''This is the way you should do it''

Trying to do my blogger's duty and following up on David Blunkett's claims about Radio 4's The Food Programme, where His Lordship said that the programme had “lost its connection with the ordinary cook” by focusing on the “interests of those making the programme, rather than those of the wider public,” I listened to last week's edition...

...at least for as long as I could stand it. 

It marked the moment when the winners of the BBC Food and Farming Awards 2021 were announced at a ceremony at London's Broadcasting House.

I made notes, but soon realised it was pointless. The agenda was openly stated. The programme was selecting winners who would be ''models for others'' [their words]. 

Social responsibility, BBC-style, was one key factor. The other was helping radically transform the means of food production in favour of things like farming cooperatives, organic farming, sustainability, local-sourcing - and lowering the amount of meat-eating.

For a 'food' programme it was strikingly 'political'.

A classic line from presenter Sheila Dillon came when one prize went to a small-scale, local-focused butcher who wants us all to each smaller amounts of meat:  ''We [the judges] concluded that meat is such a controversial thing right now, but if you're going to eat meat this is the way you should do it''. 

There's quite a lot of agenda in that one sentence.