Category Archives: rural life

Aldi’s ‘Traditional’ Values? (Warning this post may contain traces of ‘Imazalil’)

Traditional Orangery?Traditional Orangery?

I must take issue with supermarket group Herr Aldi & Co, the (“it’s amazing how much I saved”) toast of all Perfect Shire dinner parties these days; despite the perfectly passable quality of the clementines, therein, this “traditional grocer’s box” bears no resemblance to the pale and splintery stapled wooden ‘slatted’ boxes which characterised such fruit and veg sellers’ receptacles of yore.

Aldi's 'traditional' Christmas 'Orange' Day Parade?Aldi’s ‘traditional’ Christmas ‘Orange’ Day Parade?

Indeed, I would go so far as to say that far from being ‘traditional’, this is a very ‘modern’ form of packaging indeed, based on compressed mdf-like material, perhaps even with the hint of hygenic ‘wipe clean’ plasticisers added for good measure, but poor authenticity?

My traditional Christmas (or ‘Festive’, as per the label on the box) now ruined. Bah humbug Aldi!!!

clementine 2 of 2 20151129_132933

May contain traditional values and ‘Imazaliil’ [sic] wax? Presumably non-connection to potential carcinogen ‘Imazalil

See also The Guardian’s 2006 “Survey points to unsafe levels of pesticide residues in food” and an interesting 2015 (United States) alert site – ‘Food Sentry‘ – documenting regular Imazalil contamination. There’s also a routine Daily Mail ‘shock horror’ type story from 2012 which mentions Imazalil and other fungicides, too.

Driver Awareness

Keep Your Eyes on the Road...

The sunniest afternoon of the year spent in a windowless Korova Milk Bar-like Holiday Inn in Eastleigh, being reprogrammed by Borg from Hampshire Constabulary Driver Awareness Training. A perfect illustration of ‘When Outsourcing Goes Wrong’: a grotesque David-Brent-meets-Magwitch ex-policeman performing opposite his Royston Vasey female counterpart.

roystonShe, an apparently drunken Tim Burton-styled apples ‘n’ pears landlady, wearing metaphorical hobnail boots, the soles of which — imprinted with stopping the distances for jellied-eels at 30, 40, 50, 60 and 70 mph — stamping again, and again, hour after hour, into my face in retributive justice, as I scream ‘only a fool breaks the two second rule…’