I am about to cook a serious Sunday lunch (well, as serious as I get in cooking) but I came across this which I had completely missed this week.
The New Economics Foundation has produced a report into our ecological debt – ie the imbalance between what we consume versus what we produce. Frightening. And properly illogical:
“* We export 5,000 tonnes of toilet paper from the UK to Germany but then import 4,000 back again
“* We import 22,000 tonnes of potatoes from Egypt and export 27,000 tonnes the other way
“* 4,400 tonnes of ice cream get exported from the UK to Italy and 4,200 is exported back”
I would really really like to have the choice of buying as much food and household stuff as possible from within a local radius. There was a restaurant in London that used to do this – I have no idea if it’s still there but if it is, I’m going to go there next week on principle.
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Bravo! The only opne that might be a bit suspect is the potatoes – we export seed potatoes and import potatoes to eat.
But, Kinglear, you have pointed out exactly the qualitative difference that makes the quantitative one irrelevant. Ice cream, potatoes and toilet paper are not pure commodities: there are hundreds of different flavours, varieties and brands. This is economics 101.
Who is to tell the British they can’t have stracciatella ice cream and who is to tell the Italians they can’t have Cornish ice cream?!
Similarly, why shouldn’t the Bavarians wipe their bums with bronco, if that is what they wish, and Geordies buy luxury scented bogroll made in Cologne?