Vegetables and the age of entitlement

Spanish spinach. Spanish peppers. Dutch tomatoes. Dutch onions. Irish mushrooms. These vegetables all found their way into the pasta sauce I made for dinner last night. They were all readily available for a reasonable price at the supermarket yesterday afternoon. This is despite the signs on empty or near-empty racks apologising for a shortage of other items of fresh produce because of climate conditions in southern Europe.

In unsurprisingly idiotic news, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express lost their collective shit over this, whining about vegetable price increases. Yesterday's Mail splashed with pictures of well-stocked supermarkets in continental Europe while we suffered here in Blighty with sad emptiness in our fresh produce sections.

Sheeple of Britain! Be woke! Those terrible Europeans are denying us our God-given right to eat cheap iceberg lettuce, courgettes, broccoli and aubergines at all times of year!

But surely the Mail and the Express, two of the emptiest vessels making the most noise on behalf of the Brexit campaign, should be welcoming these scenes of vegetable rationing in our supermarkets. Why aren't they delighted that Britain is having to import vegetables from California and Arizona to fill our supermarkets and our bellies? Why aren't they thrilled that Spain is keeping more fresh produce for itself rather than sending it all our way?

After all, this is what they convinced people to sign up for when they voted to leave the EU.

Without free trade with Europe - and this will happen with a hard Brexit - European countries will charge us more for the myriad fruit and vegetables that we currently enjoy even when they are out of season.

We will have to rely on markets further afield, such as the warmer states of the US, to make up for any shortages, and there will be increased costs and an increased carbon footprint. Even if Theresa May can get Britain a good free trade agreement with the US (excuse me while I laugh so hard my bladder explodes...), the cost of transporting fruit and vegetables from the US to here means it won't necessarily be any cheaper - and those costs will be passed onto consumers. Fruit and veg growers are businesses, not charities.

As well as the rank hypocrisy of pro-leave newspapers whining like fussy-eater toddlers about direct consequences of leaving the EU, the vegetable furore shines a light on our collective sense of entitlement. The howls of protest in supermarkets across the nation when suddenly people couldn't access whatever vegetable they wanted are pretty pathetic when considered in a global and historic context.

There was a time in Britain when lettuce was generally only available from mid-May until the end of October. This weekend, we have people panic-buying lettuce.

We are now accustomed to simply popping down to the supermarket and expecting all the produce to be there all the time. Sure, some of us prefer to buy from the independent greengrocers, the farmers' markets or grow our own, but overall, we expect to see everything from asparagus to zucchini every time we pop into the shops, whether we want to buy it or not. We are ridiculously privileged.

The age of entitlement is right there for all to see in Sainsbury's, Tesco, Morrisons and Asda stores up and down Britain, and in supermarkets of developed countries around the world.

Indeed, in my native Australia, I grew up with the rise of all-year-round fruit and veg in supermarkets. Supply grew along with the Australian palate growing up. I remember, with retching horror, the khaki-coloured, flaccid tinned asparagus of the 1980s. But I rediscovered asparagus as an adult in its fresh, green glory, pan-fried in butter, wrapped in proscuitto, maybe sprinkled with a little grated fresh parmesan, available at Sydney supermarkets whenever I wanted...

It wasn't until I moved to Dubai in 2006 and was working on an entertainment and lifestyle magazine that it really occurred to me that asparagus season was a thing. I started getting press releases in May from five-star hotels with asparagus promotions at their restaurants. I had to ask my British colleagues why I was suddenly overrun with asparagus press releases and I discovered that asparagus season runs from St George's Day - April 23 - until the June 21 summer solstice.

Asparagus season seemed so quaint to me at the time, but we now expect to have all the fruit and vegetables at all times. The very notion of produce being in and out of season, and hard to come by when it's not in season, seems pretty damn retro too. Just as well the bad weather on the continent only represents a blip to our entitlement to the vegetables of Europe. Oh, wait...




Photography by whologwhy/Flickr

Crocodile tears and closed shops

Jessops has closed its doors. The high street photographic retailer shut 187 stores and put 1,370 people out of work in a tough economic climate. Then, it was announced that HMV had gone into administration. There's another 4,500 jobs in jeopardy. And Blockbusters has gone into administration as well. That's another 4,190 people facing the fun of Workfare. Cue the inevitable outpouring of grief over more closed shops on Britain's high streets and the plight of the suddenly unemployed.

And cue a big pile of hypocrisy. Unless you diligently bought all your camera gear at Jessops, have never tried to pass off your groundbreaking Instagram work as bona fide photography, and eschew online shopping, you're not really in a great position to bemoan the demise of Jessops. We're all part of the problem. So many of us have becomes accustomed to shopping from home in our pyjamas, from smartphones and tablets, from work PCs in our lunchbreaks.

Stores like Jessops become free showrooms where people will try out all the products and then go home, jump online and scour the internet for the best deal. In the case of Jessops, their online price would seldom be as competitive as Amazon. So they are part of the problem too. Likewise, HMV struggled in an era where people seldom buy CDs anymore. And a colleague of mine wisely pointed out that Blockbuster could have survived if they invented the equivalent of Lovefilm as part of their drive to go online. After all, people are still watching films at home, just as they are still taking photos and listening to music.

As far as we can tell, all three businesses met their tax obligations but whether government tax breaks - or ensuring competitors such as Amazon paid their fair share of tax - would have saved the day for either one is uncertain.

The simple fact is that retailers who don't adapt to the drive towards online shopping are going to fall by the wayside.

Inevitably, stories from staff and suppliers to both Jessops and HMV have come out, offering insider perspectives on the human cost and reasons for the downfall that we may not have thought about. And, no doubt, ignorant customers with vouchers they can't redeem are probably being rude today to HMV staff who are facing unemployment.

Cue the moans about the death of the high street. Cue Mary Portas appearing on the news to repeat her mantra about how she hates that high streets are full of pound shops, charity shops and betting shops. Cue the opening of the No Shit, Sherlock files as she states the bleeding obvious - that these three types of shops typically attract business in recessions.

Yes, it'd be simply spiffing if every high street in Britain was a charming melange of tea shops, independent purveyors of cashmere knitwear and fair trade homewares stores. But struggling people need charity shops, they don't want to pay any more than a quid for a large bottle of bleach and, regardless of what you think about the morality of gambling, the notion of a big payout is always attractive when times are tough.

When parking on the high street is impossible, expensive or a constant game of parking ticket roulette, is it any wonder shoppers with cars prefer to drive to malls with gigantic free carparks? They're not pretty but they're convenient and they're warm. People like convenience and warmth. As long as councils continue to make it difficult for motorists to park and there is insufficient investment in public transport, this will continue to happen.

And if high streets die what happens then? How about repurposing buildings for social housing, or for schools and universities, or for medical centres? Maybe unattractive buildings of no historic significance can be knocked down and parks created in their place?

Whatever the case, few of us are keen to give up shopping online. And as such, we must deal with the inevitable consequences.


Image courtesy of www.kozzi.com