Ape::Tracks

Too rotten to drink?

My local healthfood grocers Eighth Day are no longer selling Innocent smoothies as a result of Coca Cola buying a large share in the company. The sellout to Coca Cola and resulting boycott are a big disappointment to me, as I was an almost daily consumer of Innocent drinks until today.

Innocent's generally ethical stance is a stark contrast to Coca Cola's: doing business with a company that sells rubbish like Coke is one thing, but when a company is involved in the murders of rivals and trade unionists... that's not pragmatism, that's complicity.

The decline in the quality of Green and Blacks chocolate following their 'merger' with Cadburys shows what else can go wrong. The post-Cadburys Green and Blacks 'vegan' chocolate ended up with enough milk in it to make people will dairy allergies ill, so they've now abandoned claiming it's vegan. I've read unsubstantiated claims that this is due to machines no longer being cleaned out between production runs of different products in order to boost profits.

The silver lining (chocolate wrapper?) of the Green and Blacks sellout was that Montezuma's far superior chocolate filled the niche. I'm hopeful that something similar will happen with the niche Innocent have abandoned.

Update: Green and Blacks have sent me an email saying that although their dark chocolate's packaging lost the 'vegan' label and gained milk on the ingredients, the actual recipe didn't change following Cadburys ownership - what changed was a more cautious policy regarding traces of milk from previous production runs. They plan to produce proper vegan choc in the future. I've asked if I can reproduce their email here as a comment.

(I do sometimes eat choc that's labelled vegan and has warnings of possible trace amounts of milk, because 'traces' implies incredibly small amounts - I think the appearance of milk on the ingredients list gives the impression of much larger amounts. Restaurant plates may have traces, but I wouldn't eat a meal containing it as an ingredient.)

Here's the email (comments are locked now...)

Dear Pete,
Your blog at http://apetracks.binary-ape.org/2009/04/fruit-thats-too-rotten-to-drink.html has recently been brought to my attention and I hope you don't mind me taking this opportunity to address your comments about Green & Black's recent changes to the dairy allergen and vegan labelling of our dark chocolate products.

I would like to assure you that there has been no change to the recipe of our dark chocolate; the change is simply in the way in which the risks of dairy cross contamination are being communicated on bar wrappers. I will outline the background behind this decision below:

As you may be aware, there are no milk ingredients in the recipe of our Dark chocolate bars and this continues to be the case. However, the bars are produced on the same production line as Milk chocolate bars within our range. The bars have previously, therefore, carried the following statement to reflect this: ‘Manufactured in a factory that handles dairy ingredients.’

A recent audit revealed that traces of milk residues can still be found on manufacturing equipment despite intensive cleaning. Therefore, in order to ensure that consumers are at minimum risk, our allergen statements will be changed and we will clearly state on pack that milk residues may be present in dark chocolate bars across the range. This will be indicated by the inclusion of ‘Organic Whole Milk Powder’ within the ingredients list itself and a ‘Contains Milk Ingredient’ statement on pack. The Vegan labelling was also consequently removed from pack, as you have noted.

Therefore, there is actually no change to the risk to allergy-sufferers as the recipes and ingredients that go into the making of the bars have not changed. What we are now clearly stating on pack is that we cannot guarantee the absence of milk. It is almost certainly going to be present – albeit at a low level. This packaging change ensures that consumers, especially milk allergy sufferers, are aware of the possibility and this represents a positive step in consumer communication.

We are eager to inform consumers of this change to prevent any possible concern that may arise. Therefore, this information is displayed clearly on our website at www.greenandblacks.com and we have been working with organisations such as Allergy UK, the Anaphylaxis Campaign and the Vegan Society to ensure that this may be clearly communicated to allergy sufferers and vegans alike.

Separate dedicated lines for our dark and milk chocolate bars would be the only way to eliminate the risks of dairy cross contamination in the dark chocolate. At present, the restrictions for organic segregation and the design of plant we need for our type of chocolate restricts the availability of equipment. We are very certain however that we must work towards alternative equipment and we are planning to provide a dedicated production line by the end of 2009. Our hope is that we can make product available early in 2010.

I hope that this information, along with the attached FAQ’s and image of the new labelling, is of some help to you to further clarify our position.

<<Milk allergy FAQs.doc>> <<Image of new labelling Dark 85%.doc>>
However, if you have any further queries or comments at all, please do not hesitate to contact me again. Green & Black's also intend to update any consumers concerned about this issue to inform them of our updated position when the separate lines are up and running- if you would like to be contacted at this time, please do let me know and I will gladly add you to the list.

Kind Regards

Laura Bowyer
Customer Care Manager
Green & Black's

Photographers in the UK should read this House of Commons debate

There's been a surprisingly good, sensible discussion in the House of Commons on the recent police vs photographer problems. The issue was raised by John Randall (Conservative) and a number of other MPs made good contributions. It's well worth reading if you're an amateur or pro photographer in the UK.

• Here's the readable version: Photography (Public Places) provided by They Work For You
• (Here's the 1995-style official version of Photography (Public Places) from The Stationary Office)

The official government position appears to be in favour of photographer's rights and critical of police abusing existing laws

"I make it absolutely clear that unless someone is engaged in criminal activity, they must be allowed to take photographs in public places and that the law should not be used to discourage or hamper that activity."

However, reassuring noises from junior ministers are not enough - abuses are still happening.

(I'm not generalizing police behaviour - I've got no doubt that most officers are fine, and many of those involved in these 'photocop' incidents are simply ill-informed. All the same, here's why we need freedom of photography)

Standing

I'm standing as a candidate in the May 2008 local authority elections, in the Manchester City Centre ward. I'm the Green Party candidate.

More about this in a little while.

Afflecks

Save Afflecks
Originally uploaded by BinaryApe

Another bit of Manchester under threat from corporate mundanity: Afflecks Palace might have only a few days left.

Link: The MEN's archive on this sorry saga

I tend to blame Manchester City Council for problems like this, but at least Marc Ramsbottom (LibDem, City Centre) is offering support.

Little Green Laptops

I can still vividly remember how much I wanted a computer, and how happy I was to eventually get one*. For some children today a computer would cost their parents' annual income. It was rather moving to read about the first real deployment of the One Laptop Per Child computers, and see the photos of the children:

Link: ivan krstić · code culture » First OLPC deployment: now it’s real

There are going to be disappointments, and problems, and scandals, but the project is marvellous and will improve people's lives - not just the children's but their families and communities. The "give them food instead" argument is both astonishingly ignorant and somewhere between patronising and downright racist. Most people in the world have enough food, and have enough clothes - they need access to education, information and communication, tools to create things, and a voice.

*Although technically I got the tape player, joystick and software, and my eldest sister got the computer.

Craig Murray (not) on The Guardian

People frequently assume I read The Guardian. I don't.

There were a few years when I bought it a couple of days a week. Then a few years when I bought it on Saturday. Then I realised that whoever it was written for, it certainly wasn't written for me. I can find adverts for overpriced rubbish disguised as reviews, weak propaganda, sloppy journalism and ignorant punditry on the Internet, or write it myself. When The Guardian became key to keeping Blair in power unchecked ("hold your nose and vote Labour") it became as unpurchasable as Murdoch's rubbish.

Craig Murray posted the following to Comment Is Free, a sometimes quite decent site that is owned by The Guardian:

After I blogged the (indisputable) fact that no maritime boundary between Iran and Iraq in the Persian Gulf had ever been agreed and the MOD map was a fake with no legal force, it took some time to seep into the public consciousness. Eventually the Mail published it, then the BBC took it up, and eventually everyone except the mad people on the Harry's Place blog accepted it as true. I have now been asked by the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee to produce a paper explaining it to them. The reason I note this here, is that before I did any of that, I phoned the Guardian and explained at length the problem with the map to David Leigh and Richard Norton Taylor. They took no notice whatever and the Guardian continued to reproduce the Blair fake boundary map as propaganda for weeks, with no hint there was a problem with it. This is very sad for me, as I remember the days when the Guardian was a newspaper and not a Blairite neo-con rag. I think that what the Guardian/Observer has become under the war criminal supporting White, Tisdall, Wintour, Toynbee and Cohen is a national disaster. Rusbridger is just a cypher in a very bad wig.

and then the whole thread magically disappeared from the front page and recent items list.

Link: Craig Murray - The Guardian and the Guilty

(One grumble per week)

TV Licenses (rant of the week)

So then, it seems that:

It's OK to bomb a state TV station (killing journalists) because they were showing propaganda (Serbia's RTS) It's OK to bomb independent TV stations (killing journalists) because they were showing propaganda. (Al Jazeera)

But it's not OK to legally withdraw a broadcast license for a TV station (without killing the journalists) that shows propaganda. And was involved in a coup against a democratically elected government. (RCTV) Doing that would be terrible blow against freedom of speech! (RCTV can now only be seen on cable)

This 'act of revenge' by Chavez is years after the attempted coup, so it would definitely be a dish served cold. How long would an Al Qaeda funded and staffed TV station remain on air in the USA or UK?

I'm not one of the many people who idolise Hugo Chavez (I think he's a demagogue and thug) but there seems to be a rather disproportionate media outcry against his withdrawal of a broadcast license for RCTV. Even BoingBoing is joining in.

[When NATO bombed RTS I was working in a British TV studio building. Did the RTS technicians and hairdressers deserve to die any more than the ones I passed in the corridor? Not renewing a broadcast license is rather mild in comparison.]

Mohammed Sheikh Khalid Stole My Socks

Confess to everything and you've confessed to nothing.

Mohammed Sheikh Khalid has now, voluntarily and of his own free will, admitted he masterminded every significant event from the Norman Invasion through the bubonic plague, fall of Constantinople, and Great Fire of London, to the Battle of Little Big Horn, assassination of JFK and the Oklahoma bombing. Or he might as well have. The extraordinarily comprehensive list of terrorist outrages for which he claims responsibility would be beyond the capacity of any but the most brilliant and inspired mortal; Khalid, I fear, is a more run of the mill thug.

Khalid's list of confessions read like something from a show trial in a stalinist state. There's something for everyone: the authorities have caught the man responsible for all the bad things (Mission Accomplished!), Al Qaida can claim to be super-powerful, and to anyone else the whole thing is an obvious farce.

Link: Craig Murray via Blairwatch

Update: According to Jesus' General, the key to uncovering this high-quality information is to torture a mentally ill man after kidnapping his children.

Missing details

On 12 February an RAF Hercules aircraft was badly damaged while making a night landing on a makeshift airstrip in Iraq. The damage was so serious that it couldn't be repaired on site and it had to be destroyed to prevent insurgents getting their hands on it. Fortunately nobody was killed.

A couple of weeks ago, while idly reading an interesting article in Wired over lunch, I followed this link to TheyWorkForYou.com and found some details on the crash that I'd missed in the UK news.

In the most recent BBC report on the Hercules landing 'incident' we have these two statements:

A military spokesman in Basra said there was no evidence of hostile action during the landing in Maysan province.

The MoD stressed the aircraft had been making "a routine landing on a tactical landing zone" and the plane had not been shot down.

Contrast that explanation with the one given in the House of Lords and recorded in Hansard:

Lord Garden (Liberal Democrat)
Under what circumstances a United Kingdom Hercules C130 aircraft was destroyed on 12 February in Maysan Province, Iraq; and what was the value of the aircraft.
Lord Drayson (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Defence Procurement), Ministry of Defence)
My Lords, a Hercules C130 on a routine mission was involved in an incident on landing in Maysan on 12 February. The initial investigation suggests that it was struck by an improvised explosive device similar to a roadside bomb. After assessment of the damage, it was concluded that the aircraft could not be recovered without undue risk to personnel so the aircraft was destroyed by UK forces. The current market value of a C130J is in the region of £45 million.

So the Hercules was not damaged by an accident during landing, it was damaged by a bomb on or near the runway. I can't find anything in the British media mentioning this. Why? Did the MoD play it down and keep quiet, and journalists miss the reference to it in Hansard? Is there something more official in place, or are journalists just being unusually discreet and waiting for an official report to be released later?

I can understand the MoD is unhappy that a cheap bomb destroyed their £45,000,000 aircraft (plus contents) but I think they should have been more open about what happened, and the media should have updated the story when more details were revealed. There's a definite difference between an 'landing incident' and an aircraft lost to enemy action.

DRM-Think

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. DRM is unprecedented choice.