Alex Massie Alex Massie

George Orwell’s lesson for Jamie Oliver

Jamie Oliver, eh, what a card? Why can’t Britain’s revolting poor eat better food? If they can afford televisions they can afford mussels and rocket too, don’t ya know? Something like that anyway. But instead they loaf in front of the goggle-box stuffing their fat faces with lardy ready-meals and fast food. What is to be done with them? And why can’t they be more like the Spanish or the Italians?

Never mind that Italian children are more likely to be obese than British children. Never mind, too, that kids in impoverished southern Italy are more likely to be overweight than children in the wealthier north. Instead just fantasise about a future in which poor British families will dine on fresh vegetables and the finest seafood. Failing that, they can make do with something “slow-cooked” or the “amazing texture” of a meal fashioned from “leftover stale bread“.

Of course it is true that “peasant food” in other countries can be good for you and relatively simple to prepare. But, hark at this, when peasants become wealthier they often leave these time-consuming meals behind. They want something reasonably nourishing and tasty that can be prepared quickly. They made a virtue of want; they’d also like to leave want behind.

Oliver doubtless means well. But his comments are not so far removed from the kind of nasty authoritarianism that wants to deny fat people treatment on the NHS or thinks the unemployed should be banned from purchasing tobacco or alcohol. The poor lead difficult, sometimes miserable, lives so let’s make their lives still more miserable and difficult. Punish them for their sins! Or rather, for the sin of appalling their wealthier compatriots. Slap a minimum price on alcohol that will hurt the schemies. What finer way to express our disgust for them and their ugly little lives? We, after all, will always have claret.

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