Gordon Ramsey: Statist, Authoritarian Wierdo
GORDON RAMSEY, the cook turned TV 'personality', wants the state to outlaw the use of out of season ingredients. Yes, really.
He said: "Chefs should be fined if they haven't got ingredients in season on their menu ..... "There should be stringent laws, fines and licensing laws to make sure produce is only used in season. If we get this legislation pushed through the Houses of Parliament then the more unique this country will become."
I'll stop here only to ask - what the hell is 'more' unique? As for the proposal and what it reveals about this odious creep, Perry de Havilland at Samizdata says puts it well enough:
The 'I am' does not want to see something and so wants his views be the force backed law of the land, the psychopathology of the expert that we so often see coming from doctors at work again. The great unwashed must be forced to follow expert opinion, which means their opinion, naturally.
I like the idea of third world farmers pulling themselves out of poverty and selling me their products whenever I want to buy them and why should a loud mouthed self important chief and a bunch of fascistic green activists get to have a say in that? Their craving to impose their will on others should stop being socially acceptable and they need to be called authoritarian thugs to their faces.
Pete Moore
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Reader Comments (14)
I'll stop here only to ask: what the hell is a "wierdo"?
Assuming that Mr. Ramsey can read , I suggest that he gets an ethics for beginners and looks up "autonomy" .
I'll stop here only to ask: what the hell is a "wierdo"?
The Doctor,
How many Michelin stars have YOU? I assure you Mr Ramsey not only can read tolerably well but can write too. You and Pete ought to develop a little more respect for your betters.
Pete,
Fully agree with you and Perry. Been away all day and had no time to blog but Ramsay can f*** off, to borrow his favourite expression.
Just hang-on a moment you lot!
Forget about your personal dislike of Ramsey, and the exaggerated way he spoke. I listened to him on radio 4 this morning, plus a couple of retail food specialists, and I agree with the general drift of what Ramsey and the others, were trying to say.
What was pointed out is that British vegetable growers are in decline and increasing amounts of good agricultural land is being sold off to developers, all to assuage our greedy consumerist desire for more and more exotic food, no matter what the cost; and it costs a bomb in fuel and pollution.
Have you all forgotten about the EU grant to fruit growers in the 1970s, to grub out fine productive orchards around the country in order to make way for apples/pears etc, from France and the rest of Europe?
We can grow all the healthy food we need, all the year round, without- "asparagus from Venezuela in January", as was one of the comments.
It's the super-market 'bird-table' syndrome: put the food out and people will flock down to gorge themselves whether they need it or not.
Take the table away and they'll eat something else.
No-ones going to starve.
We don't NEED the 26,000 different kinds of food that super-markets bedazzle us with.
Eat in season. It's good for you... and the planet.
PS. I live on a farm.
Bernard -
If Waitrose wants to sell Venezuelan asparagus and I want to buy it, that's none of your business.
If I want to flock to the supermarket bird table, that's none of your business.
If you don't advocate the use of state power to proscribe certain foods - what's your point? If you do think that the violence of law ought to be applied in the regulation of what we can eat, you're an authoritarian fetishist like Gordon Ramsey.
Bernard,
That's telling 'em. Mr Ramsey is a tonic, a gifted individual who achieved his great success by, in his own words, "working my ballocks off". Where food is concerned this man knows what he's talking about and should be heeded.
Like him or loathe him as a person, the less talented among us should hesitate before describing him as an "odious creep".
Ramsey would be on stronger ground if he stood up for British farming against the greedy bullying supermarkets.
Where food is concerned this man knows what he's talking about and should be heeded.
Clearly so. But when it comes to liberty, he's retarded.
Bernard,
Fair enough but if he has a case for what he's saying then he should make it instead of demanding force.
Too many people believe that the solution to every problem is to give somebody else more power.
Frank- that last sentence of yours was a good one, and most applicable generally. Must remember it.
And Pete, a local farmer very near me has given up beef rearing (he says he cannot compete with cheap foreign imports, and EU regulations) and has applied to the council for a change of use of one of his fields to a car park, for Gatwick airport overspill.
A council poster has been put up to give us all a democratic right to say yay or nay to it.
As you say,that may well be be HIS business, but it's also MY (and our) business too!
Savvy?
Dawkins ; I have no betters , I may have equals , but damn few of those . If Ramsey's cooking is as good as his logic I would rather have fish & chips .
The Doctor,
Ramsey's cooking is matchless in my opinion. Bernard has already explained the logic. Bon appetit with your fish & chips
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