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2 weeks ago | 
wickedleeks.riverford.co.uk | Nick Easen
Surprisingly there is no legal right to food in the UK. Access to our daily veg is at the mercy of neoliberal markets and oligopolist supermarkets. The same is true of our nation’s food security and resilience. Right now, the British government has no legal obligation to ensure that our food supply is reliable, healthy, sustainable or accessible, let alone tackling food poverty and hunger.
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1 month ago | 
wickedleeks.riverford.co.uk | Nick Easen
Every year £5 billion is spent on food in the public sector including meals in our hospitals, schools, prisons and care homes. The sector plays a massive role in on our national diet. A quarter of the entire UK population consume at least one public sector meal a year, while school-aged children get 30% of their daily sustenance through public procurement. Food in these settings, which also includes universities and military bases, is not known for its top-notch standards.
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1 month ago | 
wickedleeks.riverford.co.uk | Nick Easen
What’s not to love about local food hubs? This is where consumers support growers via short supply chains, reducing waste, food miles, and carbon emissions. And when you buy from your local producers, the food system becomes more resilient, since neighbourly sourcing enriches the communities it serves in a positive feedback loop, rather than the pockets of distant shareholders. Shop at Tamar Valley Food Hubs for example and producers receive 85p in the pound.
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1 month ago | 
fpcfreshtalkdaily.co.uk | Nick Easen
Every week a British greengrocer is shutting up shop from Edinburgh to Coventry, Redcar to Builth Wells. In the process they’re creating ‘fruit and veg deserts’ across the country. Our communities are poorer for it, so are people’s diets. It’s no wonder nine out of ten children and three quarters of adults in the UK aren’t getting enough fresh produce.
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1 month ago | 
wickedleeks.riverford.co.uk | Nick Easen
When healthy produce, such as fruit and veg, is more than twice as expensive as unhealthy foods, then we know the nation’s diet is in trouble. If this is not worrying enough, research by the Food Foundation shows that the poorest fifth of the population now need to allocate 45 per cent of their disposable income to afford a healthy diet. This rises to 70 per cent for those with children. The annual Broken Plate report, recently published by the food charity, is grim reading.
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2 months ago | 
greatbritishlife.co.uk | Nick Easen
Along an unassuming road north of Plympton sits one of Devon’s most magical places to stay. Few hotels in the UK have such a dazzling juxtaposition of the old and new. Here a pre-Domesday manor meets a 21st century, state-of-the-art spa. Unlikely bedfellows perhaps, but Boringdon Hall, which means 'enchanted place on the hill' in Anglo Saxon, is exactly that, and does it with oodles of character.
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2 months ago | 
wickedleeks.riverford.co.uk | Nick Easen
Fast fashion – the business model that dominates our high streets – relies on a simple premise: selling more for less, with a ‘race to the bottom’ on price. It’s built on an unsustainable and exploitative model, as well as a search by retailers for ever decreasing costs, whether it’s labour or other inputs. But are we now living in an age of ‘fast fruit and veg’? When Christmas veg sells for 8p in supermarkets there are uncanny parallels.
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Jan 28, 2025 | 
thebusinesstravelmag.com | Nick Easen
Navigating air travel for 2025 isn’t easy. Pricing and ticketing is subject to a constrained market around the globe because demand continues to outpace supply. Airlines still aren’t getting hold of planes or parts quick enough, so expect moderate price increases in 2025, particularly on popular routes. If buyers haven’t factored this in already, they will need to rethink. Ask many carriers and they will run off a long list of why costs are creeping up.
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Jan 27, 2025 | 
businesstravelnewseurope.com | Nick Easen
The reasons for taking business trips are legion: there’s the executive who can’t afford not to attend that client meeting in China for fear of losing them to a competitor, or that essential conference in Miami allowing a sales manager to meet new partners and generate fresh income. In an age of scrutiny, putting a euro, pound or dollar value on every air mile or hotel room night is increasingly important.
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Jan 10, 2025 | 
raconteur.net | Nick Easen
There’s a common belief that AI will free workers from monotonous or low-level tasks, freeing up time for more creative or stimulating work. But it might not be so simple. Milena Nikolova, a professor in the economics of well-being at the University of Groningen, has looked at data on thousands of workers across 20 European countries over two decades. Surprisingly, she found that automation in industrial workplaces actually increased repetitive and monotonous tasks for humans.
