The Craster Kipper Caper

We flew from Bristol to Newcastle. The queue for our check-in desk was as long as the queue for the Malaga flights. All passports were being checked, and all baggage was being examined.

"Good morning, Sir. Is this your bag?"
"Did you pack it yourself? Has anyone else had access to it?"
(I had to resist my little quip about the Filipino maids doing nothing but their nails nowadays).
"And the purpose of your visit?"
(Geordie-baiting).
"Have a nice flight, Sir".

I love proper kippers for breakfast, and was not disappointed with the first breakfast at our hotel in Chollerford. The next morning, I ordered them again, but was denied. "We're temporarily out of kippers". Later that day we sped up the coast and stopped off for half an hour at Craster, legendary home of North Sea kippering. I was tempted to buy some in the smokehouse shop but Wor Lass vetoed the idea. "Nyet, they'll stink out the car, and our room at the hotel". She reassured me that the hotel would soon restock with kippers and I would have my breakfast treats for the rest of the holiday.

But it was not to be. Each morning I ordered kippers, and each morning was told that the kipper-pond was dry. It seemed that they only got their kipper orders in once a week. I planned a quick dash up the coast again to Craster, so that next morning when the kipper order was declined I could whip a whopper out of my pocket and slap it on the plate with a request to "warm this one up please, and if the chef's interested, I've got a few more for sale". But again, "Nyet, they'll throw us out.". Not if they want the bill paying, they won't. But nyet is non-negotiable, and I never saw the smokehouse again.

We flew back home at the end of a 6-day break, with my having eaten only one kipper. We flew there and back, I'll add, for less than it cost to park the car in Bristol Airport's long stay car park, and less than it would have cost in petrol to drive to and from Newcastle. Don't bother looking up the train price to see how that would have compared, I could insure my collection of cars for less. A few days later, when we went shopping at a local supermarket, I stopped in front of the fishy section of the delicatessen counter, and there, in a dish, was a selection of Craster Kippers. Even more amazing was the price - less than I would have paid for them if I had bought my planned pocketful from the smokehouse in the harbour. But at least the mystery of my kipper-less northern holiday was explained. Buyers for Waitrose had cornered the Craster Kipper market, leaving the local hotels to get by on what few fish were left after the smoking catch was shipped south.

Looking back, I shouldn't have been surprised. A fisherman myself once, I remember sailing from Lowestoft out into the North Sea, where for two or three weeks our trawlers would plod around in company with fishing boats from all around Europe. Once full, back in Lowestoft we would land our catch on the fish market in neatly packed baskets of ice. The Dutch boats, which had also been dragging their trawls alongside ours, would return to their harbours, and soon a container-lorry would cross the North Sea by ferry, drive to Lowestoft fish market, and put fully-filleted plaice alongside our own catch, for a lower asking price than we could afford to drop to. The Dutch Government subsidised the fuel bills of their industry. Well, if you 'owned' half of Shell wouldn't you be tempted? Not surprisingly, our fishing industry went into a decline and I found myself looking for another future.

So who, I now wondered, was subsiding the Craster Kipper Caper, and to what end? Before even considering the why were they doing it, I found myself pondering the how did they do it? How was it possible for someone to sell Craster kippers in Dorset for less than the shop price beneath the smokehouse where they were cured? The answer came to me when petrol prices started to rise again, and I jokingly remarked it would be cheaper for me to get work in Newcastle and fly there and back than continue driving to and from Swindon. I saw it all in a flash - someone was using the network of cut-price airlines to transport kippers at sub-freight costs. Redundant call-centre workers and computer programmers whose jobs had been outsourced to India were being recruited by adverts promising "a future in sales combined with travel and good food" ,and becoming kipper-carriers.

The ability to deal with officialdom and think quickly must be a major asset in such a career.

"Good morning Sir. Is this your bag?"
"Did you pack it yourself?"
"Has anyone else had access to it?"
"Would you mind opening it please?"

"Could you tell me why your bag is full of kippers?"
"Oh, I understand. I've been trying the Atkins diet, but I can't seem to stick to it. Have a nice flight, Sir"

I had put the Craster Kipper Caper out of my mind for a few months, when I caught sight of a newspaper headline. The National Health Service, (allegedly), is planning to send all the samples it currently tests here out to India for testing. It is, it seems, cheaper to fly blood and urine halfway round the world and back again, than to send it up the road to a laboratory in England.

(At this point may I make it perfectly clear that the word allegedly is not intended to be applied to the preceding words National Health Service, but to the following portion of the sentence. Any suggestion that the National Health Service exists more for the benefit of foreigners than it does for the paying citizens is accidental and unintended. Likewise, any suggestion that the National Health Service is actually a collection of regional authorities in a desperate competition against each other to meet government targets, instead of actively cooperating with each other to ensure the health and wealth of the nation, is grossly disingenuous ).

Back to the issue at hand:

"Good morning Sir, nice to see you again. How is the fish diet?"
"I'm not surprised, I wouldn't have been able to stick it either. So, what have we in the bag today, then?"

"Sir, these seem to be samples of some description. Have you declared them under the section headed 'Gifts, merchandise, or samples'?"
"Really? But if they are not samples, what are they then?"
"Oh, I see, specimens. Can I just ask why you have so many of them?"
"Ah yes, one of my Aunts is a hypochondriac, too. I hope you get cured soon, Sir".

The headline "India to test our NHS samples, now they're taking the p*ss!" is a single-source item of dubious intelligence, probably wrong for sensational reasons. Sadly, though, it is exactly the sort of information that a government would use as a reason for going to war against the NHS. But, tax and insurance contributions have dropped somewhat as jobs go abroad, and either taxes must rise to make good the shortfall, or costs must be cut. No sensible government puts up taxes when there is a perfectly good alternative, so I predict we are going to see much more of this drive to outsource anything that we, as a nation, can do perfectly well ourselves, to other countries eager to maximise their use of cut-price air travel.

There could even be a benefit to us, as motorists, when the Shire Councils realise the way to reduce their highway maintenance expenditure is to stop the never ending cycle of "resurface the road, dig up the road, patch the road again, deal with the complaints about potholes, resurface the road ...", and, yes, I can tell you're right there with me, outsource the road-mending process to India. No longer will half a mile of road be single-laned to mend and resurface a few potholes. Instead, they'll be shipping out standard-sized metre-square chunks of pot-holed road and receiving back patched and resurfaced pieces to be slotted back into place again, without all that unnecessary expense of paying wages and Employers National Health contributions.

"Good morning Sir, nice to see you again. My, that is a large bag, I am sorry to see your hypochondria is getting worse."
"Cured, you say? Oh, I am glad for you. So then, what is in the bag today, Sir?"

"What are these large pieces of black stuff with holes in them?"
"Your collection? What are you collecting. Sir?"
"Oh, modern art. Well, I prefer classical sculpture myself, but it takes all sorts, as they say. Have a nice flight, Sir".