According to a recent report published in Ethical Consumer magazine consumers should avoid eating most species of tuna.

Of the five commercially farmed species – albacore, bigeye, bluefin, skipjack and yellowfin – it is the bluefin that is critically endangered, being specifically valued for eating raw as sushi and sashimi in specialist restaurants, particularly in Japan, which recently opposed, along with Canada, a ban on taking them. According to the EUC bluefin tuna stocks have fallen by 85% since the 1950’s. A fully grown fish can fetch up to £60,000 at market, or is worth more than £250,000 on the plate. Continue reading →

Meanwhile a fish and chip shop in Bourton-on-the-Water, Glos. has been doing its bit for the environment by supplying its customers with lashings of cheap, tasty, sustainable catfish for their enjoyment.

Regrettably customers of the C’or Blimey emporium have been told it was the rather more expensive and unsustainable cod, which has earned the owner a £2000 fine for selling food not of the nature demanded by the customer.

The Incentives & Promotional Marketing – Live show takes place at the NEC, Birmingham, 21-22 September offering exhibitors, educational seminars and networking opportunities.

Free entry at www.ipm-live.co.uk

The UK’s most under-rated comedian must be Michael Roberts, chief executive of the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC)

Commenting on the heinous crimmos who travel on his paymaster’s trains without buying a ticket Roberts has told the press “Fare dodgers suck millions out of the railways each year that would otherwise go back into improving services for passengers”

So definitely not on improving salaries, bonuses, commissions on penalty fares and pension pots for senior staff then? Ho. Ho. Ho.

A fascinating take on ethics by Delia Smith has been reported by Private Eye.

It seems that in November 2008 our Delia impressed the Oxford Union by telling them that she didn’t think it was an ethically sound thing for celebrity chefs to back one supermarket or product against another, and that she had never done any advertising because she felt she was “in a position of trust” Continue reading →

Given the frantic efforts by the leaders of our main political parties to market themselves on live TV debates it might be interesting to recall the words of former Premier Sir Alec Douglas-Home, quoted recently in events trade magazine Access All Areas.

Turning down the chance to go on TV prior to the 1964 General Election Sir Alec opined “You’ll get the best actor as leader of the country”

Question is, looking at the recent result was he right?

Supermarkets have been criticised for selling cheap alcohol by a coroner after a 64 year old man in Norfolk drank himself to death for less than £10 He was found to have a blood alcohol level of more than six times the drink-drive limit.

In Russia the government, concerned that half the deaths of Russians aged 15-54 were caused by alcohol have doubled the price of the cheapest vodka to £3.60 a litre. In the UK the cheapest vodka in supermarkets is around £10 per litre, with some recent reports claiming that our government is considering more than doubling the price in the next Budget, on March 24th. Continue reading →

Wine club marketing lists were used to target wine lovers with an investment opportunity in a vineyard in Australia that didn’t exist.

Some victims of the fraudsters are reported to have parted with £100,000, and the six suspects, based on the south slopes of east London are said to have received £3 million. Continue reading →

Some ticket inspectors on our trains are getting a 5% commission on fines they “impartially” impose on passengers, according to the Department for Transport.

The fines, dubbed “Penalty Fares” by the train operating companies are effective in raising their revenue from passengers who inadvertently travel without a ticket, or on an incorrect one, but ineffective against fare dodgers who play the numbers by never buying a ticket and then cheerfully paying the occasional fine.

The commissions paid to inspectors torpedo any trust the fare paying public might have in the train operating companies. In a similar vein one deservedly maligned firm ,First Capital Connect claims that their appeals procedure against penalty fares is run ” independently of the train operating companies” when in fact it is run by a director of a train operating company who is registered at Companies House as a director of the Association of Train Operating Companies.

They lie.