Mixed blessings for Pringles

Pringles, the popular tube based snack, has been declared to be 'not a crisp' by a court. The makers, Proctor and Gamble, had gone to court because potato crisps, unlike most food, are subject to VAT.

According to the BBC report:

The manufacturer had insisted that their best-selling product was not similar to potato crisps, because of their "mouth melt" taste, "uniform colour" and "regular shape" which "is not found in nature".

The good news for P&G is that they won and so they will save millions of pounds in VAT (customers may also see the benefit).

The bad news is that they are officially now 'unnatural' products.

Doesn't this remind you of the bit in Yes Minister when the Eurocrats are trying to redefine British sausages as high fat offal tubes?

Wading in to the polling mess

Mark Pack over at Voice has had a dig or two at John Rentoul of the Indie concerning his commentary on Nick Clegg's leadership and the party's polling.

Of course, Mr Rentoul is entitled to his opinion. However wrong he is.

I perhaps shared the view that we aren't doing so well in the polls as I hoped we would. But then I looked at Political Betting's reminder of the latest polls from each firm:

ComRes C40: L26: LD20

ICM C39: L29: LD20

YouGov C44: L26: LD17

MORI C40: L31: LD19

Populus C40: L30: LD19

I don't know about you, but I'm fairly impressed. You Gov tends to poll us lower than the others and so I'm not too fussed about them being 2/3 points lower. But hitting the 19-20 point mark at this stage is not to shabby at all. Of course I'd like to be on 23, 28, 40, 98%. But I was there in the days of 6% and coming fourth behind the Greens.

And I expect us to rise a little bit further after Thursday night. We won't get 19/20% on polling day. Being local elections we'll poll higher than that. And the relative coverage as well as the good news stories I know we'll get from Liverpool, Hull, Sheffield and so on will translate into another little poll hike.

Pity the poor Labour Party. Set to lose London. Trounced in the North. Gordon Brown least popular Leader since Ethelred. I'm not as optimistic as Nich that we'll end up overtaking them in the opinion polls (ironically, we may just do so in the ballot box). It's a very long a low road from here on it.

So let's raise a cheer for the people who have got us here. And that starts with Nick Clegg.