Snappy Snacks!

25 March 2002
Nottingham Evening Post (p.3)

It’s the sort of dietary devotion that could give you art burn…

For a whole year, every time Ellie Harrison had a meal she took a snap of it first.
The 23-year-old’s time was eaten up by her final-year project at Nottingham Trent University, where she was studying fine arts.

Now her photo diary has had positive results, in the form of a website and a London exhibition… and the whole thing, appropriately, started with the Big Apple.

For it was in New York that she got her teeth into the idea for the project called Eat 22, that helped her to gain her degree.

While visiting the city two years ago, she kept a photographic log of her meals and, having digested the appetising results, decided to try it for a year.

Her first taste of her final year project came on her 22nd birthday, March 11 2001.

Ellie said “I am obsessed with food, but not in a bad way. I just love eating. The day before my birthday I bought a digital camera and it all started there. I became so obsessed with it that I never forgot to take a picture. I have forgotten my camera a few times – and my dad had to take a photo with his own.”

Now Ellie has created her own website where you can see every meal she ate, from rice pudding and Bran Flakes to Indian sweets.

She finished her project on March 11 2002 and all 1640 photographs can be seen on her website.

Professor Frank Abbott, senior lecturer in fine arts at Nottingham Trent, said “Ellie was very imaginative and resourceful with her work.”

Her work was previewed at the Broadway Cinema bar in Nottingham in November and was shown this month at the 291 Gallery in London.

All 1640 photographs are packed into a two-and-a-half minute piece shown at ten frames a second.

Ellie’s food art does not end there: her website is full of food, food and more food.

Ellie, now living in London with her parents, said that since finishing her project it has been strange being able to eat without thinking about the camera.

She said “I’m on a see food diet at the minute… I see food and I eat it! It’s really nice to just pick something out of the fridge.”

People can view Ellie’s photographs, read her log and enjoy her obsessively artistic eating habits on her website at www.ellieharrison.com

Clare Pilling

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Ellie Harrison Louise Haigh and Labour say that they will reform the complex fares system to ensure that passengers are confident that they are getting the best fare; confidence that X is the case, and X being the case are not necessarily the same thing. Simplification of fares would have to include the abolition of many fares. The assertion that simplifying the fares structure would reduce travelling costs is based upon a false premise, that being that the complicated-ness of the fares-and-ticketing structure is the reason why fares are expensive, that is not why they are expensive. They are expensive because the base level is too high. If you massively simplify the fares, one might then always be certain of getting the best available fare because there are no obscure cheaper fare hidden away in a Byzantine monolith, but that best fare is likely the best of a bad bunch. Railway fares are complicated, but it is within this myriad complexity that the nuances which facilitate cheaper options lurk; if you take a sledgehammer to the behemoth you bring down the cheaper options which lurk within the behemoth. If there are presently 18 options for doing Thing X, with 15 of those ways being cheap, and 3 of those ways being expensive, if you abolish the 15 cheap options for doing thing X you have massively simplified the paying-to-do-Thing X process because having 3 ways is much simpler than having 18 ways, and you have made it such that one is highly unlikely to not notice the cheapest of the available fares, because one is more likely to notice something when it is one amongst 3 than if it is one amongst 18, but it is nevertheless the case that the person is selecting the cheapest of the 3 most expensive. (i) Being guaranteed to always get the best fare; and (ii). getting cheaper fares are not necessarily the same thing. Be mindful of the actual specific wording of things: both before and after coming into government, Labour has never in actually promised cheaper fares, what Labour has promised is that one will be guaranteed to get the best available fare. The general public, politicians and public-transport campaign organisations alike have been seduced by the word 'simplification'. Simplification is not a virtue in and of itself. Simplification is a neutral concept, neither a good thing nor a bad thing; what is pertinent and important is the nature of the simplification. One can simplify travelling costs upwards. Simplification can simplify out the cheaper options. I deliberately say 'travelling costs', not 'fares', because thinking only terms of fares when it comes to simplification of railway fares and ticketing, and when it comes to Single-Leg Pricing is a proverbial red herring, one should think both in terms of fares AND in terms of travelling costs. Fare decreases do not necessarily mean travelling-cost. LNER is a prime example: with the June of 2023 introduction of Single-Leg Pricing on LNER, and the February of 2024 introduced of the Simpler Fares pilot, travelling costs for using LNER have gone up. Two halved-in-price Singles are more expensive than one Day Return; a fare reduction, but a travelling-cost increase. The changes December of 2023 fares-and-ticketing changes on c2c have many of the same fare-decreases-but-travelling-cost increases as LNER, plus its pay-as-you-go tap-in-tap-out integration with Transport for London (to simplify things) has necessitated the introduction of a weekday early-evening peak period between 4.00 p.m. and 7.00 p.m., which has numerous knock-on effects which can hugely increase one's travelling costs. The answer is not reform of the fares-and-ticketing structure. The answer is not simplification of the fares-and-ticketing structure. The answer is to decrease the price of all existing fares. Do not abolish any existing fares. Do not introduce any new types of fare. Just make all existing fares 45% cheaper, and leave it at that.

As the idiom goes: 'Be careful what you wish for, because it might come true'. Reform will only be good if it is good reform. We don't need reform, we need good reform. Some might fear that prices would inevitably be rationalised upwards. Inevitably, the rationalisation would rationalise out the cheaper options. Some might fear that reform of the fares-and-ticketing structure would, inevitably, reform travelling costs upwards, and reform out the cheaper options. Some might fear that simplification of the fares-and-ticketing structure would, inevitably, simplify travelling costs upwards, and simplify out the cheaper options. Just take a look at LNER. Be careful what you wish for, because it might come true.

Snappy Snacks!

25 March 2002 Nottingham Evening Post (p.3)

Clare Pilling

25 March 2002
Nottingham Evening Post (p.3)