Binned food: not a waste

According to research carried out for a Radio 4 documentary, Britain throws away £20billion worth of food every year. So what?

Apparently, one-third of all the food grown in the UK ends up being thrown away. Lord Haskins, a Labour adviser on rural affairs, told the Independent: 'This reflects the worst side of us as consumers. We have built a society where we think food is cheap and can be thrown away.' Despite appearances, this story is not about trying to improve the productivity of society - it's about beating ourselves up for being selfish individuals.

We live in a wealthy society where we value choice - and a by-product of choice is that not everything produced will sell. We're also wealthy enough to choose not to eat what we have bought, for whatever reason. In that respect, this isn't waste: food in the bin is the price of greater choice, variety and flexibility.

The hand-wringing about the food we throw away suggests we should not only value the efficient use of society's labour, but every bit of rotting lettuce and out-of-date ready meal because it is valuable in its own right. How can we be so wasteful, we are asked, when there are people starving in Africa? But it doesn't help Africa to use up the food in your cupboards. In fact, we should ask which we prefer: a developed world where food is relatively cheap and we can be choosy about it; or the developing world, where every precious morsel must be consumed, no matter what state it is in.

Poverty is the greatest driver of efficiency, as the homeless men picking through litter bins will testify. How perverse that we fret about the food we throw away rather than why others don't have enough of it.

Unused food: What a waste, Independent, 15 April 2005

spiked-central | Bites | spiked bite

Book review: The Dinner Lady

But this book is worth buying - for the 100 or so recipes in it. If you want to produce all the best bits of school dinners that occasionally invoke misty-eyed nostalgia, this is the book for you. I can certainly recommend the Oaty Apple and Sultana Crumble, which went down a treat in our house last night - and I'm especially pleased that I now know how to make a proper custard!

Unfortunately, the straightforward pragmatism of both the food and the author is used to promote the half-baked ideas of the Soil Association: a rag-tag mix of health fears and the unscientific idea that organic - that is, 'natural' - is best.

spiked-life | Article | The Dinner Lady

Andrea Dworkin: RIP

Given her early life experiences, it is no surprise that Andrea Dworkin had a low view of men, verging on the misanthropic. But what does it say about society that she was so influential?

Andrea Dworkin

Nuclear power going to waste?

Why is the UK government still discussing nuclear waste?

The Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CORWM), set up in November 2003, has produced a shortlist of options for dealing with high and intermediate level waste, ruling out options such as blasting waste into space. The discussion now is whether deep underground storage should allow waste to be retrievable or not.

These endless discussions are an obstacle to further development of nuclear power in Britain. Back in December 2004, the House of Lords science committee attacked the government for these delays. 'The government seems to have been sitting on its hands for around seven years. We have really had no progress', said Lord Oxburgh, chair of the Lords committee.

The debate currently seems to be about balancing doomsday scenarios: if we don't bury the waste, al-Qaeda might steal it or blow it up. If we do bury the waste, it might leak and poison our grandchildren. Greens worry that dealing with the waste would only encourage us to produce more. Nuclear waste should not be a major problem. The bulk of it is not especially radioactive - and the most radioactive material can usually be reused.

But all the handwringing about nuclear power denies us access to the one technology currently available that could lead to the production of qualitatively greater supplies of energy than we have now - a necessary precondition for a more prosperous world.

Warning on nuclear waste disposal, BBC News, 4 April 2005

First published on spiked

No return for the have-a-go bobby

Michael Howard wants police officers to 'eyeball' yobs. But law and order ain't what it used to be.

Howard told a press conference on Thursday that he wanted police to confront louts. 'I want policemen and women to have the confidence to eyeball these characters; to invade their personal body space, just like they're invading ours; to confront and challenge their unacceptable behaviour.' He also wants 40,000 more police to be recruited, with more officers made available by reducing paperwork, and more prison spaces to be created.

But it's one thing to talk tough on crime. It's another thing to step outside the narrow confines of the politically acceptable. When asked whether officers should be able to give unruly youngsters a clip round the ear, Howard said: 'No, I wouldn't support that. That's going too far. I think you can do the job without doing that.' So he wants to appeal to the revenge fantasies of those driven to distraction by yobs, but doesn't actually want to do anything different - except perhaps to offer assertiveness training to the bobby on the beat.

The law and order discussion has always been about a desperate desire to impose some shared values on a society that no longer respects authority. However, the days of hangin' and floggin' are long since gone. These days, our timid political class daren't do anything too decisive - not so much looking the world in the eye, as nervously staring at its shoes.

Confront yobs Howard tells police, BBC News, 31 March 2005