Supermarket Shenanigans

Just over a year ago, our supermarkets were being exposed on the telly for their rip-offs marketing methods. Little tricks like buy two 99p items for just £2.00 and prices reduced to more than they were a few weeks before.

One rip-off in particular was Tesco. They were selling cheap cuts of beef as topside until a butcher, Graham Johnston, spotted this and blew this whistle to BBC Watchdog. So here we are again, just over a year later and guess what? Yes, Graham’s spotted them back up to their old tricks. He posted on here on the 8th:

“Hello every one who likes good beef. I’m the butcher Graham Johnston who reported Tesco to BBC Watchdog for selling crap meat. Its Christmas in 2 weeks so be careful, they are up to their old tricks as they have been doing for years. Topside/toprump labelling. Is it pine or oak or a jag or an old mini?
4.00 a kg is not possible. It is a loss. It’s on sale to get you in the store. Good luck if you find any Topside and if you do it’s too fresh to eat. (Meat needs to age to be at its best)”

How stupid do they think we are?

One of the nice things about living out in the countryside is there’s more barter and dealing going on than in the towns. We’re enoying a large box of lamb that would have cost over £100 in Tesco (according to their web site) and it cost us £55.00. And we know where it was raised.

I’d love to see a world where the bulk of our food was locally sourced if not home grown and we knew where it came from. OK, that’s a bit idealistic but surely it’s better than buying from multi-national companies whose only morality is to increase profits and not get caught out when cheating us. Viva la revolution!

Stormy Weather Continues

Well the weather might not be as bad as last year, the only snow we’ve seen so far is on top of the mountains, but it’s been pretty dramatic all the same. Stormy hardly covers it. Still, could be worse. Saturday was grey and cloudy, threatening to rain. The weatherman had promised a fair day and I suppose it was, it didn’t actually rain.

However, to add to my fun, I managed to somehow twist my knee in my sleep and awoke feeling as if it might be on fire. When I injured it back in August, the hospital doctor said it would probably heal of itself given rest and time. It doesn’t seem to be following doctor’s orders though. The only thing is, everyone I know of who has had a knee operation has but one word of advice – don’t!

Being stir-crazy, took some ibuprofren and took the shredder for a spin in the afternoon. I’ve a load of brushwood from the tree surgery to get rid of. I could have a bonfire and turn it into potash but I’d rather chip it if I can. Chippings slowly return all their nutrients to the soil and add humus.

There’s a knack to getting it going, you pull the cord and before it stops turning, pull again. Once going it just chugs away. That is until it runs out of petrol. Now I freely admit I’m not the best mechanic around, for some reason the mechanical gene didn’t get passed on to me. I need a manual to put oil in the car. So that’s why I wasted 10 minutes trying to restart the machine before I thought to open the petrol cap and look in the tank.

Anyway, made a good start on the pile. Can’t believe the difference between this and my little old electric shredder. This beast just gobbles branches without a burp but I used to spend longer clearing jams than shredding with the electric one.

Can’t get over how early and quickly it gets dark now. At 4pm I finished off and put the shredder away. By the time it was settled in the shed, I could hardly see. Not long now to the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice on the 21st. Then the days will start to get longer again and we’ll know spring is following on.

Posted in Rants and Raves
11 comments on “Supermarket Shenanigans
  1. Andy Mahoney says:

    Hi John,

    I have been busy with the leaf shredder for the last month, it does a great job of mincing the dry leaves ready for rotting down. Living 10 meters away from a 200+ year old Horse Chestnut tree and having a Weeping Willow in the garden helps on the leaf mold situation though!

    I am 30 miles off of the east coast of England (Lincolnshire) so our soil is a dream to work with anyway!

  2. Peter Mears says:

    To cheer you up a bit, even though its 10 days until the shortest day, the darkest evening (ie the time when it gets dark the earliest) is in a couple of days time so at least things will start to improve slowly – unlike the mornings which continue to get darker until early Jan.

  3. Mike Snelgrove says:

    Bring on Spring! Sick of winter already…

  4. Meat from supermarkets? No thanks!
    We’ve always bought meat from family butchers. With our local suppliers, I can ask about the origin of the meat, how long it has been aged and so on. Frequently, I even know the farmer who raised it.

    While we’re on the subject of meat, one outrageous curtailment of my civil liberty is being unable, legally, to buy pheasant, partridge or a hare, over the counter, un-plucked, un-drawn – i.e., not eviscerated – and just as it was shot. Therefore, it is impossible, now that I don’t shoot, to enjoy properly hung game. Disgraceful! There is no more health risk, if I do my own plucking and evisceration, than buying a plucked, trussed, over-fresh bird from a fancy shop. In fact there is probably less risk of contamination because I’m only handling one or two birds at a time.
    Great blog, by the way,
    Thanks.

  5. Cathy says:

    Don’t worry about that John – I fully anticipate that our ‘health and safety’ beaurocrats will soon end up too scared to venture outside, that they will stay indoors in locked, climate controlled ‘zones’, breathing filtered air. They won’t be able to even touch a keyboard for fear of risk of infection and the supply of food that they deem ‘edible’ will eventually run out.

    We will enter a dangerous time where we will have to ‘accept responsibility for ourselves’ and ‘learn from our mistakes’. Only those with an iota of common sense will survive in this brave new world and the population will be much better for it!

  6. Su says:

    Re the post about living 30 miles off the Lincolnshire coast. When we lived there years ago I remember seeing a sign post directing ‘to the Land’!

  7. Andy Mahoney says:

    We actually live on the end of a very long pier and the soil is actually a sophisticated setup utilizing reverse osmosis 😉

  8. phil storry says:

    A 30 mile long pier! Curiouser and curiouser.

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