Once in a while, somebody releases statistics or data that tells a complete story in figures alone. Take this example from the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) last week.
…One fifth of laying hen are kept in sheds that are more than 25 years old, with the average shed age being 17 years. Meanwhile, sheds for pullet ands and breeding activities are even older . The total spend on building construction fell by 40% compared to the previous five-year period. The UK poultry sector is being squeezed, even if this is not immediately apparent.; If you want another example, many English pullets are living in sheds that are up to 50 years old, while their Welsh counterparts are accommodated in sheds that go back 12 years on average. (data available here))
There is no suggestion that the fabric of the buildings concerned could be unsound, but rather that as supermarket suppliers, they have faced pressure to leave capital expenditure for years on en. The lack of due process to recover their legitimate capital costs, let alone operating costs, just adds injury to insult.
There are a number of gaps in the human rights platform that cannot be allowed to go unchallenged. The first is that in eighteenth century France, it excluded women, which was more than a minor oversight. It means that where womens’ rights had prevailed, there were the beginnings of a more balanced society. But while womens’ voices were heard in occasional outbursts and as far away from the functions of government as could be managed, the bigger flaw in the liberal vision remains the exclusion of the planet and the natural world from future vision. There is no way that humanity can be left to destroy the planet’s resources from the highest levels of the atmosphere to the deepest recesses of the oceans. It is not just ironic that a species which claims the world’s resources for itself should make such a good job of destroying life on the planet, its own included. It is also extremely offensive, not least because of the high levels of coercion that the world’s rulers apply to those around them.
The opening weeks of the French revolution saw the drafting of a declaration establishing the existence of human rights and what each person was obliged to do to protect the same rights and privileges for their fellow citizens. These boundaries can only be determined by law. As we shall see later, there was no
We need to start somewhere and there is every sign that even exemplary revolutionaries will struggle with the idealistic aims of human rights: the planet comes off second best in the face of such the supposedly universal rights, as do flora and fauna the length and breadth of the planet. Having claimed the lion’s share of the world’s natural resources, the human revolutionary elite turned its attention to making a set of laws to withhold its new-found privileges from those who could possibly represent a challenge to future generations of global power brokers. The irony of this paradox is a heavy burden that is shared with nature in every corner of the globe: we have already seen some of the consequences in our atmosphere, our ocean depths and our chances of survival, but this is only this is only the beginning.
For France’s parliamentarians, 1993 ended with some progress, but without a readily identifiable outcome. To be sure, national legislation had got a better grip on the systematic abuses of commercial practice, but there remained a lot of work to finish before anyone would be able to say they had anything solid to show for it. The
Scottish fishermen working in the North Sea from the from the 18th century onwards, adopted the cran basket as a measure of fish on the quayside; a full cran of herring weighed 56 stone and was usually spread across four quarter cran baskets. (56 stone = 56 x14 divided by 2,2 kilos) The quarter cran basket became a legalised trading measure in Scotland during the 19th century, followed by England and Wales in 1908.
The deck crew sort and gather the catch, most of it is herring, bound for the smokehouses. Before the quarter cran baskets are filled, they are moved to the unloading area on the deck. Once again, the skill of the basket weaver is put to the test: a quarter cran basket holds on average seven stone (7stone = 7×14 divided by 2.2 kilos) of fish. The baskets are topped with a solidly woven rim. They are unloaded using a small steam-powered crane and of specially shaped pair of clips to hold the basket until they land on the quayside with a gentle scrunching noise. Soon to be smoked as kippers, some of this catch would have been sent to London by train overnight, arriving just in time for breakfast at a gentlemens’ club.
The NFU’s next director general is an experienced food industry management figure. Sophie Throup joins the National Farmers’ Union in May, bringing with her years of board level experience, notably as Head of Agriculture at Morrisons. Raised on her family farm in Yorkshire, her working life reflects her commitment to food production. “My roots have always been in agriculture, and I know how important this period of change is for the sector,’ she told journalists when her appointment was announced. NFU members have frequent problems when dealing with multiple retailers, since food producers are not automatically the supplier named on the documentation. This seemingly minor distinction makes an important difference, since food retailers will stone wall and refuse to engage with any party that is not explicitly named on the account details. Quite apart from being very frustrating, this can make some contracts unworkable. This may be a deliberate tactic used by the retailer, or it may be used to stress test a supplier. Time sensitive crops and activities are particularly vulnerable to such practices, since person or party that has to deliver the product has no way of knowing where the real problem arises. Retail logistics will often assume that all categories are time sensitive and place a 20-minute window on deliveries, particularly store deliveries, to keep sites moving, even if the products themselves are stable.