The Chartwells/Compass free school meals package scandal is a teachable moment about capitalism. 1/ Why do so many families need free school meals? Because real wages have stagnated while profits soared...

2/ Why packages and not vouchers? Because the big outsourcers like Compass *lobbied the government* against vouchers, claiming they could use their scale to provide cheaper food...
3/ Here's the business model in a single graphic. Buy food as cheap as possible. Achieve growth by replacing/acquiring smaller, higher-quality providers, hire the cheapest possible labour...("we focus relentlessly on costs")... but it's not done to make huge bottom line profits
4/ If you look at a normal year, Compass and other big outsourcers make relatively meagre profits... they grow, and drive dividends, by acquisition - not by innovation... (except in ways to cut costs)...
5/ Businesses like this were created by the state. They're not the product of the market, or consumer choice, but of regulation. They survive on wafer thin margins because that's how the govt structured the market...
6/ So it's not corruption - except in the moral sense - that leeches most of the value of the food away from the poor families who have to live on it... it's "operating costs"... the CSR department, the glossy annual report, the lobbying, exec salaries etc...
7/ How do you turn £30 worth of food into seven quid's worth? It's capitalism. It's an institution called a corporation. It's the state that regulates to eviscerate small, well-run businesses and replace them with faceless outsourcers... it's called neoliberalism... but wait...
8/ Who owns Compass? The global middle class and the super-rich, through these lovely bespoke, boutique (add other adjectives) investment managers... it's to them that the £1.6bn a year operating profit flows (in a good year)...
9/ The managers and execs of these firms are trapped in the same system as the victims of the gross rip-offs at the bottom (though they have a better deal) ... it's the system and its design that incentivises cost-cutting, and a race to the bottom...
10./ What if we designed school meals provision on human scale? Do we have a model? I do - in my memory! Good, locally produced food, so good people look forward to it...
11/ Free school meals should be a universal basic service. Produced and sourced locally, with decent wages and the best quality produce, with a fair deal for the farmer and nothing to the middleman, aka the capitalist...
12/ They would cost more to produce. But the efficiencies and scale could be even bigger - despite the fragmented nature of many co-ops and SMEs providing: because the state would foster co-operation, not competition...
13/ Capitalism makes us look at that rip-off box of veg, beans and bananas and say: if only they'd delivered value for money. I want value for people, not value for money.

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It is simply not correct to point fingers at wind & solar energy as we try to understand the situation in TX. The system (almost) had a plan for weather (almost) like this. 1/x


It relied on very little wind energy - that was the plan. It relied on a lot of natural gas - that was the plan. It relied on all of its nuclear energy - that was the plan. 2/x

There was enough natural gas, coal and nuclear capacity installed to survive this event - it was NOT "forced out" by the wind energy expansion. It was there. 3/x

Wind, natural gas, coal and nuclear plants all failed to deliver on their expectations for long periods of time. The biggest gap was in natural gas! The generators were there, but they were not able to deliver. 4/x

It may be fair to ask why there is so much wind energy in ERCOT if we do NOT expect it to deliver during weather events like this, but that is an entirely different question - and one with a lot of great answers!! 5/x
1/ A thread of comments & observations about the death of the cackling vampire Rush Limbaugh.

My first observations in the main thread are here, but this offshoot is needed because there's been so many wise & witty things I've


2/ First, re: those who in their wayward moral obtuseness feel we "can't speak ill of the dead." I've said that this is what abuse enablers say, but I hear that some religious traditions preach this. Oy.
So there's this: https://t.co/7Ky4RA3nkZ &


3/ Drucker is another great wit, and this carries the proper mood


4/ There's definitely a Jewish Tradition angle for how to treat evil people who die: the only respect is to justice, right & wrong, and above all compassion's existence necessitates condemning cruelty


5/ We're coming up on #Purim, and that's all about how to remember evil. There may be a reason, then, that I share the attitude of many other people committed to righting

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https://t.co/6cRR2B3jBE
Viruses and other pathogens are often studied as stand-alone entities, despite that, in nature, they mostly live in multispecies associations called biofilms—both externally and within the host.

https://t.co/FBfXhUrH5d


Microorganisms in biofilms are enclosed by an extracellular matrix that confers protection and improves survival. Previous studies have shown that viruses can secondarily colonize preexisting biofilms, and viral biofilms have also been described.


...we raise the perspective that CoVs can persistently infect bats due to their association with biofilm structures. This phenomenon potentially provides an optimal environment for nonpathogenic & well-adapted viruses to interact with the host, as well as for viral recombination.


Biofilms can also enhance virion viability in extracellular environments, such as on fomites and in aquatic sediments, allowing viral persistence and dissemination.
राम-रावण युद्ध समाप्त हो चुका था। जगत को त्रास देने वाला रावण अपने कुटुम्ब सहित नष्ट हो चुका था।श्रीराम का राज्याभिषेक हुआ और अयोध्या नरेश श्री राम के नेतृत्व में चारों दिशाओं में शन्ति थी।
अंगद को विदा करते समय राम रो पड़े थे ।हनुमान को विदा करने की शक्ति तो राम में थी ही नहीं ।


माता सीता भी हनुमान को पुत्रवत मानती थी। अत: हनुमान अयोध्या में ही रह गए ।राम दिनभर दरबार में, शासन व्यवस्था में व्यस्त रहते थे। संध्या को जब शासकीय कार्यों में छूट मिलती तो गुरु और माताओं का कुशल-मंगल पूछ अपने कक्ष में जाते थे। परंतु हनुमान जी हमेशा उनके पीछे-पीछे ही रहते थे ।


उनकी उपस्थिति में ही सारा परिवार बहुत देर तक जी भर बातें करता ।फिर भरत को ध्यान आया कि भैया-भाभी को भी एकांत मिलना चाहिए ।उर्मिला को देख भी उनके मन में हूक उठती थी कि इस पतिव्रता को भी अपने पति का सानिध्य चाहिए ।

एक दिन भरत ने हनुमान जी से कहा,"हे पवनपुत्र! सीता भाभी को राम भैया के साथ एकांत में रहने का भी अधिकार प्राप्त है ।क्या आपको उनके माथे पर सिन्दूर नहीं दिखता?इसलिए संध्या पश्चात आप राम भैया को कृप्या अकेला छोड़ दिया करें "।
ये सुनकर हनुमान आश्चर्यचकित रह गए और सीता माता के पास गए ।


माता से हनुमान ने पूछा,"माता आप अपने माथे पर सिन्दूर क्यों लगाती हैं।" यह सुनकर सीता माता बोलीं,"स्त्री अपने माथे पर सिन्दूर लगाती है तो उसके पति की आयु में वृद्धि होती है और वह स्वस्थ रहते हैं "। फिर हनुमान जी प्रभु राम के पास गए ।