It is interesting how companies are so keen to get swept up in whatever profoundly illiberal fashions define the mainstream. Prêt a Manger, a high quality sandwich chain, proudly says they do not use air freighted produce. They are a major purchaser and they are refusing to buy from a great many Third World producers whose products depend on air freight. No doubt this is seen as a positive thing, hence the fact they go out of their way to let you know.
Prêt founder Julian Metcalf is a fine entrepreneur and his company does make great lunch food. Moreover I approve of them giving their leftover food to homeless shelters, all enlightened stuff. From a business point of view I can see their thinking as a much higher percentage of their clientele are likely to be middle class Guardian readers with an eco-fetish than impoverished Kenyan farmers desperately trying to get the European trading system to let them sell their damn products and really not needing a meme infecting the private sector that makes it even harder for them than it already is.
I have no idea if the directors of Prêt actually believe the eco-bollocks or if it is just a marketing exercise. However as I am not saying Prêt a Manger should not have the right, for whatever reason they wish, to buy from who they wish, it does not make any difference to my argument because either way I would criticise them for it. I eat there in spite of the greener-that-thou crap, not because of it. But the thing that really gets up my nose and motivates me to look elsewhere is…
No, not the fact they banned smoking. I do not smoke so that is fine by me. I once said something nice about them on Samizdata, mistaking it for a sign (pun intended) of pro-liberty political thinking. But in truth they are clearly just typical corporates more than happy to see the state use force when it coincides with their sensibilities.
“We’re always banned smoking in our shops but now it’s against the law too – probably no bad thing”.
So if Pret thinks it is good to do something in their shops, it is probably a good thing for the Boys in Blue to impose with that notion everywhere else too. How very caring of them. I wonder what other aspects of their business they think it would be no bad thing for the state to impose on other folks who might disagree?
But as I do not contest their right to do and say as they please, why even mention it? Well that is because we are in a Culture War, boys and girls.
When The Suits utter some pro-statist platitudes about how they are actually rather happy some people cannot do what they want, or proudly adopt a ‘Screw The Third World’ eco-bollocks policy and then hold it up as a reason to think well of them…just shrugging your shoulders only encourages more of the same. I am sure their marketing people tell them that the eco-bollocks and the ‘we rather approve of people having less liberty’ utterance will give their clientele a sense that Prêt People Are Caring (marketing people really do talk using Interior Caps When They Say Things).
Actually guys, a rather different C-word comes to mind when I think of you.
But yeah, your sandwiches are great and the shop floor level people I encounter are dependably cheerful and pleasant… however EAT just opened up right next to your shop on King’s Road in Chelsea so you might be seeing a bit less of me these days because they have not found a way to annoy me (yet). And if they do, there is a really great Lebanese place called Al-Dar just a few doors down from your gaff and I am quite certain they do not give a… whatever… about such things.
There is a strange irony to this as Pret’s sister company is Itsu.
“We’ve always banned polonium 210 in our shops but now it’s endorsed by the Russian government – probably no bad thing.”
I suggest that everyone writes a civilized letter to the President of Pret stating your position.
Fresh basil leaves?
Fresh basil grows perfectly well in southeast England.
Anyway…
This next bit is totally off topic so smite away.
I finally got the armed response squad turning up at my house!
I woke up at 4:45am this morning cos my dog was barking. Then I hear some sounds outside which sounded distinctly like someone trying to break my door down.
I live in a converted industrial unit in a block of 12. There are entrance gates at either end so anyone mooching around inside the gates at that time was probably up to no good.So I wandered outside to be confronted by a youth in the dark carrying something long and metallic (which I know assume to be a crow bar).
I asked him what he was up to and in return he told me to get back inside my house or he’d shoot me. Which is surprising because around here the weapon of choice for killing homeowners is a knife.
Anyway, I called the police and mentioned the gun thing, then I waited at my front door armed with a kitchen knife and a very aggravated Rottweiler. I could hear sounds of another unit being broken into.
The coppers came along but they still don’t know if the guy has left the unit or not. Now I have a horde of machine gun touting uniform searching the unit 3 doors down where the break in actually took place.
Just thought I’d share that with you all.
Eamon
Yes, I don’t go to Pret, can someone tell me – is that sign real or taking the piss? Wait, just checked the website and apparently it is real.
What a joke. Oh no, air freight is killing the planet, we would never do it. Except for fresh basil leaves of course, you can’t expect us to do without them, we’re not savages you know.
Anyway, everyone knows it’s those dreadful common people with their frightful budget holidays to Spain and air-freighted Tesco value food that are really causing global warming. When I take one of my twice-yearly backpacking trips around South America or Thailand the long-haul flight is powered along entirely on a tide of my own self-satisfaction.
Eamon – you should have armed yourself. How long did it take for the police ‘armed response squad’ to arrive?
I used to buy Pret sandwiches – but I couldn’t bring myself to do it now having read that. I’d rather spend the 30 mins it takes to make my own sandwiches for lunch the night before.
Armed myself with what?
If whoever was out there had decided to come through my own door, then it was me and an 8″ knife between them and my wife and child.
Had that been the case I would have used it and from what I am aware, that would have constituted excessive force in the eyes of the law. But in the early hours with your family in potential danger (people have been slaughtered on their own doorsteps around here), the finer points of UK law tend to take a back seat.
It took about 6 minutes for the gun-squad to turn up.
Eamon
Eamon
I’d say there would be a market for honesty in the sandwich game with slogans along the line of:
“We source the best produce we can, wherever we can”
“A Kenyan farmer, an American aircraft engineer, a Nigerian oil worker, a Scottish fisherman, an English truck driver and a Polish food technician are just some of the people who helped us deliver to you fresh, wholesome food that you can’t beat in price or quality. Frankly we’re amazed, we hope you are too.”
I’ve stopped going to Pret since I noticed that the tables outside their Oxford Street branch have little No Smoking signs saying that they like to think of their outdoor seating as a garden and therefore they don’t want smoke ruining the delicate amibience.
Considering that their tables are actually on a public footpath (one that is choked in bus fumes, dog shit, homeless people and Golf Sale entrepreneurs) I think their request is ludicrous and, of course, betrays a certain nastiness that has pervaded our society since we started eagerly banning stuff a few years ago…
Off Topic –
Eamon,
Was the burglar still in the apartment 3 doors down, or did he escape?
On Topic –
Notice the Weasel Word in the No Smoking sign? “Probably” no bad thing? Let’s feel Self-Righteous, but not offend too many Customers Who Smoke.
(Interior Caps Used to help Market My Opinions.)
Off topic
He/they escaped with a flat screen TV and a laptop. And I am going to have a serious review of our security.
One other thing. At the time I wasn’t particularly frightened. Six hours later I am shaking with terror at the thought of this. Is this normal?
Eamon
Perfectly normal. When there was a possible confrontation you had your head in the game, although I’m going to guess that you also had some signs of sympathetic nervous system activation. Despite a few thousand years of civilized living, your brain is still wired to lapse into fight-or-flight mode. Without going into details, that means a lot of adrenaline got dumped into your bloodstream. Some of your higher brain functions -the parts concerned with thinking about how foolish it is to go poking around in the dark unarmed when home invaders are afoot, for instance- shut down. When that wears off, you shake.
Shaking isn’t fear or anything like that. It’s a normal physiological reaction to the adrenaline wearing off. If you feel more tired than usual as you come down from the adrenaline, that’s also healthy. And while you’re tired and shaking, now you have time to stop and think about just what could have gone wrong, which is probably why you call it ‘shaking with fear.’
The same thing has happened to me. With unfamiliar stresses, it sometimes still does.
Thanks for that info Sunfish. Much appreciated.
And apologies to Perry for derailing his thread.
Eamon
Perry,
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this with me. However, I already agree with you, and you know it. You are preaching to the choir here, and we are singing an a cappella accompaniment to your words.
Write to Pret, tell them why this is not just pointless, but positively damaging both socially (on a global scale) and environmentally.
Sheesh, Guardianista dogoodery (!!!) KILLS. Can’t we tell them that?
“A Kenyan farmer, an American aircraft engineer, a Nigerian oil worker, a Scottish fisherman, an English truck driver and a Polish food technician are just some of the people who helped us deliver to you fresh, wholesome food that you can’t beat in price or quality. Frankly we’re amazed, we hope you are too.”
God, who wouldn’t want to say that?
Brendan, brilliant.
Not much surprise here. The bigger companies become, become, the more they need permissions from various branches of government to continue growing, and the more they need the public at large to see them as ‘nice’. So if they are conformist in everything, and in some matters pompous and perverse, that is merely a reflection of the way they see the society they earn their living within. The only good thing is that like all fashions this one will change too.
Why are Basil Leaves so special in order to break their totalitarian ban? And if the plane is going that way anyway, couldn’t they put some other fresh stuff on to keep the leaves company?
More like Basil Fawlty
What?! They don’t sell one sandwich without that devil’s spunk known as mayonnaise(Link).
Thanks CC
Maybe it was a joke?
I mean, I’m no master farmer but my own experience has been that basil will grow any place that tomatoes will grow. Surely, somewhere in the UK someone is capable of growing a proper tomato.
The last decent Tomatos I had that were grown in the UK were from my late grandfather’s greenhouse, and I’ve been looking for something as tasty ever since. My father in law’s efforts aren’t bad, but they’re just not quite as good (but no one tell him please, I’m in enough trouble over how I raise his grandchildren). Can’t do it myself – I didn’t get the green fingered gene.
They don’t sell one sandwich without that devil’s spunk known as mayonnaise
Absolutely.
Dreadful stuff.
And even lower on the scale of edibility – salad cream.
God, I almost retched just writing the words.
Sunfish,
I have basil currently growing in a window box in the cold, dark, rainy NW of England.
And it’s damn fine basil. Not at all Fawlty.
More generally, the Green hatred of air-travel is bonkers. A Green might be real proud of capering around in a Smart (do you actually need a driving license for one, it looks like a toy) but does it get 80 passenger miles per gallon. A 70% full A380 does. I’m guessing at the 70% but my understanding is that’s the industry standard break-even. And that’s for three class 555 seat config. It will take 800 if everyone is crammed in stearage. And that’s an old tech duralumin plane. The 787 is mainly placky and is 20% more efficient than the planes it replaces. Now think about that. If the 2009 Honda Accord were to be 20% better on gas mileage than the 2007 model then… Well Honda would be lauded to the skies (and make a packet) but Boeing are just plane evil.
If there is one thing that I hate most about the Greens it’s their hatred of air-travel. It’s completely irrational and utterly anti-progress. I hope the likes of Porritt and Gore are haunted by the spirits of Orv and Will.
Christ all-fucking-mighty a mere 104 years ago two guys from Ohio achieve the dream of thousands of years and now, for an affordable sum, I could be drinking Sunfish’s home brew in CO today and this is apparently a bad thing!
Don’t worry Sunfish, me and the missus have other plans which don’t include your ale. They do involve driving in a car though. God, I’m evil. I’m killing the planet!!!!
Well, I suppose I grow my own basil so that counts as a carbon offset or some bloody thing. Well it’s one up on Pret.
Yeah, mayonaisse and salad cream are wretched, putrescent, and ubiquitous. Many a good burger has been ruined by mayonaisse, lurking out of view, awaiting unsuspecting taste buds, and ejaculating into awareness like… well… yeah.
In regard to the matter at hand. I have never eaten there and do not plan to. I do not particularly like farmers from the UK, as they quite enough money from my pocket already!
Incidently, did anyone see that government propoganda “advertisement” last night? The one about global warming. Ugh, bastards.
Interesting, I just found this posting about the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations foray into agriaid.
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=gatesagriculture200&date=20080120
I sincerely question whether agricultural aid is as necessary as economic reform.
Just think, if the same money had been spent in lobbying for an improvement in property rights, reduction in African restrictions on entrepreneurial activity and freer trade.
Would achieve ten times the affect.
Lee, ‘Cats, all of ya!
I have long suspected certain things about libertarians but the hatred of mayonaise is a new one on me…
Lee, I’ve had a gutful of TV ads by His Tonyness and no desire to watch them from His Gordoness. I especially hated the “Carbon Trust” ads with some geezer playing Robert Openheimer and the tag line, “I am become death shatterer of worlds” as though driving a 2 litre engined car was morally equivalent to nuking Hiroshima. I will give them more credit than is perhaps due by saying this was a subtle hint from government masquerading as a charity that nuclear is not the answer.
Of course, nuclear is the answer and only fools think otherwise. But then I am a physicist by training.
Have you noticed how Meticulous Pret are about their displays? Their staff are trained to straighten all of the sandwich boxes tidily into parallel ranks, with all of the same filling types adjacent to each other.
I rarely buy sandwiches from Pret, as they arent great value, but often pop in just to mess up their display, by swapping sandwich types around and pushing one back a bit here, or forwards two centimetres there, twisted around, upside down, etc.
It quite creates some hilarity if you surreptitiously do this just behind the “straightener”, so that just as they are finished, they look around & have to start again;-)
If I incite others to do this on Samizdata, does this make me a criminal?
Three Little Pigs ‘too offensive’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7204635.stm
Of course you are not a criminal AAA
you just have too much time on your hands is all 😉
Talking of food outlets.
Coming back from Pantelleria (off Sicily) in the summer, I spent a long time in Palermo airport.
They have had a smoking ban for 2 years over there, but they are civilised about it. There is a huge terrace that runs the length of the building almost, and sliding doors that connect you to bars and resaurants only 50 yrds away.
I had a couple of slices of Pizza that were to die for and a beer for 5 euros, and took ’em outside to enjoy a smoke as well. The place with the pizza would be the equivilant of Little Chef in Britain. Bog standard to Italians.
Well contrast that to British Bog standard.
Once we’d cleared Stanstead and off on the long journey down the M4 to Bristol, to keep awake, you stop at the services. Usually Moto these days.
It’s three in the morning, all we wanted was some coffee and the wife a kit kat or something.
The coffee was almost undrinkable and the chocolate bar a mere chocolate bar. Cost us £6.50!
The smoking ban was not yet in force, but here it was, even though we were the only customers.
We drank our coffee as quick as possible, whilst dolefully watching the rats scavenge in the car park.
Welcome home I thought!
Basic point Pret are pulling our plonkers for profit!
Not only fresh basil leaves (a bit chi-chi-urban-mediarati-fooderati for most people anyway) but all things, such as strawberries in December in the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, ought to be considered a normal thing for civilised people to want to have, even the urban poor (for whom Tesco does such a good and undersung job, under great stress from stalinist British lefties.)
If flying the stuff is the way, the market will find a way to do it at a profit.
“I have long suspected certain things about libertarians but the hatred of mayonaise is a new one on me…”
It isn’t as such a hatred of this stuff dolloped on food (though I dislike it intensely and evn despise Hellman’s for promoting it) but it is the assumption that you cannot eat any food without it running in pumped up goo.
If you ask for an alternative to having such stuff smeared liberally on everything (like, er, can I have it without?) you get stared at as if you are crazy… after all, it adds flavour – so I am informed – and a decision has been made for you.
Ye Gods, what would the world be like if people had a choice?
Why do these corporate types not understand that leftist often target companies that project a “Progressive” image.
Companies like GAP and so on.
So, far from such a stance being an insurance policy against being attacked by “activists”, a leftist stance by a company may actually attract attack.
Still, perhaps this is a “if we are leftist they will like us” ploy – perhaps the corporate managers of this enterprise actually believe this stuff.
After all they go to main stream schools and colleges and watch and read the main stream media.
So many corporate managers (and even owners of major enterprises) have leftist politicial opinions and social attitudes.
This is sometimes reflected in the way they do business – they have been taught that “greedy capitalists” have no honour, so they have indeed no honour.
I love mayonnaise (although not on “chips”, as you Brits call them), and I don’t apologize for it!
That’s it. If I ever open a store, I’ll call it “Sod Off You Guardian-Reading Wankers” — internal caps and all.
Interior, sorry.
Of course, nuclear is the answer and only fools think otherwise. But then I am a physicist by training.
You mean you are informed? And that you base your opinion on that?
Good Lord!!
How extraordinary.
Me, I go to bed at night praying for Robert Bussards soul and hoping that polywell is the answer. We will probably know the answer to that one by mid year. If for no other reason than knowing that cheap, really cheap, carbonless energy and a high technology fix to the (non existent) problem of AGW would make a number of heads explode in a well deserved manner.
Talking about officious dogooders, anyone been reading Ezra Levant’s blog? Seems his interrogator, Shirlene McGovern, has been ringing his lawyer complaining about the publicity, and the HRC itself complained about the blog.
Things that live under rocks really don’t like it when the rock is shifted and light floods in.
The smoking sign is nauseating in many ways. I makes me want to smoke in revenge, which is perhaps most nauseating of all.
The food-miles sign is fine. Even on Britain’s congested roads, local food is much fresher than air-freighted food, and almost certainly tastes better as a result. I don’t feel any strong urge to buy low quality goods just because the people who make them are poor. Furthermore, by supporting UK farmers, I reduce the likelihood of farmland being sold off for housing, thereby boosting the value of my house (by restricting supply of houses) and boosting the value of my house again, by ensuring I continue to have a view of fields. Yay for Pret.
And a smart car with two people in is probably about equal to an A380 with a 85% load, although the issue is obscured by God knows how many factors.
I doubt it makes much difference in terms of time to market.
Quite so, but who said anything about low quality good? Kenyan green beans are the best in the world in my opinion. Likewise tomatoes from almost anywhere outside the EU are generally both better and cheaper.
Not surprisingly that doesn’t rank highly on my list of good reasons. I am all for completely paving over Kent in fact.
When my wife was visiting Penicuik in Scotland, we live in Vancouver, she was amazed to see green beans from both Kenya and Zambia in the same supermarket.
Hah! Try finding tomatoes that aren’t from Mexico. Apparently it’s cheaper to grow the things del sur and ship them ~1000+ miles than it is to grow them locally.
Our transportation infrastructure has reached a level of sophistication and ubiquity that would have been unimaginable half a century ago. The next generation will have no conception of what ‘out of season’ means, as far as they are concerned, everything has always been on hand year-round.
After reading: “….they have been taught that “greedy capitalists” have no honour….” I was fully expecting Mr Marks to say something like ‘so they support high taxes and so on out of a guilt complex’, but instead he zooms to the finish line with “…so they indeed have no honour!”
Fantastic – I nearly pissed myself laughing!
“The food-miles sign is fine.”
Except it’s not fine J because it is not, in fact, a food miles sign – it is a sign with a crossed-out airplane and the words ‘air miles’ underneath. It says nothing about the number of miles the ingredients making up Pret’s sandwhiches have travelled before you consume them.
Do such signs now exist on the back of Pret sandwiches (the packaging I mean, of course!)? If they are, I might be tempted, in a moment of passing frivolity, to fly back to Britain and buy up plenty of used Pret sandwich packaging boxes and ask Pret for a significant ‘appreciation’ of my loyalty as a customer on the basis of the massive number of food miles consumed in my name. How I would laugh in their faces!
Somehow though, I doubt anyone else would get the joke ane I would be shoed away into some ridiculous corner like Cornwall…
There is something odd about this sign (and crossed out planes isn’t the whole story) and it the fact they “believe” in this.
In other words, they don’t know, have no basis for this idea but would like you to take a leap of faith with them.
Okay, so some people believe the earth is flat too…
I could also point out the phrase “over the top” is weird too. Yes, planes do go over the top mostly and “completely over the top” emphasises that nicely. But there is a curious mixture of hope and chumminess in the wording of this sign that suggests it was dashed out by a bored executive who had read something in the Guardian that very morning.
Food taste is not a linear one-variable function of the distance the ingredients have traveled, or time since harvesting. I, for example, would prefer high-quality tomatoes flown in over a few thousand miles in mid January to bending over and gnawing on a tomato that tastes like rubber still on the stalk in some local greenhouse. Moreover, I’d be even happier to buy my eco-hostile anti-fresh tomatoes cheaper, since green-minded morons will pay a premium for the local crap just because it’s “local”.
But that’s just me, I am weird that way. As long as they do not ban the good stuff from being flown in, I’ll smile and so NOT feel sorry for them.