Imperative cooking: Mrs Peter Bottomley negated
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THERE IS a modern axiom, beloved by the twin, modern, bogus disciplines of social work and management studies, that people should be 'affirmed'. The idea is that if you value someone's work, you must be sure to tell them, otherwise they might not know how appreciated they are. According to this curious ethic, the ideal is that people 'feel good about themselves' and are in danger of not doing so. In fact, most cooks feel far too good about them- selves to the point of complacency. They need a jolly good negating, but not so much as politicians. Some politicians look as if they have no idea that anyone has any doubts about them. It is obviously a kind- ness to tell them frankly how much they are disliked.
Let me clear up any doubt in Mrs Peter Bottomley's mind. Since I launched the `Enemies of Mrs Bottomley' club here last November, I have received more mail than in response to any other single column over the last nine years. Not one of these corre- spondents expresses the smallest affection for the Secretary of State for Health or the slightest sympathy with her Stalinist ten- year state plan to change our eating. Some letters are simple and unqualified. Appro- priately from Tunbridge Wells, there is: `Dear Digby, I would like to join the Ene- mies of Mrs Bottomley. Yours sincerely . . (I am omitting the names because if Bottomley gets as coercive with eaters as she is already with smokers, they will need all the anonymity they can get.) Complaining about being told what to eat by the nanny state, a London reader begs: 'Please enrol me.' Others give their calling: from Dumfries, an 'upland beef and sheep farmer [who] is aware of the extent of government interference in food' wishes the campaign well and asks for fur- ther information about `this great move- ment'. Several offer support and wish luck `in the struggle'. One correspondent offers money: 'I enthusiastically apply to join your new club. If a subscription is needed, let me know; you may have more on your hands than you calculated.' On that last point, he is joined by a chap from Devon: `May I stake a claim for a place in what will surely be a long queue to join your anti- Creeper Club? I have two reasons for being an enemy of Mrs Bottomley.' The first is love of meat and home cooking. 'Secondly, I am a retired surgeon with an interest in gastro-enterology. I have an abhorrence of fashionable dietetic experts . . . Their co!' placent authoritarianism revolts me ... Bottomley may have been an excellent school prefect and possibly a good captain of the hockey XI but she should not have been further promoted. The cry should be not "Delenda est Carthago" but "Delenda est Virgo".' There are comments which I will not reproduce here because they are personal1Y abusive, though I understand them: it Is, after all, Mrs Bottomley who is trying to invade the privacy of people's homes no kitchens. It is also worth recalling that the object of this anger claims that her crazed plan to make us all conform to health, die!' drinking and smoking quantified targets is undertaken for our benefit. Perhaps she ought to listen to people a little more. It is also curious that, though the coon' spondents are even more furious about the activities of Mr John Gummer's Enviroly mental Health Police in closing excellent small slaughter-yards, they don't seem to I have any personal antipathy to the fellow. too indicated more hopes for Gummer. He doesn't appear to relish his dreadful poll" cies as she does. But I have to report that since that column the butcher-slaughterer, who for 20 years has provided me with superb hung beef, tripe, pigs' heads and se) many things, has been forced by the new regulations to stop slaughtering. I will find alternative sources of supply, but think for a moment of the man concerned. He was about to retire and pass the business on to his son. It was run by his father and Ins father before. Something which had gone on giving people what they wanted for some 80 years will close. I would have liked Mr Gummer to have seen the butcher face when he told me. How many worth" while services have to be closed down, how many people thrown needlessly out of work, how many old men humiliated to sat' isfy Brussels and their craven accomplice's among the Environmental Health Police?
We shall have fun again next column, promise, but just occasionally it's worth recording the evil things being done in the, name of health and the hostile reaction 01 ordinary consumers and producers t°, them. Keep writing to: 'The Enemies 01 Mrs Bottomley', c/o The Spectator.
Digby Anderson
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