Boots is under fire again for selling homeopathic remedies that don’t work (cue the usual influx of angry e-mails from those who insist they took them once and they do; now Google the word “placebo”). A senior executive at the company was forced to admit to the House of Commons last autumn that it had no evidence they are any use, but Boots still takes money from the credulous for them.
More than 300 sceptics across the country are planning a protest on January 30, at 10.23am, when they will take a mass “overdose” of the remedies and then die hideously. Or perhaps not. 1023 is a reference to the Avogadro constant, which proves scientifically that homeopathy doesn’t work (again, Google it).
Boots comments: “We know that many people believe in the benefits of complementary medicines and we aim to offer the products we know our customers want.” And will pay for, however worthless. What do you expect from a company that employs Andy Hornby, one of the architects of the destruction of HBOS, as chief executive? A sense of shame.
If Cadbury disappears as an independent company, what of the Museum of Brands? This is just off the Portobello Road in West London and is the creation of consumer historian Robert Opie, who started his collection of, er, well-labelled rubbish with a packet of Munchies at the age of 16 and now has a huge range of goods, from toys to wrappings and souvenirs.
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Cadbury is one of the sponsors and an elderly tin of Cadbury’s Cocoa Essence is prominent on its website. “It would be suicidal to change the name Cadbury and tamper with it too much,” Opie tells me. As to the museum itself, “it just means we need to go off after Kraft, I guess”.
In celebration of the critic
In the blue corner: Sir John Tusa
Sir John Tusa, the former newsreader and, until 2007, managing director of the Barbican Centre, has become honorary chairman and public face of theartsdesk.com, a website that allows freelance reviewers of art, music, dance and theatre, among others, to post reviews online.
The venture is owned by its contributors and various outside donors. Its commercial adviser is Kevin Madden, former online director at Dennis Publishing.
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Tusa is enthusiastic about the venture, which he tells me is a “zero-plus game” that adds to reviews in national newspapers. “I love the impassioned debate that springs up in the immediate aftermath of a new production or show.”
The arts thrives on feedback from consumers, he says. “You can’t judge what you are doing without regular comment on what you are doing.
Some calorific content
Weird but, apparently, true. As we limber up for some sort of mandatory labelling on alcohol, the Stanford Graduate School of Business has been looking at the effect of labelling the number of calories available at fast-food outlets. The college was given data from Starbucks from its shops in three big cities where calorie counts were listed. The number of calories consumed per transaction fell by 6 per cent. But overall, revenues were not affected — in fact, in areas where there was a competitor near by, sales actually increased in stores where calorie counts were posted. But, as Stanford sadly admits, “the research team does acknowledge that a 6 per cent reduction in calories is too small to have a major effect on the nation’s waistline”
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When is vodka not vodka? When it is, for example, a 22 per cent strength mixture of vodka and ordinary alcohol sold under the name Vodkat, a High Court judge has ruled. Diageo, which makes Smirnoff, was in court, and vodka joins the protected ranks of champagne, whisky and sherry. Vodka was, of course, first made by starving Russian serfs out of potato peelings, grain, rye — or, indeed, virtually anything else that could be fermented.
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