Magic Statistics

For the past five days, a 75-foot long Boeing 737 has been parked on a street off a busy thoroughfare in Mumbai, India.  The aircraft fuselage (without wings, tail, and wheels) is wedged into a narrow spot and has no room to move forwards or backwards.  It’s been there so long that homeless people have moved in.

It arrived when a truck driver made a wrong turn and then fled the scene of his error.

The plane, formerly the property of India’s domestic carrier, Air Sahara, was being transported by road to New Delhi where an entrepreneur planned to install it as an attraction at an amusement park.

This week, however, hundreds of Mumbai street kids and passers-by got a free “ride” in the Boeing, clambering into the fuselage and sliding off its nose until police belatedly moved in to cordon off the area.

By the time police arrived a group of homeless had already set up a makeshift kitchen in the cargo hold while another group of “pavement dwellers” had found the stumps of the wings a handy hook for a clothes line.

Local shopkeepers and restaurant owners are complaining that trucks cannot make deliveries with the airplane blocking access.

Police don’t know whether to cut it apart and take away the pieces or lift it out whole by crane, but they assure everyone that it will be removed “tonight”.

In his infinite wisdom, Canadian Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl has decided "to protect consumer interests and to promote choice in the marketplace" by forcing dairy processors to use more raw full-fat milk in cheese.

The federal guardian of supply-management farming had come to help Canadian consumers? This was more ominous than it sounded. Run, Miss Muffet. Run.

As subsequently translated, Mr. Stahl's announcement meant that the government proposed to compel Canadian food processors to use more "full-fat" milk to make "light" cheese, prohibiting the use of recycled whey in some instances, restricting it in others. As you might suspect, however, the actual work was already well advanced. The regulations will require, for example, that mozzarella contain 63 per cent full-fat milk, that cheddar cheese contain 83 per cent full-fat milk, that "fine cheeses" contain 98 per cent full-fat milk.

If more full-fat milk goes into “light” cheese, it won’t be all that “light” anymore, will it?  Wait a minute.  Isn’t Health Canada advising Canadians to consume less fat by, for example, eating more low-fat cheese?

Because whey is far cheaper than full-fat milk, the regulation will increase costs for Canadian cheese producers which, of course, will mean higher prices at your local grocery stores and restaurants.   Another reason why one of the least-believed sentences in the English language is: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you”.

At the same time as Canada imposes regulations with the effect of increasing cheese's fat content, the British government is regulating cheese because its fat content is too high.  Cheese advertisements have just been banned on children’s TV shows for that reason, and producers are concerned that parents will get the message that cheese is unhealthy for anyone.  It gets worse.

A survey published in The Grocer magazine, of 100 senior people in the dairy industry, confirmed that the overwhelming view was that cheese is under siege.

Only 2 per cent believed that the Government was supportive of the cheese industry while 52 per cent said that it was actively “anticheese”.

Canadian and British cheese makers have good reason to be cheesed off.

Previous related post: If watching paint dry is too exciting for you . . .

In his first public response to the highly critical pastoral letter from Zimbabwe's Roman Catholic bishops, President Robert Mugabe calls the letter "nonsense" and warns that his government could start treating the bishops as political enemies.  The state-controlled Herald newspaper reports on an interview with Mugabe.

"If I had gone to church and the priest had read that so-called pastoral letter, I would have stood up and said nonsense. It is not something spiritual, it is not religious, the bishops have decided to turn political. And once they turn political, we regard them as no longer being spiritual and our relations with them would be conducted as if we are dealing with political entities, and this is quite a dangerous path they have chosen for themselves," said Cde Mugabe.

Mugabe's henchmen did more than stand up and say nonsense to a priest who discussed the letter with his congregation.  They arrested him and held him overnight.

The arrested priest and a member of his congregation were released without charge after spending 24 hours in jail last month, said Father Oskar Wermter of the Catholic social communications secretariat in Harare.

It was the first reported arrest of a priest on political grounds in recent years. The priest had evidently given prominence to the letter in services in northern Harare.

Mugabe singles out for particular criticism Archbishop Pius Ncube, saying he has "long been a lost bishop".

The Anglican bishops' pastoral letter that was generally perceived as pro-Mugabe was apparently not discussed during the interview.

The Catholic-educated Mugabe attends Catholic services held at his residence.

Previous related posts:

• US Catholic bishops support Zimbabwean counterparts
• Anglican bishops support Mugabe after Catholics call for his departure
• Zimbabwe’s Archbishop Ncube ready to face bullets