Tuesday 15 April 2008

No more Cadbury factory tours

It's a great pity that the likes of us will no longer be able to tour the Cadbury factory in Hobart. I was down that way some years ago, and did the tour. After reading several books on the chocolate industry, including The Emperors of Chocolate and a couple of others that are still on my bookshelf, I just had to see a conching machine in action for myself. Seriously, I could have spent all day in the conching room just smelling the chocolate.

I love chocolate that is 70% cocoa or more, which is why I thought the conching room smelt so good. It is what chocolate smells like before it is completely fucked up by the addition of sugar and milk and all that other stuff.

The safety nazis have intervened once more to wreck something that was once available to the paying public. Cadbury are citing OH&S as a reason for stopping the tours - I guess they don't want the hassle of someone being sucked into the Turkish Delight machinery. Yes, you do get to stand next to big bits of equipment that whirr and stamp and buzz and do other things, but reasonably sensible adults stand back from things that look like they will take your arm off, and they keep the kiddies back as well.

Fucking safety nazis.

Oh, whilst we are on the subject of safety nazis, I will believe that the govt is getting serious about obesity when a Big Mac costs ten bucks and a can of Coke costs five. The govt has been bleating about obesity for some years now, and we keep on getting fatter. If they want to do something about it, short of sticking us all into fat camps, they are simply going to have to do to junk food and its ilk what they did to cigarettes - tax the crap out of them.

Are cigarettes horribly expensive? Yes.

Are people smoking less? Yes.

Except for blackfellas of course. They are still smoking like chimneys.

No comments: