My resulting position was middle girl and middle child the least distinguished place in family ranks
Posted in General on 22. Oct, 2010
My resulting position was middle girl and middle child, the least distinguished place in family ranks. I always wore hand-me-downs; I always had to share a bedroom, and my older sister dictated when the light went out, even though I wanted to read; I never got to sit in the front seat of the car; and nobody bribed me £10 to stop biting my nails.In other words, like all middle children, I developed a deep-rooted sense of injustice and an insatiable appetite for love, recognition and approval. Which would have been fatal for my long-term happiness if I had not identified one family category more desperate than my own: the only child. My own sense of grievance is as nothing compared to that of the child who grew up staring grimly at an unused ping-pong table Ask my husband.. The Soil Association, the body responsible for promoting organic food in the UK, has suppressed a report accusing Britain’s leading supermarkets of overcharging for organic goods. He said it sent out the wrong message by effectively encouraging supermarkets to lower their prices, which would squeeze organic producers’ profits and threatening them with bankruptcy.But Dr Anna Ross, senior economist with the University of the West of England and author of the study, accused the Soil Association of being “too busy trying not to upset the supermarkets”.In her study, Dr Ross claims supermarkets are the “most expensive of all organic food retailers” with “the smallest range of fresh produce”.According to her research, a basket of vegetables bought in a sample of farm shops was 63 per cent more expensive in Tesco; 59 per cent more expensive in Sainsbury’s; and 38 per cent more expensive in Waitrose. Organic meat, she said, was on average 64 per cent higher in supermarkets than in local farmers’ markets.Some of the findings were due to be published in the coming issue of the Soil Association’s quarterly magazine, Living Earth.But its message would have contradicted the main message of the association’s annual conference, due to take place in Harrogate this week, which will call for a sea-change in society’s attitude to food pricing.
Mr Holden, wants to get across the message that “as a society we pay too little for our food”.Dr Ross’s report, Mr Holden suggested, could have the effect of driving organic producers “into bankruptcy”. Mr Holden said: “Our primary responsibility is to make the public aware of the consequences of a mantra of cheap food. If consumers want the organic movement to survive they must understand it is worth paying more for quality.”Organic food is big business for supermarkets. Tesco, says Dr Ross’s report, has announced plans to increase sales of organic food to £1bn in five years, while Asda has said it wants to get organic food prices down to the levels of non-organic.
Mr Holden said the report would only encourage the supermarkets to try to trim costs even further.Last year, organic retail sales grew 33 per cent to £802m. Supermarkets have 80 per cent of the market, the study claimed.* The report Organic Food Prices 2002 is available for £55 direct from Dr Ross (tel: 01666 824585). When Lesley McKenna returned home in the new year of 1996, she found a Christmas card lying unopened in her hallway. “Flip beyond the dimensions in ‘96,” read the message inside, above the unmistakable signature of Kim McGibbon.
They shared a love of skiing and an indivisible spirit, had done so since childhood on the slopes of the Cairngorms. But the following day, McKenna would be joining her team-mates on the British ski squad to shoulder McGibbon’s coffin into the chapel of the Linn Crematorium in Glasgow.On the night before she died, in a freak training accident in the Tyrol, McGibbon had written a poem…”Always head towards the distant hills,Our future lies silhouetted on thehorizon…”It was a poem of immense power, eerily portentous. Kim’s sister had read it at the funeral and McKenna keeps the original back at home in Scotland. “I feel Kim was on a journey and it was her time to leave the path and go wherever she’s gone,” she said two weeks after McGibbon’s death. “Now, I feel it is time I got on and started my journey and I feel her strength.”The impact of that loss could be seen at the time on the fresh faces of the British squad, already struggling to compete against almost impossible odds. For most of them, the fun drained out of their sport that January day when their team bus left the Alps with a seat empty.Only Emma Carrick-Anderson, the veteran slalom skier, has ploughed on. And McKenna, whose new path will lead her to the top of a snow-covered semi-circular runway – known as a half-pipe – in Salt Lake City next month.”It was strange,” McKenna recalls “The first time I ever did snowboarding was with Kim We just went up a mountain and couldn’t get down.