Public health would really like to ban Christmas (and use your taxes to campaign for this ban)

OK I exaggerate but only slightly. It does feel like it's only the lack of opportunity that's stopping public health from banning Christmas - or at least anything over Christmas involving things they'd like to ban: drinking, staying up late, going out to parties, kisses, eating rich puddings with custard or cream, taking the kids for a festive Happy Meal, lashings of ginger beer, red meat, sausages, cheese, sleeping in the afternoon and anything else involving any sort of pleasure. Including of course the annual (and I'm told, 'much loved') Coca-Cola "Happy Holidays" truck tour.

As you know, I find it very difficult to why it's any part of anyone's business whether or not the Coca-Cola Christmas lorry arrives in town. Especially if your reason for objecting to the bright red truck coming is because you've convinced yourself that somehow Coca-Cola are entirely responsible for children being fat with poor teeth. Here's astroturf "campaign group" Food Active"(100% funded by your taxes):

It is with huge disappointment and concern that we see Coca-Cola are once again using the Christmas period to promote their sugary drinks across the North West in their “Happy Holidays” truck tour.

We are aware of the damage caused by these drinks which play a major role in the soaring obesity and type 2 diabetes figures in our region which place a huge and growing strain on the National Health Service.

The Chief Executive of the NHS has said that “We are now spending more on obesity-related conditions … than we are on the police or fire service.”

In the North West, 35.2% of ten-eleven year olds are overweight or obese and 33.4% of five year olds have teeth decay, largely down to their consumption of sugary drinks.

This contains some untruths - firstly the cost to the NHS of obesity (at least according to those libertarian folk at Public Health England) is £4.2 billion whereas the cost of policing in 2016 was £12.6 billion so Simon Stevens is making stuff up again. And secondly, childhood obesity and tooth rot is not - even a little bit - "down to...consumption of sugary drinks". Even if they were, then it's almost certainly not Coca-Cola that's the primary culprit. More to the point, we know absolutely how to reduce the incidence of dental caries in children - good dental hygeine (you know, brush your teeth twice a day, visit the dentist).

But public health people lying isn't my beef here. Rather it's why on earth they think banning Coca-Cola from promoting its products (including zero and low sugar products that amount to over half of the sales) is any of their business. What is truly offensive here is that your and my taxes are being used to mount an ill-informed and misleading attack on a private business. Hardly a day passes without one or other story about local councils being forced by budget cuts into closing and reducing services. All of the money for 'Food Active' comes from local council budgets in the North West and they are using it for the express purpose of lobbying for national government to change the law (as well as wanting to ban Coca-Cola's "Happy Holidays" promotion).

So next time Manchester or Liverpool council leaders wring their hands about shutting down a library or cutting funding for a community centre ask them how they can justify spending money on astroturf political campaigns like 'Food Active'.

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The consumer society is the good society...

We're forever being told - nay lectured - by well-off folk who write books (not to mention politicians, pundits and a whole crowd of their fans) that consumerism and the consumer society is a terrible thing. Multi-millionaires like Naomi Klein pop up with yet another ignorant and ill-informed (but delightfully written) book about the evils of said society - how it tempts us to consume, how this will destroy the planet and how wise folk like Naomi will lead us to a better place.

This is all utter nonsense - we are not here on earth to dress in sackcloth and ashes or to flagellate ourselves for the sin of wanting (evening buying) some high-priced branded goods that the priests say we don't need. Such folk tell us that being a little chubby is a sin because it is a waste of earth's resources. Nonsense squared - we are here to consume, that's why we work. And deliberately constraining our consumption (especially when we're paying over the odds for something that folk in poorer places pay a fraction of that price for) is not our purpose - indeed it is irresponsible self-denial.

So - although I'm not Ayn Rand's biggest fan - this comment about Christmas is spot on:

The best aspect of Christmas is the aspect usually decried by the mystics: the fact that Christmas has been commercialized. The gift-buying . . . stimulates an enormous outpouring of ingenuity in the creation of products devoted to a single purpose: to give men pleasure. And the street decorations put up by department stores and other institutions—the Christmas trees, the winking lights, the glittering colors—provide the city with a spectacular display, which only “commercial greed” could afford to give us. One would have to be terribly depressed to resist the wonderful gaiety of that spectacle.

As a summation of why Christmas is great and why we love it, this takes some beating. So consume my friends, live you life, party, celebrate and share the wonders of human achievement - goods and services created for us to enjoy more for less and a better life.

Credit to Alex Tabarrok here for the link.

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Enjoy the rest of Christmas. And a bumper 2015 filled with the joy of consuming the things we humans create.

So Nell, you hate Christmas do you? Bah, humbug!

Every year, somewhere in the torrent of Christmas-related guffle that the media pour into our consciousness, there is the Grinch piece, the 'I'm going to tell you how much I hate Christmas' article. Such articles are as much part of our preparation for Christmas as the 'we've lost sight of the true meaning' rants and the avalanche of charity appeals each more tragic than the next.

We need people who write stuff like this:

Christmas is the stick with which millions of us beat ourselves into brandy-soaked agony for being poor, single, childless, lonely, or simply bad at being jolly. It’s one thing to be single, skint and surrounded by dysfunctional relatives, but it’s quite another when the entire capitalist world is telling you that this is the most magical time of the year. We seem to have lost the script to a pantomime we never even believed in. We have ruined Christmas, without even trying.

Indeed this article (being as it's in the Guardian and all that) fills a specific sub-sector of the 'I hate Christmas' genre - the 'I hate Christmas because of all the advertising, commercialism and evil capitalist exploitation' piece. You see folks, we really don't have any choice in the matter as the glamour of capitalism's seasonal fairies has enchanted us - we are led astray by the glitter of fairy dust. Now is not the time to deal with the ignorance of this view - suffice it to say that it's nonsense.

However, it's necessary for us to have these sorts of writings just so people like me can tell the authors (in this case one Nell Frizzell) to stop being pathetic, grumpy old kill-joys and get down with the spirit of the time. To remind them of this:

"I do," said Scrooge. "Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough.” 

For this is the message of the Nell Frizzells of our world - like Ebeneezer Scrooge they see Christmas as 'just a day':

...if we really do want to spread comfort and joy this year, we should accept it for what it is; a day. Just a day. Whatever Roy Wood says.

You see our Nell sees Christmas as an intrusion into her misery and her celebration of the misery of others. The sad thing is that (and I've no issue with Nell sitting in the corner with her pet lip, arms crossed and definitely not getting involved in anything that seems even the slightest bit like festivity) what the 'I hate Christmas' brigade don't appreciate is that, if we didn't have Christmas, we'd have to invent it or something pretty much like it. And the very reason for that is that very gloom, misery and despondency that surrounds so many of us - especially in the dank, dreary darkness of winter. The thing Nell evokes in her sorry tale of Christmas past and Christmas present.

More to the point (and it's a very important point) Christmas is still the very antithesis of that supposed selfish capitalism. Even ignoring the God bit, Christmas is a time when we give presents, send blessings and share stuff with our neighbours. Most of the year we don't sing songs with other people (I'll be carolling at The George in Cullingworth tomorrow - beer and song, what could be better), we don't make a specific effort to consider our fellow men near and far, and we don't make an effort to recognise the bonds of family and friendship that hold our society together.

It is people like Nell Frizzell who are the selfish ones (and let me stress that I'm not saying they can't be selfish, just that their selfishness is sad and pathetic) with their self-righteous, posing rejection of Christmas. Po-faced and preachy, Nell refuses to play - no gifts for friends, no smile, no games. Just nonsense about capitalism.  Nell doesn't even plan to replace expensive largess with making a cheaper, personal effort to join in the spirit of sharing - nope, Nell plans to do nothing, to sit there pretending she's a better person because she's opted out of Christmas. Well she's wrong and there's only one thing to say to such people...

Bah, Humbug!

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The most influential humans ever...and a Merry Xmas!!

There was a list - there's always a list. It claimed to contain the most influential people in history (but contained Elvis Presley and omitted Confucius - reminding us of American parochialism).

However (and you may disagree) the two most important humans - probably women - were those who invented baking and brewing.

Think about it - imagine life without bread or beer!

Have a good Christmas with plenty of beer, bread and pleasure.

Cheers!

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Happy Christmas!

Rather than a jolly Santa or even some tasteful arrangement of holly, tinsel and pine cones here's a photograph of Ullswater taken on Christmas Day 2011.

Hope you have a good one, that you overindulge, have plenty of fun with family and friends. After all, we are here to consume and Christmas - whatever the grumps may say - celebrates this fact wonderfully.

So eat the turkey (goose or duck), sip the champagne, quaff the red wine and savour the whisky. If it's your pleasure to smoke a fine cigar, do just that and do it with a smile and a sigh of pleasure.

Enjoy!

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Stephen Bayley is still a cultural snob...

The victim of Stephen Bayley's scorn

Three years ago Stephen Bayley - then described as  “…one of Britain's best known cultural commentators" - had a pop at what he dubbed 'kitschmas'. At the time I found this a terribly snobbish and ignorant approach:

But Stephen Bayley and his ilk wouldn’t understand this – schmoozing round their charmed circle of the cultural trendsetters, these folk are nearly as out of touch with the real world as Ed Balls. And they annoy me…I like my inflatable reindeer, grossly overblown Santas, great fat snowmen, kids singing “Away in a Manger”, over the top lighting on private houses, German Christmas markets, re-runs of “White Christmas”, happy drunks in plastic reindeer horns…all the trappings of Kitschmas. I loved it that the car parked next to mine outside PC World had horns and a red nose.

You’re welcome to your smug little view Mr Bayley – but it doesn’t reflect what the rest of us want.

It seems that nothing has changed - yet again the Spectator has given this monstrous snob space to tell us who like our Christmas kitsch-filled that we lack taste. He even enlists another hideous snob - this time a Marxist one:

Thus the gross Furby is the embodiment of our too brightly coloured contemporary Christmas and the redundant gifts and trick effects that are part of it. The Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm is rarely quoted, directly or indirectly, with approval in The Spectator, but here is an exception. Hobsbawm said that the less educated the consumer, the greater his taste for decoration. I do not know that Hobsbawm, who unfortunately died before the relaunch, was aware of the brightly coloured Furby, but he would surely agree that, if temporary decoration may be compared to ludicrous merchandise, his idea applied here.

Perhaps next year the Spectator might like to give someone the space to make the case for house bling, tinny carols and artificial snow rather than giving this so-called "cultural commentator" another chance to parade his ghastly prejudice.

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Happy Christmas...

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Here's hoping for a good one filled with wine, song, great food and company. This after all it what we live for - not for Christmas but for pleasure. So enjoy this festival of pleasure and cast aside the puritans, those who say pleasure must have a purpose. Stare down those who sniff at "consumption" as if it is a bad thing. And smile with me at the whimsical wonders of our world - the laughter of children, the first little glug from a new bottle of wine, the mouth-watering smell of good mature cheddar and the feel of warm wood beside a bright fire.

Many thanks to all of you who've read, commented on and sent around the inane ramblings, irritated outbursts and intemperate rants (plus the odd thoughtful moment) that are my thoughts from Cullingworth.

Happy Christmas!

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Bah, humbug!

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The teachers union, NAS/UWT are having a Christmas 'go slow':

Members of NASUWT are to be ordered not to put up festive decorations or help produce Nativity plays and carol concerts in a dispute which could go on for months.

Frankly, how pathetic can you get. Also those children looking forward to the festive season, excited at the prospect of giving and receiving and Miss says:

"Sorry, Children. No tinsel, no nativity play, no party on the last day. I'm not allowed to help with these becasue all the teachers are cross with a man down in London."

Dreadful. Almost unforgivable.

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Happy Christmas and Thank You

Happens every year, dunnit? Christmas, that celebration of all things good and shiny (not to mention the kitsch that we all secretly love). Or is it some religious occasion?

However you think about it, Christmas is a time when - just maybe - we think a little beyond our usual selfish bounds. Stretch our minds - if not our time and cash - towards others and their problems. This isn't some kind of indulgence but a good thing - those who try to put it down to schmaltz or whimsy are missing the point that thinking about others is the starting point for us doing something for others. Without the thought there is no action.

Now I know I talk about the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of public services - and I mean it when I say that the private sector is (most of the time) vastly superior in service quality, timeliness and reliability. However, this isn't ever meant as a criticism of individual public servants - people who, on the whole, try to do a decent job within a rubbish system. And quite often - I've seen plenty of examples in recent snowy and icy days - go above and beyond duty to serve the public.

I've no time for these people's so-called leaders - fat-cat union bosses like Bob Crow and Len McCluskey who think there's something clever in behaving like playground bullies. It isn't just the ignorant left-wing ideology but the hectoring, ranting and divisive style that does no service at all to public servants.

However, this Christmas around 100,000 public sector workers are looking gloomily at an "at risk" notice - an indication of possible redundancy - and wondering whether the sugary finger will point at them come the New Year. And there's perhaps another 100,000 who know that letter is just around the corner. All this on top of the tens of thousands of public and voluntary sector people who have already been made redundant (not of course to forget the private sector).

The Government may have run away with the idea - egged on by rapacious bankers and developers - that the magic money pit was bottomless. The country may be in a huge financial hole - much of it created by the profligacy of Blair and Brown. But it isn't the fault of those public servants with redundancy notices any more than it's the fault of the ordinary taxpayer who is about to get the bill for that criminal government we dumped in May.

So if you know someone with that letter telling them their job's "at risk" or who is counting down the days to redundancy go and give them a hug, buy them a beer or simply wish them well. It's the least we can do really. That and say...

"Happy Christmas and Thank You"

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Friday Fungus: Chestnuts & Mushroom Rarebit (oh, and Happy Christmas)

Although I have done my best to demonstrate a link between mushrooms and Christmas and have provided you with the best breakfast recipe you can imagine, there is still a little distance between our midwinter festivities and our fungal friends. So I though I'd put mushrooms together with chestnuts since those sweet nuts have long been associated with Christmas (mostly to be fair in an often vain attempt to make hard old Brussels sprouts more palatable).

It seems to me that there are three possible types of dishes we could make with chestnuts and mushrooms - stuffings, vegetarian meat replacements (you won't hear me say that too often) and tarts or flans. However a spin through the ether reveals:

Turkey with Glazed Chestnuts, Parsnips and Mushrooms
Roasted Sea Scallops on a Bed of Chestnuts and Mushrooms
Passover (oops wrong time of year) Stuffing with Chestnuts & Mushrooms
Mushroom and Chestnut Wellington (a vegan dish that would make a good Christmas dinner)

However, I still prefer the simple and so give you a grand development of cheese on toast - bacon, chestnut and mushroom rarebit.

You'll need:

Chestnuts (peeled and chopped) about 40z
Fresh mushrooms (yellow oysters are nice) about 8oz - also roughly chopped
Green bacon - two thick cut rashers cut into lardons
Thyme (a sprig or two)
Worcestershire sauce
Good cheddar (enough grated to cover two slices of toast)
Salt & pepper
Oil for frying
Bread for toasting

Heat the oil in a heavy frying pan (oh and turn on your grill - I always forget), fry the bacon lardons for a minute until they start to curl then add the chestnuts and mushrooms. Stir and fry vigorously for two or three minutes then add the thyme and a couple of good dashes of worcestershire sauce. Cover, turn the heat down and leave to cook for about five minutes.

Toast one side of your bread and then spread the cooked mushrooms and chestnuts on the untoasted side, cover thickly with the cheese and return to the grill until the cheese is thoroughly melted.

Enjoy with a nice glass of port.

Happy Christmas!

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Wednesday Whimsy: Remembering a White Christmas

I was nine when I experienced my first white Christmas. My memory may be a little rose-tinted but we’d set off to walk to midnight mass at Our Lady of the Annunciation in Addiscombe – probably a mile or so. It was cold but not snowing and about 9.30 in the evening as we were serving so had to get everything ready for what would be the full on smells and bells service.

During mass – almost perfectly – it snowed and when we set out home the roads were covered with a pristine layer of snow. We walked the old organist home (he was over eighty and a little wobbly) and set out home. And it started to snow again. Perfect.

Today our relationship with snow seems angry – we don’t seem to take in its beauty. To look in awe at the way in which it covers blemished places making them fine and grand again. We run headlines saying: “Fury of the travellers grounded by snow storms” or “Transport chaos: blizzards bring Britain to standstill as more snow on way” and “Snow-hit Britain: another day of chaos as roads and airports are closed”. Snow is an obstacle to our lives, it interrupts our frantic scuttling about doing important things…we care more about whether the bookies will pay out on a white Christmas than we do about seeing a stunning white blanket out the window on the morning of 25th December.

I like snow and worry that our anger with the inconvenience of the white stuff takes away from the magic it brings. The pleasure of the “snow day”, the excitement of sledging, giggling while we throw snowballs or building the biggest snowman in the village. Pleasures that shouldn’t go away just because we’ve grown up a bit. And to those pleasures us old folk can add a glass of mulled cider or Christmas ale, a log fire and “White Christmas” on the telly. What could be better?

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Wednesday Whimsy: "Away in the Manger" and the spirit of Christmas

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Whether it’s the choir stalls of a fine cathedral, the nativity at a school in the rough end of town or a family gathered round a piano (or more likely these days an on screen karaoke) there is one carol we all know…whether we’re five or ninety five - “Away in a Manger”. It’s the first one we learn (fighting it out with “Little Donkey” for that privilege) and the simplest and easiest to learn.

For me it sums up everything about Christmas – yes there’s the God stuff but, as importantly, there’s the sense of wonder, anticipation and excitement we see in the faces of children (and old softies like me).

Now some grumpy humbugs want to portray our modern Christmas as an unwarranted and excessive festival of consumption. Every year some self-appointed guardian of the “real Christmas” pops up to lecture us on how all that eating, drinking, partying and spending isn’t what it’s all about – we should instead be all puritanically frowny about the sins of the world.

Not me. I love our modern Christmas with all the over-the-top kitsch, the tear-jerking movies, the schmaltzy music, the excessive lights and the over-eating (especially the over-eating). It is the great celebration of all the things – good, bad, highbrow and lowbrow, Christian and secular – that define our culture. And, for me, “Away in a Manager” with its plodding melody, it’s slightly maudlin lyrics and its simplistic message is part of that culture.

Oh, and "Away in a Manger" is guaranteed to make me cry – every time!

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Stephen Bayley Cultural Snob - bah, humbug!

Source: http://www.holidayinflatables.info/christmas-inflatables.htm
Oi you fancy designer types lay off my kitsch!

Apparently Stephen Bayley is “…one of Britain's best known cultural commentators.” As happens for such people, Mr Bayley gets a nice big space in the Spectator to bemoan what he (rather sadly) dubs “Happy Kitschmas”. I smiled at this passage:

“And what can I see from my office in Carnaby Street? I can see a giant, pneumatic, puce-coloured reindeer with white spots suspended from tension wires in space.”

Yay! Loving it…we need more of this it’s good. It’s what our festival of consumption is all about. It’s what we like Mr Bayley…it really is. We like our Christmas kitsch.

But Stephen Bayley and his ilk wouldn’t understand this – schmoozing round their charmed circle of the cultural trendsetters, these folk are nearly as out of touch with the real world as Ed Balls. And they annoy me…I like my inflatable reindeer, grossly overblown santas, great fat snowmen, kids singing “Away in a Manger”, over the top lighting on private houses, German Christmas markets, re-runs of “White Christmas”, happy drunks in plastic reindeer horns…all the trappings of Kitschmas. I loved it that the car parked next to mine outside PC World had horns and a red nose.

You’re welcome to your smug little view Mr Bayley – but it doesn’t reflect what the rest of us want. So we’ll go on having a cheap, slightly tacky, but great fun Christmas thanks (and if you want some good Kitsch jewellery this Christmas – go to the Kitschen Sink)

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Friday Fungus: possibly the best breakfast dish in the world ever!!

Thought I'd share with you this awesome breakfast dish (which of course you are free to eat any time of the day or night) - mushroom & bacon toasts.

You'll need:

3oz butter
6 rashers of green bacon (chopped)
8oz mushrooms, sliced (shitake are good as they're quite sweet but ordinary button chestnut mushrooms are fine)
Handful of chopped parsley
Salt
Black pepper

8 thin slices of good bread
4oz full fat soft cheese

Melt half the butter in a shallow pan and fry the bacon for a couple of minutes. Add the mushrooms, parsley, salt & pepper. Cover the pan tightly & cook for about 5 minutes (not too long or the mushrooms go all slimy - they need to be just tender).

Lightly toast the bread and spread thickly with the soft cheese and sandwich together into pairs (you'll have toast, cheese, toast, cheese in a pile) and spoon the mushroom & bacon mix over the top. Melt the remaining butter and pour over the top (if you're a pig like me you might need to melt a bit more).

For Christmas morning serve with prosecco & good coffee!