Waste in the kitchen and at the BBC

What a waste...

...two articles caught my eye yesterday. One was about the huge amount of food we waste every Christmas. We shop. We cook and serve. We eat (some). We bin the rest. Thrown away are:

• the equivalent of two million turkeys (it didn't say what size turkeys, but even small turkeys are big birds and two million of them is rather a lot);
• five million Christmas puddings (have you tasted those things? little wonder they end up in the bin. We probably only buy them because we think we have to, because they have the word Christmas in their name;
• 74 million mince pies. See above, really, they're not very nice either, are they?

That was in the Guardian, online edition.

They signed off with the fact that we will also throw away (and into the sewers, mostly, where it forms a solid, soap-like material that has removal costs of about £50 million a year) enough turkey fat to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool.

I think we should all make an effort. Estimate more accurately. Buy less, think about it more, waste less.

I also think that we should all take the turkey fat to this Olympic-sized swimming pool and fill it full. It would be an interesting art installation, and, it'd be a right laugh watching the early Boxing Day morning fitness fanatics go diving into that fat.

The second article was in the Big Issue, and recorded the expansion in numbers of, and the tonnage handled by, food banks.

So, before lobbing anything out, and particularly if you're working on the 27^th or 28^th, when it's likely to be wet and cold, wouldn't it make sense to wrap and bag some leftovers you're never going to eat and hand them straight to someone who needs them more than the local landfill? Or to find the nearest food bank or soup kitchen and drop it off there?

BBC on the defencive...

...after criticism of their payoffs for failing management. Don't see how is defensible.

George Entwistle (failed to manage the Jimmy Saville stuff, at all) left with a £450,000 payoff.

Deputy Director General Mark Byford trousered a cool £949,000.

Caroline Thomson copped £670,000. Severance pay. She had to leave because she was passed over in favour of Entwisle.

That's two million quid in licence payers' money paid to three people in one-off, brown envelope, golden handshake payments.

The report criticising this (according to Patten) is 'shabby' and 'unfair'. How fair is paying money for something I don't, and never will want? How shabby is rewarding failure with other people's money?