Review: Bounce (Matthew Syed)

 

Full disclosure: the picture above is from MumsNet. Now I know how my dad felt when he started agreeing with Billy Bragg on Question Time.

Sharing common ground with a website for surfing mums wasn't the only eyebrow-raising moment for me when it came to Bounce. In journalist and ex-table tennis World Champion Matthew Syed's analysis of contemporary sporting culture, quotes from Dragon's Den's Duncan Bannatyne and literary novelist Howard Jacobsen  feature on the same cover.

 

What's next? I thought, thumbing through pages. Roy Keane, secret football managerial genius? Gillette are the root cause of Roger Federer's superlative tennis career? Drugs should be made legal in sport?

Actually that last one is in the book.

I read much of this with varying degrees of surprise. Syed gleefully informs his audience as early as possible - i.e. the opening chapter - that much of his world-conquering status was predicated on living in a suburb in Reading, and his efforts since that point can be traced back to that single street.

 

Success, says Syed, is predominantly based on equality of opportunity - even now something of a controversial idea, until you realise how far off many institutions are from the things he is talking about. His assertion is that simply providing the right facilities, open to all, is enough - in his case, a shed where any member of his table tennis club could practice. The rest, as Syed's life illustrates, comes down to regular practice and enjoyment of whatever it is you're doing.
 

Some of the ideas, such as the oft-quoted 10,000 hours theory (courtesy of Outliers' Malcolm Gladwell), are backed up with compelling rhetoric and excellent examples. The most successful debunking occurs with Syed analysing the young years of Wolfgang Mozart and finds that, contrary to the found opinion that he was a 'born genius', he was the product of an intensely driven father who trained the young Mozart from his baby years. As for genius, Mozart had been writing music since the age of 5, when he created Andante in C - nothing more profound than 15 solid years of practice.

 

But it's the less fashionable stuff that really creates an impression. Syed discusses at length the career of minister Norman Peale, a New Yorker who is widely credited with creating the world's first self-help book which claimed belief in almost anything can both reduce stress and improve performance.

 

One of the best, and most refreshing elements of Bounce is the author's unapologetically open outlook to all manner of ideas, even the stuff generally perceived as weird or uncool. The terms 'self help' and  'life coaches' are deservedly treated with contempt by many not due to their spiritually empty nature, but their clear lack of evidence-based reasoning, with little recognition of the historical precedents. Amongst many, the profession ranks alongside televangelism for all-out nonsense, and appears outmoded in thought.

 

And so he deserves great credit for including a man like Peale, not only for the historical precedent but for the ripple effects felt throughout professional sport today. It's fair to say Peale's theories enabled a greater scientific understanding of what affects sportsmen, and after Glenn Hoddle's dalliance with Eileen Drewery, later derided as a crackpot, it should escape no-one's attention that England manager Roy Hodgson has returned to the well (albeit for professional, rather than amateur, assistance) to employ professional sports psychologist Steve Peters for England's World Cup 2014 campaign.   

 

Arguably best of all, is the manner in which Syed makes the theory flesh in all sorts of fascinating ways. On an investigation into Kenyan genes and their effects on long distance running, the former Olympic champion is found living a humble lifestyle in a tent with his wife - quite the unconscious comment on sporting contemporaries such as Lewis Hamilton and Wayne Rooney. Such eye for detail belies his second career as a sports journalist. And in one of the book's more sombre episodes, Syed goes to visit a former East German athlete whose life changes - literally - following her indoctrination into the East German Olympic training program as a young woman.

 

He balances this genuine tragedy alongside another of his counterintuitive questions with emotional good sense and some panache - should all drugs be made safe and legal to use in athletics? The success of the chapter can be found in the sensitive way Syed handles the anonymous brutality of a Cold War state with a more contemporary flavour. Unlike many in his field, he's an excellent moralist - ironically because it forms no part of his outlook, becoming invisible in his conclusions. 

 

The foundation for this book's success can be found in one of Syed's own anecdotes, retelling his unfortunate thrashing in the first round at the 2008 Olympics. Afterwards, he's informed he focused on the event and the outcome too much. It makes no grand statements, seeks no unassailable positions; it has a frankly terrible front cover. But in focusing on the details, the conclusion takes care of itself - and that has broader repercussions for all of us.

 

 

Gabriel Garcia Marquez 1927 - 2014 

 

During the latter stages of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude, a character returns from the dead. His reason? Loneliness. 

 

Whilst that in itself is a funny and sharply insightful remark, it almost feels like a sleight of hand trick to deceive the most intelligent of readers. Ignoring the metaphorical intent for a moment, consider: a man returns from death, and no one really bats an eyelid when he provides an explanation.

 

The novel is stuffed with clever allusions which are partly illusory in this way - how Garcia Marquez managed to build a state of normality out of the strangest happenings is the book's foundation, and was probably created from two founts - his grandmother, whose deadpan style is recounted in Saldivar Dasso's Garcia Marquez: Journey From The Seeds.

 

The second comes from history itself and there's no doubt a man of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's wit noticed that the fuenta of his novel could be taken from numerous streams of life. The banana massacre, one of the very few episodes laced with anger venomous wit, actually happened in 1928 in Ciénaga, Colombia.  

 

In this novel, death, like everything else, is treated simply as an event in a circular existence, and it feels now as though, particularly with regards to mortality, Garcia Marquez was writing about the novel itself as well as the history of his country and its inhabitants. David Nicholson's 1970 review makes clear how the novel was considered to be on its uppers in the in the decade, and there's a revealing chapter in Gore Vidal's Selected Essays which reveals the newly created chasms in reading habits of east coast Americans via the NY Times bestseller list.

In short, a very rapid advancement in media, television had done for much of contemporary literature - or so it was thought. It's particularly ironic that the autocratic governments popping up all over South America contrived to produce some of the most joyous and freethinking writing seen in the 20th century, including the Kerouacs et al of the 50s.

Marquez had been at the forefront of that vanguard, working as a journalist in Barranquilla and then Caracas, Venezuela as a columnist and the principal reason for the near-airless gap between him and his characters throughout his career is surely down to these formative years. Through sheer practice, Marquez had become the writer's writer.

 

One Hundred Years is the only Nobel-winning book I've read more than once. On a sliding scale of 'chore' to 'joy to read', the latter is definitely the permanent resting place for this book. I first read the book before going to university and at the time enjoyed the stories for their ridiculous natures.

 

I read it again aged 21 after graduating and then I enjoyed the subtexts; having three years of looking at the ingredients, not the cake, had really changed my outlook to all sorts of literature, and I became a bit of a snob for it.

 

Describing my thoughts now, I still love the same things about the book but age - I'm 30 this year - has helped me marry the dual elements above through reading a larger array of books, from pop culture through to inscrutably weird. That cyclical journey, that on the face has no overtly changed from 12 years ago - is an enduring reason of my love for Marquez's finest work; because, at the end, I can relate to what he is saying, and why he is saying it.

Picture thanks to PicLab

Fat Chance

 The second article in a series examining the contributory factors to obesity in the UK.

So, over here I looked at costs associated with food, including average annual inflationary rates for food and fuel, and pressures on affordability, i.e real incomes, alongside a broad definition of what people were eating and who was eating what from a 'socioeconomic' perspective.

In this article I'm going to look at that last element in more detail, and perhaps find out what's driving those spending habits. I'm also going to look at look at contributory factors to cost - specifically, where is our food coming from?

Before we get started however, I suggest you click here and download the government's Food Pocketbook 2013. It's an invaluable guide, produced by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and one I have pilfered from extensively when looking at the above subjects.

But first I'm going to look at what we're not eating - but are buying. Whilst we are definitely moving towards buying a basket of goods with more preservatives added, as 2013's GVA chart on food manufacturing showed, we are still buying food that enables us to have a rounded diet. Price, and therefore affordability, have a correlative relationship with what ends up in the bin. Evidence from 2010's DEFRA report suggests that 15% of all household food and drink is 'wasted' . From this overall figure, the three items we throw away the most are:

1. Bread
2. Vegetables and potatoes
3. Fruit

The three items we're least likely to throw away are:

1. Alcoholic drinks
2. Soft drinks
3. Dairy and eggs

Best to bear in mind we are not throwing away items that are past their sell by date - there is merely a perception that the food is past it's best. That's an interesting nuance.

The most obvious difference between the two lists is the quality of nutrition in each one. There is next to no nutritional value in alcohol or soft drinks, but they are significantly more expensive than fruit and vegetables; therefore there appears to be a perception we can afford to throw away more. Our appetite seems to be tied to financial cost, and not physical health. This may be a major factor in declining health in many British adults.

It's also important to add there are stabilizers and preservatives in soft drinks and alcohol which don't exist in most fresh produce (although it probably isn't true that there are no preservatives sprayed onto fruit and vegetables - it's just that many regulatory bodies don't ask for it). As a result, we're also less likely to chuck it out because it's 'gone off'.

Not only are we wasting food here, we are wasting vast amounts of money. Although fruit and vegetables remain near the bottom of the cheapest goods on offer to shoppers, a more instructive number can be found when looking at price rises per food group between 2007-2013 - approximately the years when many Britons have seen incomes decrease in real terms.

Every food group has increase in price over the six years. Although some of that is to be expected in line with CPI, the numbers are still quite striking. Fruit has increased in price by 34%. Potatoes and vegetables are up by 31%. Meat has increased by 34%, which illustrates the crushing pressures many British retailers are experiencing in trying to remain competitive in consumer eyes (and also goes some way to explaining the horse meat controversy). Butter, margarine and cooking oil - traditionally staple bases of much of British cooking, particularly those on low incomes - increased the most, by 55%. 

It's tempting to say these figures are misleading when considering the basic price of an apple versus a steak, and relatively speaking, on a ratio of 1.1, there is no major loss in throwing away the apple. But do that hundreds, thousands of times, and it becomes easier to see why weight is becoming an issue.

So what are Britons eating, and how much of it are they eating? The 2013 Food Pocket Book lays out the 'eatwell' plate, with set percentages of foodstuffs to follow for a healthy diet. One third of your diet should, for example, include fruit and vegetables, and another 33% on bread, rice, potatoes, pasta and other starchy foods.

Just 8% of your diet should consist of fatty or sugary foods. But when looking at the diet makeup of the average British person in 2011, 22% of their diet consisted of those things, or almost three times the recommendation.

The most concerning result of all of this is that there appears to have been a long term decline in purchasing of what we'd call 'healthy' food amongst the poorest families - i.e. fruit, vegetables, carcase meat (i.e. not processed/reformed). Within that demographic there's also a long term move away from foodstuffs with short shelf life towards goods with preservatives and long life items - a strong indicator of downward pressures on wages.

Between 2007 and 2011 this group of people 20% more flour, 14% more non-carcase meats, 7% more cheese and 5% more confectionary. The obvious correlation between many of these items is price vs life - sweets and flour are long life, cheese is mid-life produce with a typical shelf life of 4 weeks, and non-carcase meat - i.e. processed meats - are consequently considerably cheaper than their carcase alternatives, and therefore can be 'wasted' more often.

So what are the main factors in cost? It's difficult to measure things like marketing budgets and import costs on food. So Defra have helpfully used something called the 'farm-gate' value - i.e. the net value of the item once those things have been subtracted from the gross value - to link a value to each foodstuff, and where it came from.

The first interesting thing to note is that as of 2012 Britain actually produced quite a lot of its own food. This might not be surprising regarding stuff like veg due to our fertile climate and significant farming communities, but it is surprising when once again looking at the horse meat issue. The rationale fr this occurrence was that food pricing in the UK is too high, and as consumer perception does not match real value of food. This drove most high street retailers abroad.

Except it didn't. As of 2012, 83% of all non-processed meat in the UK came from the UK. We actually produce more poultry now than we have ever done previously. The key indicator is our production of red meat - because of the beef export ban linked to things like CJD, there is less impetus for UK farmers to farm cattle.

Therefore the retail market goes into the EU and further to sate the customer demand, and this is where the supply chain breaks down - as people like Jay Rayner have pointed out previously, on multiple occasions, it's very likely supermarkets have painted themselves into a corner that's difficult to get out of when it comes to pricing. HMRC's import/export ratio on meat tells the story with clinical details. We export around £2 billion yet import just over £5 billion each year.

So, although there's a clear economic benefit to importing from within the Eurozone, there are also clear pitfalls to be found when basic foodstuffs increase in price - and the Eurozone doesn't guarantee fixed prices in a global market, as the two examples below show.

The table below is taken from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation. As well as more domestic issues like those described above, you can see how, for example, the rapidly expanding Chinese middle class and slowly rebounding Japanese economy have both contributed to the sharp upward turn in meat prices, particularly beef.

This is taken from a World Bank article in 2013 as food costs started to level out. Here's what the global costs look like for customers in graph form since the turn of the century.

 

So global trade has dramatically altered the purchasing power for supermarkets and other grocers, and has unfortunately produced the sort of weird behaviours you'd expect to see with underperforming businesses who are experiencing long term capital and income problems, not behemoths such as Tesco and Aldi.

It's obvious then from all of the above that three key things have changed in diets in British people over the last 6-7 years. The first is that cost, not nutrition, is driving choices in supermarkets. The second, which is linked to the first, denotes a clear shift in attitudes towards 'value' when retaining food - i.e. we are increasingly less likely to eat fruit and veg due to perceptions about cost versus value.

The third is that, after a relatively stable few years in pricing (and coincidentally a relatively stable global financial market), the types of food bought are again following socioeconomic lines - i.e. the less well off you are, the less likely you are to invest your wages in fresh food, instead investing in longer term but less healthy produce. This last element is being driven by global rises in food types essential to a healthy lifestyle.

In the next and final part of these semi-regular articles I'm going to look at consumer attitudes. Specifically, what drives people to buy food that they know is bad for them?

 

Burger Business

for the disgusting picture>

NW

Zadie Smith

I'm listening to a guy called Kanda Bongo Man on Spotify right now and he's made me think. How many people from the DRC are likely to read a book review written by a white British guy on the internet? If everyone had access to the internet, a PC/laptop, tablet or phone, would my review of Zadie Smith's NW make it into their daily lives? If not why not?

 

More generally who reads book reviews? What does this charming branch of arts journalism exist for (I am not doing arts journalism FYI)? Are those readers black or white? Are they educated? Europeans, East Asians, Africans? Who is interested in this stuff? Is it relevant and why?

 

I suggest an amazing paradox is at work here. A medium that is both ignorant of human existence yet created for and by humans to interact with, opening up preserves to all sorts of visitors. To me, arts literature is vital. It informs me when I walk through the Ancient City in Rome or watch a Brecht play with friends in Salford. But, returning to my original point, I'm the sort of guy that I imagine ingesting this stuff. What about Kanda Bongo Man?  

 

I'd be fascinated to see the average hour on the internet from a guy working in a souk in Algiers for example. Equally, I'd be curious to see if the 30 year old Sydney businesswoman looks at the pages I think she'll look at when she gets back from her day at work. Guess there's interesting cultural perks for those guys checking your emails at GCHQ after all.

     

Humans, like every other species with a brain, are after all creatures of habit, and there is a natural and easy tendency to go for what we know, as long as that does not cause us emotional or physical pain. I'm still not sure that advances in technology will ultimately broaden many worldviews; instead, they will only give us easier access to the things we love already.

 

And that's why I loved reading NW. I've been a fan of Zadie Smith's style for some time now since reading her first novel White Teeth, and that's mainly down to her, in my eyes, exceptional skill at prying open complex cultural habits and transactions with the delicacy of a pearl fisherman, and documenting what's to be found inside. Information is Smith's stock and trade, and she wields it with a precision that I haven't found in many other writers.

 

It's present in her ear for her fellow Londoners dialects, so ripe that its pungency assails your nostrils, and in her topographical mastery of her city, tugging your sleeve as you navigate a place you (I) have never been to or seen. It's there in her cultural bookmarks; the trick is helping you understand an alien gesture, like buying a tabloid and broadsheet, and then revealing the thought processes deftly, like a street magician plying all of his best tricks before your eyes. 

 

That escape from a culture, a series of habits, is also present in much of Smith's work, and in Natalie/ Keisha Blake she finds the best foil yet to tease out the darkest desires of a historical people. I liked her handling of On Beauty's Howard Belsey - his innate fallibility was revealed with a chastening lack of respect for its subject, and it's easy to feel Smith is closer, although ultimately no less clinical, with her subjects here. 

 

Blake's arc starts in the Eighties in a high-rise in NW London, goes on a brief sojourn to Manchester for her formative years, and returns to the nest for the beginning of her professional career, her marriage and the birth of her children. Throughout a spiritual unrest pervades the post-it note chapters; their brevity and layering of detail upon detail lends a restless, anxious air that Leah's story, Keisha's best friend, does not have. 

 

And as the tower of details becomes ever higher, some inevitably fall off, floating past their antecedents, and a connective loop is established between the actions of a woman apparently rent in two by career, family (her son and daughter, and then her mother, sisters and brothers) and locale. And all of it delivered in a hovering indirect third person that observes its subjects anguishes and desires with a delicacy that saw her compared to Dickens. It's a 'performance' in the theatrical sense, and I think it deserved all the plaudits it received.

 

Suffice to say I was equally taken with Smith's rendition of skinny white girl Leah and the unfortunates Nathan and Felix - although unfortunate in different ways. But this is getting pretty long. The source of my admiration for this book, though, is ever-present in small details; in the bus stop outside Felix's dad's house, in Nathan selling a Tube ticket outside his local station, and in the herky-jerky opening chapters of Leah's encounter with Shar. 

 

There's a sense of being there. Of touching and dealing with things that exist, and an invitation to observe the things described from your own home and background. This book stands up to every perspective, regardless of background or set of interests. It exudes so much confidence that it could only have been written by someone at the peak of their abilities, which is exactly where I believe Zadie Smith can be located right now.

 

Thanks for the book London Fictions

 

Bridesmaids

(A Few Words)

Here's a fact: last year, Universal Studios, responsible for distributing Bridesmaids, had its best ever year, raking in nearly $1.4 billion in revenue.

Here's another 'fact': I've never seen Girls, I despised the whole concept of SatC and I quite fancied New Girl but didn't watch any in the end.

Here's a (rhetorical) question based on the two statements above: am I contributing to the continuing fusion of capitalism and conservative patriarchy?

 

TV and film matters. Maybe not as much as literature, or at a push music. History and technology are continually playing a large part here. But it is influential, it's trendsetting, and it's become a stimulator for conversation between dozens of interlinking social groups.

A small exercise: try to remember the last time you started a conversation with 'Have you seen' or 'Did you see'. Pretty easy isn't it? No surprise then, based on all of the above, that film makes a massive, massive amount of money through its central position in our daily existences. We don't need a number to tell us that's undeniably true.

It's not a small jump to suggest that an industry with that much traction gets a say in shaping what others think of each other. That's also a given - and that's mainly why I felt a bit guilty about Bridesmaids. I loved it - and then realised why. I'd never seen anything else like it.

Watching a film is supposed to be fun, so no one considers the implications when they buy  their ticket for whatever they're watching. And why should they? I don't want someone scrutinising my viewing choices (unless it's on here of course).

But going back to that last question: am  I, alongside a broad percentage of the male population, reinforcing a certain 'oeuvre', thereby eschewing a different set of films entirely, by 'opting out'? The $64,000 dollar question here, however, is of a chicken-egg nature: does audience influence output, or visa versa?

 

Take directors - the executors of 'Hollywood's' creations. A 2013 Neilson report highlighted the more or less even gender split in moviegoers in the US over three years. But the top ten highest grossing films in 2013 were all made by men. In 2012, only Kathryn Bigelow made the financial cut.

 

Whilst I'm not suggesting directors like David O. Russell or Steve McQueen are perpetuating a male capitalist hegemony (first and last outing for that phrase) it is coming from somewhere. Women are watching as many movies as men - so what are the reasons for the dramatic imbalance?

 

It could be something to do with genre. Neilson also notes that the most popular genre of film in 2012 was action/adventure, with 61% of moviegoers seeing at least one within the year. Discounting arthouse, musical and re-releases, the three genres least viewed by moviegoers was romances, kids/family films and romantic comedies with less than 25% people watching in each case. It's not unreasonable to suggest two out of three of these genres appeal to women more than men, although it is mighty difficult to prove.

 

Nonetheless there seems to be a correlative relationship there of sorts. Of course it's ridiculous to suggest women don't enjoy action films or comedies and there's obvious perils when matching men and women to film genres. So here's the part that can't be measured - at least accurately, or with any degree of impartiality: is there a top-down assumption on what men and women find funny?

I don't believe that marketing bods in Universal et al are out to reverse women's suffrage through the form of cinema. That was a joke. But budgets and spending constitute risk by necessity - and there are some huge budgets for films out there. And risk is only really assessed based on two composites. The first is unassailable knowledge - that is, empirical fact. Not even 'it is raining'. That's ultimately subjective, based on language, geography. I mean granular, like 'water is wet'. 

The other is effectively educated guesswork, increasingly done through algorithms, increasingly placed in the hands of the customer. That's obvious and everywhere. And that's where the really knotty question lies. We have almost no empirical truths left, beyond those that are irrelevant due to their mundane nature. Another day of existence invariably means progress of some sort in a particular field on inquiry.

So when people watch a film like Bridesmaids and argue over the reasons for its success, much of it does boil down to the fact it is an apparently honest appraisal of women in the real world, behaving normally. But how did Universal reach the decision that that was all it took for an economically successful film?

Tick a couple of obvious questions off: how many films are there like Bridesmaids? Of that pretty small pot, how many were successful and translated well culturally? How many of the actresses have a big following in media? Who was the director? Do they have cultural traction? Are you any closer to a definitive answer? Speaking objectively, it's a miracle this film actually got made, because none of those questions are definitive in any sense.  

The question is pretty obvious: how do you change a setup that's almost entirely based on perspective? Here's a more provocative question: when your best, most accurate consumer research is completed for you every day by consumers, with the author as such making almost no autonomous decisions based on the above, is the industry really the issue here? In a nutshell: is your audience unconsciously preserving a male-dominated industry through its economic decisions?

 

Of course that's all pretty obvious. So here's my solution: formative years are the most important. We should get as many kids watching women screaming about bleaching private orifices as they can. Want to see more films like Bridesmaids? Get films like Bridesmaids into schools. I'm only being a tiny bit flippant.

 

Thanks to artsclash for that awesome comic pic

 

Fat Chance

 

The first of three articles which looks at the effects of diet and budget on health

 

It seems perverse that phrases designed by the business and political classes to identify with shedding waste - belt-tightening, waste reduction, streamlining - seem in life to achieve exactly the opposite result quite a lot.

An unusually literal example of just that occurred today, when it was reported in the Guardian that half of British men and women are overweight. The British Heart Foundation had predictable palpitations, warning that lack of regulation around advertising of cheap junk food was contributing to the nation's expanding waistline, as well as bigger projects like town planning and public transport infrastructure.

I like both of those ideas a lot - emotionally, they appeal to an ascetic side of me that also enjoys not using any form of transport at all and buying and freezing fresh produce for later consumption. It does, however, rely on a couple of key elements; quality and affordability. If the offer is no good, I will not buy it. However, if I was to be priced out of my usual shop, what choice do I have? I have to buy what is available.

The most recent example of this can be found in a 12 month overview of the ONS's annual average consumer price inflation index for 2013. This report highlights the annual average inflation per item in % terms. The only thing with a higher rate of inflation than food over 2013;is alcohol at 6.2% (interesting fact: more pubs closed in 2013 than 2012, when the inflation rate for alcohol stood at 6%)

The average rate of inflation above price for food and non-alcoholic beverages is 3.8%. That's higher than last year's figure of 3.2%, which was at least lower than 2011's all time high of 5.5%. In real terms, British people are paying more for food out of their salary packets year on year.

How do the British compare like for like with Europe? Poorly, according to the OECD, who suggest that the British pay more than their Scandinavian peers, France, and much of Central Europe as well as countries struggling with sovereign debt such as Spain, Italy and Portugal.

As a continent, Britain averages above Europe's inflation rates by.6%. It would be unreasonable to consider costs without means of spending, and this is where a relationship begins to form. The government's report on the issue reported that median income fell by 12% for low income households from 2002-03 to 2010-11. That picture has not changed since. Furthermore, the median income in every other income group - bar the highest income group level - dropped by between 1% and 7%.

It's important to recognise this fact -whilst people can put on weight quickly, it takes a long time for a country to change its national physique, and the downward pressures on real incomes added to the upward pressures on food and energy, particularly oil, which rocketed to above $100 a barrel during the second Gulf War, have begun to force this to happen. Equally important are attitudes to food and eating, which tend to be generational and change at a glacial pace. More on that in the next post.

If that wasn't enough, American nutritionist Dr Adam Drewnowski has made some interesting links between spending power and obesity, and his analysis of what a hypothetical dollar would buy from the average grocery shop is compelling, if disturbing reading. The picture is similar in the UK. The government's own research suggests that:

"Those on lower incomes tend to buy different food items to:

• those on average or high incomes but food prices for these different shopping baskets have risen at about the same rate"

I'll also go into more detail on what those products are, and some interesting information around what informs those decisions, in my next post.

It's pretty pertinent to look at what's available on the supermarket shelf for the average Brit. The Department For Environment Food and Rural Affairs notes that 25% of Gross Value Added in food and drink manufacturing in 2012 was beverages, including soft drinks.

The biggest group was baked and other 'farinaceous' products - which is shorthand for products with flour, starch or yeast in them, and therefore difficult for the human body to break down. The three smallest groups were grain, fish and crustacean and fruit and vegetable providers - which all provide fibre and vitamins A and C. There's also a preservative element to contend with - baked good produce this naturally through the process whilst fruit, veg and live meat and veg have a shorter shelf life, indicating faster turnover. Again it's not hard to see why people turn to Greggs and not the greengrocer.

Finally, British energy prices must also play a part here. As a recent Oxfam survey shows, Britain suffers some of the most volatile price swings For many items to be eaten, they must be cooked, which results in fuel of some sort. And again, despite much of David Cameron's posse deriding Labour's 'Marxist' strategy of price-capping energy bills to customers, there is some meat on the bones of Ed Milband's argument (that's the only food-related metaphor I'll use, FYI).

The same data from the OECD shows Britain paying a comparatively higher cost in real terms of take-home pay than much of their counterparts, and the overall figure for the OECD Europe area was 1.3% in 2013 versus Britain's figure of 3.4% - whilst that compares favourably to countries like Turkey and Norway, it pales in comparison to France and Germany's figures of .6% and 1.4% respectively, as well as Italy and Spain - again (though these last two have probably benefited from massive central investment from the ECB).

Food is a subject that should engender a more emotional reaction than it does. It's the difference between life and death, and everything in between. Yet all the evidence suggests the means to a healthy, sustainable life are being challenged like never before.

Up next: what makes certain food types so popular? What is the effect of branding when buying food and drink? And what can we do to recycle our food to ease cost pressures on manufacturers?

Sources

OECD: Consumer Prices, Annual Inflation Data

http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?queryid=221

Dr Adam Drewnowski: Poverty and Obesity

www.niehs.nih.gov/...n.../supplementary_informationdrewnowski2.pdf

Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Food Pocketbook 2013

https://www.gov.uk/...data/.../foodpocketbook-2013report-19sep13.pdf

ONS wage inflation data 2013 

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/april-2013/sty-awe-dec-feb-2013.html

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/ashe/annual-survey-of-hours-and-earnings/2013-provisional-results/stb-ashe-statistical-bulletin-2013.html‎

Pic courtesy of The Guardian

 

?

Interesting things that I read today:

1. An article suggesting Danes are some of the most indebted people in the world
    
2. The same article stating Denmark has 'statistically' the happiest population in the world
    
3. An article stating that GDP in the UK had grown by 1.9% in 2013
4. An article showing customer satisfaction with businesses had generally improved in the UK

I also watched another episode of Season One of The Wire.

All of these concern two things: money, and the lack/ surfeit of it, and happiness (or in #BizTalk which is basically awful all you hashtaggers).

Does money equal happiness? Is it that simple? Can you measure happiness? Or rather, does it simply make us behave n different ways that result in more positive outcomes?

One doesn't appear to equal the other. Take Denmark. Danes pay the highest taxes in the world, but only earn the sixth highest salary. Effectively, they're losing something, somewhere. It's obviously possible that they get it back in kind - a kind of BIK - from their government through safe and secure neighbourhoods and borders, excellent housing, a flexible labour market and great health care. But where?

The HPI (or Happy Planet Index) seems a good place to start. That's got some big name fans - Zac Goldsmith, for one, although he seems a bit nuts. This looks at subjective well-being, ecological footprint, and life expectancy. Here, Denmark is ranked first on subjective well-being. Britain is ranked 19th.

It's when you look at GDP that it gets interesting. There's approximately 62 million British people, and they generate $35,866 per capita (or £21,641.70 by today's XE comparison) - just over 75% of what US makes in ratio terms.

Denmark, however, generates $40,163 per capita - or 85% of the profit generated by the US, in ratio terms - for its population of 5.5 million people. So 10% more appears to count for a lot, based on the HPI.

What about that great fear factor: after poverty, people are afraid of death. Denmark has one doctor per 294 of its population - by comparison, the Telegraph laments EC figures that state there's 2.71 docs per 1000 people in the UK. Denmark's figure is 3.40 - less than one better. Is that such a big deal?

Denmark spends approximately 9.8% of its GDP on healthcare - at least according to Wikipedia. The UK spent approximately £170 billion on healthcare in 2011, or 9.3% of its budget. Does .5% make such a big dfference?

What about quality of life? In 2012 the average Dane worked 1546 hours over the course of the year - or, assuming he gets five weeks holiday and weekends off, that's about six and a half hours per day. Wow!

By comparison the average UK worker did 1654 hours in 2012 - using the same figures, that's about seven hours per day. There's basically almost nothing in it - again, the only really big difference really does appear to be money, and how much of it people have.

The other interesting element at play here is how happy customers are with businesses. You might not be surprised to learn the least favourable satisfaction scores this year were generated by energy and utility companies - Ed Miliband has clearly been doing his homework.

By contrast, the only major group to have bounced back from declining scores was... banks and building societies. Weird, right? Even though I can testify from first hand and professional experience that some banks are making strenuous efforts to improve their products and services, that is a big jump in just 12 months. Link that in to the widely reported news that in 2013 the UK's GDP grew by 1.9%, taking it back to pre-recession levels, and there seems to be a pattern developing.

To return to one of the main ideas at the start then - do people make better decisions when they have more breathing room financially, and does this help achieve a snowball effect?

Looking at the opposite side of the coin, there is some scientific evidence that quick access to cash with little attention to creditworthiness tends to lead to a decrease in self control, increasing the chance of default. This can have an effect on mental health and result in depression, which is just one of many symptoms of poverty.

In conclusion:

How people achieve a constant state of happiness in an ever-changing economy is a harder question - and many people might not like the answer that comes to mind.

 

Thanks NME for your picture!

 

 

OSCAR CHAT

 

TWENTY EIGHT OUT OF SIX HUNDRED is less than 5%. Other things that are less than 5%:

• The number of voting members of AMPAS that are black.

Steve McQueen stands a great chance of becoming just the 29th black man or woman to win an Academy Award, and the first to win a Best Director award. Since the inaugural awards, there have been 600 Oscars handed out. Having suggested a nomination for handsome Hollywood hero Robert Redford here last week I now feel a bit embarrassed to have overlooked this weirdly archaic statistic. It seems difficult to believe that not a single black director has won an Oscar - in the entire history of the Academy Awards, only four films made by a black director have been nominated.

There are two ways to look at this. The first concerns the above numbers; whilst no one (i.e. me) is suggesting the Academy is institutionally racist, another statistic on their makeup is pertinent: more than half of the makeup are sixty or older. America has changed dramatically since 1953, when Sarah Keys became the first African American to challenge the 'separate but equal' race law in Carolina. That's important. From a demographic perspective it's hard to suggest America's rewarding it's film-making talent. Incidentally, McQueen is British.

The second is a knottier question and therefore a little more difficult to answer. How many films made by black directors deserved to win an Oscar? And, one step back, how many black film directors are there working in the industry? It's knottier because there are smaller considerations that flow into bigger subjects like national politics and macroeconomic policy, and those considerations are much harder to quantify.

For example: the age old debate on equality of opportunity and how that affects career trajectories. The US Social Security Administration (SSA) recently released data showing more than half of Americans earn below $30,000 pa, which is about $3,000 above the 'federal poverty line' (the line delineates who is in living in poverty and who isn't). That was for 2012. As this heat map shows, many Americans in the South live below the poverty line. The US Census Bureau suggests the majority of African Americans live in cities and suburbs within the South (although the suburbs are undoubtedly more affluent than they once were). CNN Money thinks the average public college education (i.e. open to all) is $8,200 pa per student. So allowing for a reasonable margin of error, a good percentage of African Americans will never get to college, and therefore find a door to film-making closed. And that's just part of the question - why are they in that position in the first place?

Demographics do make a huge difference - the most recent American census put the African American population of the US around 12%, so naturally more white Americans will be getting the opportunity to make an Oscar-winning film. But 12% of 381 million people is just under 45 million people - that's the equivalent of Ukraine or South Africa. It also doesn't answer the much more subjective question of quality - how many black directors are making Oscar-worthy films?

So in short, there does seem to be something wrong with the current set-up - but how much of that is in the Academy's hands is difficult to say. One final and interesting thing: the four previously nominated films made by black directors/ producers are The Color Purple, Precious, Django Unchained and The Blind Side. For anybody who's seen those films, there's a certain underdog theme to each, and three explicitly concern slavery. I think the Academy's right to promote these films as great social commentaries but they should be broadening the net more - it does ask an awkward question of what the voters are interested in watching.

Pic from Shetland Arts

 

ALL IS LOST

 **A FEW THOUGHTS**

This was the second of two films I saw last week which focused on imperilled humans at the mercy of their environment. The other film was Gravity, which I posted about below.

Sarah and I discussed both films whilst eating delicious (healthy) Malaysian food at Ning NQ, in Manchester. She hasn't seen either film and does not want to, which I think is a pragmatic reaction to two scenarios which I found very unpleasant to watch.

Sarah said she felt like being adrift in the ocean was much more preferable to space and I am inclined to agree, but on reflection, it seems the defining factors have an air of irrelevance about them. I found myself thinking again that most of the universe, including the planet Earth, is totally intolerant to human life.

I really admired the way JC Chandor set his tale up - with (what may be) the ending at the start of the tale. Throughout this, I kept returning to:

~How do people understand and process a tragedy in their lives?~

As the viewer, did I pity Redford's character because I (thought I) knew of his fate? If I'm under no illusions as to the ending, is the emotional journey more or less satisfying? The main reason I loved this is down to Redford. He invests so much into the character and creates connections with an audience through a full appreciation of, and reaction to, his environment. Another thing I unconsciously noted about All Is Lost is how out of touch almost all American cinema is with its surroundings. You could probably do World War Z in a music hall in the Caribbean, it's that focused in on itself.

Robert Redford should win Best Actor at the Oscars, no doubt. I also think JC Chandor should win Best Director, but with him, McQueen and Cuaron all up for the same thing I don't think the Academy people will make the 'right' choice. History is heavy. Now I have said that Scorsese will win again.

One award I do feel the film will walk away with is the cinematography and sound. It is gloriously expansive, and approaches its human subject in an almost alien manner - the wide underwater lenses observe Redford's plight impassively, almost benignly, from below the ocean surface. It looks and sounds like the world is watching itself.

I did feel the practical attentions of Redford really upped the ante emotionally. Lots of people have come out and claimed the science is bogus in Gravity but what mattered for me there was the fragility and the expertly unravelled storyline, as Ryan's paradox regarding her loneliness is revealed. Just watching Redford pack away glassware and wash items before the coming storm created a tangible, scary foreboding that many directors could learn from. And that's not mentioning the ordeal suffered in his lifeboat following the storm.

This is a great film and, I feel, ought to be remembered in years to come. It is lean, subtle, beautifully shot and will reduce you to an emotional wreck. A must see.

Pic thanks to Athena Cinema, Athens.

 

G     R     A     V     I     T     Y

It was as good as everyone said. I saw Gravity once everyone had come back down to Earth (yes I did that) about the astonishing special effects, the knuckle-shredding tension, the superlative performance from Sandra Bullock (I know!) which will probably see her up for another Oscar.

The biggest draw for me, though, was the 3D element. I have seen four films (I think) in 3D. Gravity is the fourth and so far it's the only one to do anything interesting with the format. And interesting is probably putting it lightly. It was great to feel so directly involved with something, watching a film that made superior use of its environment, much like All Is Lost in fact.

Leaving aside the physics and the chemical side of things, I feel like Cuaron handled the 'space is the ultimate metaphor for the human condition' thing adroitly. Ryan's loneliness is the mirror image of Matt's; but Cuaron riffs on the same sensation through both of them in smart, character-building ways. Matt bounces around the vast nothingness as he tells his story about floating, alone, through the crowded streets of Mardi Gras trying to find his lost love; Ryan stays attached to the dock, focusing down on the one thing in front of her, in the same way that she does with her daughter.

Cuaron finds ways to create drama in a lean, clinical fashion. He has excellent manners when creating drama. He also employs action at strategic intervals like he is conducting an orchestra. The crash sequence is astonishing and has to be seen on a big screen; nothing else will do it justice. This might be the best film I never buy on DVD.

I don't know why Cuaron has been called out for bogus science by those in the know: this seems stupid and self-effacing by those who've said so. Of significantly more interest were the remarks made by overtly Christian writers who suggested a belief in (a) God in the film. Ryan's numerous monologues do appear to be referring to an unconscious belief in someone/thing that's not present: but as the admirably brief intro makes clear, an inhospitable environment's the natural catalyst for humans to reconnect with their absent brethren too. I felt like Cuaron took the humanist route in his treatment of Ryan's grief and both sides should probably feel there's some merit in the others perspectives. Which I suppose is pretty much humanism in a nutshell.

Besides those elements the running time was a pleasant and effective surprise, lending some urgency to the whole enterprise and giving a 'real time' element to the story.

This is also the first time I've loved watching Sandra Bullock in something - her Ryan was full of faults, imprecise in the most unforgiving of environments, and blinded by emotion for her colleague and daughter, both absent to some extent. But getting mad somehow seemed brutally careless - as Peter Bradshaw said, this is the first space film happening now, with real live humans, rather than the past or future, with a faceless android, or a Vulcan. As such empathy was a much more direct sensation - easy, familiar, and it gave the film a powerful directness.

The best expression of Gravity's effects? Afterwards I craved familiarity. Much as Ryan squeezes wet soil between her fingers following re-entry, I wandered around Manchester in the rain, glasses in my bag. You'll never want to go into space again. 

(Pic from Alt Film Guide)