Peru or Ecuador?

My "go to" chocolate preference is plain and dark. Tesco has own brand Finest offerings from Peru (85%) and Ecuador (75%) and milk chocolate from the Ivory Coast (48%). They are unusual in identifying the source of their cocoa. I carried out extensive research in the chocolate aisle of the store (yum) and no other brands did this. Lindt? No. Green&Blacks? Also No.

ChatGPT, in a style which I appreciate, is at its most cynical in saying why:

Because they don’t want you to think too hard about where it comes from.

Here’s the blunt truth:

Most big chocolate brands deliberately leave out the source country because transparency would expose uncomfortable facts about their supply chains — child labour, deforestation, and unfair pay being the main ones. The majority of the world’s cocoa (around 60–70%) comes from West Africa, mainly Ivory Coast and Ghana, where working conditions are often poor and traceability is patchy at best.

So shout out to Tesco, which displays the following information in their packaging:

We work with the Transparence Cacao programme and the Rainforest Alliance in Peru, Ecuador and Côte d'Ivoire to help ensure that every bar of Tesco Finest chocolate supports sustainable practices in the cocoa industry and contributes to the livelihoods of farming communities.

I couldn't find any evidence of any other major chocolate brands using Transparence Cacao, although they all make claims to sustainable practices. So why not tell us where your cocoa comes from?

I need to undertake a taste test. Will the winner be Peru or Ecuador?

I'm a Progressive Activist

The pollster More in Common has produced a new segmentation of the British public, "based on extended research into Britons' core beliefs, their values and behaviours". The seven segments are:

• progressive activists
• incrementalist left
• established liberals
• sceptical scrollers
• rooted patriots
• traditional conservatives
• dissenting disruptors

Based on an initially flimsy understanding of what these mean, I'd say that I am naturally either a sceptical scroller or a dissenting disruptor. Given that the sequence looks as though it is fundamentally left through the centre to right, I think I'll go for being a sceptical scroller.

moreincommon.org.uk helpfully provides a detailed description for each category and, even more helpfully, a "Which segment are you? Take the quiz" button. So I did.

There are 21 questions; it took me 13 minutes. Started with a really tricky one:

I went for option 1. I hope they're not all this hard.

Turns out, as the title says, I'm a Progressive Activist - "A highly engaged and progressive group, uncompromising on the issues they care about and striving for global social justice".

Key words

Idealistic, radical, uncompromising, political, woke.

What they worry about

Global issues such as the war in Gaza or climate change, inequality in Britain, the power of billionaires, the rise of Reform UK, the rise of Donald Trump, Brexit, affordable housing, racial justice.

Where you might find them

In university campuses and cities; in Labour and Green Party meetings; on Bluesky; in flatshares or living with their parents; in third sector workplaces; in constituencies such as Hackney South and Shoreditch, Edinburgh South and Bristol Central.

How they get their news

High engagement with the news: from notifications from multiple news apps (likely The Guardian and the BBC), independent digital news outlets such as Novara, directly from political commentators on social media, from podcasts such as The News Agents or Pod Save the UK.

You can read a full description of me and the other PAs here.

Honestly, this is completely wrong about me. Which means (a) I'm too stupid to understand the questions or (b) their model is completely flawed and verges on clickbait. I believe the biggest defect is that they conflate feeling strongly about something with being emotionally and practically active about it. Believing in one of two strongly worded options (because you can't stomach the other) is not the same as caring about it. I'm the sucker that does online quizzes but despises their tendency to put people into boxes.

Looking at the details of the other segments, I think I actually fit Established Liberal more than anything but "less empathetic to those who are struggling" means it's a No. I have no natural home in their segmentation.

I suspect my reservations won't encourage my readers to try the questions but you could just treat it as a bit of fun. Do what I did - instinctive reaction first then do the quiz and post your answers in the Comments.

Genius Act

The USA passed the Genius Act on 18th July. Did you know? Me neither. Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins (GENIUS) is its title.

I have been struggling for literally months to figure out how to write a blog post about stablecoins, given that I don't know what they are and I don't understand any explanation offered. But, in the Reithian spirit of inform, educate and entertain, I am trying. Today is not the first time that Mehreen Khan, the Economics Editor of the Times, has written about this subject and today's article is headlined "Fear of missing out may convince central banks to embrace stablecoin". She writes "A stablecoin is a digital asset whose value is meant to be guaranteed by a peg to a traditional currency such as the dollar". She compares this with cryptocurrency, which has no such (notionally) intrinsic value.

Through the Genius Act the US government seeks to regulate, enable, perhaps even promote the issuance of stablecoins by non-governmental bodies - perhaps the likes of Amazon. But it's the central banks that are now considering the "opportunities". The Bank of England, initially sceptical, is now pursuing the possibility of a "digital pound". Khan asserts that the Bank "changed its tune...probably driven by the potential fiscal and financial benefits of the goldrush into stablecoins, which seems too lucrative to miss".

It seems to me that "goldrush" should raise a huge red flag. Isn't it true that the 2008 financial crisis was caused by the creation of new financial instruments which ultimately fell apart? Is the world at risk of doing it again? Why is the stablecoin concept necessary?

Another of my regular TV programmes has been Dragon's Den and the "dragons" frequently make the criticism of a pitch that "it's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist". Could stablecoins be one of those? The cynically minded amongst us would ask "who benefits from their existence?" The answer is almost certainly not you or me.

The whole thing is like those theoretical concepts in maths and physics - the square root of minus one, imaginary time, the Higgs Boson, multiple dimensions - which have no reality or meaning except in the minds of weird people.

I used to want to be one of those weird people - existing only in a non-corporeal state - but my natural patience and low boredom threshold make it an impossible dream. However, I shall continue trying to bring difficult concepts to you, dear readers. Mostly in the hope that one of you can explain better than I can.

Latest quiz night

Last night on BBC2:

7:30 Mastermind

This week's specialist subjects:

• The Jurassic Coast - not too far away from me but I really have no idea.
• The major plays of Molière - I may as well snooze until the next contestant; but this one scored barely more than me.
• Queen (that's the band, not the Queen) - this is more like it but I still got zero.
• Mickey Mouse cartoons 1928 to 1935. He should get out more.

The second half of the show is general knowledge questions, in which I have a chance of scoring higher than zero. I should probably just switch on at 7:45.

I'm baffled as to why people watch this programme but it's been going since the 1980s when it got over 20 million viewers. Latest viewership is around 1.5 million. I imagine it's pretty cheap to produce so it'll still be going in the next century.

8:00 Only Connect

Whereas I know that I know nothing on Mastermind, on this programme I expect to be able to solve the mind puzzles but I think, like cryptic crosswords, untangling them is a matter of practice and familiarity. Sadly I'm not there yet. Whereas I don't care about Mastermind, I do care about this impossible quiz.

8:30 University Challenge

I rather like the range of personalities in the teams, and occasionally I'll shout out some answers  - particularly if I know the answer and they don't. For some reason I find it enjoyable. When the team members introduce themselves, I pay attention to the discipline each is studying, in order to assess the balance of knowledge you need to cover all sorts of questions, much as you would to build a pub quiz team. If you have four mathematicians, you're going to struggle. I don't know if this is a recent pattern but it seems as if there are more postgrad students than in earlier years. Not sure that's a good thing.

Fortunately there are plenty of Monday evenings when there is football, so that gets preference.

Of the three questionmasters/mistresses/persons, Clive Myrie doesn't really have much to do except ask the questions so his unassuming persona is what's required, Victoria Coren Mitchell is clever but annoying and Amol Rajan is perfection.

Things I can't find out #2

The French government has fallen (again) because they decided to get rid of two of the country's 11 bank holidays. Non!

It seemed to me I should know a bit more about bank holidays. Why do they exist? Who invented them? Given economists consider poor productivity to be a key driver of the UK's weak economy, shouldn't we ban them? How much does a bank holiday cost the country?

We can blame Sir John Lubbock, who introduced the Bank Holidays Act of 1871, which created the first official bank holidays in England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. I asked ChatGPT why?

In addition to the “sacred” days (Christmas, Good Friday, Sundays), the Act designated Easter Monday, Whit Monday, first Monday in August and Boxing Day (Scotland has always had different days, let's ignore that for the moment). Funnily enough, Christmas Day (a traditional holiday) didn't become an official Bank Holiday until 1974, although banks had always closed on that day.

Later additions to the list were New Year's Day, May Day and the last Monday in August. The Spring Bank Holiday replaced Whit Monday.

What is it with bankers? Are they so rich they need extra time in which to spend their money? Just get back in, get rid of all these unnecessary holidays except Christmas Day and GET THE COUNTRY BACK TO WORK! (I know, I've gone all Trumpish).

Given that we all bank online nowadays, do we need high street banks at all? Maybe we should call these holidays Public Entitlement Days instead of Bank Holidays; perhaps that would cause people to think about whether we need them.

I'm with Boris on this; in 2022 when England's women won the European Championships, there was a (public? media?) clamour for a one-off bank holiday but he said No on account of the "big economic cost of an extra bank holiday". Good for him. Although he did say he'd consider it if the men's team won something, which is (a) typically Boris sexism and (b) an easy promise because there is no chance of it ever happening.

The French government wanted to scrap Easter Monday and VE Day and that didn't end well. So perhaps beware.

I should probably, in the cause of complete transparency, declare an interest. As a pensioner, every day is a holiday.

Footy updates 2025/15

How did my forecasts fare this weekend? (And ChatGPT's)

Manchester City Women 1 Arsenal Women 1 CGPT: 2-1 Result: 3-2
Attack good; defence awful. Title gone?

Wycombe 1 Barnsley 2 CGPT: 2-1 Result: 2-2

Leeds 2 Tottenham 2 CGPT: 1-2 Result: 1-2

Arsenal 3 West Ham 0 CGPT: 3-1 Result: 2-0

Nice to see one of our favourites topping a table. Those pesky other North Londoners threatening, the North London Derby is on 23rd November.

Preston 1 Charlton 1 CGPT: 2-0 Result: 2-0
Preston 4th in the table so no worries

Ipswich 2 Norwich 2 CGPT: 2-2 Result: 3-1
Ipswich haven't won this derby for 16 years so this is a welcome shock. It took an hour for Ipswich to realise that playing out from the back is a recipe for disaster at this level. Thereafter, and with four excellent attacking substitutions, it was all Town.

Hythe Town 0 Whitstable Town 1 CGPT 1-1  Result: 1-2
Still a promising position in the table if they can make the most of their games in hand 

Correct results: 2 out of 7 (ChatGPT: 4)

Correct scores: 0 out of 7 (ChatGPT: 2)

Match score: usedtobecroquetman 0 Chat GPT 1

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Upcoming midweek games:

It's an international break so only one game:

Arsenal Women v Lyon (Champions League)