apricot” over “loose tobacco and undergrowth”. A person working there told me, rather unsurprisingly, that they faced scepticism and hostility from the old Bordelais winemakers. La Winery’s approach might seem dumbed-down or gimmicky, but it makes a refreshing change from the esoteric babble of much of the wine world, and its very existence signals a partial shift from the reactionary model of the established Bordeaux wine industry. Outside the ludicrous prices of its most famous wines, Bordeaux faces a difficult task: how to retain its relevance against increasing competition from the rest of the world, a currency situation making export difficult, and a perception that it’s fusty and overpriced. But most Bordelais know they can ill afford to jettison the heritage that is the source of their fame. The true winners in this debate are visitors to the region, who can both experience a newly gleaming city and inspect those few vineyards that have opened their gates. Getting there
By plane: Easyjet (easyjet.com) flies to Bordeaux from Bristol, Gatwick, Liverpool and Luton; British Airways (ba.com) flies from Gatwick. By train: Eurostar (eurostar.com) from London to Bordeaux starts at £109 return.
Further information: Bordeaux Office de Tourisme (bordeaux-tourisme.com/uk)
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March 23 2011, 3:16pm | Comments »
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Cajun Music Cajun Food - Andy Roberts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfpnThKO2XI&feature=youtube_gdata
September 22 2010, 11:54am | Comments »
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Cajun Music Cajun Food - Andy Roberts Original
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September 16 2010, 10:21am | Comments »
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Duck And Pigeon Food
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Duck And Pigeon Food
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Duck And Pigeon Food
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Duck And Pigeon Food
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Duck And Pigeon Food
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Andyrob
Duck And Pigeon Food
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Duck And Pigeon Food
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Andyrob
Duck And Pigeon Food
May 5 2009, 1:01pm | Comments »
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couscous with quinoa
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February 7 2008, 2:00pm | Comments »
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