This "Sandwich Makers from Hungary" Story

From the Northampton Chronicle and Echo

An article in the Daily Mail newspaper today said Greencore was having to recruit a 300-strong workforce from abroad to work in its new £30 million sandwich factory, opening in 2016, because “no local people wanted to do the job”. It led to the front-page headline, “Is there no one left in Britain who can make a sandwich?”.

But, in response, the company which produces 430 million sandwiches per year, said it had been “pleased” with the response from local job applicants.

It aims to recruit 250 new people in total to staff the new facility and is not looking to fill all the positions with Hungarians.

Good that all the other newspapers and TV companies didn't just print articles regarding that without calling up to verify, eh?

Sally Mortimer, officer for Unite the Union said: “We welcome the possibility of 250 new jobs in the Northampton area. With the closure of Solway foods in Corby, there are plenty of well-trained members that are looking for permanent work. The jobs fair will give hope to many of the unemployed local people who have struggled to find employment.”

Margot Parker MEP for UKIP pointed out that more than 500 jobs were lost earlier this year when the Solway Food factory in Corby closed. The workers were doing near identical jobs, she said.

She added: “It is apparent that the availability of cheap labour from Hungary is more important than the livelihoods of local people. It is doubly galling that the taxes paid by ex-Corby workers will subsidise the tax credits of the new Hungarian employees. Talk about sticking the knife in.

Jesus. Corby is 20 miles away on a not particularly fast road. I'd be surprised if many people from there would want to travel that far for such a job rather than finding something local in Corby.

And none of this would be a problem if we had a Citizen's Income, because a lot more of the people in Northampton that could do these jobs would take them as they wouldn't lose benefits.

Fun Online Polls: Sandwiches and chemtrails

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll on a good turnout of 116 votes (thanks to everybody who took part) were as follows:

Which are acceptable synonyms for sandwich? Multiple answers allowed.

Outright winners:
Sarnie - 95 votes
Butty - 93 votes

Also rans:
[Ingredient] on [type of bread] - 22 votes
Piece [and...] - 14 votes
Hoagie - 14 votes
Sub/submarine - 13 votes
Double-decker - 11 votes
Sanger - 11 votes
Wrap - 10 votes
Hero - 4 votes
Grinder - 3 votes
Other, please specify - 4 votes

So now we know. The only ones I chose were "butty" and "sarnie" so thankfully I'm in the majority on this.

PeterA5145 said: "It's interesting how many different regional words there are for "bread roll" - bap, batch, barm cake, cob, muffin, bun, stottie, hoagie etc. I've even come across one pub that called them "bunnies"."

Indeed this is very interesting - there are few regional expressions for "bread" as such or a "loaf of bread" but dozens for "bread roll". I'd noticed that in Germany as well, in Austria/south Bavaria a bread roll is called a "Semmel" but if you ask for a "Semmel" in north Germany, they stare at you blankly. I'm sure there's a reason for this although I have no idea what it is. Is it like this in other large countries?
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And lo, to this week's Fun Online Poll.

CriticalThinking touches on another conspiracy theory:

As a flying mad youth, living on Royal Air Force bases in the 1950s and 60s, I observed condensation or vapour trails from planes on a regular basis. Typically, they would last minutes at most, even when artificially induced during aerobatic displays of the Black or Red Arrows (the RAF flying display teams).

Today, you can observe two types of exhaust from jet engined planes: normal, temporary contrails consisting of mainly of water vapour and chemtrails about which there is little information but linger for hours muddying the sky and making it dull and overcast.

We don't know the purpose of these chemtrails but there are observations from around the world confirming both the extent and content of the trails. Samples of high levels of barium, aluminium, polymers and radioactive material have been collected from affected areas.

One theory is that it is being used to combat climate change - creating a reflective layer around the planet - but techniques, such as cloud seeding, have also been used to manipulate weather. It could equally be to induce severe weather to reinforce climate change fear. Who knows? More research required.

All of which baffles me. We know that the military get up to all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff and that there is such a thing as "cloud seeding" if you want to precipitate a rain shower, but I find it difficult to believe that commercial airlines would deliberately contaminate their own jet fuel for purposes unknown.

Surely some pilot or technician or designer or somebody would have blown the whistle by now? I have also been led to believe that there is a very short and clearly defined list of stuff which you are allowed to add to jet fuel. If you get more than a couple of millionth parts of crap it in, the planes won't fly properly, the engines wear out more quickly etc.

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll.

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.