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We are the egg men
Thursday 25 March 2010
What kind of Britain do the Tories want? If you take their own self-image seriously, a Tory Britain is one where the free market rules the economy and where rural Britain is preserved.
The Tories should be a party of sharp, competitive urban entrepreneurs with whizzy small businesses bringing exciting innovations to the cities and sturdy farmers maintaining centuries-old holdings and traditions in the country.
But we all lie to ourselves a little when we look in the mirror. If you look in the Tory accounts, you'll find what looks like the opposite of these two values.
One of the latest donations to the Tories listed by the Electoral Commission came from Deans Food Group, which slapped a whopping £50,000 into David Cameron's kitty.
The sum of £50,000 is significant because it is the membership fee for joining the Conservative Party "leaders' club."
This is a bit like joining eHarmony or one of those other dating agencies they advertise on the telly, only with slightly higher charges.
After paying your money you get to go on a series of dates after checks for those "key dimensions of compatibility."
In particular they find that very rich people are compatible with Tory shadow ministers.
You could even get a date with Dave. According to the Conservatives, "members are invited to join David Cameron and other senior figures from the Conservative Party at dinners, post-Prime Ministers questions, lunches, drinks receptions, election result events and important campaign launches."
One of the groups that gets to hobnob with the Tory top nobs is Noble Foods.
And who are Noble Foods?
Well, this is an appropriate story for Easter - they are the egg men.
Noble Foods packs and delivers 60 million eggs a week. If you are eating Goldenlay, Woodland or Big & Fresh brands, your dippy egg and toasty soldiers are, I'm afraid, funding Cameron.
The Tories are tucking into a big money omelette whipped up in kitchens across Britain. Noble Foods boss Peter Dean has done well out of chickens - he has an estimated wealth of £72 million.
However, the egg business is not a very free market. Noble Foods was formed by a 2008 merger of two companies - Deans Food Group and Stonegate - which gave the new company control of at least 46 per cent of the egg market, and possibly more.
The Competition Commission ruled the merger would cause "substantial lessening of competition."
Competition Commission boss Dame Barbara Mills said the new group "would be in a notably strong position, accounting for over half of both sales of shell eggs to retailers and the supply of liquid egg."
At the risk of putting you off your soft-boileds, liquid egg is big business, with the food industry buying eggs delivered in a tanker load rather than in the shell.
So Cameron gets his cash from the would-be monopoly master of liquid eggs, the man who wanted to get the free market out of free range.
Noble Foods did not take the Competition Commission's warning lying down - it went ahead and merged anyway, with a promise to de-merge later.
This is within the rules, but it's a robust response.
Mills had two egg-based worries. First, she said: "We think it is likely that the merged company would be able to increase prices to its customers, knowing that many would be unable to respond by buying from another supplier.
"Ultimately these prices rises could feed through to the consumer."
So now you know who to blame for high-priced eggs.
Mills's second worry was that "the merged company's size could have an adverse effect on egg producers, giving it the ability and incentive to use its buying power to reduce prices."
The Conservatives' big new funder dominates egg farmers, even without the merger.
And how are egg farmers faring?
Alex Renton of The Observer newspaper investigated the egg market in 2008 and found egg farmers were doing pretty badly.
What the newspaper called "shady middlemen" seemed to be making all the money. These middlemen are the packers, and the dominant packer is Noble Foods.
Renton found that Noble just won't talk to the press. The egg farmers were reluctant to speak up as well.
One told him on condition of anonymity, "it is just too dangerous to put your head up. Most of us sell to one packer - you might say all our eggs are in one basket."
He added that "if the packer found out I'm complaining to the media, I could lose all my business overnight."
This all suggests Cameron's new chum is not looking after rural Britain, although I should say that Noble Foods by contrast claimed it paid and charged a fair price for its eggs and was pleased about the increased cash it gave to egg farmers.
At the start of the week, a paper by right-wing think tank Reform calling for cuts in NHS beds made a big splash in the news.
Its claims that hospitals should be closed and that this would save the economy but leave patients unharmed was treated very seriously on Radio 4's Today Programme and in the broadsheet newspapers.
But what is Reform? It's an organisation run in part by ex-Lehman executive Chris Gent. Former Lehman bank director Gent sits on the Reform advisory board.
So first he runs a firm whose collapse causes an economic crisis. Second he helps run a think tank which says the solution to the economic crisis is cutting hospital beds.
Oddly enough, Gent's biography on the Reform website makes no mention of the fact that he was a Lehman director - the job has been airbrushed from history.
_________________ Mick Hildreth (07814 032002)
GMB PDB P39 Southern Region Branch Secretary
mick.hildreth@gmbtaxis.org.uk
www.gmbpdb.org.uk
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