Thanks to Easy Jet and having a good friend with an appartment in Nice, France, I shall be enjoying a six day break during Easter for just £113.05. A bargain by anyone's standards I think.
Should be a great reward for finishing and handing in my dissertation on blogs. I just need to write it first!
I have just sent off my first application form for a proper, grown-up job! I've applied for Hotwire's 2008 Graduate Schemein London. I shall let you know how I get on.
I've just made myself a delicious free-range chicken and pesto salad with a bag of Sainsbury's organic seasonal baby leaf salad. This seasonal salad came from the UK, Kenya, Portugal, Italy, USA and Spain in a non recyclable bag. What's so seasonal about that?
So, my choice to try and protect the environment and my food from chemicals has resulted in at least five flights, countless food miles and a plastic bag that will still be here in a few centuries time.
It makes you think why bother. Am I doing more harm than good?
The Christmas holidays finally came to an end today and I moved back to my flat at University. The organic meteor peas I planted a few weeks ago have sprouted! I've built them a small structure to climb up out of orange straws and waterered them a little.
Something has sprouted in another pot of mine too, but I cannot remember what I planted. I think it's garlic, but it could be anything.
I'd like to have the vanity to think that my last post has made a difference. But the decision this weekend by Sainsbury's,Morrisons and the Co-Opto stop selling eggs laid by battery hens within three years was probably based on more than just my opinion.
In today's Sunday Times they point the finger at the RSPCA and Jamie Oliver. Apparently the saviour of the school dinner, will be putting forward the case to abolish the intensive farming of chicken in 'Jamie's Fowl Dinners'on channel 4 this friday at 9pm. Good on him I say.
The timing of the announcement to stop selling battery farmed eggs seems a little suspect to me though. Do the supermarkets really care how chickens are treated or is it just a PR stunt taking advantage of Channel 4's programming this week and the press coverage that it has already and will probably continue to create this week?
In April last year my eyes were made open to the suffering of battery farmed chickens in Britain by the excellent Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in his series, The River Cottage Treatment. Since then I've made it my aim to buy only free-range chicken and other products such as mayonnaise, chicken stock and pasta.
However as a 'poor' student the extra expense is definitely a source of contention. As I'm sure it for many other people in the country.
Yesterday I saw an advert for Hugh's Chicken Run, which is as far as I am aware the first television series to be totally dedicated to promoting free-range chicken and exposing the horrors of intensive farming. It debuts on Monday at 9pm and needless to say it's already sky plussed on my television set.
Today the front page of The Independentused it's front cover to visually represent the miniscule space that Britain's 800m battery farmed chickens are forced to each live inside. Or rather die inside. I hope that this combined with Hugh's efforts may help with the free-range fight. But I fear the vast majority of the UK will either not watch the show or read the newspaper.
So today I became the 18,234th person to support the Chicken Out campaign. I urge you do too.
What do you think about the free-range issue? Will you or do you already buy free-range? And if not, why not? I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
