Why didn't I think of that? ... the WrapnMat

This is one of those genius ideas that really leaves you wondering why everyone isn't using it. It saves money and the environment and looks cool too. In fact, a heck of a lot of people are using them (weirdly they're more popular in the US), so join the wrapnmat revolution!

The wrap-n-mat is a cloth wrapper for your sandwich (or other snack) - one side is plastic so that it's wipe-clean, one side is cloth, they come in a range of colours and patterns and fasten with velcro.


Why is this so genius?


1) it saves you money on foil/clingfilm
2) unlike tupperware, once it's empty it's flat, so doesn't take up unnecessary space
3) no more foil/clingfilm in the landfill
4) it looks cool
5) you can lay it out so it acts as a mat for your sandwich while you eat
6) they cost about £5-10 only and will last you years

I've used these for about 3 years now and they really last - I've bought about 4 in that time but partly because I wanted a different pattern. People always ask me about where they're from and say how cool they are - some people have actually bought their own. I often see people on the tube looking at it curiously.


You can buy them from Nigel's Ecostore here , Amazon here or the American site WrapnMat which has good UK delivery and a great range of materials and also other versions of the wrapnmat for different types of snacks!

youcanarguewithstupid

Future Fodder... the Maximum Wage

Today the news is all about RBS Chief Exec Stephen Hester waiving his £963,000 shares-only bonus.

This comes after enormous media pressure and an impending Commons debate on whether he's worth such a rewards. In that face of villification and the unpicking of his abilities, Hester caved, saying he feared 'pariah' status.


The reality is that Hester's million pound present is not the problem. It's a drop in an oceon of zeros surfed by every Fat Cat in town. Bob Diamond of Barclays is in line for a cool £10 million. Note that Barclays signed up to the govt's Merlin Agreement - part of which was an agreement to curb bonuses.


Outside banking, these sorts of nine figure boons are par for the course.

Here's the thing. Let's not lynch one greedy man-is-an-island banking boss. Let's look at a culture that allows people to earn this sort of money for working no less hard than those on a fraction of the wage. Hester surely does not believe that his work is more essential or stressful than that of a paramedic in the UK, which is £29,284.

Thinking Girl's Crumpet George
Monbiot

George Monbiot has written this excellent article on why now is the time for the introduction of a Maximum Wage.


Don't forget, we only got the Minimum Wage in 1999, with strong opposition from business and the Tories. It seems ludicrous now that only a few years ago you could be paid 50p/hour if your boss chose. It is equally ludicrous that there are people earning 1000 times the median national wage (Monbiot).

Dan Ariely and his colleagues have shown us that, above a certain level of income, more money doesn't actually improve performance [watch this video or have a look at this]. The notion that the promise of big financial rewards is causally linked to better output is a fallacy. We also know that the sort of inequality this high pay culture is contributing to has horrendous repercussions for society as a whole [read this book].

The Commonsense Sniff-o-meter
on youcanarguewithstupid:
rotten haddock - eggy - pine fresh

To me, the Maximum Wage scores pine-fresh on the Common Sense Sniff-o-meter. But let's take a quick tour of the arguments against.



In his 2009 essay for the Institute of Economic Affairs, Tom Papworth said this:

"It is based upon two related errors: that earning more than a certain amount is unnecessary, excessive and even obscene; and that there should be a certain proportion between individual earnings. At the root of these lies the belief that there is a decent amount that people should earn, above which one is earning too much. Its origins lie in a puritanical rejection of wealth. A rich man, as we all know, cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, and when one is seeking to make an egalitarian heaven on earth, there is no room for the rich. Basically, it is institutionalised envy."

This argument, which seems to be what's colloquially known as "you're all just haterrrrz" doesn't really deserve to be called an argument at all. He's neatly overlooked the idea that it might not be envy at all, but a truly held belief and reasoned opinion that the sort of wealth disparity we have today is morally/ethically unacceptable and that yes, there is an obscenity to it given the dire poverty some in the world live in. Swarovski-studded baby prams are pretty bloody obscene.

He gets worse:
"There is no reason, functionally or morally, why a person should not enjoy any amount of wealth. Wealth is not limited, after all. There is no lump of wealth than needs to be shared out. If you want more money you can make more money: work harder; take more successful risks; use information more efficiently and effectively than others."

Would some nice international volunteering project like to send Mr Pap-worth to Darfur for a month or two? Rural China? Ex-mining towns in the UK? Perhaps he forgot about the majority of the world in the 5 minutes he took to write this piece, and was only thinking of Western white people with full mobility based in one of the richest cities in the world who had the fortune of good education.

He goes on to mention the C-word... Communism... as the big bad poster boy of ideas like this one. But that's highly simplistic; it's not Stalin or the astronomical inequality we have now. Maximum wage policy isn't about equalising all wages, it's about narrowing the gap. It isn't about impoverishing and homogenising people; it's about saying let's spread all this wealth around a little, and you can keep your nice house, and probably your country cottage too, but possibly not all 3 Jags.

Mr Papworth wrote his article in response to the launch of a High Pay Commission. The Commission (set up by Compass, a democratic left pressure group) ended in late 2011 and recommended the following measures:

The commission calls for a number of reforms, including a "radical simplification" of executive pay, putting employees on remuneration committees and publishing the top 10 executive pay packages more widely. [sources below]

These ideas are very much in the public domain at the moment, but will any of them actually happen? And if they do happen, will they have any effect? One of the main arguments within this agenda is strategy; legislation or self-regulation and transparency? I know which I have the most faith in.

One of the other main objections is that the 'talent' will go elsewhere. This is basically your war-on-terrorism argument: create a bogeyman scenario and everyone will roll over and say ok. It is posturing. We would potentially lose some executives, but hardly all. These are people with millions in the bank and homes and families here, in the UK. Let's be realistic.

The cowardly lion from the Wizard
of Oz

My main question is what's happened to the ideal of being the vanguard? What's with all this lemming-like behaviour? We're terrified that if we make life a little less cushy for the wealthy here, they'll run off to where it's more cushy. But what if that haven changed its' laws too? It's called leadership.

Maybe one day the Maximum Wage will seem as much a part of common sense as the Minimum Wage.

youcanarguewithstupid

Sources:
BBC News on Hester's decision here
RBS performance under Hester here
Institute of Economic Affairs, Pap-worth against the maximum wage idea here
More on the Merlin Agreement, including why it's 'toothless' here
The Equality Trust, fighting for a more equal society here
High Pay Commission here
BBC report on HPC here

FAB Research

FAB Research are a bloody Good Thing.

That's Food and Behaviour Research. And that's exactly what they do.

We're pretty used to being told which foods are Good, which are Bad, which are somewhere in the middle. We know about obesity and fried chicken and that a good breakfast is an essential start to the day.

But FAB aren't your run-of-the-mill nutrition info service. 

They produce and compile research that is at the forefront of how we really are what we eat, moreso than we may realise.

This is what they say:

"Diet is important not only for physical health, but also for optimal mental development and functioning.

Nutrition can play an important role in the prevention and management of many kinds of difficulties in behaviour, learning and mood. These include:

• Everyday difficulties in behaviour, learning or mood that can affect children and adults - at home, at school or in the workplace.
• Developmental conditions - such as ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, and autistic spectrum disorders.
• Mental health conditions - such as anxiety, depression, bipolar (manic-depressive) disorder and schizophrenia."

Google 'mental health time bomb' and you get hit after hit after hit about this massive issue affecting all different parts of the UK. It's a humungous burden on the NHS, on the welfare system and on society generally. Mental health problems prevent people leading full and engaged lives. The statistics on homeless people with mental health issues are abysmal [see sources].

Science is starting to tell us more than simply to shove them full of anti-depressants, a dubious solution at best [read this book] and a net with many holes for the dispossessed, diet has a rather large part to play.

It's not just mental health either.

Our obesity epidemic could be helped in a way you might not expect - not eating less, but eating differently. It's starting to become clear that certain nutrients affect your sense of fullness. So rather than taking a pill that makes you 'shit oil' you might want to just up your omegas.

It's all there on FAB's site where they have a list of 968 resources and counting.You can also search by condition - say Alzheimer's or Antisocial Behaviour, letting you find out what cutting edge dietary science there is on that subject.

It's worth a look, if only to appreciate the volume of research coming out about this. It makes you realise how simple changes to a child's diet could bring dividends in their later life.

youcanarguewithstupid

Sources:
Homelessness mental health stats here

A good thing for yoof... National Citizen Service

Here's a government scheme that's got the goods. But first, let me give the preamble that yes, this govt is cutting everything it possibly can whether or not it causes mass riots. This includes youth and early intervention services. So this is not in favour of the govt's actions broadly. However, as a standalone policy, I like this one and this volunteerism has a serious place in building a stable society and preventing a repeat of the Aug 2011 riots.

The National Citizen Service is a non-military national service programme for 16 year olds to be run each summer.

The pilots took place in the summer 2011 with 11,000 16 year olds taking part in a 3 week scheme.

Week 1 is an outdoor activity course (presumably to promote teamwork and bonding), week 2 is volunteering in a neighbourhood and week 3 is designing and carrying out a community project. The govt hope that in 2012 30,000 teens will take part after their GCSEs with the eventual aim of rolling it out to 600,000.

However to be truly beneficial to society, it must have a mixed intake. Hugh from Dulwich and LaTonya from Edmonton need to learn to get along if we're ever going to have a safer, more equal and tolerant society.


Volunteering in and of itself is a Good Thing. It teaches people about other walks of life, promotes community, cohesion, tolerance, and obviously provides help where help is needed. It is not something that should be lauded, but something that should be done as a natural and normal part of civic life.

Possibly the biggest problem with our yoof is that they have no sense of themselves as part of a larger, diverse community. They are over-individualised, frequently angry and prefer an iPhone 5 to the social contract. They band together in 'postcode gangs' to find some sort of meaning. If the NCS can get to a few of these disenfranchised, tribalistic young people and take them abseiling and make them serve tea to Betty down the road, then maybe we'll have a few less dead teenagers on our streets in the future.

youcanarguewithstupid

Sources/further reading:
Conservative Party spiel here
Nifty govt site with teenage testimonials here
Guardian piece here