pumpkinstrokemarrow

Rather shocked to read in this morning's DT that maybe a quarter of animals slaughtered in this country are slaughtered without prior stunning, thereby causing a lot of additional fear and pain. To me, the industrial slaughter of mainly large and sentient animals for food is fairly distasteful already, without allowing practises which might possibly have been sensible 2,000 years ago to make it a lot more so. Most of the religious involved seem quite civilised in other ways, so why do they persist in this barbarity? What sort of a god are they answering to?

One can only suppose that the numbers of such animals are far in excess of the numbers of relevant people because food processors like to be able to label their products as fit for consumption by relevant people, the production runs for whom might otherwise be too small. I find the DT line that abattoirs save significant money by not bothering with stunning a bit unlikely.

Then intrigued to read about the sale of a chunk of heritage to the Chinese, to wit the Weetabix Corporation. It seems that the Weetabix family, having been in the chair for more than 50 years, decided to cash in and sell out to a private equity outfit for some £642m nine years ago. The private equity outfit has now sold 60% of its share to the Chinese - not known for their love of milk covered breakfast foods but there is certainly room for growth - for £720m yielding a return which the Guardian computes to be 500%. Not quite sure about the sums but the return does look to be quite reasonable. The private equity people took a punt on breakfast cereal and did OK. Can't really quarrel with the the large return: they are betting with their own money - or money which at least has been lent to them for the express purpose of such betting. They are taking a risk while the Weetabix family is blowing the dosh on the geegees. But the Chinese are clearly buying up the family silver. How long before they are supervising our budget, rather in the way that the Germans are supervising the Greek budget now?

At the other end of the financial scale I heard yesterday of a new-to-me  manifestation of the poverty trap. Suppose I am 60, have no income and no savings but am eligible, amongst other benefits, for housing benefit of £100 a week or £5,000 a year. Suppose now that I inherit £100,000, the income from which might presently be £5,000. When I declare the £100,000 to the housing benefit people they will stop the benefit, leaving me with a net gain in income terms of ziltch. Which is fair enough; why should the taxpayer pay for your flat or whatever when you have money sitting in the bank. But the rule might encourage me simply to blow the £100,000 and carry on claiming benefit. The same, I guess, for older people who blow their savings to make sure that it is the taxpayer that pays for their care when they come to need it, rather than themselves. I'm can't think of a solution to either problem, so I leave them as puzzles for readers.

And then there was an irritation of a different sort as I was on the inbound leg of a light version of the Horton Circuit (clockwise) when I came across an abandoned bag from the nearby Tesco Express. Two thirds of a tuna sandwich was falling out of the bag and one third of a cup of chocolate was sitting on top of a nearby bollard. The package that the sandwich came in announced on the one hand that it was a £2.50 meal deal, then just a sandwich at £1.35 and then reduced to £1.15. All a bit confusing, but no excuse for buying the stuff and then abandoning half of it on the pavement. When I was little I was trained to eat food that I bought for myself and to put the rubbish in a litter bin. In this case there being a litter bin within 25 yards or so. Was the perpetrator on housing benefit? Was he a school boy trying to impress his mates with his get one over the gown-ups bravado? Or was it simply someone in a hurry who had not been brought up very carefully? It was certainly the sort of area where such people breed & multiply.