CHOCOLATE MICE..

Two important news items almost slipped me by this month.

Chocolate is good for you. We all know that already - it releases feelgood chemicals in the brain and makes life happier, not counting the benefits of sharing chocolates with your friends which it turns out builds up social capital and goodwill - note to friends: I will love you more if you share with me!

A recent research study exercised mice and measured their fitness levels.  A control group were fed small chunks of dark chocolate over the same period and they appeared to have the same if not better levels of fitness as the runners. Here's the link if you don't believe me.. onlinelibrary

Don't get too excited though, a second run of the experiment was undertaken on middle aged mice and the group that ran and had chocolate too did better than the couch-mice who sat around all day (well, I say sit.. but that's quite hard for a mouse to do properly? more like lay around) eating chocolate.

The second is the not so surprising revelation that Cadbury's, purveyors of fine boxes of chocolates that have seen me through many a stressful report writing time, is reducing the number of chocolates in the tin just ahead of the busy Christmas buying period..

No real surprise given the continual reducing size of various chocolate bars over the past years (and don't get me started on cakes!!!  see my December 2010 blog on that one here), but I bet they won't reduce the size of the tin they come in. Oh no. How many people are going to be duped into buying what they think are the same number of chocolates?

You know who I think the real culprits are? The stores that continually offer tins of chocolates as loss leaders to draw people in - stacks and stacks of them greeted me last time I walked into Tesco at 'half price' allegedly.  Who would pay £10 for a tin? And our local Co-op never seems to have an end to the 2 for £8 offers on Roses tins?  If the stores are offering the discounted product, then you can bet they have been squeezing the manufacturer on cost.  The manufacturer is then only able to maintain their required profits by doing two things.

The first is to substitute cheaper raw materials into the mix - not something advised in the UK chocolate market which is dominated by only a few brands and where any reduction in quality, if perceived by the customer, would lead to mass switching of brand loyalty and significant pain to the business.

The second option open to manufacturers is to reduce the number of chocolates in the tins.  This latest reduction sees Roses down to 1 lb 14 oz from 2 lb 2 oz.  That's a reduction from 964g to 850g for metric-heads.  Equivalent to an 11.8% reduction.  Not a small graudal amount in anybody's book???  Cadbury's Heroes - always and unexplainedly a slightly more expensive purchase for a less luxurious set of chocolates I think you'd agree? - go down from 936g to 794g, a whopping reduction of 15.2%...

Not much we can do about it - except switch brand or get wise and stop buying the Heroes on rational economics grounds. Cadbury's Roses were always my favourite anyhow.
 

Johnny..

Johnny Stiletto lives in London. Always has. Probably always will.

He's been snapping everyday street scenes for over 30 years and has a back catalogue of amazing events, everyday events and fortunate moments when he was stood on the right street at the right time.  He has a great blog / website called 'alias johnny stiletto: a website for people who like photograhy'.

On his website is a photo of Margaret Thatcher snapped on the TV one evening during her ascendancy in 1979. Interesting idea. Snap the TV and capture historic events for later digestion…

Anyone can do it, but nobody has the idea to do it. 

The defining difference between an artist and everyone else?

http://www.aliasjohnnystiletto.com/#/single-lens-reflex-thatcher/callaghan

RIOTS...

Well, Saturday night I was sat in Spain around the pool and enjoying the relaxing atmosphere.  Sunday I was vaguely aware of a rumour of trouble in Tottenham that reflected my childhood in a bizarre way; I was 13 in 1981 and remember the TV footage of Toxteth, Brixton and Handsworth in Birmingham.  My son is 13 now and watching the developing crisis with much the same mixture of fear and amazement.  This time he lives in Manchester so it's a little closer to home than my sleepy medium sized town in the east was..

Night four of rioting has just closed with Manchester, Birmingham and - strangely - Gloucester becoming involved.  The footage is quite extra-ordinary on youtube; St Ann's Square being looted for gods sake, parts of the Arndale on fire? cars driving straight at people just protecting their own homes in Birmingham (with a resulting 3 people dead)?

Soon, hopefully soon the British establishment is going to start asking the awkward questions; the political issues beihnd the reason why this has happened beyond the sheer greed of a few young people who have been brought up on a diet of consumerism and having anything they want without having to work or it, and the generation just above theirs; the twenty-somethings who seem to be in denial that it can be anything to do with social structures and is all about the lack of fairness or disgruntlement with the current government?

To me the only real question is, 'what makes the rioters think they can do this?' but then a good friend just asked me if I honestly thought the rioters even thought before acting...

Good point...

What next for this nation that proudly boasts some of the 'highest' low educational achievement in the West?

Hopefully, the British weather has come to the rescue as it has started raining today and nobody likes getting wet - least of all the pathetic, cowardly little kids that have formed a large number of the looters...

Here's hoping...
 

DEFINE IRONY...

 
Some irony courtesy of The Economist this week..

"The great irony of Mr Cameron's predicament is that he has managed to get himself embroiled in a crisis concerning something he has never really cared about: newspapers."

Full editorial here