It all started when I finished reading one book and got a few pages into another I didn’t really want to read. It occurred to me that it must be about time for another Ian M. Banks book to be out (it’s been this long since I read the last), and perhaps even one of his Culture novels. Sure enough, it turned out that that Surface Detail came out last year.

One snag – after years of stubborn nay-saying, I’ve finally come to the conclusion that ebooks are good thing, for various reasons which I’ll save for another day. This shouldn’t have been a snag, of course, it should have made it easy – instead of an hour’s round trip to the bookshop, complete with the costs of petrol and parking and the need to mingle with shoppers, I could have had it there and then. Or, relatively painlessly if I was prepared to wait for the postman.

So the theory sounded good – pay for ebook, download ebook, read ebook. First stop, Iain Banks’ web site. Well it seemed like a good idea at the time. Admittedly, deeply buried within I did find a link to the publisher’s site, where I could order the book for nearly three times the price Amazon are selling it for. But as for e-books – forget it. Oh, but wait, there was a whole “Ebook News” section. Unfortunately, all that it contained was some blurb about an ‘app’ for some nasty locked-down fruit-based device. You buy the book, then you scan the QR code with your fruitphone, and you get some extra goodies. Or something. It ended like this:

So unlocking the ‘story beyond the story’ with one of the world’s leading publishers is an extraordinary project and a UK first that will quite simply transform the reading experience for ever.

After I’d cleaned the vomit off my screen, I went looking elsewhere.

Options, not many: Amazon would sell me a copy, but only if I bought one of their Digital Restrictions Management-riddled devices, or alternatively, tainted my nice device with their malware. Alternatively, WH Smith seemed happy to sell me it, but the very small print hidden at the bottom of the page before (I suppose I should be thankful for that) you buy indicates that you have to install some Adobe-crap to be able to actually read your not-at-all-cheap purchase. Waterstones were slightly better, in that they revealed the presence of the deal-breaking DRM clearly.

So, about this DRM shite. Even if I was prepared to install any of this maladjusted proprietary software, it’s not even compatible with any of the computers or handheld devices I have now, let alone any I may decide to buy in the future. Even if it was, I’d have to be prepared to jump through all the ridiculous “register your thing here”, “authorise your computer there” and “link your device to your whatjamacallit” hoops. And if I ever found it suddenly wouldn’t let me read my book, well no problem, I could just phone them up (Monday-Friday: 9am-6pm).

How does all this rigmarole benefit me exactly? Well, it means I won’t accidentally read my book on more than the maximum number of devices they’ve decided I’m allowed to ever have. Or commit the crime of reading it on a device they haven’t thought of yet. Or worse, still be able to read it after they’ve gone out of business, which will hopefully be soon. Or, and this is the worst thing of all, I might let *you* read it. In short, this is all to prevent me from ‘stealing’ the thing I bought.

I can’t help but liken this to a trip to a supermarket where they make you dress up at the door in a white pocketless suit and gloves and follow you round with a megaphone shouting at you to keep your hands on your head at all times unless retrieving (with prior permission) an item from the shelf. They need your passport, two copies of your driving license, and a letter from your long lost Aunt Sally before you can get in. Oh, and then they insist on coming home with you to make sure you don’t eat your tomatoes in an unauthorised part of the house, They leave an armed robot behind to make sure you don’t do it when they’ve gone. And they reserve the right to burgle you in the middle of the night and take the milk back if they discover you’ve put it in an unapproved brand of fridge. They never need to do this though, the milk is booby trapped – it will automatically explode if you try that.

Of course, few people shop at this supermarket. They’d like to shop somewhere else, but unfortunately the place has a monopoly on tomatoes and milk. But there’s a secret. If you go round the back, you can just pick up as much stuff as you like from the goods yard. It’s the exact same stuff, but without the armed robots and booby traps. The only catch is that you like the cows that make the milk and feel they ought to get paid, but the only way that can happen is to allow yourself to be treated like a fool and a criminal.

Ok, enough of the stupid analogy. It was quite hard to find places to buy the ebook, because search results everywhere were swamped with places I could download it for nothing. Piracy, they like to call it, although I’ve always failed to see how you can compare making an unauthorised copy of some digital data with robbery and murder on the high seas. Or let’s call it theft – I steal something from you, and you’ve still got it. That can’t be right either. Anyway, let’s stick with the pirate word, it’s funniest. After an hour of trying to hand over my money, and being treated like an idiot and a crook for my troubles, I decided to try the other way. Within twenty seconds, I had the goods. No strings attached. No slurs on my character, irritating registrations and authorisations, no technical problems, and no fear of the book suddenly becoming useless in the future.

This is a very poor state of affairs, is it not? Try and pay, and you get shat on from a great height. Or take the pirate’s way, and everything is plain sailing. Of course, we’ve been through all that with the music industry already – I went from someone who would happily go out several times a week and return with a bag full of records and CDs, to someone who wouldn’t give a penny of my money to that industry if my life depended on it. Luckily we’ve finally reached the point where musicians can do without the parasites and take money direct from me.

As for the book, don’t be expecting it to appear in my next list of what I’ve been reading. After a quick skim to confirm it was the genuine article, I deleted it. I’m sure it’s every bit as good as its predecessors, all of which I’ve avidly read, but I suddenly have no appetite for it. Until such a time as Iain Banks is prepared to accept a simple exchange of some money in return for the excellent words he’s written (and preferably without all the obsolete middlemen involved) there’s plenty else for me to be reading.

What follows is a non-comprehensive list of what I think is crap. Some of these things everybody must agree with, while others most people probably don’t care about.

One other thing before I start moaning, just to be clear – I am a big fan of Android in general, both from a user perspective (it’s great) and a techy one (there’s a lot of clever stuff hiding in there). Anyway, on with the moaning…

Finding Things

You’d think, what with Google being the long reigning undisputed champions of search, that they’d have this covered. Nothing could be further from the truth – it’s a disaster. Unless you know the name of the app you want, or the developer has managed to sneak the exact keyword you choose into the stingy allocation of description they’re allowed, you’re up shit creek. Take a simple example – find me all the apps that let you play chess online via FICS. Sounds simple, but I bet you don’t get them all in the first ten searches, if at all.

Some folk like to say that this is just because it’s just like such a hard problem, man. I disagree. Web search – that’s hard. You have no control over the quality or semantics of what you’re searching. This isn’t the same at all. Or at least, you shouldn’t have let it be.

Choosing Things

Assume you’ve climbed the search mountain and found a bunch of apps that look like they might do what you want – what now? Apps have very little metadata attached to them. You’re basically stuck with a couple of screenshots, a description, a price, a rating, and some user comments. The screenshots are not usually particularly useful and the description, as I already mentioned, is extremely limited but usually the best you have to go on. The other items deserve sections all of their own, which follow, but first a section about the elephant that isn’t in the room:

License

For me, there are two kinds of software – one kind is the one where the developer has deliberately kept the source code secret, preventing me from seeing what’s going on inside, customising it, or fixing bugs when they can’t be bothered any more. The other kind is the kind where they haven’t done that. There ARE legitimate reasons for concealing your source code, but most of the time, and especially for my personal use, I will avoid the practice like the plague.

Just to clarify, for the uninitiated, the latter kind of software is what’s referred to as Free Software. Free referring to freedom, not price (see below). If the developer has decided to suddenly make everything bright green, and I liked it when it was black, I am free to paint it black. If the developer can’t or won’t fix a bug, I’m free to fix it myself, or get someone else to do it for me. The former kind is sometimes referred to as proprietary software. I prefer the term Secret Software. The usual way of differentiating between these kinds of software is the license – it may consist of either “you can do this, feel free to do that” or “you mustn’t do this and don’t even think about that”. You don’t need me to tell you which is which.

Anyway, Google didn’t need that last paragraph – they understand all this very well and have built and run their business on Free Software, as well as making huge contributions to the world of Free Software at large. Indeed, most of Android itself (let’s not talk about the exceptions) is Free Software. The point of all this diversion into licensing being that when I manage to get to my list of possible apps that might fit the bill, although some are Free Software and some are not, I frequently have no idea at all which are which, because Google completely neglected to have any kind of licensing information attached to the apps. But not neglected, of course, because that implies an unintentional omission – it just didn’t occur to them? Of course it did. So why did they leave it out? You decide.

Price

So, based on the previous section, you’ve probably decided I’m looking for things that are free, as in free of charge. No. I don’t want to pay someone to keep the source code secret from me, but I’ll happily pay them to give me it. Anyway, free of charge would be easy, because the one thing you can easily see is the cost, FREE or… hang on a minute, did I say easily? FREE, or the cost in one of numerous different currencies. Are you familiar with the current exchange rates between US dollars, Euros, Pounds Sterling, Japanese Yen, and more? You’d better be. Update: not any more – it now displays approximate prices in your local currency instead.

You’d also better hope, if your final choice isn’t free of charge, that you’re in the right country, because in many countries you simply can’t buy them. Strange – surely everywhere at least has PayPal? Yes, but Google doesn’t own PayPal.

The same situation arises, but to an even greater extent, if you’re on the other end of the deal. Live in Australia and want to sell your app? You can’t. Update: Some new countries have now been added.

Adware

Some people, I assume, are happy to see adverts. I never see them, and I never want to see them. I especially don’t want to carry them around in my pocket, so I’m not interested in any app that is going to put them there. Google doesn’t want me to be able to filter this crap out, of course, because it makes a whole lot of money out of adverts, but still, I’m not going to look at them for longer than it takes me to quit and uninstall, and I’m definitely not going to click one, so why not save us both the trouble and just tell me up front.

Mind you, you can normally stop this kind of stuff before you get as far as actually installing it, because it wants all kinds of unnecessary permissions on your phone. But you don’t get to see this information until you actually tell it to install. Why not, when I’m looking at a list of 20 potential vuvuzela apps, let me see which ones mysteriously need to know my current location and shoe size, and have the ability to send that information to god knows where? I wonder.

Ratings and Comments

These two go together. This is where Google try to ‘crowdsource’ away the twin problems of unsearchability and unchoosability. Everyone can rate an app, from 1-5 stars, and everyone can comment on it. Wonderful – now you can see an app’s average rating, and you can read the comments. Or at least, it would be wonderful if the crowd wasn’t a crowd of idiots.

Looking at some apps, ones you know are superb, you’ll find a whole bunch of 1* ratings accompanied by comments like “wut iz this it sux”. Conversely, if you’ve ever accidentally downloaded a complete dog of an app, you won’t have been saved by the string of 5* comments. I mentioned the chess apps earlier – have a look at some of those again if you like, with particular reference to the comments. Common themes include 1* it makes illegal moves (i.e. I don’t understand the rules), 1* it’s too hard (I am crap) and 1* it won’t let me move my prawns diagonally (Even in a crowd of clowns, my long shoes and big red nose stick out like a sore thumb).

In many cases, these comments are the only line of communication between user and developer (because the Market provides nothing else) and it’s particularly sad to sometimes see a developer attempting to provide support amidst this sea of bozosity.

Additionally, pretty much every time you look at an app’s comments, almost the first thing you’ll see is spam, most frequently offering you all the paid apps you want, for free. These comments always virtually the same, and contain easily recognised URLs, but for some reason Google doesn’t seem to be able to recognise them, or stop them at source, despite the Market being essentially a closed (you’re tied to a Google account, and a mobile device) platform. Very odd.

Sorting and Filtering

This ties in with the almost complete lack of metadata, and with some of the areas discussed above. I have a list of potential things as a result of a search – the next logical thing to do, if you want to find something in it, is filter the list or sort it by something. Everyone knows this.

There’s a place where you don’t do that – where the list is sorted and filtered for you, and you get what you’re given. It begins with Goo and it ends with gle.com. I wonder if the mindset of Google Search, which is a complete different kettle of fish to the app Market, where ultimately Google has the ability to shape the quality and quantity of the incoming data (and metadata), has influenced this lack of functionality at all.

Versions

Maybe a developer releases a version of an app that breaks a feature you use. Maybe you don’t realise this until you upgrade – why would you? Maybe you want to go back to the previous version that worked, and wait to upgrade until the next release when things are back to normal. Maybe they didn’t break anything, but you just liked an earlier version better, before they cluttered it up with stuff you never wanted in the first place. Well whatever the reason, it’s tough, because you’re stuck. There’s a current version, and that’s that.

The End (For Now)

I’ve missed quite a few things out, but that’s more than enough so I’ll stop now. There are quite a few alternative marketplaces available, needless to say given the above sorry state of affairs, but as far as I can tell they’re all even worse in various ways, so maybe there is more to me spending the time writing this than just one of my usual rants – only time will tell…

In response to this ‘article’ (which is entirely old hat anyway) and inspired by the stupid comments they published, here is my contribution:

I’ve heard of some horrific head injuries incurred while walking down the street. Trips and falls, and of course muggings and other violence, can even be fatal, and most of these deaths could have been prevented by the wearing of a helmet.

Thus, I always wear a helmet when out walking, and consider anyone who does not to be a fool.

I urge the government to make walking helmets compulsory with immediate effect. The law can be enforced, and fines handed out, by traffic wardens and litter inspection teams – thus no additional staff will be required, and a tidy profit can be made by the local council too.
R Perrin, Climthorpe

Something I forgot to comment on was this:

“It’s plain and simple that helmets are effective,” Ms Lee continues. “If you think of people who have mobile phones, computers, I bet they all have covers on to protect them. You have a skull protecting your brain and if you know anything about computers you know that if you damage a computer you can’t load the programme. That’s exactly the same with your brain.”

Then again, there’s not much to be said in response to that mindless babble is there? Stick the the nursing, love Ms. Believe it or not that quote came from the actual article, not a comment from some passing halfwit.

Dear James,

Thank you for your recent election communication, in which you requested my vote in the forthcoming general election. I’m pleased to note that you would listen and work hard to represent me, and as such I have one or two queries on issues you weren’t able to cover in the brief leaflet:

Digital Economy Bill – This was a poorly drafted bill, debated by MPs who clearly didn’t understand the issues involved and forced through parliament without proper consideration or scrutiny. This would be bad enough in any circumstances, but in the case of controversial measures such as those in clauses 1-18 this is nothing short of disgraceful. The measures, which now have Royal Assent, have the potential to cause untold damage to innocent individuals and businesses, and to stifle the ‘digital economy’ in various ways – all, clearly, done at the behest large media corporations who have failed to understand or adapt to the modern world, and almost certainly will not benefit from the legislation in any case. How would you have voted in relation to this bill, what will you be doing to undo the damage caused, and what will you be doing to ensure this abuse of parliamentary process and mandate to govern is not repeated?

Home Education – Thanks to an awful lot of luck, a great deal of campaigning, and the Conservative party, the government were forced to drop Schedule 1 of the Children, Schools and Families Bill. These provisions were badly drafted, based on a totally flawed report, and in any case totally unnecessary, yet the government ignored all opposition and persisted in trying to rush through these provisions, again with total disregard for proper consultation, scrutiny or parliamentary procedure. Furthermore, they have vowed to reintroduce the same measures in the next session, in the event they are returned to office. In that (admittedly very unlikely) event, what will you be doing to prevent this from happening?

ID Cards – I have never had any difficulty identifying myself when the need has arisen, so I have no need for an ID card. I object to both the idea that I should be legally required to carry one, and that billions of pounds of taxpayer’s money should be spent on facilitating this, despite the fact that it would achieve nothing at all beyond the further expansion of the authoritarian nature of the state. I understand that the Conservatives would put a stop to this project. What is your position on this, and does it differ from your party’s? (And in general, where your position might differ from your party’s, would you be inclined to vote according to your beliefs, or your whip? In other words, are you asking me to vote for you, or the Labour party?)

Drug Policy – I can’t help but notice that the failed policy of prohibition has continued to be followed by the government. Prohibition, now known as ‘the war on drugs’, is clearly a counter-productive policy which provides a lucrative source of income for organised crime, criminalises recreational drug users (who form the majority) and leaves problem drug users (the minority) in danger due to poor quality and contaminated supplies. This would be bad enough in itself, even if vast sums of taxpayer’s money and huge amounts of valuable police time were not expended on this foolish and phoney ‘war’. Such is the level of dogma behind all this that when a respected scientist and government advisor attempts to introduce even a small amount of common sense into the debate, he is promptly sacked by the Home Office. I would welcome your comments on this topic.

Abuse of Parliamentary Process – As I have touched upon in some of the earlier points, I am greatly concerned by the fairly recent, but seemingly growing, abuse of parliamentary process. The number of new laws introduced over the three previous terms of Labour government is truly shocking, and in the hurry to fit in as many as possible we have seen badly drafted legislation and lack of scrutiny, as well as members voting without being present at debates, and even speaking in clear opposition to measures then voting in favour of the bills. In addition, there is an increasing tendency to write ‘skeleton legislation’ along with Statutory Instruments, where the true measures are later filled in and amended as the relevant Minister of the day sees fit, thus circumventing parliament entirely. While I personally believe that the state has little function other than to keep the peace, where laws that restrict the liberty of individuals or place requirements on them are truly necessary, I expect the whole process to be conducted with the thought, care and precision it deserves. I would be interested to learn whether you share my view that things have gone very badly wrong in this department over recent years, and if so what you hope to see change and how you intend to contribute to that change if elected.

Obviously this is just a small and random selection of the issues that concern me, but I’m confident it is a good enough sample for me to gauge your appropriateness for the task of representing me in parliament, and I look forward to your response.

Yours etc.

It turned out to be a bit wordy but I reckon that many words would have fitted on the leaflet, if most of the space wasn’t taken up by publicity photos and VERY LARGE WRITING, but I daresay substance is not what people really want in a leaflet. I don’t expect James Lewis to have time to read my letter during his campaign, let alone reply to it, but writing it kept me amused for a while.

Yes, the sticker says “25″ with a line through it, and “Are you old enough?”. And yes, it’s a child’s cutlery set, with a knife you’d be hard pushed to slice off a piece of ripe brie with, let alone stab a rival gang member in a dark alley. Let’s have a look at the back:

“Cutlery to be sold to those aged 18 and over only.” What kind of madness is this? And while we’re at it, how about “Cutlery set only suitable for children over 3 years”? Jake is less than half that age, and he finds it perfectly suitable, thank you very much. Is he supposed to wait until his third birthday so I can present them to him in a coming-of-age style ritual? “Son, the time has come for you to cast aside your childish plastic spoon and, like a man, go forth and use this miniature fork emblazoned with a cartoon cow. Oh, and also this blunt knife which you may, if you press hard enough, be able to slice your yoghurt with.”

Since I’m probably already attracting the attention of Social Services by letting a one year old use a fork, I might as well take the opportunity to have another offence taken into account – Mia, age 4, has been using a proper real-life 8 inch kitchen knife for chopping vegetables. For years. Never unsupervised, to be fair, but the level of supervision required is very minor these days, on account of the fact that she’s so good at it.

Apart from vegetable chopping being an important skill (especially for a child that’s mad about cooking) and good because it allows her to actually make a useful contribution, it also means she understands and respects knives for what they are and knows how to handle them safely. If or when, during her childhood, she gets hold of one that she wasn’t supposed to get hold of, it won’t be a problem. I think that’s a far healthier situation than turning them into some kind of mystical forbidden fruit. Having said that, it maybe depends on the child. I can certainly think of other children the same age I wouldn’t trust with one for 5 seconds.

Anyway, I’ve been sidetracked again. I was ranting. It may seem a bit extreme to get worked up about some stupid restrictions on purchasing toddler cutlery, even if they are, by anyone’s standards, REALLY stupid. But it’s not really about that – it’s just that these things are symptomatic of the awful authoritarian nanny state that’s closing in around us every day. You can’t move for rules, regulations, licenses and inspectors any more. Ban this. Ban that. Don’t do this. Don’t eat that. And whatever you do, don’t run in the pancake race.

The picture on the right (thanks to Dick Puddlecote for finding it), incredibly from 1929, portrays a shockingly accurate picture of modern-day Britain, although to be perfect some of the inspectors should be hiding behind CCTV cameras. Oh, and of course, they said “all round” the home, but Ed Balls and his cronies want to send them in too. Not that this is a party political broadcast, since the only alternative to the current mob of meddling social engineers is another lot wearing a different coloured rosette. Very much a preferable lot at this point in time, but hardly much better on the scale of things. It seems to me like the only way to free ourselves from the ever expanding claws of the oppressive state is full scale revolution. As that seems highly improbable, I try to ignore the important things and focus on children’s cutlery.

Even at the best of times, there’s nothing more embarrassing than a politician trying to “communicate with the young”. But Ed Balls managed to take this one step further by engaging a bunch of manufactured gangsters to spearhead a ‘beat cyber-bullying’ campaign, as depicted in the artist’s impression opposite. The fake hoodlum standing alongside bully-boy Balls is Dappy, of N-Dubz, who shortly afterwards stole the mobile number of a Radio 1 listener who sent in a less than complimentary message about him, and used it to harass her, culminating in sending her a death threat. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

Behind the farce though, lurk more serious problems. How did we reach this sorry state where, in order to try and convince school children to stop bullying each other, it seems like a good idea to enlist the help of dubious role models who make a living pretending to be (or in this case actually being) illiterate thugs?

Balls, in his role as Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, presides over the state machinery that’s entrusted by most (and imposed by force on others, if he gets his way) with the education of their children. This is carried out in institutions (that’s the schools part) that tend to breed a culture bullying and violence – hence the need for this kind of campaign, and for metal detectors. Children are sectioned off into groups, all the same age, and left to formulate their own social structure, culture and rules, Lord of the Flies style, while lone adults known as teachers attempt to impose order – a task made more difficult as Ed and co relentlessly continue to turn the teaching profession into a job of administering tests, ticking boxes and imparting snippets of politically correct knowledge meticulously detailed by Westminster bureaucrats. Any other adults are suspected paedophiles, only allowed within a mile of children if armed with a “CRB check” – proof they haven’t been caught yet, and a nice little money-spinner for various parties too.

In the meantime, ever-younger children are force-fed sex, violence and “gangsters are cool” by the media and the music industry, and while the government Ed is a prominent member of meets the demands of this industry by imposing ill-conceived legislation to prop up it’s failing 20th century business model, Ed himself acknowledges the failure of the whole system by standing there next to one of these self-styled gangsters in a desperate and doomed attempt to get a message across to the inmates of his failing schools.

So there’s the schools part. What about children and families? Hang on a minute, aren’t they the same thing – aren’t children part of families? You might think so, but Balls is very keen of late on positioning himself as an arbitrator between parents and their children, as if he knows best and has some kind of right to say so. Phrases like “striking a balance between the rights of parents and the rights of children” crop up frequently in the rhetoric of Ed and his cronies. What? But in Ed’s world, families are not to be trusted with their children – they need to be monitored and inspected to be sure they’re not beating and starving them, or worse still teaching them things not in keeping with the politically-motivated dumbed-down drivel proscribed by the DCSF. Do you think it’s an accident that Schools comes in between Children and Families in the department’s title? I’m not so sure.

The modus operandi is the same as what we’re seeing with the dubious spectre of terrorism that seems to have us cowering, snivelling and slipping further into a police state for our own protection. In the past, when there was a real threat in the form of the IRA, this kind of thing would have properly been seen as giving in to the terrorists, letting them win. But not when it suits the agenda of a government obsessed with controlling everything and everyone. Likewise with children, one-off incidents are whipped up into a media frenzy and used to justify all manner of state intrusion where it doesn’t belong, all in the name of protection.

I think the Dappygate fiasco perfectly sums up this government and the nasty culture they’ve nurtured – characterised by bullying and incompetence, and like the majority of people in this country I can’t wait to see the back of them.

I wish to make a formal complaint about this article regarding the tragic death of Khyra Ishaq.

Despite the fact that Ishaq was NOT electively home educated, but simply removed from school (technically a truant) for the vast majority of the period in question, you have for some reason chosen to devote a large portion of the article to providing a platform for the discredited Graham Badman to attempt to link this case to his shoddy review of home education.

Home education is entirely irrelevant to this case. The measures the Government hopes to put in place regarding home education following Badman’s recommendations would not have affected the outcome here. You say in the article that Badman says “children could still be ‘hidden’ from the system. ” The children involved in this case, the majority of whom were attending school anyway, were not hidden from the system at all. They were known to be at risk by several parties, all of whom failed to act.

By allowing Graham Badman (and indirectly the Government) to use this tragic case to make unrelated points about legislation which is currently being fiercely contested in parliament, you have shown the BBC, or at least the writer of the piece, to be biased and not impartial.

In relation to this, I specifically draw your attention to section 5.13 of the broadcasting code, which reads “Broadcasters should not give undue prominence to the views and opinions of particular persons or bodies on matters of political or industrial controversy and matters relating to current public policy in all the programmes included in any service (listed above) taken as a whole.”

I suggest that this is exactly what has happened here.

Update: For some real insight into this issue, try reading Gerald Warner or Renegade Parent.

What did you think? A crossbow? A box of hand grenades? An assault rifle? Close, but no cigar…

Argh! Do the people responsible for this nonsense know how ridiculous they are?

Thanx, whoever they may be
For specifying many useful ones
Amongst the others ignored

C’mon, it just isn’t sensible
Consequently I wonder why
But regardless
Somebody somewhere should be sorry

Of course, all reasonable people are used to this backwards and forwards nonsense with every kind of food and drink under the sun and routinely laugh it off with a good dose of “all things in moderation” common sense. Only the media seem to suck it up like a sponge, with this latest egg story apparently being headline news everywhere.

I was blissfully unaware until it was given a prime slot on the BBC evening news, the highlight being the way they managed to wheel out the amusingly named Lucy Egerton from the British Egg Information Service without cracking so much as a childish grin.

The cynical side of me though, as always, responded with a weary “who paid for this ‘research’ then?” No surprises in the answer, or the fact that you have to dig a bit deeper than the news stories (a.k.a. press releases) to find out. It was of course the egg industry, which also seems to double up as the acronym industry, what with the BEIS (British Egg Information Service), the BEIC (British Egg Industry Council), BEPA (British Egg Products Association), the BEA (British Egg Association) and many more.

None of this though, should detract from the fact that you should eat eggs. Because they’re nice. Poached, boiled, scrambled, fried or omeletted – you can’t go wrong with an egg. Ok, you could – there is eggnog, for example. But in general, my advice, which I say is just as valuable as some ‘scientific’ research paid for by a vested interest, is to eat plenty of eggs. I wouldn’t advise eating eggs produced by an industry though – instead, eat eggs produced by a free* and happy chicken, preferably your own.

*As with free software, the “free” is as in freedom, although of course if they’re your own chickens you don’t pay for the eggs)