A month of Sundaes |
Back in the mists of time, when the snowflake generation's parents were children themselves, a transformation occurred. Along with globalisation and council house ownership, cruise missiles and 'Big Bang' came the mini Americanisation of the UK.
Councils tried to ban McDonalds and the broadsheets derided the vacuousness and sexuality of MTV over the old Grey Whistle test.
But the public were queuing in long lines for a taste of 'the exotic'
Baskin Robbins 31 flavours had arrived in the UK.
31 flavours was inconceivable. Everyone knew there were only four.
Chocolate, strawberry, vanilla and a block containing all three for very special occasions.
So people made it a mission to see what these extraordinary flavours could possibly be. Banana? Maybe Black Cherry..like in the SKI yogurts! Families loaded up the car and set off to find out.
My Mother, always keen to embrace new foods, took us all. Her, three kids, and her mum. And we queued for an hour.
In the style of Peter Kay:
"You kids..stop messing about or you'll get nothing. It won't be long now..Go and look at the board again..Do they have FAB? We've not queued up for ice lolly. What ice cream do you want. Rum and raisin ?..You can't have rum. You're only nine! Choose another..And not beer flavour, neither..
Jamoca? Jam and Ocha? What's that about?
What you having Mum? They've got Almond BonBon..You like Bon Bons, don't you.? Almond..Not Strawberry, don't look like...Look up front. That's Beryl from the bakers. What's she getting? Mint Chocolate and Chips, did she say? She's always a bit funny, that one..In a waffle cone too..Ohh, get her, posh cow!
What you having Nan?..Praline 'N cream.. 'N cream it says. No idea ..what 'N is, no..Neapolitan? Ok..Pick another..there's plenty more..What's that? ..Bubblegum? With your dentures? I'm not having you chewing ice-cream all the way home...Try again, Nan..
Vanilla? We can get vanilla in shop! ..It's in the freezer with the crispy pancakes. Vanilla! What about Mango Tango? No.. Or Pistachio ? I don't know what it is....Its green. Looks like mushy pea flavour. No.. No ..Just vanilla..with a flake, you say..Ok Nan..With no chips..Ok pet.."
What has any of this to do with a USA trade deal and chlorinated chicken?
Simply that the most consumer focused, most 'can-do' and most litigious nation on the planet will sell us what we want to have and make damned sure they can't be sued for giving it to us.
The USA is not the EU demanding we follow diktat number 11/44k-sii'#2 - regulated size and depth agreement of ice cream tub for retail/wholesale, but non domestic, non hospitality purpose.
If we don't want chlorinated chicken, we won't have it. They will sell us, what we, the customer, wants to buy. As the interview between the BBC's impoverished Emily Maitlis and Trump's spinner Anthony Scamucci revealed. He looked bemused when she brought the remoaner's fallback defence line of 'foreign chicken.'
The man from the nation of 'Have it your way! You choose!' seemed bemused she even raised the question. He admitted he didn't know the details regarding EU agriculture and US agriculture laws
From a country that had drive thru ATMs before we even had walk up ATMs, and the two hundred channel TV when we had only three, it would be odd that if we wanted a specific item, in a specific way, that they wouldn't be able to give it to us.
OR
Won't be able to give us something else that we really do want in order to allow them to sell us their chicken as it is.
That's what trade deals are.
43 comments:
Basically
I do not want you to eat a chlorine washed (therefore kept under less kind conditions that we mandate in the uk) chicken.
And I can enforce that because you live in the UK as well.
This sounds weird to an american and to me.
Yes, it should be a matter of personal choice.
Somewhere there is a line.
It lies somewhere before.
It is a matter of personal choice whether you have reasonable healthcare.
If you cannot afford insurance, that too is a personal choice.
-being poor is a personal choice .
This sounds normal to many americans and weird to me.
No, it should not be a matter of personal choice where being poor is a choice that means means you can suffer and die.
@andrew: I do not want you to eat a chlorine washed (therefore kept under less kind conditions that we mandate in the uk) chicken.
The chicken is washed in a bath of potable water with sodium or calcium hypochlorite at a concentration of 3 parts per million. Then rinsed in potable water. The chicken is dead when this happens so the so-called "chlorine rinse" isn't prima facie evidence that it was previously kept under less kind conditions than here :-) .
After all, your local swimming pool is chlorinated at 3ppm. Your kids splash around in it and are then rinsed. It isn't evidence that they're brought up in less kind conditions even though they're still alive when it happens!
Apologies if I misunderstood you. I agree about having the freedom to choose chlorine-rinsed (or as might be said in some circles, "bug free") chicken and would probably make that selection for myself. The BBC seems intent on persuading the hard-of-thinking that chlorine gas or concentrated bleach is used. Idiots.
"After all, your local swimming pool is chlorinated at 3ppm. Your kids splash around in it and are then rinsed."
Yup, I fully expect all the people making a fuss about chlorinated chicken to to protesting outside their local swimming pool next week to complain about this neo-liberal profit seeking use of chemicals on young children...........
Oh and of course water supplies are routinely chlorinated too, so I assume all those opposed to the American chicken will have the water pipes removed from their houses forthwith now this terrible situation has been made clear to them.
The actual chicken debate does appear to be solely a protectionist one from the EU, against US farmers.
US chicken can retail for around 20% less in the USA, making the same margin for the farmer and supermarket and so on.
Outside the EU, other nations examining the chlorine issue seem to have ruled 'its fine.' New Zealand carried out a long, long study {probably a delaying tactic in itself} and found there was no health issue.
Which is bleedin' obvious, when you think about. . If they were killing off the population, surely it would have registered by now. 9 billion chickens reared EVERY YEAR.
The UK, according to the poultry council uk , no doubt a bit biassed and skewing their figure, suggest 800 million chickens eaten each year in the UK. Siting 95% of the population eating chicken twice a week. Which seems very high to me.
But even if its half that, that's a lot of chicken.
The USA does what it does to reduce salmonella. The EU does it differently, but for the same reason.
The USA is very, very litigious.
If the chicken was causing even a hint of something, surely the courts would be full to bursting with potential claimants?
But, as already people have spotted, the choice lies with the consumer. As long as its labeled as 'usa chicken' people will have the choice whether to buy it or not.
"From a country that had drive thru ATMs before we even had walk up ATMs..."
Er, the first ever ATM was at Barclay's in Enfield on 27/6/67. Give the Septics credit for the drive thru ATM though.
Same people are not complaining about halal chicken served in grubby kebab shops.
(V funny post btw.)
I'd like to complain about halal chicken in grubby kebab shops. Who can I do that to?
Trading standards!
The thing is that in the UK / EU we seem to not understand that there is great value and importance in being able to do what you want to do - true personal choice
The thing is that in the USA they seem to not understand that circumstances and forces outside government constrain effective personal choice and so need regulation.
In this case most of the country outside people who buy free range organic corn fed chicken (people like me) will probably end up buying the US 20% cheaper chicken.
And fair play to them.
I see on lots of processed chicken products that the chicken (or sometimes duck) comes from Thailand, but the RSPCA reckon it's produced to a higher standard (cos land and labour are cheaper). I bet it's full of antibiotics and hormones though, they're over the counter out there IIRC.
"two hundred channel TV when we had only three"
Yes, but they were all crap. Thirty years back the missus and I sat in a US hotel room watching Dr Who repeats, the only remotely watchable stuff.
Thirty years later - we too have two hundred channels of crap!
I forgot to say - and thirty years later Dr Who is crap too!
If chick fil a arrives here chlorinated or not I'll be a happy man....spicy chicken and waffle fries, mmmmm!
HBO is about the only thing that isn't crap.
Oh dear.
Lightbulbs.
One organisation told us we would not be able to buy filament lightbulbs in the U.K. as we were killing Gaia.
Therefore YOU VILL HAFF TO (sorry!) use halogens. Those ones that took for ever to glow brighter than a geriatric glowworm. They, under EU H&S rules, would have had to be disposed of by trained operatives in boiler suits, should they shatter. But that warning on the packet would have prejudiced sales, so hey get on with it.
So yes, there is one organisation that ignores science, ignores health and safety and bows to vested interests. But it's called the EU,
As long as the country of origin is on the label then what does it matter? The US is already big on COO labelling and it's required on most products (unlike the EU) so I don't see why they wouldn't agree to it.
Good points all.
Just on US tv though, of the top twenty tv shows of 2026 worldwide, 18 were USA and 2 were Japanese.
Game of thrones was easily number one. Walking dead number two. And a host of other really, really top quality shows.
The days when the US produced only crap are over. Now their top shows are very impressive, sure, a lot of crap gets made, especially in storage challenge, reality arena. But Westeorld and Breaking Bad and Big Bang theory are watched throughout the world.
For the U.k, in recent years, it's only been Downtin Abbey and the BBC's Attenborough series that ever make the lists. We have fallen a long way behind. I expect Poldark will make a listing. But that's about it.
"Baskin Robbins 31 flavours had arrived in the UK"
Huh? Never heard of BR31. Is it anything like Ben & Jerrys? But I imagine you're talking about the 1970s or something. Poor culturally deprived souls: as a Forces brat in the 1950s I lived in Singapore, which had quite a US influence, so my friends & I had ready access not only to dirt-cheap Chinese fireworks all year round, but also to US-style comics and milkshake-burger-ice-cream-soda joints in Singapore City. Cool, civilised, air-con cinemas and department stores too. It was great, and far more cool than post-WW2 UK, while being hot & sunny at the same time!
"From a country that had drive thru ATMs before we even had walk up ATMs": oh you silly boy. We had ATMs well before the Yanks. British invention, wunnit? I can remember a Californian visitor who was appalled that we could get cash out of a wall when he couldn't at home.
It might have been a British invention, in part (at least some claim it to be) but it wasn't until 1974 that ATMs started to appear in significant numbers on British High Streets. A fixed £10 withdrawal, with the card returned in the post.
It was very much an American invention - VISA and Mastercard - which allowed ATMs to become the game-changer they were, along with credit cards, in the 80s and 90s; interchange fees making it worth the banks' while to invest in the network.
I'm with Formertory. I didn't see an ATM until Yhe middle of the 1980s. About the time of the original pond coin.
They just weren't on the high streets.
However, the first ever user of an ATM hole in the wall, in 1967, was star of On the Buses, Reg Varney.
Malcolm Stevas. baskin Robbins is huge. Youge!
They are dunkin'donuts franchise too.
The 31 flavours chain was fairly short lived in the uk. Uk has too short a window for ice cream really. Two months of summer only. And the winter is not cold enough, as in Russia where they sell more in winter than summer.
It's the bloody drizzle that spoils it for us, I reckon. Can't eat ice cream in the rain.
That said, the big new innovation on the high street is ... ice cream and desert parlours.
Loads opening up.
I was a student in the 70s and there were several utterly vital ATMs across the town (with instructions / menu etc printed on a rubber belt that rolled back and forth as you answered the questions - only dispensed £10 per go, but by then it spat your card back instead of impounding it)
I have a dim memory that there was something to do with ATMs and interstate banking in the USA (IB was almost non-existent at the retail level) that either made ATMs very parochial & therefore not very useful, or made them the only way you could get money in another state & herefore very useful - I forget which!
(it's because I'm getting on, you see - see "student in the 70s" above...)
"the big new innovation on the high street is ... ice cream and desert parlours"
Back to the 50s, when every small town had its (usually Italian) ice cream parlour. Still some of the originals left, like Joe's in Swansea.
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g186466-d7258801-Reviews-Joe_s_Ice_Cream-Swansea_Swansea_County_South_Wales_Wales.html
Italian ice cream has been in the UK since Victorian times, hence music hall songs like "Oh, Oh, Antonio".
The great fried chicken divide is Halal.
McDonalds's does not serve Halal food in any shape or form. Hence the venue of choice for all those who wish to avoid faith-contaminated fried chicken.
KFC chicken in the UK is almost universally Halal, hence favoured by Islamist chicken-eaters.
@ND: It was the problem of interstate banking controls and increasing mobility of people that had Bank of America start its BankAmericard network - piddly little state banks paid to join it and use the branding so their customers had a card which could give them money while out-of-state. BankAmericard took care of authorising and settling the transaction for ATMs and also, importantly, credit and debit cards. Eventually it became VISA. MasterCard started in a similar way amongst a different group of banks and of course here in the UK, Barclaycard took a similar early role before itself joining VISA in later years.
At least, that's how I remember it! The plastic card world might look a bit different today had the Septics NOT had controls on State-only banks and massive numbers of tiny credit unions.
"Chloirnated Chicken": congratulations on using George W Bush's pronunciation.
"McDonalds's does not serve Halal food in any shape or form"
Kudos to MacDonalds. I shall be frequenting their outlets more often.
"I didn't see an ATM until the middle of the 1980s." Where in the sticks did you live? I used them regularly in Edinburgh in the seventies.
The Scotsman takes a mildly patriotic line: 'Mr Shepherd-Barron died in 2010 at the age of 84. While he was long regarded as the father of the ATM, another Scot, James Goodfellow, can also lay claim to the title. The Paisley native unveiled his iteration of the ATM the same year at Mr Shepherd-Barron. Crucially, his was patented 12 months earlier, and was the first to use a card and PIN code system. Last year, he revealed he made around £10 from the patent, and has not made a penny more since.'
Judging from this, I must first have used ATMs for withdrawals in the early 70s or very late 60s, with the more modern style available to me later in the 70s.
http://heritagearchives.rbs.com/rbs-history-in-100-objects/serving-our-customers/cash-card-1969.html
Had I been a BoS customer, it would have been late 60s when I started using them:-
'Scotcash', a forerunner of the ATM or cash machine, was introduced by Bank of Scotland in 1968. Customers could now withdraw cash even when their branch was closed.
'Scotcash' machines operated 24 hours a day. Customers were given personal code numbers to activate the machines, similar to the modern PIN. They were also supplied with £10 vouchers. These were fed into the machine, and the corresponding amount later debited from the customer's account. Any sum in multiples of £10 could be withdrawn. The machines proved popular, and by the end of 1971, there were 26 in operation across Scotland.
80s? Good grief!
Andrew - if you eat bags of salad leaves from supermarkets - they (as are other foods) are washed in chlorine.
Meanwhile, one happy outcome of this complete piece of non news sees Moonbat fall off his high horse, which always cheers me up when it happens, Moonbat being a supercilous little prig.
https://order-order.com/2017/07/28/george-monbiot-fowls-chlorine-chicken/
'Guardianista eco-warrior George Monbiot will be in a fowl mood today after he was caught out employing underhand statistical wizardry in an attempt to bash Brexit. Monbiot used his Guardian column to heavily hint that chlorinated chicken could be a factor behind poultry-borne infection rates which he claimed “four and five times higher in North America than in
Europe“.'
Radders - anybody who eats anything from MacDs or KFC needs their heads looking at. Though thanks to KFC and the fact that my ex and I were hungry way back in the day, we missed the Kings Cross bomb
They can argue about chicken as long as they like and I couldn't give a ****. You can keep your antibiotic/chlorine/whatever contaminated meat/chicken and I'll stick to my vegetarianism.
I don't read the Guardian by the way but in centuries to come I think people will look back on this era of eating animals as barbaric much as we now view the slavery of the past.
It would be different if we were starving.....I'd eat anything then but we have a choice now.
Anonymous at 12.30: which "era" might that be, in which we engaged barbarically in eating animals? Home sapiens evolved as an omnivore and we've eaten animals from the word go. Check out the teeth and the digestive system. If you choose not to eat meat you're a wacko, kicking Mother Nature in the face.
Anon - I eat a lot of meat, I feel far better when I eat meat. My wife, an acupuncturist, has an endless stream of vegan/veggie women coming to her who can't conceive. Eat meat - she tells them and when they do they conceive. She's also helped two very sick women who were vegan by putting them on the Gaps diet, which to start with is almost entirely chicken and beef broth.
Anyone of the slightest intelligence can source uncontaminated meat, from the farm gate, from farm shops, and from enlightened butchers.
Anyway, if you need to preach, feel free. It's kind of tiresome tho' the moral superiority that so many veggies, and most all vegans love to exhibit.
Malcolm's right. Constitutionally, we are omnivores, which means we can survive in all sorts of different conditions. You won't see many vegetarian Inuit, will you?
"You won't see many vegetarian Inuit, will you?" Apparently the Inuit eat half-digested vegetable matter from the belly of the walrus. But they don't discard the walrus.
Plus, animals taste ...DELICIOUS !
@Anon 12:30
I'm reminded of the joke at last years Edinburgh Fringe - paraphrased: "I went vegetarian and lost a load of weight, but most of it was off my personality"
I don't eat much meat, and like a lot of veggie stuff, but get off the high horse. You're still killing something living, and with some (scant and debatable so far) evidence that some plants exhibit signs of a basic intelligence, you're really just doing the same as the rest of us and drawing a line, under which we regard as 'yum' and above as 'awww, not yum' with nothing but personal opinion as a rationale.
Only ones who can claim anything close to a moral high ground are fruitarians, and go ask Steve Jobs how that worked out. You'll need a Ouija board though, and possibly a sacrificial pancreas or two.
As for chlorinated chicken... I can see why there was a kerfuffle about it. You can easily imagine a stern-faced Panorama presenter, day 1 after a trade deal, stood in a US chicken chlorinating place and saying "Brexit. What has it done for chickens?" Followed by 60 minutes of kicking the practice with Daily Heil levels of fuckwittery. The BBC will likely be grumpy they'll have to try for higher hanging fruit now.
As for ATMs, we had them round my way in the early 80's, and it's a old mill town oop north. And the US are waaaaaay behind us in some ways. In Honolulu only spot I saw with contactless was Macy's, everywhere else was chip, pin and sign. Near enough same in Vegas. Not seeing anything like our Fintechs either. You've PayPal, which is light years behind us.
Over here I can pay for a round with a bip-bip, just so long as I'm not getting a round of something like Tactical Nuclear Penguin.
And on a final veggie note, I do an awesome bean stew. As good as any meat stew, although I'd not have it night before a meeting. It gets you a little gusty, fragrantly gusty!
Mrs D is almost-veggie & I have no complaints abt the cooking round here, veggies have to be more inventive
I can always get bacon when I'm out .... mmmm, bacon
Elby - Maccy Ds is a godsend for a long-distance driver - the coffee is OK and the beef not bad - when you just need caffeine and calories you can't beat it. And now I know it's not halal I think better of it - and worse of KFC, which I shall avoid henceforth even more than I do already.
Allahu snackbar!
This guy turned up to play cricket for us last year, aged 68. He'd cycle 5 miles to practice on a Wednesday night and then cycle back. Bowled a spell of 10-3-12-3 against a team of 20 and 30 something Indian lads on an artificial wicket. Took a low one-handed diving catch at short cover off a driven ball that most 19 year olds would consider at best a half chance.
He was a vegetarian and the only person that's ever made me seriously consider giving up meat.
Anon
I think you meant 'Alan's' Snack Bar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMohK3w9slE
I think we should eat whatever the old boys in this video eat.
Vegan i get, but only if there is an acceptance that modern agriculture and storage allow said diet in the Northern Hemisphere. Given a large number of vegans are driven by an extreme green agenda they can get a little sweaty when they try reconcile the two. When were mung beans last grown in the UK?Most have not considered this when shouting from their moral high ground. Now vegetarianism is another story. If you just dont like the taste of meat, fine. If you are vegetarian for ethical reason and like to bash meat eaters, and many are, then i ask these two questions? When did you last see a field of cockerels? When did you last see a field of bollocks? Explaining the process of gasing and maceration for the 50% of poultry that dont lay eggs causes some serious twitching. Bullocks, similar story.
Anonymous at 11.54: both the very worst so-called coffee and the worst ditto burger, I've (part) consumed during my 2.5 visits to a McDonalds. The coffee simply didn't resemble anything I've understood the word to mean, not even mass-catering "instant" coffee; the burger was, well, from some long-dead creature seemingly unrelated to beef cattle. It might have been whale flesh, judging by the amount of blubber...
Even the welcome news that Maccy-D doesn't do halal will not tempt me into one of their joints again. As for KFC, I haven't patronised one for decades, when as a young man I cared nothing for OD-ing on cholesterol.
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