February 2011 Archives

WE don't half get some completely loony edicts wafting down from the EU. Sneaking in under the radar is the moronic idea that to be called a Cornish pasty a pasty has to come from Cornwall which has seen the Cornish Pasty Association wetting their knickers with excitement.

Now I could understand it if there was some sort of quality control to go with with their geographical status, a sort of Pasty Appellation but no, nothing so sensible. Any old rubbish can be bunged in a bit of dog-rough pastry and as long as it is churned out in Cornwall it can be called a Cornish pasty - and trust me there are a lot of pasties from the county that do its reputation no favours at all.

Just as an aside has anyone ever managed to buy a pasty that has never won some sort of prize? Any foreign visitor must think the real name is Award Winning Cornish Pasty.

Even more stupid is the fatuous diktat that to carry the legend Cornish pasty it is supposed to be made to the traditional recipe. Traditional recipe? I suspect that there as many traditional Cornish pasty recipes as there are people who make them from Land's End to John O'Groats.

As for the idea they are some sort of Cornish delicacy unique to Cornwall . . . there are pasties of some description in pretty well every mining area of Britain. It was a simple, cheap, hearty meal full of carbohydrate for the lads at the face needing no plate, knife or fork. It could be eaten cold and even in the dark.

Ingredients were local or home grown veg and, in a good week, meat and would vary depending upon the region and the time of year.

The Cornish variety was flat, D shaped and crimped around the sides while the pasty from the Manchester area and the pits of south Lancashire was more upright - the shape people think of as a pasty - crimped along the domed top. I hope the Cornish remember that when they are knocking out their traditional pasties to traditional recipes. Hate to think they were nicking another region's design.

Giving the Cornish Pasty geographical status is as daft as anyone doing the same for Lancashire Hot Pot, Eccles Cakes, Bakewell Tart, Yorkshire pudding, French onion soup and so on. They are recipes and not even unique ones at that. No one area can really lay an exclusive claim to them although they might be associated with a town or region.

We are not talking Parma ham orBurgundies here, we are talking foods you can knock up in any kitchen in the world and they will look and taste the same. I fear Cornwall, or at least the Cornish Pasty Association could well come unstuck.

People might well find they prefer a well made plain old non-Cornish pasty to some of the cheap barely edible stuff which will carry the Cornish name in all night garages and service stations. At the moment all pasties are thought of as Cornish and good ones, made anywhere, are still good PR fro the county. Leave it to the cheap and cheerful exports to carry the name though and Cornwall could be in trouble by association.

Anyone who has ever listened to the BBC World Service in far flung parts will know it is not exactly cutting edge stuff - it is more like a comfortable old sofa in a 1950s Ealing comedy, shabby genteel we used to call it and probably still do in the kippers and curtains belt of any Northern town.

I struggle in English so have no idea what the World Service in other languages was like but I imagine it was much the same, rather dull and matter of fact news and current affairs with no sensationalism and avoiding being blighted by the cancer of celebrity.

People dying of AIDS in Malawi or struggling under the thumb of dictators and drug cartels in South America probably don't even know who the likes of Jordan or Peter Andre are let along care.

But for many people on the planet the BBC World Service in their own language is the only access they have to unbiased - relatively so at least - news and information about what is going on in their own country and the world. It is their only chance of hearing news which has not been censored, massaged or twisted by the state or other international broadcasters. The US and Russia were experts at sending propaganda around the world dressed as news.

That is what is so sad about the news that the BBC has ended several of its World Service broadcasts as part of its cuts.

This incidentally is the same BBC which can spend millions forcing staff, who don't want to move, to relocate to Salford and shipping programmes around the country like misdirected parcels to fulfil some moronic diversity plan which had no purpose even when it was being spouted as New Labour gospel.

This is the same BBC which employs hundreds of people, many on high five and six figure salaries, in jobs that would even seem out of place in an Alice in Wonderland send up. Perhaps a start on BBC cuts would be to get rid of every job and department where an equivalent could not be found in any other major broadcasting company such as NBC, ITV, CBS and so on. That should free up enough cash to cover all the cuts and leave plenty over to even make a few programmes.

So to save a few bob in a corporation where waste is a way of life large parts of the world will be denied fair, accurate and largely unbiased reporting and information. The BBC's response to this denial of basic information is typically out of touch. It tells us that its web services will continue.

Ah the internet cafes in the rural Hindu hinterlands of India, rural China, the Balkans, Azerbaijan, Vietnam, the home villages of Spanish speakers or the Portuguese speaking parts of Africa will be buzzing as the inhabitants pop in for a skinny latte and a quick surf.

These are people who do not have Ipads, laptops, wi-fi in their local Costa along with Twitter accounts. Many do not even have electricity. They have radios (some wind up because their is no mains power remember) in some cases one or two in a village. Their radios and the World Service are their only window on the real world which has now been closed and shuttered by the BBC and the ConDems combined to bring in a new dark age. Scandal springs to mind.

Meanwhile to go with the theatrical website I now run - www.behindthearras.com - I also run a pub theatre at The Station Pub next to . . . the station (the name is a bit of a clue) in Sutton Coldfield.

We called ourselves the Royal Sutton Coldfield Actors' Workshop which sound as posh as cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off but it was just so we could shorten it to The Other RSC.

And The Other RSC has curtain up again at The Station (the pub not the . . . you know what I mean on) Thursday March 3 with Kim Charnock and Lorna Meehan, who founded RoguePlay Theatre Company, in the play what they wrote, as Ernie would say, Portrait of an Actress as . . ..

This is based on actual incidents from their lives as actresses from an actress as a workshop leader, on the dole, at a critic or at a RADA audition and so on.

If you want to see pub theatre in action then come along - the pub has a nice range of decent beer and does cracking food and home made chips by the way.

The play starts at 8pm and admission is £8 or £6 for concessions. You can find more info and pictures on my website www.behindthearras.com

RoguePlay, incidentally, operated at The Custard Factory but then moved to the Old Fire Station in Moseley before making their home at the New Life Baptist Church in Kings Heath

How come we have all this technology, cameras all over the motorways, we can read licence plates from space and work out average speeds to scrw a bit more money from the motorist but we can't actually warn anyone when motorways are blocked.

We have signs the size of a decent sized house telling you the M6 Toll is clear (the one time I know it wasn't it still had a sign saying it was which tells you something about the monitoring), we have huge signs telling you to think bike, take a break and if you drive in the early hours on deserted motorways you will still see signs claiming that an otherwise empty road has congestion ahead or that queues are likely - can you have a queue with just one car I wonder?

But get a shed load, an accident, incident, breakdown or whatever which closes the motorway and where are the signs? What is wrong with telling people the road is closed ahead so leave at the next exit or signs at entry slip roads saying nothing is moving on the motorway so find another route?

There is nothing worse than turning on to a slip road and as the motorway hoves into view seeing a three-lane car park as far as the eye can see. Not only is it infuriating it is just adding to the chaos with traffic joining an already blocked road, as I did today, along with dozens of other motorists.

The only people who benefit from congestion are the Treasury with the extra fuel tax generated on the extra fuel used unnecessarily in queues and congestion. Road users pay enough in road and fuel tax each year to expect some return and sensible traffic management would be a start.

Nice to see the spirit of Fred Karno is alive and well in Westminster. I am sure he would have been proud of the chaos our lot have managed to create out of a simple rescue.

First we have a warship refusing to dock to pick up stranded Brits because it wasn't safe. Didn't anyone bother to tell them that that might just have been the reason they were there in the first place? Meanwhile a plane sent on an airlift mission breaks down on the runway.

Then we have the Deputy PM skiing an an exclusive Swiss resort, no doubt telling all the millionaires and financiers that inhabit the place that we are all in this together, and forgetting he was supposed to be minding the shop while the PM was kissing babies and shaking the flesh with the new kids on the souk in the Middle East.

We have had the moral hand wringing about weapons sold by Britain being used to actually kill people. Doesn't anyone in Whitehall know that that is what weapons do? If you flog guns to despots, dictatorships and hardcore regimes it does not take an IQ much into double figures to work out that the weapons are not to display on the wall or in trophy cabinets either side of the 52in plasma in the sitting room. They are bought to defend the the state and if necessary defend the regime and, more specifically, the leader that bought them.

Gaddafi is no different than he was when the weapons were sold or indeed when he was shaking hands with Tony Blair in his tent in the desert in that shabby, cynical deal seven years ago - except of course the Colonel will not be in a position to award lucrative contracts to UK firms - and UK consultancies of course - if he ends up in exile or on some Tripoli lamppost.

So, just in case, it might be best to wring a few hands and show moral outrage so that if Libya's beloved leader runs out of bullets and tear gas, which obviously would make him less beloved, and gets the old heave ho from the palace we can join the celebrations.

Bit of nifty diplomatic footwork and we can be flogging the new lot guns, tear gas and riot control gear in no time.

I CAN'T help but feel it is all going to go belly up in the Middle East.

I am no expert on politics at that end of the Mediterranean - or anywhere else for that matter - but when a regime is toppled by popular uprising - or bungling US and UK forces come to that - there tends to be a bit of a power vacuum as they call it.

Basically it means no one has enough power to be in control and much as the save the earth, sandal brigade idealists hope that this is the birth of a new people's democracy they are being sadly naive.

The people might well be throwing off the yolk of one form of tyranny but sure as oil is wealth it will soon be replaced by another as power is grabbed by those who have been waiting for an opportunity. The moderate academics in exile will be a bit short of mosques and armed militias on the streets when it comes to the real politics.

Iran might be a more realistic model to consider as a likely replacement than Utopia.

It does not help that all these countries were cobbled together in the corridors of power in Europe with borders decided by bureaucrats with no thought of tribal or cultural heritage - a bit like building a joint church for hardcore Celtic and Rangers fans.

The West has been sucking up to some pretty awful regimes in the Middle East because the ruling families had everything our rulers desired, namely oil and wealth. and, in the case of some of our leaders, luxury homes for freebie holidays.

The people in those countries tasting freedom, for a while at least, might just remember which countries were backing their toppled leaders and flogging them the arms used to shoot protesters which might mean a diet of humble pie for a while - and I suspect Tony Blair will not be on the shortlist for man of the year in the Libyan edition of Time this year.

But peace in the Middle east could well be further away than ever.

So let me get this right. The Government bungs up VAT to by two-and-a half per cent to 20 per cent in January and sticks on even more fuel tax and, surprise , surprise, prices go up.

The consumer price index rises to four per cent and suddenly the economists are talking about a need to raise interest rates to control inflation - higher interest rates would also mean a profit bonanza for banks and financial institutions of course, the employers of many of the most vocal economists.

So poor old Joe Public who now has to pay 2.5 per cent more for everything he buys plus another 3.5p per gallon duty on his fuel would also have to pay more on overdrafts, credit cards, loans and mortgages.

If tax had not put prices up by 2.5 per cent - more in the case of petrol - is it not be possible that the price index would not have gone up to 4 per cent? So it is not so much inflation as taxation that is the cause of increases.

Seems common sense to me but that is something sadly lacking in those who contol us these days.

It really does not seem to matter which bunch of political pygmies have the most seats when the music stops they still talk fluent cobblers.

What is this Big Society waffle. Apart from strangling the English language (volunteerism and localism to mention just two linguistic abortions) it seems to be largely a means of dumping yet more services we pay for from our community charges and taxes onto the public.

Libraries and other services run by volunteers and community groups seems to me as not so much giving power to the people as a spin doctor dressing up cuts as some sort of benefit.

Voluntary groups fill in where there is a need, such as fund raising through charity shops, or support groups, campaign and pressure groups but the Big Society seems more of a big con, a way of axing professionals running a professional service and sticking in a bunch of amateurs for free to save money.

Libraries, for example, are actually run by people who have qualifications and know what they are doing rather than a collection of well meaning local residents who can manage a couple of hours a week minding the counter. Where do you draw the line? Helpers on hospital wards to reduce the need for nurses? School dinners to cut down on cooks?

Within a short while the plan will see us with less in the way of community facilities no doubt with the excuse that the reason facilities have died is because the people in the community did not want them plus no doubt services which have to be provided will end up privatised because not enough volunteers could be found.

There are some things that Governments should not meddle with and one of them is marriage.

I have never had a problem with civil partnerships for same sex couples which give them much the same legal rights as married couples regarding inheritance, tenancy and so on.

Nor can I see any logical reason why hymns or prayers should be banned by law at same sex civil partnership ceremonies. Belief does not have a sexuality clause.
But this Government seems to be trying to sneak in the concept of gay marriage by the back door.

In much the same way as Catholic adoption agencies were told equality does not extend to you when they were given the choice of closing down or carrying out Government diktats against their beliefs - handed down from the altar of political correctness - Churches seem to be on the same road to being stitched up.

A lifting of the ban on same sex partnership ceremonies in religious premises on the face of it should not be a problem as long as the various religious bodies have the right to refuse to carry them out. Equality is a two way street which is something the more extreme gay activists - among the most intolerant people on earth - seem to forget.

The Quakers and a few other Christian groups are quite happy to carry out the ceremonies apparently but that will not satisfy the PC storm troopers.

We all know that within months we will be in for some test case of a gay couple refused a same sex partnership ceremony by some Anglican or Catholic church somewhere or other, preferably one with a more fundamentalist priest, and the human rights bandwagon will roll over the rights of religions like a steamroller.

It all seems to be part of a move by the ConDems to change the name of same sex civil partnerships to marriages - and they meddle with that institution at their peril.

Same sex unions no matter how sincere, loving or committed are never going to be a marriage - and before the Gay Liberation Front start braying that has nothing to do with homophobia but everything to do with history, tradition and language.

The concept of marriage is much older than any modern religion and existed in societies and cultures where homosexuality and same sex relationships were nothing unusual but were never seen as a marriage or even close to it.

Marriage has always been a union between a man and a woman who become a husband and a wife, hopefully a father and a mother and, eventually, a widow or widower.

Ask anyone in any country what is meant by marriage and you will get the same answer and no arrogant Government decree will ever change that.