Rob Lyons has an excellent response to the comments of celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay today in Spiked. We like Ramsay and he’s found favour on this blog before, but these latest comments – in which he says it should be illegal for restaurants to offer food shipped from other parts of the world – are simply loony. His TV colleague Janet Street-Porter (whom Lyons calls a “rent-a-gob”!) came to his defense:
“Eating out should mean we have a chance to enjoy great food created with local produce, rather than fish, meat and exotic veg flown in from the other side of the planet.”
Who the hell is she to tell me what “eating out should mean”? It means whatever I say it means! If I want to eat turducken from the Indochina Peninsula or cockscomb gravy from Guyana, and a restaurant is flying it in to serve it to me, then I’ll damned-well do it! This is yet another prime example of someone advocating that their preferences be dictated to everyone by government force; like the BBC Licence Fee (“I think it’s value for money so it should remain in force for everyone”), like laws against prostitution (“I don’t think it’s right so it should be banned”) and so much else. Ramsay should stick to what he’s good at: cooking food, making entertaining television and pissing off vegans.
In other punditry, Radley Balko reports that a website called RateMyCop.com is pissing off police departments around America by offering citizens the chance to review how the police officers handled their particular situation (be it a traffic stop, a call or other encounter):
“Site founder Gino Sesto wrote to police departments across the country and obtained lists of the names and badge numbers of their officers. He then posted the names online in a format broken down by state and city, encouraging users to rate their experiences with individual officers.”
I think the idea is brilliant. It creates accountability to the public, and I can’t ever see that as a bad thing.
And before I finish I’ll point you to a couple of interesting discussions between myself and other punters over at W&T: the first between myself and Peter Morrow on allowing people to buy and sell human organs HERE, and the second between myself and Peter Henderson on the BBC licence fee HERE.
Have a great Tuesday, friends; more ahead.