New Gluten-Free Food Rules
I was in the new Kings Cross Station yesterday and they have a Leon restaurant, which offers quite a lot of gluten-free meals.
One of their staff told me, that new regulations mean you can’t call food gluten-free unless it is cooked in a separate gluten-free kitchen with no gluten in it.
So going in to a restaurant and saying can I have scrambled eggs and smoked salmon and expect it to be gluten-free is off the radar.
Leon get round it by saying that particular dishes are made from gluten-free ingredients.
If this new law has come in, it basically means that no restaurant will offer gluten-free food, as they can be prosecuted by the local authority, unless they go for two separate kitchens.
This new law may explain why Starbucks seem to wrap their very good chocolate brownies in a cellophane wrap and keep most of them out the back.
Support for Fabrice Muamba
The support for Fabrice Muamba has been heart-warming and according to reports his family have appreciated all of the messages and displays of support.
Let’s hope he makes a full and speedy recovery!
The Intro And The Outtro
Network Rail showed how to open a station today. There were lots of signs and the old entrances had ushers so you would know the correct way to go.
Pratt of the Week? - Not Really!
I suggested to this guy, that he might be the “Pratt of the Week”. He took it well and it certainly is a light-hearted way to herd people in the right direction.
On exiting the station though, I was greeted by lines of smokers.
Pratts of this and every other Year!
How do we stop these “Pratts of this and every other Year” causing litter and blocking the way for those who are less than mobile?
The New Kings Cross Opens A Day Early
I hadn’t intended to go into the new part of Kings Cross station until it opened on the 19th. But I found it was open on Sunday the 18th.
It is impressive and even has a restaurant that does gluten-free fast-food; Leon
I have added some more pictures taken on the Monday. I’ll probably add a few more as time goes on.
There is a very good article on the design here in the Evening Standard.
A Question Answered
A few weeks, ago I asked how scammers got your phone number and other details.
The Sunday Times answers the question today and says it all down to corrupt Indian call centre workers, who sell the details for two pence a shot. Surely, I’m worth more than that?
If that is the case, we need a nice EU Law, which says that data from individuals of a particular company, must only be held and accessed in that country.
Companies might moan, but all we would need to do was boycott the moaning companies. As it is, I try to avoid companies with overseas call centres. And that would include Spanish, German or French companies, that have their call centre, where they are head-quartered.
The Old and the New
I took these two pictures of buses on Route 15.
The first is a Routemaster on the Heritage route and the following bus is an Alexander Dennis Enviro 400H Hybrid, but it doesn’t seem to have had the leaves stuck on yet!
I don’t think they’re travelling in a pair in case the other breaks down, but perhaps as the Routemaster only goes half the way, the new bus can pick up the passengers, when the other stops. Or it could be a cheaper way of creating a high-capacity bus, as the total capacity is 64+80 or 144 passengers!
when I was a child, there was always a rumour that one London bus route, always went in convoy for protection, as once one got hit by a German bomb.
I’m Getting Fed Up With Carluccio’s
I should say that I have no complaint against Carluccio’s. Quite the contrary. It’s just that on my travels around London and sometimes further away they are the one place I can trust to get a light gluten-free meal at an affordable price.
Take my trip last week to the East India Dock Basin. It was either go to their restaurant in Canary Wharf, the one in Islington or go home. I chose the last option.
If anything the complaint is against other restaurants, who don’t provide a gluten-free option. In some chains like, La Porchetta, I know that some choices are gluten-free, but when I ask, they treat me like a leper and tell me to go elsewhere.
Groupon Told to Improve
I’ve always felt the web site, Groupon, a bit suspect and in the “If-it-looks-too-good-to-be-true- then it-must-be” category, so if any offer has anything to do with it, I ignore it.
So now the Office of Fair Trading has told it to improve as reported here on the BBC.
I’ll ignore it even more, if that were possible.
Bad Mathematics on the Underground
When the London Underground replaces or refurbishes an escalator, they put posters on them to amuse and inform. One says.
Twice the life. Escalators are refurbished at least twice in their lifetime.
Here’s a picture of the error, that I took later.
Bad Mathematics on the Underground
If the refurbishments make the escalator as new, surely two will treble the total lifetime.
The French are Complaining
According to The Times, the French are complaining that the official Olympic brochure is not available in French.
But if you do put it into French, do you use French French, which I can read or Canadian French, which I can’t and a lot of French people from France have been known to laugh at in the same way we treat American English.
In my view there might be a more serious problem on the various Olympic sites. All sports with the exception of football, cricket and one or two others are performed with respect to metric units. Even rugby talks about 10 and 22 metre lines!
So do we put up the signs inside the Olympic park with yards or metres. As most of the competitors and spectators, think a yard is somewhere to keep your rubbish, we should use metres.
But I bet we don’t!
The only place I know in the UK, with metric signposts, is Liverpool University’s campus.
There is an e-petition on metrication here.
For those who are against this on account of it’s not the British thing to use metric units. I have never used Imperial units in business and don’t ever use them to measure anything. My eldest child will be 43 this year and he didn’t even learn about Imperial units at school.
So why do we keep them?
The Anonymous Widower 