It is that time of the year when Christmas presents need to be bought. But the decision as to whether to buy online or from our local shops was a dilemma.

On the surface the dilemma is easily resolved. Online shopping is cheaper and convenient. Click on the web site and a few days later a package appears on the doorstep. No walking along the high street searching for a present. But with the recent disruption to the mail by the postal strikes and delivery companies failing to deliver parcels on time then the convenience part of the online shopping equation was under question.

When I was looking for a particular book as a Christmas present I found that there was a £5 difference between my local bookshop and buying online. Given the recent problems with buying online I asked myself whether price and convenience should be the only criteria. Was I drunk on convenience which is fuelled by relentless marketing or should there be other factors that I should take into account?

Searching on the web produced some interesting facts. For example, research has shown that for every £1 spent with a local business, 63p stays in the local community compared to 40p that is spent in a large store. Local businesses pay their taxes while it is not clear if online companies pay any tax at all! There was even a discussion that a vibrant high street increases house prices.

So I headed off to my own high street with open eyes to gather some information. The first, and maybe obvious fact, is that when I see a product in the window or on the shelf I can buy it there and then. Job done! If the shop doesn’t have the product then they can usually get it quicker than I can by going online. Then there is the personal experience in shopping. I can get helpful advice: the butcher gives excellent advice on cooking a particular cut of meat, the wine merchant helps to select a wine to go with a particular meal, the builder’s merchant advises on house repair problems and the my regular chats with the newsagent puts the weeks news into context. If I cannot find the item that I am looking for then I have to blow the dust off s my imagination and came up with something that I wouldn’t have thought about which has produced some interesting presents!

Local businesses are highly innovative and adapt quickly to the changes in their customer’s needs. Also, because they are local they don’t suffer from the much discussed supply chain disruptions. During the recent egg shortage when Sainsbury’s were importing eggs from Italy our local egg producer made sure that there was always eggs on the shelf. There are many more reasons to support local business: they support local charities by donating products and services to raffles, charity shops are part of the recycle movement which reduces waste, reduction in carbon foot print and even the health benefits in carrying the items home.

2022 was the year that I did the vast majority of my Christmas shopping using local businesses. What I have found is that I have bought less presents but better quality, and using second hand, shops my overall budget has been reduced. The power is with us as the shopper as to how we spend our money and we can use the power to develop our local businesses. But what about the difference in price between online and local shops? For me it is an investment in the local shops which will ultimately benefit the local community.

Dear Lord Bird,

I read in an edition of The Big Issue that you had decided to stop work on your paper It’s Expensive Keeping People Poor and concentrate your efforts on tackling the cost of living crisis. However, I would like you to reconsider your decision.

Judging by the title of your paper and the content of the article it was addressing the situation that keeps people in poverty. The article suggested that your paper would argue that moving resources to education and early child and family intervention would prevent poverty. Your paper sounds as though it could make an important contribution to eliminating poverty.

The UK is in a cost of living crisis that is predicted to last many years. Therefore it is important that there is a safety net in place to prevent more people slipping into poverty. Switching your effort into making sure that they are as strong as possible is very important. However, there will always be some crisis that draws our attention to the short term: today it is the rising cost of energy and food caused by the war in Ukraine, tomorrow it could be China flexing its global muscles or another pandemic. In a crisis it is important to keep an eye on the medium to long term if anything is going to fundamentally change for the better.

In a crisis priorities change, things that were thought important are dropped and other areas become more important. Covid, our last major crisis, showed that family and community were more important than the ‘me society’ People on low wages who were keeping us safe and fed have received an increase in public support for an improvement in their lives. I believe now is the time to build on this change in people’s perception. As priorities change then the key factors to eliminate poverty can be embedded in the new priorities. Your paper, along with your other initiatives, such as Big Futures Campaign should be given maximum promotion to push the UK government into taking focused action to eliminate poverty.

I appreciate that you are extremely busy and that you need to concentrate your efforts on the cost of living crisis. However, the solutions to eliminating poverty is not an either / or situation. We need the short, medium and long term situation to be address at the same time if poverty is going to be eliminated. Hope is a quantity that is in short supply at the moment. If you find a few minutes in your busy schedule then please continue with your paper and add a spark of hope.

When we have milk close to its use by date it’s used to bake a milk loaf. Slices of the delicious bread are quickly eaten. When I was kneading the dough for my recent loaf an idea struck me about reducing food waste.

The idea, which was more of a question was, could perishable food that had reached its use by date be baked or cooked into food that can be used to feed a hard pressed community? But with all ideas that seem to pop into my head it needed to be more focused.

The next step was to find out what happens to perishable food when it reaches its use by date. The best place to start was with the supermarkets who by far sell most food in the UK. I know from my regular shops that when items on a supermarket shelf get close to their use by date a yellow sticker appears and the price is dropped. This is a great time to buy the items especially if it can be baked, cooked or frozen for later use. For example vegetables that are close to their use by date can be turned into a big pot of vegetable soup that can last a few meals. But I needed to find out what they did with the perishable food that was not shifted with the yellow sticker. So I contacted all of the major supermarkets with the simple question: “what happens to perishable goods when they get close to their use by date or start to go off?”

The supermarkets replied but there was a wide range of detail which could be a few lines to several screens worth including links to their company policy. In general, the supermarkets go through various stages to reduce the amount of food waste. They have improved their stock control so that the amount of unsold food is reduced. Unfortunately, this is starting to have an impact on food banks where the amount being donated by them is dropping. Any surplus food at the distribution hubs can be donated to people in need using organisations such as FareShare. If there is perishable food on the shelves close to the use by date then a yellow sticker goes on and the price is dropped. Interestingly some supermarket will use damaged fruit and vegetables in their staff restaurant. Lidl have an initiative with their ‘too good to waste’ boxes that are sold at £1.50 and what I have seen of it is good value. Food left at this stage is donated to local causes through organisations such as the: The Trussell Trust, Food Aid Network and Feeding Britain. Other organisations used are Neighbourly and Esther Community Enterprise who distribute food along with clothing within their local communities.

Mobile phone apps such as To Good To Go take unsold food from cafes, restaurants, hotels, shops and manufacturers and distribute it through a network of volunteers. OLIO and Food Waste Heroes collect surplus food from local businesses, bring it home and list it on the OLIO app, and redistribute the food to their neighbours, who pick up the food. Finally, if there is any food left that can not be donated then the supermarkets turn it into green energy using anaerobic digestion.

So what does this all show? Supermarkets have systems and processes in place that ensure that any unsold food is being used in the best way possible and waste is minimised. As for my idea? There are already excellent organisations such as the Sunderland Community Soup Kitchen and other community kitchens that take surplus food and turn them into into meals for their local communities. Therefore the idea that I had is already in use. Oh well, back to baking bread and waiting for another idea.

I enjoy baking my own bread for myself and family but with the cost of living crisis is it a luxury that we can still afford?

How I started baking bread is lost in the past. It probably was when somebody in a newspaper praised bread made from a bread machine. Eventually we bought one and the taste and texture of the loaf was much better than anything bought. After a couple of years I started wondering if I could bake my own bread without a machine. I bought a few second hand books on the subject and turned out my first loaf which was well received by my family. After a while, I started reading books by famous bakers such as Richard Bertinet then milk loaves, seeded bread and brioche started to appear on the table. Feeling confident in my bread production I took a deep breath and had a go at the holy grail of baking bread - sourdough! Now I enjoy experimenting with my own recipes. But with increasing costs of flour, butter and electricity is it a luxury?

My challenge was simple - can I bake a popular loaf such as the farmhouse white for the same price, or less than, than a bought one?

It has been a few years since I bought any bread, therefore walking around the bread shelves of a supermarket I was surprised to see such a wide range of loaves which covered every combination imaginable from plain to seeded and in different sizes and shapes. The supermarkets have tapped into the sourdough market but there is an ongoing debate about whether it is genuine sourdough because they can use bakers yeast to accelerate the process. On most high streets there are family owned bakeries such as Taylors of Bruton in Somerset, or Oxford’s in Dorset. They offer a reduced range of bread that include farmhouse white, seeded and sourdough as well as very tempting cakes, tarts and biscuits. Finally there is the artisan baker who turns up at farmer’s markets and usually concentrate on french breads, sourdough, seeded and flavoured such as olive and cheese. The price of the breads reflects the production process. The supermarkets rely on the Chorleywood Bread Process that mass produces loaves in their thousands per hour which can get the cost down to as little as 39p for a loaf. Whereas a family bakery has higher higher labour costs and therefore are more expensive. With the spectrum of bought bread my challenge was to see where the cost of producing my own bread would lie.

The key ingredients for baking bread are: flour, water, yeast and salt. A few other ingredients can be added to affect the taste such as sugar and butter. Cost for the different ingredients can vary considerably. For example strong bread flour can range from £1.30 for a 1.5kg bag for a supermarket brand to £2.40 for 1.5kg bag for a top branded product. Personally I can’t tell the difference between the flours because most of the taste comes from the crust which depends on how the bread is baked.

The breakdown of the approximate costs for making a 800g farmhouse white is as follows:

Ingredients	Amount	Cost ( pence )
Flour	500g	50
Yeast	3g	5
Sugar	4g	1
Butter	25g	20
Salt	6g	1
Water	350g	3
Electricity	0.8kWh	30
TOTAL		110

The total cost for my farmhouse white bread is £1.10 which is less than a typical farmhouse white from a supermarket costing approximately £1.20 therefore the costs are still comparable. The majority of the cost is the flour with electricity coming a close second. With some careful shopping such as buying the ingredients when they are on offer then the cost of my farmhouse white could be reduced further. To save a bit on electricity a number of loaves could be baked in one go which would spread the cost and could be frozen for later consumption.

Of course buying bread from the high street is more convenient that than baking it by hand which for many people with busy lives may be the best way. However, there are many advantages of baking your own bread. First their is health. Industrialised bread is one of the most common ultra-procesed foods in the UK and research is beginning to show that there are increasing health risks. Another aspect is that the ingredients can be controlled when baking your own bread. The Chorleywood Process relies on chemical improvers and antifungal agents as well as hydrogenated or fractionated fats which is being blamed for a sharp increase in gluten intolerance and allergy as well as obesity. Home baked bread uses none of these ingredients.

Another aspect to home baked bread is to do with mental health. There is a lots of satisfaction in throwing a few ingredients into a bowl, mixing it and then kneading it into life. During baking there is the intoxicating smell of fresh baked bread that fills the house and lifts everybody’s mood. Then there is the mental stimulation from learning to bake bread and the sense of achievement when you see everybody tucking into fresh slices bread. Finally it is great way to introduce children to baking and understanding how their food is made.

As the cost of living crisis worsens baking bread at home can still be a viable option compared to buying bread. Although it takes time to bake bread at home there are many benefits for health and wellbeing. We will still be cranking up the oven and watching the bread rise with its golden dome.

Back-of-the-envelop calculations can be a springboard for interesting questions about a topic. It can be used to dissect government announcements or the opinions of experts. A calculation on one of the critical elements of life - food - unearthed a lack of government action.

As the name suggest a back-of-the-envelop calculation is just that: a calculation done on a piece of paper the size of an envelop. Taking some key numbers for a topic, a quick calculation can be done to to assess whether what is being claimed makes sense. If it doesn’t then more details can be sought or the assumptions made to do the calculation can be checked. Back-of-the-envelope calculations are used regularly by engineers and scientists to quickly check whether their ideas are doable. But they can be seen being used on TV. One prominent example where the use of the back-of-the-envelop calculations is Sir John Harvey-Jones in his series The TroubleShooter, where he visited businesses that were in financial trouble. As he went around the company talking to various people he would jot down numbers in a small book then using the resulting calculations he would give advice on the best way forward. Another example is on The Dragons Den where the dragons are seen scribbling down numbers during a pitch for investment then based on their calculations may offer a deal for a stake in the business.

Recently I was reading Yanis Varoufakis’ interesting book Talking to My Daughter About the Economy when I came across the term “surplus” in connection with agriculture. The book went onto describe it it as “… simply meant any produce of the land that was left over after we had fed ourselves and replaced the seeds used to grow it in the first place.” and goes on “ … the production of agricultural surplus gave birth to the following marvels that changed humanity for ever: writing, debt, money, states, bureaucracy, armies, clergy, technology and even the first form of biochemical war.” Quite a claim.

The idea of a surplus supporting life raised questions about how many people in agriculture support the rest of the country. Searching for a few numbers on the web I found that there are approximately 466,000 people working in the agriculture industry. The population in the UK is about 67.5 mn. The back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that it take one person to feed approximately 140. Is that ratio good or bad? Checking other countries such as Germany where the ratio is approximately the same as the UK. In Spain it is approximately 1 person feeding 58. The difference between Spain and the UK is probably down to levels of mechanisation. The thought that struck me while doing this calculation is that we depend on very few people to produce our food. Compared to other industries such as Management Consultancy where there are roughly the same amount of people as in agriculture yet given the UKs lack of productivity questions have to be asked about its effectiveness.

The next question that comes to mind was about the level of agricultural productivity. The UK is about 60% self sufficient in the growing of its own food. Whereas Germany food self-sufficiency is 80%. The only European country to be self-sufficient is France. Given that the global supply chains are being disrupted by climate change and geopolitics it would be prudent for the UK to increase its self sufficiency in food to say 80% ( we would still need to import food that we can’t grow such as tea and coffee etc. ).

Therefore, this increase in self sufficiency would require a 33% increase in either mechanisation or automation or employing about 100,000 more people in agriculture. The UK Goverment’s Food Strategy recognises that there needs to be an increase in food self-sufficiency but there are no clear plans to achieve that aim. For example there is lots of discussion about the increased use of robotics but looking at the current developments from companies such the Small Robot Company’s, where they are developing the exciting concept of per plant farming, it is tens of years away from main stream agriculture. There is very little discussion about how more people could be attracted into agriculture. Food production is a critical activity in our lives and the UK government must be more proactive in securing its future rather than leaving it to market forces which is undermining its sustainability.

Back-of-the-envelope calculation bypass a lot of complexity but it is a quick way to start a series of questions that digs down into the difference between what is being claimed and what is being done. Anybody who can do simple arithmetic can carry them out and in the case of government policy back-of-the-envelop calculations can be used to ask questions that can hold them to account.