Owen Patterson - an MP past his sell-by date?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Unnecessary hypercorrection, ....

Oh dear, here we go again.

[jean]

Indeed. But then ten hours is an amount (singular) of time. £10 is an amount (singular) of money. Ten items is a number (plural) of countable and separable things or entities.

All three are grammatical plurals, which can be thought of as individual items or as total quantities, as personal taste or context demands.

Waitrose isn't wrong so much as unnecessary.

(Anyway, I think M & S did it first.)

[jean]

Oh dear, here we go again.

Well, you did ask for it.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Well, you did ask for it.

...by aknoligin gud yooss of inglish, wile yoo difend evrithin thats rongg

Anyway, a hyper-correction is something that is already correct, altered by someone trying too hard, such as "between you and I".

[vinteuil]

All three are grammatical plurals, which can be thought of as individual items or as total quantities, as personal taste or context demands.

Waitrose isn't wrong so much as unnecessary.

.)

... and the context here is countability (as in my # 44). So I don't think this 'correct' form is an 'unnecessary hypercorrection'.

[teamsaint]

Or the rather classier Waitrose version:

"Could the owner of the white B-reg Escort Cabriolet please move it from our car park to somewhere more appropriate like Tesco, Morrisons or Aldi."

And who could take offence at that?

A nice story on similar lines from the football world, about a poor (or misguided) soul who didn't park his Nissan Micra legally, while attending a Newcastle V Middlesbrough match. This led to an announcement , asking him to move the car or be towed away.
The announcement brought the wrath of 50K north eastern folk down on his head apparently...... Nissans are made in Sunderland !

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

nowhere is safe .... not even

[Resurrection Man]

nowhere is safe .... not even

Typical bad journalism from the DM. The headline is 100% wrong. This is what Waitrose sent out...

Following my letter to you last month, meat continues to be in the news and so I thought you might appreciate an update on what we have been doing. We have now done tests on 40 of our meat products. No horse meat was found in any of these tests. We did, however, discover that in just two batches of our essential Waitrose frozen British beef meatballs (480g), some of the meatballs may contain some pork. In fact, one of the tests carried out showed that the meat in the meatballs was, as it should be, 100% beef. But because another test indicated there may be some pork, I felt it important for you to be aware.

But re-reading it several times, I'm still not sure. What does 'may' mean? Are we talking about a vanishingly small trace of pork DNA....within the realms of scientific error?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

i am vegetarian and have previously posted my opinions concerning the Rothermere and other rags; i buy neither processed meat nor processed piffle but oh what larks eh?

[ahinton]

Leaving the Maily Dail out of it (which is all too often the best policy), it would seem that the word "may" as used in Waitrose's statement suggests that testing is as yet incomplete, on what is surely the sensible basis that either some of these products do contain traces of pork DNA or they don't and that it is possible to test conclusively one way of the other.

However, what's now being discussed has clearly spread its wings (or mane, or horns, or trotters, or something) quite rapidly both in terms of operational, manufacturing and distribution locations but also of types of case (i.e. what traces of which animal might have been thought to be found in what packaged food that claims to be made from something else).

Clearly, those who purchase little or no packaged processed food as I do are likely to find themselves less subject to the consequences of any of what's now being discussed, but even those who purchase and consume nothing but fresh produce cannot reasonably consider themselves to be wholly exempt from the risks attached to possible misrepresentation.

The terms "locally sourced", "locally reared" and "locally grown", whilst we all know what they should be intended to mean and in many cases usually do mean, are daft in themselves, because all foodstuffs are produced in some locality; "sourced", "reared" and "grown" "within x km of (the retail outlet)", whilst rather more cumbersome, would be far clearer in intent and easier to prosecute when it's discovered to be untrue.

Even then, however, whilst a conscientious butchery might know the names and locations of the farms that have reared the animals that it sells, when, how, where and at what age they were slaughtered and how they were cared for during the rearing process, what could such a butchery reasonably be expected to know about the chemicals, medications or feeds used by the farms from which they purchase their produce in terms either of their content or their origin?

Likewise, although use of the term "organic" is permissible in UK only to describe foodstuffs produced on farms with Soil Association organic certification (which is indeed a tough régime with very high standards), how much monitoring of accuracy is made of such certified producers in terms not only of their own constant compliance but also of the effect on their produce of chemicals leaked or blown from neighbouring farms or other industrial operations or, worse still, from GM operations, through no obvious fault of their own?

The only certainties here, I think, are that buying fresh minimises any risk of being subject to misrepresentation and that, apart from this, nothing is certain.

[ahinton]

i am vegetarian and have previously posted my opinions concerning the Rothermere and other rags; i buy neither processed meat nor processed piffle but oh what larks eh?

Being a vegetarian isn't the answer (although that's fine if that's what you choose, of course); whilst all of what's currently being discussed concerns meat - and specifically processed packaged products that include (or are labelled as including) meat or meat products, there's no absolute certainty about exemption from the risk of misrepresentation where the production, distribution and sale of dairy produce, fresh fruit, vegetables, nuts and other non-meat products are concerned. As I suggested above, eating only fresh produce - meat included - minimises that risk but does not and in all probability cannot in practice remove it completely and permanently.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Being a vegetarian isn't the answer (although that's fine if that's what you choose, of course)...

Well maybe it is the answer. I've often considered it myself. But I'm too selfish to give up fish. Beef production is massively greedy with land use, requiring 10 times the area to source protein than by sourcing it directly via plants sources. I havr read all the Arthur C. Clarke "Odyssey" books (2001, 2010, 2061 and 3001) The first one begins with the ape-men avoiding starvation by learning to kill in order to eat. In the last one, the eating of meat is considered offensive because of its excessive demands on the environment.
Today, the problem is increasing because of the changing lifestyles in India and China.

[ahinton]

Well maybe it is the answer. I've often considered it myself. But I'm too selfish to give up fish. Beef production is massively greedy with land use, requiring 10 times the area to source protein than by sourcing it directly via plants sources. I havr read all the Arthur C. Clarke "Odyssey" books (2001, 2010, 2061 and 3001) The first one begins with the ape-men avoiding starvation by learning to kill in order to eat. In the last one, the eating of meat is considered offensive because of its excessive demands on the environment.

True as this is, if we all suddenly went veggie (and I have no objections whatsoever to vegetarianism as a choice), that land use would have to increase vastly and the sheer scale of industrialisation of arable farming and of the distribution, marketing and retailing of its products would do likewise, thereby introducing greater risks of the kind being uncovered and debated now but, in any case, there are already risks of misrepresentation attached to non-meat products although the largest single difference in food misrepresentation seems so far to be that between, on the one hand, packaged products actually or allegedly containing meat and/or meat products and, on the other, fresh meat.

You say that you're too "selfish to give up fish" and you won't have to unless retailers no longer sell fish (sorry!) but, whilst the land use issue obviously doesn't apply to fish, there are still immense problems about fish farming, fish stocks, over-fishing and the rest and there can be little doubt that certain fish sold in supermarkets may not necessarily be described correctly or comply with fishing regulations.

Today, the problem is increasing because of the changing lifestyles in India and China.

Not JUST India and China, surely? (although I accept, of course, the the joint population of those two countries is not far off one third of the world's total population).

[Karafan]

[QUOTE=Barbirollians;260275]Does Owen Paterson have a daughter ? Expect her to be force fed on telly a horse lasagne some time soon !QUOTE]

[AuntyKezia]

Re message 57, quite a lot of livestock in the UK is pastured on land that is unsuitable for arable, being too steep, too stony, or, conversely, subject to regular flooding in the winter.