Kevin's Watch

This week The Sun newspaper had on it's back (sports) page a headline about a black Manchester United footballer who was being subjected to imitations of monkey noises from the stands every time he took possession of the ball in a game. He called for this offensive and clearly racist exhibition to be banned, saying that there was no place for it in football. A man who picked up the paper, scanning the back page as they often do as he approached the counter, said to me in indignation, "What's he on about? There's no racism in football - it's football isn't it?" He went on, and I quote him word for word, "It's just a few monkey calls isn't it! He's earning shed loads of money from it - what does he expect!"

I didn't take him to task......he was bigger, younger and more aggressive in type than I have the courage to call out.... I'm simply not that brave. But it worries me that such low minded mentality persists, thrives even, in our supposedly enlightened and progressive society - and it is into this mix that next week Nigel Farage will come to Cornwall spouting his thinly veiled racist message of anti-immigration, stoking the fires of hatred and division, whether this be his intention or not. Alas, I fear he will find fertile ground for this message to seed in amongst the type of man I had in my shop.

I've worked in food retail now for twelve plus years and here's an interesting thing. I reckon seventy five percent of enquiries you get as to where this or that product mar be found on the shelves, are for eggs. It doesn't matter where they are situated, low down, high up or at eye level, people simply don't seem to see them. This is the case in the small shop I work in now and was also so in the Tesco's I worked in previously. I cannot explain it - it just is so.

Another thing. My work consists of cooking pre-made bakery products and filling a hot-food warmer while I serve at the counter. We carry about fifteen different products ranging from steak-slices to sausage rolls,cheese turnovers to chicken pies. I serve about.... I don't know....two hundred or so items a day to customers coming in for lunch or snacks. Now getting the cooking numbers of each item right, to balancing with the demand for each type is quite hard. You might expect that as these two hundred people come in they would choose on average an equal amount of each item - but of course item price and other factors will make certain items better sellers than others. This is fine and to be expected. What is strange (to me at least) is how waves of preference spread almost instantly on a given day, for one item type to another. These individual buyers have no connection, but one day they all buy cheese rolls and every other item type languishes unsold on the warmer shelves - the next day it is brunch bakes, or steak pies. In normal distribution you would expect the shifts in preference of two hundred people to balance themselves out, for as many to gravitate from sausage rolls today to tikka bakes tomorrow as from tikka bakes today to sausage rolls tomorrow, and for all these shifts to balance out giving a regular sales pattern on a daily basis. But it simply doesn't happen. Today I sell nine potato dogs and no steak bakes, same for a day or two.......then suddenly everyone wants cheese and onion rolls and potato dogs sales drop to nothing. Why, I wonder do these waves of preference occur across unrelated masses of people almost instantly on a daily basis: why does the law of averages not simply balance them out?

Any country where the Executive sets itself above the Rule of Law is in a very dangerous place.

The franchise of which my shop is part, operate a radio station which broadcasts advertising into the nationwide chain and which is played on continuous loop throughout the course of any given day. The latest advert, pushing shoppers to take note of our excellent deals on chocolate (Kilo bars of Galaxy for two quid) play on the idea of a night in on ones own as being a great way to wind up the day. Buy that two pound bar (in both weight and money terms) go home, turn on the TV and pull the curtains. It finishes up with the following line.......

"Stay in, chill out and indulge!"

Mmmm..........yes?

Doesn't the distribution even out over a long enough period of time?

Seriously? A kg of chocolate for 2 quid? What's the obesity rate?

Oh, 28.7% obese and 35.6% overweight...that's a lot, yet not in the top 25 most obese countries. (I think you'd be about 26 in that list. )

Crazy.

--A

I just think it's gross Av. In my opinion the same rules should apply to confectionery as do to tobacco products. Obesity is a bigger drain on the health service than smoking, causes more early deaths and misery, yet a ten year old can buy one of those bars of chocolate, or 10, and head off into the distance to gorge until they are sick. I regularly sell ten, fifteen, even twenty pounds worth of crisps, pop and chocolate to already overweight children and adults. And it is normalised by the type of advertising I mention above. Wrong, wrong, wrong!

Eh, I'm generally not in favour of standing in front of other people's drives to self-destruction...

--A

Agreed, it's a pretty pointless occupation.

You know what the Buddhists say..."You are not here to change the world. The world is here to change you."

--A

Eric Idle's Galaxy Song punchline:

...So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth;
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth!

Yeah, but I would defend anyone's right to sit down with a two pound bar of chocolate and scoff it down (much as I'd prefer them not to) .......... but to actively encourage them to do so by normalising it in advert? That's gross!

I can't imagine eating two lbs of chocolate in one go. Not even while I was on steroids, and I once fried a slice of pizza in butter while I was on steroids.

I'm not proud of that.

It was good though.

That sounds great to me Sorus! Don't be putting ideas in my head like that!

An obscene amount of butter?

--A

If there exists a time and place to skimp on butter, that was not it.

Actually, I am glad this is being discussed here, and not in the Galley. Knowing the mod of the Galley, she just might adopt this. Our go-to method for rewarming pizza is a covered hot dry skillet, yielding re-crisped crust and a nice melt on the toppings...but I know how she adores butter and the one thing she can't resist is temptation.

You should yield to temptation...you never know when it will come yuor way again.

--A

Nothing worse than an opportunity lost

No one ever accused me of being a good influence.