Starvation and the Nation

Some hard-up families are facing the prospect of malnutrition due to the recession and soaring food prices, the charity ‘Save the Children’ has warned.

I beg to differ. This has more to do with other factors than with the recession.

Agriculture.
Successive governments have moved the UK away from being an agricultural nation into being a (failed) industrial nation. Cheap fruit and vegetables are now, and forever will be, a thing of the past.

Consumerism.
The UK is a consumer society that, must have a 42 inch plasma TV hanging on the wall, must have two weeks a year in Orlando, Florida, must have a state of the art mobile phone, must have a brand new leather three piece suite. How are you going to manage to buy food after you have paid for all of these essentials?

TV Cookery Programmes.
If you can’t afford plain food like filet steak with white truffle sauce and potatoes boulangere washed down with a nice bottle of Chateau Neuf du Pape how are you going to stop yourself from falling through your ribs?

TV Gardening Programmes.
You must have well manicured lawns in both your front and back gardens and what’s the use of patio doors without a patio? God forbid that you should ever dig these up and plant cabbages and potatoes. You’d rather starve to death than lower the tone of the neighbourhood!

Lack of Inventiveness.
Ready meals, take-aways and frozen chips have contributed to robbing modern woman of her creativity, but the main culprit is the discontinuation of domestic science classes in schools for the last couple of generations.

My wife can skin and gut a rabbit and fillet fish with the best of ’em. She can turn the cheapest cut of meal and a couple of vegetables into a gourmet meal. Without learning these skills, the nuclear family have no chance.

Both my wife and myself were born and raised during WWII and we came out the other side fit and healthy even though food then was really scarce.

So why doesn’t today’s government try to promote these ideals today by re-issuing posters like ‘Dig on for Victory’ and pamphlets like the old Ministry of Food’s ‘How to Plan Meals for Children’?
They could even rake out some of the old public service films of the time and show them on TV. Perhaps then the end of the world won't be so nigh!

Lead by example, I say.