Felders' Blog

It’s not unusual for me to get irked by a tabloid headline, but today The Sun has gone too far.

“99% of you want this” it claims, showing a judge wearing a black cap.

To say this is misleading is an understatement.

Firstly, on a headline, ‘you’ suggests the general public. Which it isn’t. It’s a poll of Sun readers.

Secondly, it isn’t all the Sun readers. It’s 100,000 or so of them - and I believe that their readership is about 4m.

So, essentially, their headline *should* read ‘About 99% of the 2.5% of Sun readers (about 6% of the population) can be bothered to phone in and tell us that they want the death penalty reinstated’.

Don’t get me wrong, I know tabloids always do this - skewing their figures to demonstrate ‘public opinion’, but this is such an important issue (life or death, frankly), that I think some editorial sensibility is required.

This is not a debate that should be reignited.

There are several reasons why I disagree with the death penalty - the often-rolled-out argument that innocent people *can* be killed (and have been). The fact that lives are in the hands of fallible people. Or, if you want to take a religious view, the fact that ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’ (which, as a commandment, pretty much trumps the ‘eye for an eye’ argument).

Also, the death penalty means that you are saying ‘it’s sometimes ok to kill people’, which I think is incredibly wrong.

This argument has come about because Sally Anne Bowman’s mother has called for it.

As have the parents of lots of murdered kids.

Well, obviously. If someone murdered someone in my family, I’d want to kill them as well. But it doesn’t make it right.

You’re never going to get an objective opinion out of the relative of the victim, so how about the media stop asking them for their opinion? I feel for these people - it’s horrific what they’ve been through - but I don’t want my justice system in the hands of those seeking bilious revenge.

found here:

http://www.opensourcefood.com/people/felders/recipes/citrus-seared-tuna-salad/

I shopped at Tesco yesterday and it confirmed my worst suspicions about how shite they are.

Firstly, having to barge into a checkout queue to get a basket is rubbish.

Then, at the herb section (when I say herb section, I really mean parsley & lemon thyme section, because clearly they are incapable of stocking sufficient levels of anything else), I noticed a pack of jumbo tiger prawns, open, with half a prawn remaining, where the rosemary should have been. Nice.

Almost as nice as the cheese shelf, where someone had apparently upended their entire weekly shop, complete with frozen goods and meat, into the cheese area.

Top this off with 5-people-deep queues and 5-IQ-point-deep checkout staff and you get the Finchley Tesco shopping experience.

Awesome.

…to Kandoo. That little bastard’s from the Glade Touch ‘n’ Fresh advert.

See? Not only is it shit but I don’t even know what fucking product it is after seeing it 50 times.

This must be one of the most common gripes ranted about on blogs in the UK but I don’t care.

I’m going to invoke Charlie Brooker mode and ask why in the living fuck Kandoo haven’t pulled that advert of that annoying little fucknut toddler who says ‘it’s all gone, it’s all gone’ - for a start it’s bollocks. Kids LOVE the smell of their own shit, as do grown-ups frankly. No self-respecting toddler would scream for their mother because they’d done a shit and it smelled.

So it’s bollocks AND annoying. And what’s more, everyone finds it annoying.

That little girl in the Petit Filous advert gets under my skin as well, but it seems the fantasy world within advertising has a dark sense of justice because the next time I saw her was hooked up to a portable drip looking miserable and advertising Cancer research.

Now I’d like to point out that I have nothing personal against these actors, nor would I belittle the work of fabulous charities, but can’t the directors stick something better together? I mean that kid in the Triple Velvet adverts? He’s awesome. A little star. I bet his Dad goes down the pub saying ‘You know that kid who says “You’re Fired” in the bog roll ad? That’s my Mikey.’ Contrast that with the mother who has to bring in the perfume for the little can’t-stand-the-smell-of-his-own-shit child, who has to negotiate the streets of Bicester with a bag over her head for fear of being bottled by an embittered local.

Customer Service rants are par for the course on my blog, so it’s nice to pay a company a compliment every now and again…

When buying some wine in there, I got into a conversation about D’Arenburg wines (mmmmmm) with the nice wine expert lady.

When discovering I liked a particular red, she said ’sadly we don’t stock that here’, but made calls, found out it was on offer in the other local branch and then found me while I was shopping elsewhere in the shop to tell me.

The previous week I’d asked the butcher if he happened to know whether they sold knife sharpeners. He responded by coming out from behind his counter and walking me to the other side of the store to show me exactly where it was.

Man, I don’t ever want to go to Tesco again.