A tale of the egg and the chicken[s]

Christmas is coming! I went to pick up my repeat prescription on Friday from our local chemist. I have a batch prescription, which means the one prescription is good for three separate months dispensing. Whilst everyone working at the chemist knows me, every time I go to pick up my medication, we go through the rhetoric of confirming my address. Likewise, that I like to be called Tony, whereas my prescription (and by association apparently, the NHS) names me as Anthony. There are always smiles, so it’s never a problem. Anyway, the young lady, who looked after me on this occasion, asked if wanted two months’ supply. I said ‘No thanks’, and she said ‘are you sure, as it will tide you over the Christmas period’? Now that is what I call kindness in action, and kindness matters, always.

So, we now have a rooted Christmas tree in a pot, currently outside and battling the worst of Storm Bert. We also have a Christmas cupboard complete with Christmas cake, crackers, Twiglets, bottles of mulled wine, chocolates, and all kinds of continental Christmas goodies. Our freezer contains a nut roast for me and a turkey crown for Jane, and a wide selection of interesting Lancashire cheeses from our local food and drink fair.

Although turkey, goose and duck are the traditional fare at Christmas, with the continued cost of living crisis, I think there will be many folk who will opt for chicken for their Christmas Day roast. I have reassured our chickens that they are all safe from the chop. Frizzle the sizzlepoo, hatched this year, and the smallest and most timid of our hens, also needed a hug just to be on the safe side.

Now the same can’t be said for the more than 51 million chickens being industrially farmed in the river valleys of Severn and Wye. Their story appeared last week, due to the association between intensive poultry units and river pollution. It appears that chicken droppings contain more phosphate than any other animal manure. It is the phosphates that starve rivers, fish and river plants of the oxygen they need to survive and remain healthy. Planning permission was being sought for a new intensive poultry unit to be built in Shropshire, through which the river Seven passes. Indeed, the rivers Wye and Severn flow right through Herefordshire, Shropshire and Powys. Of these, only the Shropshire local authority has been granted planning permission.

Powys local authority couldn’t grant planning permission, as the Welsh Government had put a dozen planning applications on hold back in 2023 (five were for units to be built in the Severn valley and seven for the Wye valley area). There seems to be an ever-growing demand for chickens to eat, and it’s a world-wide phenomenon.  For example, in the US, over eight billion chickens are eaten each year, in China, it is 9.3 billion chickens a year, whilst here in the UK, we eat around 800 million chickens a year. Overall, it is estimated that 79 billion chickens are killed for food around the world every year. That is a lot of chickens. Thankfully, none of ours will ever be killed for the table.

Wales was also in the news last week for other reasons. That great politician, John Prescott died. Now, I don’t do politics here in this blog and John and I held very different political views. That said, he was someone I greatly admired for all kinds of reasons. One being, in a rapidly changing world, he always seemed to exemplify the human face of politics. His death also brought back to the front pages, one of the most famous moments in his political career. He was on the campaign trail in Rhyl, Wales, when a protesting agricultural worker called Craig Evans, threw an egg at him. In an almost instinctive response, he turned and punched Craig in the chin. Sky News captured the incident live on TV.

The protesters were picketing the venue demonstrating against low agricultural wages and the Labour Party’s support for a fox hunting ban. Like many country folk living in Wales at that time, Craig was a supporter of the pro-fox hunting brigade. Reflecting upon the incident in 2019, the then Lord John Prescott, somewhat ruefully noted that ’when you get to being 80, you are not scared of anything. I have four or five years to think about death. When I do die, after 50 years in politics, all they will show on the news is 60 seconds of me thumping a fellow in Wales’. How true this proved to be. That fellow, Craig Evans now lives in a remote farm in North Wales. Last week when asked about the egg throwing protest, he said he ‘had no regrets’ about throwing the egg, but his thoughts were with John Prescott’s family. I wonder if his 15 minutes of fame were really worth it.

One of other things I liked about John was his love of Jaguar cars, something I too have enjoyed. I did wonder what John would have thought about the new Jaguar car advertisement released last week. I thought it totally bizarre. If you have not seen it, look here and see what you think. Although I love my electric car, by the time the new all-electric Jaguar cars arrive on the market in 2026, I don’t think I will be getting one at an estimated £100,000 starting price!

Finally, the last thought about John was his unique conversational style, and the way he had of presenting a speech. Matthew Parris in The Times newspaper, once famously wrote of a speech John made at political rally in Brighton: ‘John Prescott went 12 rounds with the English language and left it slumped and bleeding over the ropes’. He is not alone. My nemesis has always been the pronunciation of peoples names. So, at our university graduation ceremonies, due to my often failed miserable pronunciation of many of the students names, I’ve received similar comments from folk. 

RIP John, you made a difference.