Wednesday 30 October 2013

Ms Munt's Warning

Life goes on, I see, in all its radiant absurdity - and what could be more radiantly absurd than an obscure Lib-Dem MP getting her name in the headlines by warning of  'the end of the British breakfast as we know it'? What has prompted this rallying cry to the plain people of Britain? Why, the government's iniquitous proposal to cut the minimum (note, minimum) sugar content of jams and marmalades. Yes, there's a real risk that honest, breakfast-loving British folk might be exposed to jams and marmalades that actually taste of fruit. At present, as Ms Munt notes, 'we know exactly what to expect' when we buy jam or marmalade. Indeed we do - a mighty sugar hit with little evidence of fruit - which is why many of us buy lower-sugar, higher-fruit continental preserves instead. Funny old world.

4 comments:

  1. I can't help wondering whether she would get more patriotic juices flowing if the EU was behind it?

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  2. Oh yes indeed - classic! Perhaps that was her inspiration?

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  3. Marmalade should be bitter - 'tis the Campari of breakfast.

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  4. Nige, what is fun about these stories is how often this kind of patriotic populism coalesces around such gastonomic blights. The British sausage was little more than encased fat and the jams are full of sugar. The Great British Breakfast celebrated by Rumpole is a heart attack in the making (mmm...fried bread!) that horrified continentals like Poirot. Yet there is something politically very satisfying in sticking it to the rationalist regulators, who I imagine as scrawny, intense dieticians on a lifelong mission to compel us to eat six light solitary meals of vegetables every day, or at least put fruit we didn't ask for in our jams. Let us all march at dawn in support of the fried Mars bar and the Baconator, provided we aren't forced to actually eat them.

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