I took a long time to wake up this morning, and rise to the challenge of a trip to Maindy pool. By the time we'd medicated the pussy cat (recovering from a leg abcess), done our swim, and sat in a traffic queue to get home for half an hour, it was eleven, leaving little of the morning left for chores and preparations for travel. By lunchtime, however, Clare had successfully navigated the Air Canada booking website, and bought our 'plane seats to fly to Calgary when we visit Rachel Jasmine and John for a (hopefully) white Christmas and some skiing in the Rockies, where they now live. Then it was down to St John's for a curtailed visit and chat over some light washing up - not many customers in this warm weather, when now there are so many places around town where people can sit outside to eat and drink.
Finally the Food Police have caught up with the Tea Room, I learned. The sale of home made cakes is banned under new Health and Safety legislation. Anyone wanting to provide these for sale must have a kitchen of a certain standard and be prepared to open it for H&S inspection. While some providors are unoncerned by this insistence, others see it as an invasion of privacy and a serious challenge to their integrity as domestic food providors. Home made cakes are a key attraction to the food retail 'offer' made by St John's. There's nobody who doesn't take food hygiene seriously, and no serious food related H&S 'incident' has ever been reported. As someone pointed out St John's is an easy target for the enforcers because it is in such a high profile public place, but there are hundreds of churches all over the country that rely on the income from home made food sales that will suffer if this legislation is enforced.
To my mind, however well intentioned and correct this procedure may be, it is an imposition which is foreign (yes, from the EC in Brussels), where British bureaucrats we're led to believe are under-represented), and without due regard to the prevailing culture of wholesome food preparation, or proper respect for the conscientious people who prepare it in good faith. These rules are not evidence based, as far as I can gather. Can anyone show relevant statistics of those made sick by consuming home made cakes at church fetes, receptions or tea rooms like ours around the country? And if so, what's the statistical variance between these figures and random fluctuation? Furthermore, how is this legislation to be enforced if so many are engaged in home made cake provision? Can the state or the EC afford the necessary scaling up of food police officer numbers?
If law is unenforceable and does not enjoy the good will of the majority of decent informed people, what purpose does it serve? Money effort spent on policing the kitchens of parishioners would better be spent educating home bakers to achieve high standards, just as money has been spent on publicising the wholesome consumption of fruit and veg, and eating balanced meals. It won't be too long before ingenious new ways of arranging supply and demand of home made cake that cocks a snook at the food police. When will they ever learn?
After the tea room, I went for a CBS admin session, the last before holidays, at Southgate House. The huge room we've used is now stripped of everything save our equipment and desks. The move to a new office will happen some time while I'm away, but whether into City Hall for an undetermined spell or into the new CPE (Civil Parking Enforcement, aka Traffic Wardens) offices in Charles Street, we don't yet know - the new offices are still being fitted out, and there's something of a delay already. We should have been installed two weeks ago. CPE started operations at the beginning of this month, but has yet to build up to full strength.
It's quite a challenge to integrate into the Council's civilian way of running things an outfit that has hitherto been subject to police force command and control style management. Traffic regulations are a mix of the sound and sensible, the stupid, the unfair and the unrealistic. In any changing situation the rules of usage need to be adapted in the light of experience. No matter how much we love to hate traffic wardens, their job is to keep the city safe and accessible for everyone all the time. For those involved, no matter how much experience they bring with them to the job, it's going to be a matter of learning by doing. But, just imagine how it would be if all our traffic regulations were in every detail imposed by Brussels, and not by County Hall and South Wales Police?
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