Churnalism

You’d think a self-styled news organisation might want to expose the mechanisms by which governments fund arms-length organisations to “pressure” them – and the public – into following some previously-decided agenda.

Not so.

Scottish households throw away a billion pounds worth of food a year, according to new report into eating habits. The Waste and Resources Programme ( WRAP) report revealed the most common discarded items were fruit and vegetables, milk and bread. Researchers examined waste from more than 1,000 homes and found that one in seven items was still in its packaging. Disposing of food waste costs councils an estimated £85m each year. The report found that Scottish households throw out 570,000 tonnes of food and drink each year. This translated to an annnual loss to the average household of £430.

I would love to see the methodologies and sampling techniques which produce these statistics. Is the average Scottish household really binning £8 worth of food every week ? Are one in seven items of packaged food really chucked ? I think not.

Commenting on the report, Environment Secretary Richard Lochhead said: “I’m sure most people would agree that it’s shocking to think that society needlessly wastes £1bn of food each year in Scotland.

“Food waste is one of the many issues currently being addressed in the government’s draft Zero Waste Plan, which I would urge people to have their say on.”

Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you – given that you paid them to say it ?

I would avoid clicking on this link (pdf – WRAPs “business plan”) unless you suffer from insomnia, but suffice it to say that every penny of the £62 million that WRAP, a not-for-profit limited company, get through each year in producing dodgy reports, comes out of the taxpayer’s pocket. Indeed the most interesting thing about them is the fact that retiring chairman Vic Cocker is the brother of rock singer Joe.

Dr Nicki Souter, Waste Aware Scotland campaign manager, added: “This report being so detailed truly shows the public how much food is currently being wasted in Scotland.”

The Waste and Resources Programme is 100% publicly funded, what of Waste Aware Scotland ? Again, this link is even more tedious (they have four workstreams and eight matrices, you’ll be pleased to know – if only they were producing something other than verbiage, strategies, reports and seminars), but I can tell you that they are a taxpayer-funded fake charity, if somewhat leery of telling us exactly how deep in our pockets their hands reach (they “will draw down funding on a monthly basis by submitting the Scottish Government’s application for payment schedule“). As the Fake Charities site tells us :

“These charities are usually brought to our attention through interviews in the mainstream media (MSM) in which they support the position of the government that funds them”

The bad news is that :

SWAG (Scotland Waste Awareness Group) will continue to develop Waste Aware Business in partnership with CoSLA, CRNS, Envirowise Scotland, EST, NISP, Remade Scotland, Scottish businesses and retailers, WRAP and other partners as appropriate.

So many acronyms, so little time. It looks as though we’ll see plenty more Government press releases on the BBC ‘news’ site in the future.