The Uncertainty Principle

Ill Culinary Behaviour

I can't make rump or fetlock of the healthier eating debate. A month ago I joined a gym, and have been doing a moderate two sessions a week since. Instead of leading me on to a spartan lifestyle of granola bars and protein shakes, I seem to believe my new fitness regimen should allow me to eat additional rubbish; I tried my first ever Krispy Kreme doughnut the other week.

Assorted know-alls will tell you our obesity crisis is due to sedentry lifestyles and the popularity of highly processed energy-rich foods that don't fill you up. In short: getting calories is cheap, getting rid of them is getting more difficult.

The debate is polarised between those vegan-fascists that think the human condition can be solved by Mung beans, and the loony right wingers that reckon every householder should eat all the red meat possible and just keep one of these at home, as insurance.

It is a good examplar of the problems of choice in public policy. We're not very good at it. Give me a choice between anything and chips, and well, it won't be a Mung bean cassarole for dinner. As Boris might say, it is my own fat fault.

That doesn't stop us, however. The new Health White Paper suggests a traffic-light system for food labelling, because, never slow to aportion blame elsewhere, the British public complained about a lack of information on fat, sugar and salt content. Hint: try reading the label, podgemeister. We're even worse than the Americans at this.

The problem is, a grave matter of public health dissolves into a basic matter of individual choice the moment we open our fridge doors.

Well, this is what I told my girlfriend on the phone, and she promptly collapsed into giggles about the time I ordered an unecessarily large steak in a pub. Or, as she delightfully put it, 'Do you remember that time you tried to eat a whole cow?'.

On TV they prosecute anyone who's exciting

Nation's favourite Tory in affair-shocker? Cue: stentorian moralising from the party leadership. I can't see a strategy like that ever back-firing. His pals in the shadow cabinet now seem understandably peeved by Howard's reaction.

No one likes the idea of a married father, allegedly, cheating on his wife. While against extra-marital affairs as a 'Bad Thing', I can't help but feel respect for him.

His CV reads like one of those authors of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People or some such. You know the sort of books that always talk about 'mice', 'cheese' and 'being proactive' (what's wrong with just being active by the way?). Just to recap on Johnson's week: Shadow-minister, MP for Henley-upon-Thames, editor of The Spectator and father of four. And we are now being told he managed to conduct and illicit affair at one of his several full time jobs? I can't even get down the gym.

Even if motive, opportunity and desire were there I would never be able to co-ordinate an affair. Just think of all the chicanery involved. Half-truths, misinformation, carefully timed assignations. All this stuff must take serious time and effort. This would be a bit much for me when I can't put in a full day's work and remember to buy milk and bread on the way home. Can it really be worth all that additional effort?

I am secretly hoping that Boris's motive was that of the geekish public schoolboy in him; no pretensions to romantic love but the challenge of fitting in a fifth after-school activity and still doing his Latin prep by Wednesday. Maybe this is what being pro-active is all about.

Modesty fails / Nonsense prevails / grace and virtue turn into stupidity

Sometimes I avoid thinking about topics that I care a lot about. Often, this is because I haven’t read enough about the issue to feel I can put together my argument cogently. Other times this is because I feel someone more eloquent has already summarised my position. On the issue of the current state of the Labour government and parliamentary party, however, it is just too old to be worthy of comment.

My frustration at the lack of ambition at home and the fervent millenarianism of our foreign policy ponders along as a Kafkaesque annoyance. It is hard to chart peaks and troughs; it is just a persistent, rumbling, grey-edged sourness of mood. As the recent editorial in Renewal Magazine put it ‘members simply walk away in silence, leaving behind them an increasingly empty shell – frustrated and disillusioned but curiously not especially angry.’

A little vignette of this transgression. Last night in the shower, listening to BBC Radio Four I heard John Reid talk on the proposed Smoking ban in public places. A fairly unremarkable discussion by a minister I have no particular fondness or dislike of. The only point that I really listened to was his first sentence, before shrugging my soapy shoulders and continuing my ablutions.

John Reid began his piece with the caveat,

‘Of course, it is not the Government’s role to tell people what to do.’

A somantic slap in the face to those several million that rather do like the idea of a Government with courage in its convictions for a socially just society. A little throwaway though this remark may have been, it smacked of the day-in-day-out apologetics of the Labour government in other arena than starting wars from inadequate intelligence. A lipid timidity pervades and ‘cover-the-costs’ is its mantra. I’m reminded of Austin Mitchell’s description of Blair’s policy making as the PM jumping off a cliff and shouting ‘Someone catch me!’

Particularly offensive was Reid’s the patronising prefix: ‘Of course’, as if no rational twenty first Century Citizen would countenance the idea of a central core executive with enough power to actually do stuff, to compel people to do things they would find tough to justify in their narrow self-interest alone. Let alone transforming society for the better.

This really shouldn’t be the rhetoric of a Labour minister of a Government with a commanding majority in the Commons, facing a weak and unpopular opposition and managing a healthy economy. As the same Renewal editorial concluded:

We need to wake ourselves up. The scale of the threats and opportunities that we
face demands nothing less. We need a cause bigger than any individual, bigger
than any career, bigger than the false perception that ‘there is no
alternative’. Until we break through the silence and sycophancy, our emperors
will go on wearing new clothes and an ever diminishing band will go on
applauding.

I hope that you're happy now like you're supposed to be/
And I know that this will hurt you more than it hurts me

For the second time in a week, its a stich-up for my side of the argument. 78% of those who voted decided they didn't want an elected regional assembly. Any politician would kill for that kind of a mandate.

The No Campaign were greatly helped by a little obfuscation.

• Appeal 1: it just means more bureaucrats and politicians.
• Appeal 2: It will just be a talking-shop/White Elephant/Government poodle (insert your own animal/retail allegory here).

What many voters who swallowed the line of William Hague's ex-adviser might not have realised was that:they already have a regional assembly. What they have actually voted for is the retention of an undemocratic system of regional government over a democratic, elected accountable assembly with a reformed system of unitary local authorities. Arrgh!

Those who suggested regional authorities have no powers, might want to let the protestors against the 180,000 new homes East Anglia know that.

Maybe I'm just bitter. My side of a whole number of debates has taken a bashing this week. Tactically, it could be wise to transfer support to Manchester Utd tomorrow; safe in the knowledge that my backing will lead to a hat trick for Shaun Wright-Phillips.

It's good to hear your voice, you know it's been so long/
If I don't get your call then everything goes wrong

Or 'the real vote of the week'. In four and a half hours, the polls close for the referendum on the North East Assembly. Results are expected in at midnight, and I plan to stay up for them; just me, some fresh coffee and, yes, a futureworld funk mix tonight, I think.

Don't quite know how I am going to work it though, as the news of the referendum is apparently dropped from the news schedule.

I find this infuriating - its highly newsworthy. The referendum has got it all: the march of devolution and a titanic struggle between Prezza and an ex-advisor of William Hague pushing the No Campaign. And today we have news of botched recorded phone message campaign tactics:

When the phone rang at 2am yesterday and woke Derek and Rose Mary Robson,
neither expected to find the deputy prime minister on the other end. But
when they answered, John Prescott's unmistakable voice began asking if they
had voted in the north-east assembly referendum. Labour has apologised for
the mix-up in which the couple in their 60s, from Stanley, Co Durham, were
played the pre-recorded message.The Robsons, who are party members, were then instructed to press a button to indicate how they had voted.
A Labour spokesman yesterday said the call had been made as part of a campaign urging locals to take part in the referendum. (The Guardian)

I haven't got the time to rehearse the arguments for the elected assemblies. Though Tony Travers' reference to them as 'Christmas trees' seems to make sense. Essentially, they are useful in themselves, but once established are likely to prove themselves worthy of further devolved powers, and more powers will get hung to the Elected Regional Assemblies Bill.

For more information on why they are such a good plan see the Yes for Yorkshire Campaign. Or email me and I'll talk to you about executive powers for £570m per annum plus influence over a further £1.5bn. If neither of the above appeal just click on the 'Prezza' link above and watch our Deputy PM smacking a farmer.

All over people changing their votes, along with their overcoats

254/242. Ah well, despite people saying hopeful things about exit polls, it has happened. Now, across the world people like me are saying they secretly thought this was always going to happen and they were just being pro-Kerry out of love for the democrat cause and personal sympathy for his long-face.

Were the pollsters just trying to irritate us? Playing their very own game of Moonbat Bingo, daring each other to weigh in behind the Democrats?

I dozed in the early hours, envisaging those undecided toying with their chads in the voting booths, and then plumping for Dubya. I have posted previously on MORI's findings about the importance of the idea of 'clear leadership' for voting appeal. George Soros put in his two-pence worth on the commander-in-chief issue, but Florida didn't listen.

Like four years ago, Nader supporters have something to answer for, besides from the obvious, in places like New Mexico (Kerry 48.6%, Bush 50.3%, Nader 0.5%).

The best early election analysis comes from the ever incisive Harry Hutton. Meanwhile, the only solace I have is petty personal insults. See: the tale of the bronze rat (Hat Tip: The Virtual Stoa).

Roll on the Clinton/Obama 2008 campaign.