Author Archives: Mark Griffin

Riots: The result of thirteen years of Labour misrule

Posted on by
Reply

One of the things that struck me while listening to a reporter on the radio conducting interviews after the latest night of rioting was how eloquent the people were who had been trying to protect their communities and their property. The Turkish shopkeepers spoke perfect English and had no trouble expressing themselves, as did the Bengali Moslems who had been in their mosque that evening after the end of their Ramadan fast. Then the reporter interviewed a couple of the rioters and they had the greatest difficulty stringing a sentence together. Words and part sentences were repeated while the speaker was evidently struggling to finish the thought, and often failing. They spoke a kind of “gangsta” language but not very well, even they had trouble with it. Clearly there’s a whole sub-culture here that is completely isolated from mainstream society.

However, the photos of the looting show another aspect. Along with the young disaffected people just out to make mischief are a surprising number of other people out for some astonishingly petty thievery. A young woman with a scarf across her mouth that barely conceals her identity is seen chatting to a friend while holding two bottles of wine, one red one white, a bottle of sauce and a small packet of something. Obviously she’s expecting guests for dinner later. As well as the more obvious targets such as mobile phone shops (where everything on display is a non-working replica) the rioters are also looting charity shops (where donated items are sold cheaply to raise funds for charity) and Poundland stores (where everything is on sale for a pound or less). You can almost imagine the cry going up, “They’re looting Tesco!” and someone thinking, “Great, I’ve just run out of washing up liquid”.

Meanwhile, what are our leaders doing about it? They’re planning to talk about it. But not until tomorrow – five days after the riots broke out. Labour are meanwhile starting to put their argument together, which is that while properly condemning the violence in no uncertain terms, they put the blame squarely on the government’s cuts. For that argument to work we have to believe that on the day the Labour government left office there was no underclass, there were no disaffected youth, there was no economic crisis. We have to believe all that sprang up in the last year or so. We have to believe that a generation that left school educated and articulate suddenly became the mindless rabble we’ve seen rampaging in our city centres. No, the problem we’re seeing isn’t caused by this government, it was caused by thirteen years of a lying, deceitful, morally corrupt government that practically bankrupted this country.

This government, the coalition, has to pick up the pieces. The first thing they have to do is reverse the police cuts and re-employ all those experienced officers who have already been sacked. The second thing they have to do is issue new guidelines to the police for more aggressive action – it is okay to hit a rioter with your baton, that’s what it’s for. The third thing they have to do is get emergency legislation rushed through to protect the police from malicious prosecution as a result of doing their job. The fourth thing they have to do, and this will bring maximum squealing from Labour, is to reintroduce corporal punishment in schools. We’re not going to re-educate or discipline the current underclass but we can at least try to ensure they are the last of their generation because we can be pretty sure they will not raise their own kids to be decent and respectable members of society.

All this is necessary because over thirteen years the last Labour government abdicated all responsibility for governing. They passed ridiculous laws that favoured the criminal over the victim, even foreign murderers cannot be deported back to their own countries; they conspired to allow city high-flyers and bankers to legally loot their companies with unearned and undeserved bonuses; they presided over a culture of rewarding failure where in some high-profile cases senior council officials walk away with massive pay-offs after spectacular failures. The list is long. What example does any of this give to the rioters on the streets over the last few nights? What is amazing is how many decent people there are out there, such as those Turkish shopkeepers or the Bengali Moslems, and everyone else who is standing up for their communities and for law and order.

Labour haven’t completely ruined us after all.

Oh what a lovely riot

Posted on by
2

Who are the rioters? Bored youths.
Why are they rioting? Because they can.
What are they rioting about? Nothing in particular.

Let me take you back a few years, back to the 1980’s and Thatcher’s Britain. Massed pickets had become an industrial weapon used to close factories and impose the will of union leaders on employers during the 1970’s, but Thatcher resolved to bring back the rule of law. The police were given new equipment and training in dealing with large numbers of people to clear safe passage for employees who wanted to work and for delivery trucks to get in an out. Rioting as such wasn’t an issue although it became one as frustrations and tempers rose on both sides once they were in close physical contact.

One thing stands out in my memory from that era. The police took to drumming their truncheons in unison on their riot shields, like scenes from “Zulu” where long lines of warriors would pound their shields with assagais to intimidate Michael Caine and his few red coats. Amazingly, it wasn’t throwing bricks or bashing someone over the head with a truncheon that aroused public ire, it was that. The drumming. As tough as the striking miners were, and they did have hard physically demanding jobs, it was absolutely beastly to make them hear the drumming and after many complaints it was banned.

And it’s gone downhill since. The police are hamstrung because anything that is effective in managing large numbers of angry protesters is ruled out because innocent people often get caught up during the event, and rioters know how to exploit human rights legislation after the event. Anarchists have learned how to use peaceful demonstrations either to assemble under their cover and break away to riot, or use them as human shields. And we come down hard on the police. Certainly there are some bad apples for whom the full process of the law must apply, but we shouldn’t demonise them all.

These are not genuine protests and these are not innocent people exercising their democratic rights. This is sheer lawlessness by a violent minority that deprives the majority of honest law-abiding citizens of their own rights and opportunities. And we’ve gone soft on them. We try to police a riot with tenderness and it is the police themselves now who are usually intimidated. The slightest misbehaviour on their part and they feel the full force of the law while we provide the rioters with lawyers at public expense to get them off any charges and win compensation. The system has turned topsy-turvy.

I have a vested interest: it’s not inconceivable that I might be a peaceful protester one day. We’ve all got something to be angry and protest about. For example, I’m angry about the way the banks rip us off, and when they run into financial trouble themselves we have to bail them out with public money, and then despite having run their banks practically into the ground the top directors still pay themselves colossal bonuses, only now in order to make the balance sheet still balance they sack thousands of employees and increase bank charges. But it doesn’t make me angry enough to go out and riot.

Another thing I’m angry about is what has become of our police. The Bobby on the Beat was an enduring icon of British civilisation, but a generation of jobsworths with little front-line experience and plenty of office politics skills have risen to the top and ruined all that. They’ve built empires of pen-pushers with layers of management and turned the police service into a quagmire of red tape, driven by targets and quotas. And with the economic crisis brought about by New Labour and the need to make serious cut-backs, who gets the chop? The Bobby on the Beat. Thousands are to be made redundant.

We need new leadership for the police service and a renewed sense of purpose. And we need to keep every copper we’ve got.

We also need to remind ourselves what is important. These are difficult times and there are millions of ordinary people who have genuine grounds for grievance. Their right to complain and their right to peacefully protest is important, and that right is being put at risk by these rioters. People are being put out of work, small business owners are being put out of business, and communities are suffering. Our rights far outweigh those of the rioters and we have to give the police our complete support in dealing with them. 

Guantánamillionaire

Posted on by
Reply

You know, if I had my own terrorist organisation I would be fabulously rich. And I wouldn’t have to hurt anyone. I’d just recruit a few people with British citizenship, send them on holiday to north west Pakistan for six weeks (it won’t be necessary to train them to shoot guns and make bombs), then have them arrested. If I can get them arrested by the Americans, I’ve hit the jackpot. The Americans will rough them up a bit (you know, by not reading them bed time stories, giving them cold cocoa at night, not fluffing up their pillows, that sort of thing) and then when they get released and sent back to Blighty they can slap in a claim that their human rights were abused. And our government being so hide-bound by mostly EU-originated laws and an astonishingly simplistic world-view will pay them a million pounds each. I will have had contracts signed with these guys beforehand to split the proceeds 50-50, so ten of them will net me £5 million, fifty will net me £25 million, and the sky’s the limit. What will I call it? Al-Cashpoint sounds good.

MI5 and MI6 pay out £12m to Britons held in Guantánamo

Of course, there is no suggestion these guys were actually involved in terrorism, but if I were a terrorist it would be a great inspiration to me.

Here are some earlier posts by me on the theme of how we treat enemy combatants and conduct the war on terror generally:

How goes the war on terror? A round up of recent news
What part of “We’re at war” do you not understand?
The problem with treating enemy combatants as civil defendants. It doesn’t work.

Justice delayed is justice denied

Posted on by
Reply

We do not need another “Bloody Sunday” inquiry that will take years and cost millions, Lord Saville spent twelve years and over £200 million to accomplish nothing. The phone hacking scandal, which may be just the tip of the iceberg in terms of lawbreaking and misconduct by the media, requires new laws to be introduced at the earliest opportunity. At the very least we want tough new guidelines and sharper teeth for the complaints handling process immediately.

We are not going to get satisfaction from a ponderous inquiry. We want action.

If Lord Leveson cannot undertake to complete his inquiry within three months, he should step down now. We should instead put it out to tender. We should invite commercial bids to conduct the inquiry from suitable organisations. Interested parties submit sealed bids outlining their capabilities and setting out how they would conduct the inquiry. The government then appoints the most competent and cost-effective contractor to do the job. And of course, there must be a penalty clause for late delivery.

Should Lord Leveson get to drag his inquiry out as he plans, time will have moved on, dirt will have been brushed under carpets, excuses will be fine tuned, and we’ll all forget why this is such an important issue. The guilty will escape jail, they’ll carry on making money and eventually retire in ill-deserved comfort. And after a suitable interval we can be sure everyone will be back up to their old tricks again, write best-selling memoirs telling all and have the last laugh at our expense.

And there will have been no justice done.

Rupert Murdoch: Befuddled old man, or willful blindness?

Posted on by
Reply

Stockholders in News Corporation ought to be worried. On the evidence of his appearance before the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee yesterday, Rupert Murdoch is preparing a defence against any potential charge of “willful blindness” by presenting himself as a befuddled old man. He sat motionless and unawares during the shaving-foam assault on him towards the end of proceedings, it was up to Wendi Deng and an un-named woman to spring to his defence and wipe him clean afterwards, but in the three hours prior to that he had shown an equal degree of mental torpor.

The willful blindness charge matters a great deal, that’s why he needs to avoid it at all costs. It applies when executives try to deny responsibility for errors or illegal activity by their subordinates by claiming they didn’t know about it. That defence fails if it can be shown that they ought to have known but kept themselves in the dark or saw to it they were kept in the dark. The only other plea in that situation is insanity.

Some selected questions and answers from the Hearing to illustrate:

Louise Mensch MP: You are ultimately in charge of the company. Given your shock at these things being laid out before you and the fact that you didn’t know anything about them, have you instructed your editors around the world to engage in a root-and-branch review of their own news rooms to be sure that this isn’t being replicated in other News Corps papers around the globe? If not, will you do so?
Rupert Murdoch: No, but I am more than prepared to do so.

It seems incredible to me that being aware of how serious the situation is he hasn’t already launched an enquiry, but even more, when fed a leading question he still doesn’t announce that he will have an enquiry only that he is prepared to do so.

Louise Mensch MP: It is a much bigger ship, but you are in charge of it. As you said in earlier questions, you do not regard yourself as a hands-off Chief Executive; you work 10 to 12 hours a day. This terrible thing happened on your watch. Mr Murdoch, have you considered resigning?
Rupert Murdoch: No.
Louise Mensch MP: Why not?
Rupert Murdoch: Because I feel that people I trusted I am not saying who, and I don’t know what level have let me down. I think that they behaved disgracefully and betrayed the company and me, and it is for them to pay. Frankly, I think that I am the best person to clean this up.

Ms Mensch should have followed this up by asking “What will you do to clean this up?” but she did not, despite his acknowledgement that people he trusted have behaved disgracefully and betrayed the company. He knows people have lied to him or his subordinates, yet he shows no interest and has taken no steps to finding out who they are. The same line again in response to an earlier question from Tom Watson MP:

Tom Watson MP: If it can be shown to you that private investigators working for newspapers in News International used other forms of illicit surveillance like computer hacking, would you immediately introduce another investigation?
Rupert Murdoch: That would be up to the police, but we would certainly work with the police. If they wanted us to do it, we would do it. If they wanted to do it, they would do it.

A pattern emerged at the Hearing of Rupert Murdoch consistently failing to find out when he ought to have been finding out.

The track record of News Corp’s cooperation with the police is not good either. Leaving aside accusations that they were bribing members of the Metropolitan Police for information, and that they had a too-close relationship with some seniors officers, Keith Vaz, Chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee which is also investigating the phone hacking scandal has said, “…there has been a deliberate attempt by News International to thwart investigations…” Therefore, Rupert Murdoch’s assurance that they will work with the police cannot be taken at face value.

Furthermore, any reasonable person would think that someone in Rupert Murdoch’s position would order a thorough investigation immediately upon hearing about these allegations and without waiting for the police to launch a criminal enquiry. The scale of some of the out-of-court settlements which bought the silence of some News of the World victims, and the interference with some of the evidence by senior News of the World executives points to a culture of denial and cover-up. Did that culture extend all the way up to the top of News Corp?

Rupert Murdoch is in an invidious position. If he really is a befuddled old man from who other people were keeping the truth, then he isn’t a fit and proper person to be running such a large organisation. If on the other hand he is a fit and proper person to be running the show, he cannot deny responsibility for his failings.

In defence of the Republicans. Well, up to a point.

Posted on by
1

I know where they’re coming from. Small government is good; big government is bad. I’m totally signed-up to that, and compared with most of the free world, America has one of the smallest governments in terms of how much of the nation’s wealth they tax and spend. At around 27% it compares very well with ours at around 41% in the UK and especially well with an eye-watering 55% in Sweden. At American levels, we in the UK would not have to pay any income tax, and no fuel duty, and no tax on beer, wine and spirits. Joy!

But this isn’t the complete picture. The problem is masked by the size of the American workforce and how productive they are. Here are some figures assembled from different sources, CIA World Fact Book [cols 1,2 & 4 below], Wikipedia Tax Freedom Day data [col 3 below], Adam Smith Institute [tax levels, above].

America has a workforce of almost 155 million people, generating a national income of $15 trillion. The US government spends 27% of it, which works out to be a little under $13,000 per man woman and child of 313 million in the country. I’ve counted the whole population because expenditure covers their needs such as health and education etc whereas the income is generated only by the workforce.

For reference, here’s what the table looks like:

workforce

>

GDP

x

gov’t share

/

population

=

government expenditure per person
USA

154.9m

T$14.66

27%

313.2m

$12,590 pp
UK

31.4m

T$2.17

41%

62.7m

$14,175 pp
Sweden

4.9m

T$0.35

55%

9.1m

$21,155 pp

The comparable story for the UK would be that our workforce, which is about one fifth of America’s in size, generates only about 70% as much national income per worker as their American counterparts. Our government spends a much higher proportion of this smaller amount and this works out to be a little over $14,000 per head of population.

The difference between how much the American government spends and how much the UK government spends is almost $1,600 per head of population. This doesn’t seem to square with the dramatic difference between government expenditure as a proportion of national income and the respective dates for Tax Freedom Day. The reason is as I have already stated, that the American worker is far more productive. His or her productivity makes the American government look practically parsimonious, whereas in reality it’s very nearly as profligate as ours.

So I believe the Republicans have a point when they complain about the level of US government expenditure. It is unacceptably high. High productivity shouldn’t be an excuse for the government to spend more. It is money they haven’t earned.

Where I disagree with the Republican leadership is their approach to dealing with the problem. They want more of the burden to fall on low-income families; they want to protect some tax concessions for the super-rich; and they want to maintain taxes on jobs. And they are using the debt-ceiling crisis as a lever to further their agenda, at whatever cost to the country. Maybe it’s all a big bluff, we will know in a few days time. In the meantime, President Obama has offered some huge concessions on his side that have alarmed and dismayed many of his own supporters, going further in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid than even some Republicans feel comfortable with.

The fact there is a debt ceiling at all and the fact America is in this crisis is a self inflicted injury. But it seems that having shot America in the foot, the Republican leadership want to finish the job and kill the patient.

Their conduct is indefensible.

Defence Select Committee report on operations in Afghanistan

Posted on by
Reply

We’ve read over the last few years some pretty alarming reports in the press about the state of operations in Afghanistan, now we can read an authoritative report from Parliament which has had access to all the relevant papers and interviewed people involved at the highest level. It is a horrifying report.

The Select Committee writes:

“It is unacceptable that UK Forces were deployed in Helmand for three years from 2006 without the necessary personnel, equipment or intelligence to succeed in their mission, says the Defence Committee in its report on Operations in Afghanistan.”

“The Committee is disturbed by the fact that in 2006 the Secretary of State was being told that commanders on the ground were content with the support they were being given in Helmand when clearly they were not.”

Summary of the report

Index to the full report

Here are some further points about what the report says, distilled from an article in the Telegraph:

  • The key failing was to send too small a force into Helmand.
  • The report also criticises senior commanders for sending the task force into Helmand without a strategic reserve force – a move widely regarded as a fundamental and potentially catastrophic military mistake.
  • Troop numbers were capped at 3,150. Of those, around 650 combat troops were deployed into an area half the size of the UK; by contrast, in 2001 NATO had 30,000 personnel in Helmand.
  • The task force deployed with just five Chinooks (heavy-lift helicopters) and just over half the number of vehicles required. Defence chiefs told ministers they had enough helicopters in Helmand even though field commanders complained of shortages. It was deployed without a single vehicle capable of surviving a strike from a Russian anti-tank mine or larger IEDs.
  • The lack of armoured vehicles meant convoys could not safely travel the vast distances over which troops were spread without sustaining heavy casualties, and within weeks of their arrival, British troops were trapped in isolated locations and engaged in daily battles.
  • The 75-page report does not name officers but those in positions of authority at the time included Gen Sir Mike Walker, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, Gen Sir Mike Jackson and Gen Sir Richard Dannatt.

The full article in the Telegraph

My own view is that none of this comes as a surprise. We read all about this as it was happening, but it still comes as a shock to see our worst suspicions confirmed and to see how little the reality on the ground affected those at the Ministry of Defence whose incompetence created the shambles in the first place, and whose only response seems to have been to tell lies and cover it all up. As the Telegraph observes, the report names no names, but the four four-star officers named above presided over a monumental military cock-up that has cost 370 lives and counting, and more than 2000 wounded.

Surely there has to be some accounting for their conduct? Just how incompetent do you have to be to lose out on another promotion? Just how negligent do you have to be to lose out on another appearance in the Honours List?  Just how many servicemen do you have to kill before you lose your job?

Dishonouring the Dead

Posted on by
2

Air Marshal Sir John Day and Air Chief Marshall Sir William Wratten should hang their heads in shame.

The respect in which our Service men and women are held by the public at large is quite remarkable. Royal Wootten Bassett earned the gratitude of the nation and its “Royal” title because of the touching acts of respect residents showed to the fallen returning from Afghanistan, whose hearses by chance used to pass through their quiet town. The contempt in which the Ministry of Defence is held is equally remarkable. The MOD is an institution which has under-performed in spectacular style and has displayed gross incompetence, deceitfulness, and petty bickering on a staggering scale. It deals in denial, cover-up and blame shifting.

In 1994, an RAF Chinook helicopter crashed on the Mull of Kintyre, killing the crew of four and all twenty five passengers. It was described as “the largest peace time tragedy that the Royal Air Force had suffered”. The cause of the crash could not be determined by the Air Accident Investigation Branch, nor by an RAF Board of Inquiry who did not find the pilots, Flight Lieutenants Jonathan Tapper and Richard Cook, negligent. Nor was negligence found by the civilian Fatal Accident Enquiry. This was because there was no evidence that they were.

The RAF Manual of Flight Safety AP 3207 published by the Inspectorate of Flight Safety and in force at the time of the accident provided in paragraph 9 of Annex G to Chapter 8 that “only in cases in which there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever should deceased air crew be found negligent”.

This strict rule did not trouble the AOC 1 Group and the C-in-C Strike Command, both of whom were required to give a final review of the Board of Inquiry into the crash. Despite there being no facts to support him, AVM Day concluded that both pilots were negligent to a gross degree and ACM William Wratten agreed with him.

What is known is that the Chinook was a deeply troubled aircraft with a history of mysterious faults that would show up during flight but be untraceable on later inspection. A report two years previous to the crash had cast doubt on the airworthiness of the Chinook fleet. And a House of Lords Select Committee which also investigated the crash in 2002 covered all this in great depth and included this telling account in their report:

Witness A, who was a member of the Special Forces Flight with considerable experience of flying Chinooks operationally, had, at the time of the accident, experienced intermittent engine fail captions on a reasonably regular basis. He had subsequently experienced torque mismatches on an intermittent basis. Pilots were instructed that if the failed captions remained on for more than 12 seconds they were to be treated as though something was wrong with the engine but if they stayed on for less than that time they could be ignored. When a caption came on in flight one of the crew was directed to check engine instrumentation and the engine itself.

Witness A also had personal experience of UFCMs in Chinook Mk1s. In one case over a period of days an aircraft bounced vertically every time it was turned right. Repeated unsuccessful attempts were made to find the cause and the problem eventually disappeared of its own accord. In another case in daylight the lights came on to maximum intensity, dimmed to minimum and the hydraulic gauges cycled between zero and maximum. The pilot reported that the aircraft was becoming difficult to control and Witness A ordered him to land at the first available opportunity. The subsequent engineering investigation found no fault.

In answer to a question as to how much the unforeseen malfunctions occurring in the Chinook Mk2 since its introduction were a matter of discussion among helicopter pilots, he answered,

“They occupied our minds to a great degree, crew room talk was of little else at the time. The crews felt extremely uneasy about the way the aircraft had been introduced into service. This perception was reinforced by the lack of information contained in the aircrew manual, the poor state of repair of the flight reference cards and such like as well”

The full report can be read here.

In all these years the MOD have maintained the line that the crash was caused by the gross negligence of the pilots when there is no evidence whatsoever to support that line, and plenty of evidence to suggest a failure on the aircraft may have been the cause.

The MOD in this matter have displayed every aberrant behaviour that has earned it the contempt of the public, but Day and Wratten plumbed new depths in blaming two hapless pilots in order to deflect criticism from the MOD.

Do the Greeks know something about democracy we don’t know?

Posted on by
Reply

They gave us democracy, it says so in the history books, but look what we’ve done with it since. We’ve created bloated governments that tax the life out of us, wrap us up in red tape and all too often run rough shod over our civil liberties. Part of the “problem” in Greece is that everyone hates the government; people don’t pay taxes and they ignore pesky laws and regulations when it suits them – which is almost always. That extends to those in government too, it seems.

Maybe they’re reminding us how democracy works?

Maybe if we believe in small government and low taxes we should live the dream too?

Maybe the “problem” is really the “solution”?

However I don’t believe that rioting in the streets is the way to go. It’s self-defeating. You can get yourself beaten over the head with police batons and choke on tear gas ’til the cows come home, but will those who run the EU be in the slightest bit inconvenienced? Not a bit of it. The EU is institutionally immune to criticism. It has a president nobody votes for and a cabinet full of wastrels splashing tax-payers’ money around with abandon. There is no accounting either literally or morally, and certainly not electorally. The EU is a travesty of a democracy and Manuel Barroso has as much democratic legitimacy as Vlad the Impaler.

The reality is, there is no democratic redress available to us.

We are all Greeks in this Tragedy.

BLT: Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato? No, Botulism, Listeria and Toxoplasma

Posted on by
Reply

Frankenstein’s food laboratories have excelled again: they’ve created a sandwich that stays fresh for fourteen days. Of course, that’s stretching the meaning of the word “fresh” somewhat but it brings a renewed challenge to Gerald Ratner who once said that his shops sold earrings that were cheaper than an M&S prawn sandwich “but probably wouldn’t last as long”. Now the food technologists have raised the bar and Ratner must up his game.

I don’t doubt that the new, if that’s the right word, sandwiches taste “fresh”, my concern is what has been done to the components to make them last that long. Natural foods go off for a reason. It’s nature’s way of saying “Don’t eat me” because what made it wholesome in the first place has now gone and the bad stuff has taken over. We know and understand how we can slow that process down naturally, by freezing it for instance, but even so we can still lose some of the goodness. Other ways are less benign. Adding chemicals to preserve food is adding potentially harmful substances and we won’t know for sure whether or not they’re harmful until we’ve been consuming them for a decade or two.

I would also like to understand whether the new process merely masks the tell-tale evidence of rotted food, fooling our senses into thinking that it is still “fresh”. Just because they’ve stopped a sandwich from curling doesn’t mean it’s safe to eat. Frankly, I’d rather trust my senses than the food technologists because they have an abysmal track record in food safety and food preservation.

This story reminds me of another great innovation, the tin can. Nobody thought that was a problem until explorers and sailors started dying from lead poisoning caused by the solder leaching lead into the can’s contents. We’ve made the very same mistake again in modern times. We used to think wrapping food in clingfilm was safe enough, but we now know that plasticisers aren’t good to eat and the early products were banned because they can cause cancer. Millions of people used to wrap food in clingfilm and cook it in a microwave, that’s how ignorant we were.

Or more to the point, that’s how ignorant the food technologists were.