Image - Rasbak (Wikimedia Commons), modified under licence
Naturally, the Daily Mail’s swallowed this story whole (as has the Telegraph) – but then again, neither of these publications have been known to allow the facts to get in the way of a good EU-bashing. Iain Dale’s post seems to have been written when he was drunk and in the middle of a daydream about Dick Littlejohn: it opens with “you couldn’t make it up” and gripes about the “E bloody U.”
Essentially, the Mail says that new regulations, which would require the carton to display “322g of rolls” as opposed to “six rolls”, therefore means that eggs will now be sold in evil metric fives and tens, and shoppers will be confused into oblivion.
…except it’s a bit more complicated than that. First, there’s no reason that you’d be forbidden from buying eggs by the dozen: the idea that a change in the headline figure would result in the actual quantity changing is a complete non sequitur.
So what if the packaging doesn’t say “six eggs” any more? Eggs aren’t exactly packaged in a way that makes them difficult to count. Two times three equals six, therefore I’m getting six eggs that total x grams.
If anything, the new system, if there is one, makes more sense. When using eggs as ingredients in cooking, something like “100g of egg yolk” makes a lot more sense than “the yolk from 3 medium-sized eggs” which is an absurdly arbitrary measurement. And if you’re buying them to eat as eggs? Well, you can count them!
That said, I’m beginning to sense a pattern here. The Mail often gripes about falling standards in education, but then has the temerity to complain that the public should be asked to do simple tasks – namely, sorting rubbish, or counting eggs/rolls. That said, let’s also consider the countless other EU non-stories the Mail’s pumped out – straight bananas and all – and consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, this story might have been spun from nowhere to flog their sodding paper.
