Stephen Aldred

A couple of additional points, economic and social: (1) Since at least the 1930's the UK has pursued a cheap food policy. This relied initially on the import of cheap food from the old empire and the maximising of yields from domestic production as opposed to promoting quality. By way of example, the Milk Marketing Board, established in about 1932 to protect prices paid to dairy farmers in the Depression, paid top price for milk to be sold in bottle and least for milk to be processed into cheese. As the MMB had an effective purchasing monopoly farmers were reluctant to sell quality milk for cheese which was produced as a 'commodity' product. It is only since the abolition of the MMB that there has been a real revival in small scale cheese production. (2) LML makes a good point about the effect of rationing from 1940 to about 1954. British town dwellers became used to accepting mediocre food. (3) The destruction of many old town and city centres between about 1955 and 1975 due to misguided planning policies destroyed our old town centre markets. You can still find these particularly in the North [read Simon Hopkinson in the Independent for his memories of eating black pudding on childhood visits to Bury market] but they are vastly diminished. (4) Coupled with (3) is the rise of the centralised distribution power of supermarkets which reduced the variety of fresh products available to the consumer. I could go on.....yawn

Wilfrid, I'm with Adam and Yvonne on this. Try it with a glass of Bucks Fizz for breakfast on Boxing day

No idea, but they usually disappear so quickly that the problem doesn't arise.