ego.istic.org

I'm a little harsh on BBC News at times, usually when they are failing to live up to the standards I expect of one of the world's foremost news-reporting organisations.

This time, I applaud them for promulgating the FSA's seasonal warning about cooking your turkey properly. Call it the nanny state if you like, but I'd sooner see a brief reminder of how to make sure it is cooked through than have the NHS budget wasted on avoidable food poisoning cases.

And then they go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like, “On average, people eat Christmas dinner with six to seven other people,” and, “About 58% of us buy fresh turkey, 26% buy a frozen one.” (Both from the side box.) If we are all going around eating Christmas dinner in groups of seven or eight (on average), I'd expect that only 12—14% of us would buy a turkey at all. I guess that the anonymous author of this article meant that about 58% of us eat turkey that was bought fresh, and 26% turkey that was bought frozen, but it's the reporter's job to tell us that, not to make us guess.

I'd really like to know what the other 16% eat. Unfortunately, these figures don't come from the FSA's press release the article was retyped from, no source is given, and my Google-fu is weak, so I can't find out. (No, I'm not ignoring the possibility the numbers were made up on the spot.) If the BBC News website were editable, it would have more “Citation needed” tags than the whole of Wikipedia.

In case you're concerned that I might become one of the alleged 16% who eat turkey ready meals, Bernard Matthews's turkey slices, baked beans, or whatever else they eat for the rest of the year, I'm happy to report that Thursday week the train will be speeding me to Liverpool, land of my birth, to visit my family. As we have for some years, we will be eating Christmas dinner at my aunt's, in a larger-than-average group. I'll be sure to remind her not to run the turkey under the tap.