The perfect eco-friendly business - and how we destroyed it

Imagine that you have secured a slot on a special “green” edition of Dragons’ Den and want to devise a business proposition completely in tune with the spirit of 2012.

You surely could not improve on offering a wholesome, natural product in fully recyclable containers, conveniently delivered direct to the customer by environmentally friendly electric vehicles.

Which is precisely what we had in the doorstep delivery of milk, a system that we as consumers have happily conspired with the supermarkets to destroy.

Through high water if not necessarily hell, the doorstep milkman battles through

When I was a boy two competing milk floats clattered down our street each morning. My mother, in her belt and braces way, patronised both of them, believing that this might give her a competitive edge if rationing were ever reintroduced.

They competed, I should add, only on promptness and reliability. Both sold at the same price and the option of buying milk from a shop seemingly did not exist.

We needed a service like this because, until I was around ten, we did not own a fridge. Even delivered daily, milk was pretty unpalatable for half the year for those of us with delicate sensibilities. I spent many morning breaks at school ducking and weaving to avoid my free third of a pint, crates of which always seemed to be deposited in full sun in the hottest corner of the playground.

Yum or yuck? It had its fans, but they definitely did not include me

But then came our first refrigerator and I belatedly discovered a real taste for delicious fresh, whole milk, always delivered in bottles with a distinct layer of yellowish cream towards the top. This provided the perfect complement to strawberries in the summer.

Like so much else, milk has never been as good as it was in those halcyon days of childhood. Even whole milk, which we have to buy again now that we have small children in the house, is “standardised” and homogenised so that being able to pour fresh cream off the top is only a happy memory.

The coming of almost universal domestic refrigeration put the first nail in the coffin of doorstep milk delivery. The demise of the stay-at-home mum contributed the second, because who wants to come home from work to pick up milk that has been sitting on the doorstep all day?

Then the big supermarkets identified the milkman, along with the family baker, butcher and greengrocer, as a soft target and relentlessly pursued their quarry with prices that were literally a fraction of the doorstep pint.

Ernie the milkman, R.I.P.

As if that were not enough of a headache, most of us now choose to buy our milk semi-skimmed or skimmed, creating a surplus of cream that has to find its way onto unforgiving global commodity markets, further driving down the returns to our hard-pressed dairy farmers.

Small wonder that three quarters of the UK dairy farms in business 30 years ago have given up. Many more will surely follow. I feel sorry for them, really I do. But sadly I fear that the future is no brighter for them than it was for the UK coalminers or textile workers, many of whom had also followed the same calling for generations.

If world market forces prevail, the future is more indoor mega-dairies like the monstrosity that the grasping Brian Aldridge aims to inflict on Ambridge in The Archers; and, for us consumers, more of our milk coming in UHT cartons from abroad.

Brian Aldridge: "One day, my boy, all this will be a bloody great shed."

Is this inevitable? No, nothing is inevitable apart from death and taxes. But, if we want to avoid it, many more of us need to think long and hard about the quality and provenance of the food we buy, and the welfare of the animals and people in the supply chain.

Seeking out and supporting local producers may always be a middle class luxury, in a mass market relentlessly focused on the lowest possible price. But for those of us who are lucky enough to be able to afford a few pence more, it really is the least that we can do.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

2012: a year to remember

This promises to be a financially painful year for many of us, as unemployment rises and tax increases bite. Though these will not worry me if deathclock.com is correct in its prediction that I will die on 4 February. Irritatingly, it does not specify at what time.

If it proves to be wrong (and the same website did advise my older brother that he had already been dead for a decade) I look forward to the birth of my second son later in February, and to the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations in June. Creating a welcome boom for Chinese producers of bunting and commemorative plates.

Which brings me to an uncharacteristically serious point. We do not have to accept the inevitability of globalisation exporting our jobs. We could all do more to buy locally made and grown stuff from local retailers, and to tighten our focus on buying only what we actually need.

The ‘savings’ made by cashing in on special offers at distant hypermarkets are every bit as illusory as the claims of constantly improving academic attainment, risk-free defence cuts or the affordability of free health care from the cradle to the grave when these are now around a century apart. Though maybe not for me ...

Keith Hann is a financial PR from Northumberland, a regular Journal columnist and a born optimist: www.keithhann.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Why top salaries keep going up

If you were born in 1954, as I was, it is bad enough to start feeling your age. It is even worse when you begin to identify with people for whom D-Day is still a vivid memory.

But that is exactly how I felt at dinner last week, when I met a man with a plan for a baffling new career. His mission is to become a Global Remuneration Planner, news that I greeted with the same sort of sympathetic understanding I expect to display if my son ever announces “Daddy, I want to be an actuary.”

“Never heard of it,” I said. “What does it involve?” And, amazingly enough, it proves to be all about planning people’s salary and benefits. On a global basis.

It came as news to me that any such industry existed, but if you are similarly ignorant do go to your favourite search engine and type it in. You will be directed to page after page of consultant-speak waffle on the subject, using long words and technical jargon to conceal in expensive magic what seems, on the face of it, a perfectly simple job.

Most of it, as you would expect, is about Them: the top executives who can move so readily across national boundaries and must be retained at all costs. Imagine how silly we would feel now if Adam Applegarth or Fred Goodwin had been poached by the Chinese.

Funnily enough, globalisation seems to work in favour of Them, driving senior executive remuneration up to the highest levels. While for the rest of Us mugs, it pulls in precisely the opposite direction. How can you expect to be paid a decent wage on a production line here when there are people in India prepared to do the same work for £25 a week?

When I asked what appealed to my friend about his new calling, he gave me a very simple answer. A former colleague, of whose talents he had no particularly high opinion, had already become a global remuneration planner for a major multinational and was earning a basic salary of £450,000. Plus a bonus, last year, of 80%.

I wonder who planned that particular remuneration package? And what are the chances of anyone in that position doing anything to narrow the ever-widening and increasingly dangerous gap between Them and Us?

Keith Hann is a financial PR consultant who has never become one of Them. www.keithhann.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.