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

Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, a buffoon for each side of the pond

Could Donald Trump and Boris Johnson be the same person? Evil clown twins separated at birth perhaps? Whatever the case, they are two sides of the same awful coin and if we end up with President Trump and Prime Minister Johnson in five years time, two nations will be ruled by two spiteful, fiscally irresponsible men who are not nearly as funny as they want you to believe.

Superficially, both men are known for amusing hair. But in the pantheon of comedy, the hair on these two men is about as funny as burning orphans. Trump's flammable nylon skull pet and Johnson's deliberately unkempt head of straw serve as distractions from their real agendas, from them being properly scrutinised for the policies, for what they really stand for.

Both enjoy playing up their clownish personae. If you really think Boris Johnson's stammering, eye-popping schtick and his constant use of swallow-the-thesaurus words is spontaneous and genuine, you've been fooled. As you giggle while his head lolls about like a bladder on a stick, he wants you to think of him as a loveable buffoon. He loves it if you to think he is "good comedy value" because he'd rather you didn't question him on his abject failure to be the eco-friendly Tory mayor we were apparently all crying out for, on ever-increasing public transport fares, on the contractually dubious white elephant that is the Emirates cable car, on his vanity projects, on the money has has wasted on useless buses, on gluing pollution to roads, on trying to convince us his airport idea was a good one, on his complete failure to be present for TFL-union night tube negotiations despite happily plastering "Mayor of London" on TFL propaganda posters...

Likewise, Trump knows full well the internet contains more jokes about his hair, his orange face, his marriages and his tacky ostentation than any real scrutiny about policy. This week, he was placed under scrutiny by Megyn Kelly - I am no fan of Fox News but she did well at the debate this week. Trump's response to her perfectly reasonable questioning was to make a grotesque menstruation analogy. He knew the outrage would dominate the news cycle. His apologists won't care that he is a sexist and once the news cycle moves on, any policy-related questions Kelly asked will be largely forgotten.

Johnson and Trump use these idiot personae as distractions and we let ourselves get distracted. They are both as fiscally sensible as a spoilt teenager let loose with Daddy's credit card but that doesn't seem to stop people from hoping they achieve the highest office in their respective countries.

Both men love a vanity project. Trump Tower stands as a phallic edifice to Donald Trump's supposed throbbing, masculine success. He puts his name on everything he touches. Likewise, Boris Johnson loves that London has Boris bikes, Boris buses (even though they are crap) and he is most likely tickled that people still refer to his dead-in-the-water Thames Estuary airport idea as "Boris Island". And while bikes, daft buses and a failed airport idea seem lame in comparison to Trump's tower, plane and golf courses, it means that we all refer to Mr Johnson as "Boris". As if he is a man of the people, one of us, the kind of chap we'd go down the pub with for a night of top banter.

Both men have advocated policies that would not be out of place under the Stasi's awful regime. Trump is mad about a great big damn wall to keep Mexicans out while Johnson would simply love to see the secondhand German water cannon available for use on the streets of London. Kudos to Home Secretary, Theresa May, for not letting Johnson have his toys, even though he already wasted our money on them. Zero respect to Johnson for his complete lack of grace in the face of what he sees as a personal disappointment, as the act of a colleague who is out to get him, to stop the BoJo juggernaut.

If you seriously think either one of these men would be a good president/prime minister, you have been conned.

IS and the Turkish conundrum

Is Turkey our friend or our foe in the battle against IS? Unsurprisingly, there is no simple answer to this question.

At the time of writing, IS fighters are still besieging the Syrian town of Kobane near the Turkish border. It is still unclear what level of military support the Turkish government is prepared to give the allied forces who have made a piffling start to an already uncertain campaign with airstrikes. We're at war now and boots on the ground are the inevitable next step.

But Turkey's position is a conundrum. While it is easy to criticise the lack of military action by Turkey thus far, the country has taken in more than one million refugees, in particular Kurds (albeit begrudgingly...). Given their noisy neighbours, Turkey's unfortunate geographic position made this situation inevitable but they are doing their best with this situation. Sadly, their best is not enough and international help will be required to ensure refugee camps in Turkey do not descend into disease-ridden disaster areas.

As well as 22 refugee camps, refugees escaping the horrors of IS are also living in temporary accommodation,  such as schools, mosques and parks. Turkey has only received 25% of the funding it requested as part of the 2014 Syria Regional Refugee Response Plan. Something has to give.

Turkey's reluctance to jump into bed with the US is the inevitable result of the country's delicate balancing act between secularism and Islamism. When the modern day Republic of Turkey was formed in 1923 with Mustafa Kemal, better known as Ataturk, as president, it was created as a secular state. It was, and still is, a country where the majority of people are Muslim, either nominally or observant, but other religions are free to exist. You can see mosques, churches and synagogues in the same street in Istanbul, and constitutionally there is no state religion.

However, in recent years, the tide has been turning towards a state that favours conservative Islam over the official secularism and, as such, Turkey's leaders have been reluctant to offend neighbouring Muslim countries. Yet, at the same time, there has been an element of desperation for Turkey to join the EU. For those who would like to see Turkey join the EU, the bad news is that I cannot see that being feasible any time soon.

In the 11 years since I first visited Turkey, much has changed. When I first visited, the currency had recently changed from the Lire to the New Turkish Lire. A whole bunch of zeroes were knocked off the denominations so it stopped being one of those confusing currencies whereby western tourists go to ATMs and are unsure whether they are withdrawing enough cash for lunch or to buy a house. This helped give the currency credibility and some shops started accepting Euros as well - all good if a country wants to be a serious contender for EU membership.

During my first visit, our hire car was pulled over by corrupt police and Stuart, the friend who was driving at the time, was given a speeding fine even though he was not speeding. He was, by far, the most sensible driver of the four of us. The whole situation was bent, I was threatened by a police officer when he caught me trying to sneak a photograph of the situation, and because Turkey was on an anti-corruption drive at the time, we made a complaint when we returned home to Australia. It was dealt with quickly and efficiently and the officers responsible were suspended. This was also promising stuff for an EU aspirant.

But on the same trip, Lorraine, another of my travelling companions, and I went shopping in Istanbul's Taksim Square. Our outing was interrupted by a student protest - nothing unusual in that in many a major city - but what was disturbing was the posse of snipers on top of a tall building, rifles trained on the marchers. The locals took it in their stride but a peaceful protest overseen by snipers is not a hallmark of a country that has completely matured.

The last time I visited Turkey, it was 2009. My then-boyfriend-now-husband and I were taking a long weekend break away from the restrictions of Ramadan in Abu Dhabi, and we enjoyed being able to eat and drink beer in public in broad daylight. We could hold hands in public, it was a nice respite from Ramadan in an officially Muslim country. And Turkey is still a fun place to visit but there are many reports that suggest that under the current government, the temperature has changed and it does not feel like the same secular state that rightly filled many Turks with immense pride.

But within the EU, Turkey's dark side has emerged with the occupation of Cyprus. This has gone on since 1974. About one-third of the country has been annexed by Turkey after a military invasion. It is absolutely astounding that this situation has not been reversed in 40 years. The photo at the top of this blog post is of me looking out to Famagusta, in the occupied part of Cyprus. It was once a popular holiday resort town of about 40,000 people. Like unoccupied Cyprus, Greek Cypriots formed a majority but Turkisk Cypriots lived alongside them.

Since 1974, Greek Cypriots were driven out of their homes, people went missing, journalists have been killed and Famagusta has been left to rot. Byzantine churches which should be protected for their historical significance are in ruins, the only new buildings are mosques but even they are largely empty. As I looked out to Famagusta from a cultural centre rooftop, I did not see another living soul through my binoculars. There were Turkish military checkpoints and buildings, a UN checkpoint that looked about as useful as a fishnet condom, and the rest of the buildings were the homes and businesses that have been left to decay.

Just as the UN High Commission on Refugees has been embarrassingly ineffective in helping Turkey manage an increasingly overwhelming displaced persons situation, the UN peacekeepers and negotiators have not really done much to ensure Turkey stops their absurd occupation of a sovereign nation. And it's not as if all of occupied northern Cyprus has become some sort of IS-endorsed Islamic wonderland - a lot of money is being made there via casinos. It is a tragic farce.

I understand Turkey feeling caught between a rock and a hard place with the looming threat of IS, an awful refugee situation and a growing anti-American element. But if they are at all serious about having any credibility as a major international power, they need to get the hell out of Cyprus. Their soldiers have far greater battles to fight closer to home and they are not just of the military variety.

A conversation I had at the bus stop today

As I waited at the bus stop wondering where the hell the 293 was, an old man sat next to me. At that moment, a group of about 40 schoolchildren and their teachers walked past us. The kids were laughing, happy, well-behaved. The teachers seemed to be enjoying their job. Some of the kids smiled and waved at us and said hello.

Then the old man spoke.

"I can't imagine why anybody would want to kill children. Imagine that, if someone came out now with a gun and shot 20 of them. I just don't understand. America needs to change its attitude to guns, the whole culture is wrong."

So said a man who knows a thing or two about guns. He told me he was called up to fight in WWII, starting his military career in Ireland and Scotland before ending up in Italy. He was away from friends and family from 1939 until 1946. I told him how my late grandfather in Australia fought in Papua New Guinea before ending up in Japan, helping rebuild Nagasaki after the atomic bombs was dropped. When he returned to Australia in 1947, he was an avowed pacifist who never picked up a gun again and refused to have one on his farm.

"My grandfather told me: 'War is just old men sending young men to die.'" I told the old man. He nodded in agreement.

The 293 finally arrived. We got on the bus together and I sat beside him. He told me he had three children, five grandchildren and "six-and-a-half" great-grandchildren.

"I am so glad none of my children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren have ever had to go to war," he said.

And we agreed that we were glad to live in a country where people don't feel the need to be armed to prevent government tyranny. And a country where a group of laughing schoolchildren can walk down the street with their unarmed teachers without a care in the world. That's a microcosm of a world to which we can all aspire.

Peace.


Image courtesy of www.kozzi.com

Gun control, law reform and other stuff people don't want to talk about

First, can certain loud voices from the left and the right please quit being naive. The horrific shooting at a school in Newtown, Connecticut, was always going to be politicised, just as the death of Savita Halappanavar has been politicised in Ireland. This is what happens when something truly dreadful happens and people want answers, want to make sense of it, want to prevent it from happening again, and they hope the government might be able to do something about it.

Second, it probably comes as no shock to anyone who has ever read my blog or followed me on Twitter that I do support sane gun law reform on a worldwide scale. Background checks, cooling-off periods, regulations about gun storage, compulsory gun safety training, meticulous record-keeping as to who has licences - these are all important when it comes to buying something as potentially destructive as a gun.

Yes, I know criminals tend to be pretty good at getting their hands on guns, regardless of any laws, and laws are only as good as their enforceability, but laws are also a way of making it clear what a country stands for. When I lived in the United Arab Emirates, for example, pretty much expat I knew routinely ignored the law that bans premarital sex - it is a law that is almost impossible to enforce unless someone falls pregnant or is stupid enough to copulate in public. But it is a law that is most likely supported by many Emiratis and it does reflect the values that inform the UAE legal system.

When it comes to enforceability, there was an interesting tweet from the account @brento76 - "You know what would be neat? How about enforcing the gun laws that are already on the books?" Brent is a man with some very different political opinions to my own but I agree that is important to examine existing gun laws and see how each state can do better when it comes to enforcement.

Equally, laws that require a reasonable approach to gun ownership won't stop all gun violence overnight, but they do send a message to the community and to the wider world that gun ownership, regardless of where you stand on it as a right, is something that should be taken seriously.

Since the Newtown shooting, straw men have been popping up like idiotic scarecrows. One of the obvious ones is the oft-repeated cry that Barack Obama is going to take everyone's guns away - or Obama is somehow to blame for the shooting. Anyone who simultaneously spouts these arguments and supports states' rights is a moron who is trying to have it both ways. This straw man argument conveniently ignores the fact that gun laws vary from state to state in the US and it would take a bipartisan effort of Herculean proportions for Obama to ever get all 50 states to agree on unified national gun laws.

After the Port Arthur shooting in Australia, where Martin Bryant shot 35 people dead in 1996, the Prime Minister at the time, John Howard, a conservative if ever there was one, managed to get cooperation across the whole country. Gun laws were tightened on a nationwide basis, across six states and two territories - and there has not been a mass shooting in Australia since. Sporting shooters are still able to shoot stuff, feral pigs, rabbits and foxes, which are not native to Australia and destroy farms and wildlife, are still regularly shot, and Australia still culls kangaroos when they become more pest and less national symbol. The Australian equivalent of the NRA, the Shooters Party, is seen as a fringe organisation rather than one that has any real power over national agenda-setting. (That said, the party managed to get an amendment  through in the state of New South Wales in 2008 allowing unlicensed shooters with no police or mental health checks to join gun clubs.)

And herein lies a big difference between Australia and the US - there are massive cultural differences between the two countries when it comes to attitudes towards gun ownership. And cultural change is hard and can take generations to achieve.

Similarly, the "but everyone in Switzerland has a gun by law and they have a low rate of gun violence" is another straw man that pops up after every horrific shooting in the US. Switzerland has 6.4 firearms-related deaths per 100,000 people each year, which is indeed lower than the 10.27 of the US, but still higher than many other countries in the developed world. Having been to both Switzerland and the US, it is obvious that they are culturally very different places, with Switzerland being a very regulated, ordered, obedient society. Switzerland is not really a libertarian gun-lover's paradise. On my last two visits to the US (Detroit and Los Angeles), someone was shot dead outside my hotel. This didn't happen last time I went to Switzerland. But I digress...

Plenty of gun advocates doggedly claim that the US needs Swiss-style gun laws, which is fine provided they fully understand Swiss gun laws. Adult men in Switzerland are issued with a gun (as opposed to buying as many guns as they want from Walmart...) and they are required to undergo militia training. Permits to carry guns in public are restricted in Switzerland and usually only issued to people working in professions such as security. But these crucial elements of Swiss gun legislation, along with cultural differences, are often ignored by the kind of people who simultaneously cite the Swiss example and claim that if they were in the cinema in Aurora, Colorado, they would have saved the day with their concealed weapon. That'd be the concealed weapon they might not have permission to carry in Switzerland. Adding another gun to a darkened cinema where everyone is panicking doesn't necessarily strike me as helpful, but try telling that to the armchair heroes out there.

The other elephant in the room is the link between gun violence, poverty and low education levels - this means a rather affluent, educated state like Vermont (and indeed Switzerland...) has fairly relaxed gun laws and has a low rate of gun violence. Sometimes the stats don't pan out so well for the left or the right. And like cultural change, fighting poverty and improving educational standards are hard, but they are important priorities for any government serious about reducing violent crime, including that which involves firearms.

In the meantime, the disgracefully ignorant Westboro Baptist Church is saying the shooting happened because the state of Connecticut legalised same-sex marriage, here in Britain some despicable idiot from the English Defence League said the shooting was OK if the kids were "filthy leftists", single parent families are being blamed, video games are being blamed and much praying appears to be going on. It's the same old story after every mass shooting. We should all be tired of it - and we should all be angry.


Image courtesy of www.kozzi.com

This week's world of stupid

The week started well - I was having a great time in sane, liberal Amsterdam and Barack Obama won the US election. Then the wheels started to fall off.

The US state of California depressingly voted against a ban on the death penalty - and the County of Los Angeles voted for compulsory condom use in porn movies. It was a bizarre example of misuse of big and small government. The death penalty is abhorrent and ineffective and government should go big and step in to ban it globally. That is the only civilised solution. But how the hell did condom use in porn even end up on ballot papers? How is that something that needs government regulation and a public vote? Yes, sometimes government can be way too big. It would be far saner to ensure sex education covers the benefits of condom use as well as intelligent class discussion on pornography and its relationship to real life sex. If you think high school students can't handle such discussions, you've clearly got no idea what they've probably seen online already.

And Nadine Dorries happened again. This time, the MP buggered off to Australia to appear on I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here without telling anyone. On one hand, it is brilliant that she is currently not here in Britain. On the other hand, it is beyond scandalous that she is still accepting her taxpayer-funded salary, neglecting her constituents and abandoning her seat for important votes in the House of Commons. She further raises the idiot stakes by claiming that her appearance on a moronic TV programme will get people interested in politics and raise awareness of her views on abortion. If you are unaware of Nadine Dorries' views on abortion, you have been living under a rock. If you need to see MPs eat kangaroo testicles on TV to be interested in politics, you are too stupid to fill out a ballot paper and shouldn't leave the house without your name and address pinned to your clothes.

Meanwhile, Keith Vaz, the Labour chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, and Labour MP Chris Bryant, attempted to manufacture outrage over claims that bets were taken on the appointment of Justin Welby as the new Archbishop of Canterbury. Apparently, people who knew Welby was going to be the Church of England's new leader took bets and it was likened to the ecclesiastical equivalent to insider trading. But the outrage missed the point. Why is government still involved in the appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury? Given that Britain generally does a better job of separating church and state than America, it is time to cut this particular cord once and for all. This country has grown up enough to have an openly atheist deputy Prime Minister, freedom of religion, freedom from religion and a general attitude that religious beliefs are personal.

But any chance of intelligent discussion about betting on bishops, and the Church of England's role in Britain, got lost in the news cycle in the wake of George Entwistle's resignation as BBC Director-General after an ill-starred seven-week tenure. While the BBC-bashing newspapers get away with a tiny apology on page 23 buried next to an advertisement for mail order slippers for all manner of lies, inaccuracies and ethical failures, the BBC has to go big with a mea culpa. Yet ITV gurner-in-chief Phillip Schofield thought handing David Cameron an internet witch hunt list of suspected child molesters on live TV was the way forward and he is still employed. Alarmingly, Schofield made the Prime Minister look good - David Cameron handled an insane situation well.

Yes, there was much ineptitude on the part of Entwistle over the Jimmy Savile affair, and journalism at the BBC should be held up to a higher standard than The Sun, The Daily Mail, The Daily Express, ITV and Sky News, but this is not an excuse to tear down the entire organisation. It is a time to look ahead and ensure high journalistic standards are maintained at all times in the future. As I predicted on October 23, the real victims of paedophilia are being forgotten in the midst of a frenzy to burn Entwistle at the stake. There is no joy to be had in this prediction coming true.

Image courtesy of www.kozzi.com