h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I was going to put this in the Oh, Twitter conversation, but it deserves one of its own. The catalyst for it is this story about what a rich and privileged person said today about those who are less fortunate http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-30379431

Before I get on to gist of what I want to say, I also have to add that hardly a day goes by now without someone in the public eye saying or doing something stupid and then having to apologise and/or resign for it. Have people lost the ability to know how to behave? Or are instances like this simply being reported more because almost every news organisation now has so much space to fill and not much to fill it with? She says that she was speaking "unscripted". So I guess the answer is yes, people have lost the wherewithal and the judgement to know what should be said and what shouldn't. We seem to have got to a point where everything has to have a light-hearted and flippant aspect. Jokes and puns always have to be made. Being serious about something is seen as a Bad Thing. It seems to have robbed people of good judgement.

Any road up.

Naturally, all parts of what the Baroness said about poor people are being ripped to shreds on social media, and the exaggerationists are out in force on Twitter. Baroness tells poor people to eat porridge for 4p! Let them eat gruel!!!

She was exhibiting a condescending attitude in what she said, or rather, the way she worded it, but the actual content of her statement was rock solid, and naturally the negative aspect of it's been blown up out of all proportion by the news media.

People today - poor and rich alike, but mostly poor - *have* lost a lot of their parents' cooking skills. It's not passed on from mother to daughter (or son) like it used to be. That's how it was for my generation and for my mother's, and perhaps for hers too. The Hairy Bikers brought it to the fore in their series Mums Know Best. Every episode (which always featured three mums) had at least one with a cookery book going back sometimes two or three generations, and there was a strong sense of continuity from mothers to daughters (I think there were actually one or two mums who were dads too).

That all started to change when the food industry got behind convenience and processed food in a big way, I guess in the 60s and 70s. They were doing it before then of course - even Bird's Custard is a convenience food and that goes back a century. My mother learned from her mother, and she rarely cooked anything that was processed - she cooked from ingredients and a recipe.

I have to say here that I despise the term 'from scratch'. It usually gets bandied about in a manner meant to elicit surprise, wonder and admiration that someone has actually bought ingredients, read a recipe and made something. Says much about what modern cooking has become.

In the 70s my mother did start serving up a few convenience foods - Vesta Chicken Supreme and Vesta Curry were actually looked upon as a treat. Angel Delight and Dream Topping.. was it Dream Topping? No, Dream Topping was faux cream, wasn't it? There was another one like Angel Delight but called... I can't remember. Something Whip? Instant Whip? Or am I thinking of Walnut Whip? And every once in a while she might use a Green's cake mix.

So, over the succeeding decades, with more and more microwave meals and oven chips on the market, and with fewer women staying at home, the art of cooking has faded somewhat, and it's no longer passed down from generation to generation like it was, so the Baroness is quite correct in that aspect.

The food industry have created more and more processed and convenience foods over the years, and pushed them with slick advertising, telling us how we shouldn't have to spend time slaving over a hot cooker, how cooking = drudgery, how we don't have time to cook, how easy it would be to just bung a box in the radar range and sit down to a meal in five minutes in front of the telly.

The braying Twitter hordes are berating the Baroness for telling the poor to spend 4p on porridge. Well, porridge is in fact very, very good for you (I know - I wrote the h2g2 entry on oats ), very cheap and very satisfying. Far more so than a bowl of cereal or a pop tart. Even toast and marmalade is better for you than that. And she *didn't* tell anyone to eat porridge - she told them what she had for breakfast. It's a stretch to interpret that as a command, but people will make that stretch and the dogmatically blind will slavishly repeat it.

I've been out of work for the best part of two years. In all that time I've eaten like a king, in my own estimation, in that I've stayed away from all convenience food and saved a heap of money by simply cooking for myself, *and* with more expensive organic ingredients, I might add. Which I also used to do when I was working five days a week - it's a political thing with me. I refuse to support the processed food industry and encourage them by purchasing their products.

If you don't have much money it's really not that hard to keep down your food costs and eat well by cooking with simple and nutritious ingredients, but you have to cook. A Girl Called Jack has made a name for herself (and hauled herself out of poverty) by showing people how to, having been in dire straits herself for a long time.

The food industry itself isn't the only party to blame here though. The death of the high street is an all too familiar phrase these days. The council estate I grew up on was built in the 1950s, and the planners included two areas of shops - one a small parade of about a dozen; the other a more substantial high street setting. The parade had one of almost everything you might need - a newsagent, a sweetshop/tobacconist, a grocer, a greengrocer, a butcher, a hardware shop, a gents and a ladies hair stylist/barber, a chippy and an off licence (no baker, as far as I remember)*. The high street had toy shops, a Woolworths, a post office, timber merchants, ladies and gents (and kids) outfitters, a Co-op, a Sainsburys, a fishmonger, shoe shops (of course ), a branch library, you get the idea.

Without going very far, and certainly within walking distance, you could get everything a family required for everyday needs

Supermarkets have helped to kill off a lot of that business, so for people who can't afford a car or for whom the buses don't go to where the supermarkets are, the term food desert has come to apply. That's especially prevalent here in the US where so many towns and cities have grown in a way that relies entirely on the car. Oh, it's all very well if you live in a big city, or even a medium sized city like Austin, with a bus network, but a lot of smaller towns, both British and American, have lost shops and markets selling basic items - meat, fruit, veg, bread, dairy - that people can easily get to. And where they do still exist, also as corner/convenience shops, they can't compete with the chains and the supermarkets on price.

So, to finally come back to the subject line - you're not helping - it's utterly counter-productive to exaggerate and deliberately misinterpret something, the way Baroness Jenkin's remarks have been. It doesn't help the cause and it only gives ammunition to the enemy which they can use to discredit anything you say in the future.

*I've just had a look at the parade on Google - the chippy, the offy, the barber and the newsagent are still there, and in the same spot, but they've obviously changed hands since I were a nipper. There's a dry cleaners where the greengrocer was, a bookies where the butcher and sweetshop were, and there's also a party shop, a saddlery and a tarot reader But there is finally a bakery

And to prove that I practice what I preach, I've just made my sandwiches for tonight's shift Nothing from the 7-11 for me, no thank you. I wish I had this though http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ_lQLp82f8#t=2m55s

(Scroll to 2 minutes 55 seconds if the link doesn't take you there).

I do broadly agree with you. And I sort of slightly agree with the Baroness. But I do think that it's not just as simple as that.

For example, her use of "the poor" as though they are a single unit. They aren't. and thanks to her government and blue Labour that went before they are growing in number. That is a whole other conversation, though, but it does serve as a backdrop to what is going on.

Jack Munroe is brilliant. Her blog is brilliant and I've followed it for a fair while now. But she really is the exception (although there are a lot of people who have made her recipies etc)

A lot of "the poor" are working stupid hours, on stupid standby contracts with a long commute to their rubbish zero hours cleaning job. A lot of them are jumping through DWP hoops and spending a lot of time doing that.

They would have to have the organisational skills of the Duke of Wellington sometimes to get a good meal on the table every time.

Don't get me wrong, people did learn to cook from their mothers. Some of those mothers are now to blame for not also teaching their sons since we live in a world where a family needs 2 wages...

And a lot of the discourse around the mothers and wives makes me very uncomfortable because I often know what's coming next. Especially from right of centre

so anyway. What is the solution? One of the solutions is to ban enegy companies for making their prepaid meters so much more expensive than they are for those of us who pay monthly/quarterly/ annually. Another is to bring back domestic science (or whatever it was called - home economics) into schools for all boys and girls. Also some training on how to plan family finances, what help is available if you find yourself unemployed, longterm sick etc etc. Those experts are available, and it wouldn't cost the government that much to get them into schools.

and the food industry needs more regulation. It really does. I wonder if, à la cigarette packaging in some countries, pictures of battery farms and so on, on the outside of processed or packaged food, would help?

I love porridge. I buy a bag of oats from Aldi for 29 cents and a litre of milk for not much more, and that's a fair few breakfasts. But I'd be kidding if I said one bowl really did me through to lunchtime (I make mine with 1:1 milk and water, no sugar, no other additions)

But for me it's not all that up there. It is the fact that as you said: these people who speak in public have either no idea of how to conduct themselves properly. Or the Nasty Party feel they have such a stranglehold on the country, they don't even have to pretend "we're all in it together" any more. Or both.

Either way, it is making me very very cross.

I had a Wonko the Sane moment, the first time I saw the supermarkets, selling pre-grated cheese there if convenience then there is... I dunno.... sort of convincing people they need stuff, or a 'type' of stuff, they don't need, and, of course, making this stuff they're then convinced they need, more expensive.

I make my own convenience food (frozen chilli portions, bolognese, homemade frozen pizza, for when I'm feeling particularly lazy). Actually, talking of cost... those last pizzas I made.... *does quick inaccurate mental maths), err... cost £2, I think, roughly, to make three very large pizzas (each one, a meal for me, on its own (and probably slightly more than I need, for a meal really). Not sure now, but I seem to recall the half-edible frozen pizzas cost nearly twice that, per pizza And, certainly in the UK, who is it, with the cash, who's fueling the huge increase in takeaway food (judging by the millions of takeaways on every street now)... I got so cross, the last time I had a meal out.... £7 for a burger?!; Chips not included! Yeh... it was ment to be some fancy burger... but... I know I can make about 6 simular sized burger pattys, with £5 worth of the really decent, local minced beef from the proper butchers not overly far from here... and the substandard roll they put it in (which they amusingly described in fancy terms), I can make a dozen of, using organic flour that I get now, for a few pence each
The £5 of beef, that went into the sort of slightly spicey hotpot/stew/thing I made last night, will do me, now, four meals, at least, maybe more if I up the rice to serve with it, and the only other ingredients, veg, etc, maybe cost a quid or so (yeh, and if I'd planned ahead I'd have saved mor, as I'd have soaked black beans the night before, rahter than chating and buyin a tin of them)
Not sure my parents passed much cooking experteze to me... I just had to learn to do it, at Uni, so there was enough money for beer... and so I didn't have to eat the pre-prepared/convenience rubbish (OK, I ate that crap for maybe a week on arriving at Uni, until I got so fed up of it.... )

It would have been more tactful and perhaps more effective if she'd pointed out that people should be taught to cook at school. As parents lose the skills, and lack the time, to teach their kids basic cookery and home economics (literally : how to be economical) then schools should take over. I was taught to cook more by my DS teacher than by my mother, and still use the recipes from those days for basic things like scones, bread, some biscuits and stews.

ooo... very good point... I'd entirely forgot that!; I was lucky enough to be at school at just the right time, when home economics existed, and was something both the girls and* boys had to do...

Not sure I can particularly recall much from it, now, but I'm sure bits of it are well lodgerd into my memory, so that I can't untangle from wence they arrived into my databanks...

I know, for certain, I still recall the correct way to do the washing up, and th way to tie off thread, when sewing, and a few other bits, like that; as I was shown them, by Mrs Keetly at middle school.... have vague recolections of making stews... scones.... pizza, unleven breads.... and, actually thinking about it, the sort of slightly old fasioned cooking equipment, we had in the home economics room, at middle school, has been a large influence on what I've now got in my own kitchen oo... and I can still recall making cushion covers in home ec classes and I think some cakes too...

My rather long-winded and rambling rant was prompted mostly by and aimed at the Twidiots (feel free to use that at your leisure, no charge ) who spin and exaggerate everything, but much else came up in the course of the combat, and yet more there was that I left out.

Like for instance how, going back to the parade and the high street of shops that were built for us lovely council tenants to patronise and how there was almost everything you could possibly need from a box of matches to 50 feet of four by two to a full school uniform. And what are the shops that are going in at the mixed use development that's just been completed next door to Castle Gosho (and the other seven or eight along this road? Beauty spa, nail salon, frame shop (glasses, not pictures), tapas bar, hair stylist.

And it's not only cooking that's fading. A few weeks ago I started watching the first series (only four programmes) of James May's Man Lab, and realised that he's right - what I shall for want of a better description, for now, call dad skills have also gone down the Swanee. When I was a kid most dads could paint and wallpaper any room in the house, had a proper pair of wooden stepladders, had a garden shed populated with sundry tools (not matching) and endless tobacco tins (Golden Virginia or Old Holborn) full of sundry nuts, bolts, screws nails and washers (also not matching, but one nut has to marry up with one bolt sooner or later, right?), and all kept in an old chest of drawers that would have fetched a fortune at Sotheby's if it hadn't been used as a workbench for 30 years. They had a paraffin can (Esso Blue style) or a jerry can, and a paraffin heater to fill it with. They could do basic car maintenance. Some could do very advanced car maintenance. Some had a full-on Hank Hill style workshop with tools that match and both a woodwork vice and a metalwork vice. All had an old school lawnmower (Qualcast) and could mow a lawn in strips so straight it'd put Wimbledon to shame. All had at least one set of Mole Grips. All could drive from one end of the country to the other with nothing more than the AA (or RAC) handbook in the glove box.

How many modern dads can match up in both skills and tool content I wonder?

And I shall call them dad skills for now, and with abandon, because I'm about to go to bed at 11.30am after a nine-hour night shift and I've been up for 27 and a half hours and if my brane hasn't already turned to mush, writing that last post certainly has, so and goodnight.

Hmmm... I must be a throwback.
*Wanders off muttering to himself having just finished painting the bathroom.*

Uhmm Brain or brane http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brane.. must be brane as its turned to mush,(thinking of hawking)

well, I'm forgiving you the "mum" and "dad" divisions of labour but... Chez Sho the is in charge of all that stuff, and my workroom (it would be in the shed if we had one) has a lot of the stuff described as above.

and... of course some of us... of whatever gender/sex... do both the kitchen and the whatever happens to pass for a workshop (useually the kitchen as well, here, or sitting on the bedroom floor, with cutting mat, or whatever...)

Yeah, I know we're not supposed to think of them as mum skills and dad skills any more, but that's how it was, mostly, when I was a kid. There was crossover - my dad did some of the cooking, for instance, when he wasn't working a shift, but my mum did all the rest of the mum stuff, as well as the other usual household tasks, plus knitting and darning, and she wouldn't have had it any other way - she was in her element and never wanted to have a job. She never did any of those dad things I talked about a few posts back, and I should have included more gardening stuff in that post too. I look at some gardens these days - it's seems that too many modern dads (and mums) wouldn't know a floribunda if you whacked them on the bonce with it (nor would I ). I know Gardeners Question Time is still as popular as ever on a Sunday afternoon, and Gardeners World on Friday night, but do people still pore over Suttons seed catalogues during the dark evenings of December and January like they used to, dreaming of the coming blooms of summer and crops of vegetables?

I meant to add that I still have the tea cosy my mum knitted... 40 years ago? 35 maybe? And use it every day to keep my teapot warm and my tea piping hot. Because there are few things as disappointing as tea that's cooler than inside of a nuclear reactor and so hot you can read by the glow it gives off.

if i had time to do the garden properly (and I suspect it's a problem many other people have, which is possibly also related to the cooking thing) I'd pore over seed catalogues. (My parents did up until my dad died - but my mum seems to have lost any enthusiasm she had for actual gardening at the same time)

I expect, (but have no evidence to back it up), that popularity of gardener's question time, and simular garden programs/shows, is a bit like teh popularity of cooking p programs on TV.... - People like to listen/watch them, but less to expand their knowledge, or to learn things to put into practise, for gardening or cooking, but more, as a kind of window gazing exercise.... - listen to and watch the TV chef make all manner of gorgeous food, and then the viewer goes and sticks a microwave readymeal on to cook, etc... Still eating the kinda simple beef stew thing, I made a few nights back.... if I finish it tonight, it'll work out about £2.20 per portion,weird> I very much doubt (though honstly I've not looked at such things), that you get much readymeal for two quid and I doubt its very edible whatever it might be actually.... if I stick some bulghur and more water into the stew tonight, I might even stretch it to a meal for tonight, and another for tomorrow... then it'll drop to less than two quid per portion I might even lash out on a leek and a potato today... and make some soup, once the stew is finished now... that's a seriously cheap meal and so quick n easy to make