Horsemeat and things

Cosham Iceland

'Food you can trust' says Iceland, who took a hit when Irish food inspectors found traces of horse DNA in their beefburgers. But at least it was only a tiny trace, Tescos were far more embarassed when it was announced that almost 30% of the DNA content of it's 'value' range of beefburgers consisted of horse meat.

Strangely in 'i' newspaper a Tesco spokesperson suggested it was illegal to have the meat in their products. I'm not sure that is true, what is illegal is to say a food product contains beef only, when in fact it contains other meats as well.

Cosham high street

Meanwhile the big corporates continue to fall on the high street. Following the news of HMV and Jessops in trouble, Blockbuster have joined the growing count of failing retailers.

I am just thankful that when I graduated as an engineer all those decades ago that I went more or less into a good engineering job and spent a year as a paid trainee. I designed things that were manufactured in this country, even often went on the 'shop floor' to see the products being assembled and chatting to production line colleagues.

Jessops, Portsmouth

Today young graduates often end up in service industries like supermarkets, despite having degrees in IT, mechanical engineering etc

Yet successive governments, including the Conservatives and Liberals just cut, poke, criticise, blame and find scape goats (such as jobseekers and others) for the situations they are responsible for creating. They kill the desire to make things and the desire to innovate. It is no wonder we are in a spiral and that many are disenfranchised.

Low carbon technology and engineering is a challenge and as such must be viewed as an OPPORTUNITY to exploit, hence fostering new industry and jobs. Wasting time and effort on old industries will result in other nations overtaking us, yet again. Commiting our graduates to stacking shelves whilst other nations take the prize projects and jobs.

Havant Tesco - the story continues

It is good news to see Tescos have delayed the expansion and rebuild of their Havant store. The delay is due to pressure from green groups such as Friends of the Earth in Havant and others. It would be better if the store wasn't enlarged, however Tesco do intend to build a bigger store with new green technology at a later date.

The green technology may include wind turbines and rain water harvesting. Unfortunately even a low carbon Havant Tesco will still attract shoppers in their cars from a wide area, encouraging them to increase their personal/family carbon footprints. Also more often than not, cheap produce results in a higher carbon footprint.

Previous posts about Havant Tescos:

Havant Tesco's
Havant Tesco battle not over yet

Havant Tesco battle not over yet

It seems that despite our councillors voting to allow Tesco to redevelop the Havant store into a larger 'Extra' store, Friends of the Earth believe there is still a chance that the Tesco can be stopped via the Government Office for the South East.

Lets hope they succeed because unless these large scale developments are halted we will end up with commercial uncompetitive monopolies dominating our towns and encouraging people to travel long distances by car to get to them, killing off sustainable local developments.