Violent assault on espresso connoisseurs

Oh horror, the Dutch company Philips, maker of those both ubiquituous and horrendous 'espresso' machines relying on 'coffee pods' has bought Saeco the Italian maker of espresso machines.

I don't care strongly about Saeco as they also sell automatic coffee machines, ie coffee makers where you put your cup in, push a button and it does everything including the cappuccino foam. Pretty gross cappuccino by any stretch of imagination!

However, and here it gets really really serious, this means that Philips now also owns Gaggia, the Italian brand owned by Saeco. Just look at Gaggia's Classic (not coincidentally: I own one of these beauties) and ask yourself how such a brand will fare under the control of a company that probably invented 'coffee pods' and dumped them in uncountable hotel rooms as well as kitchens of people who should know better. A dark day indeed.

The weekend's good news: Starbucks closes store in Forbidden City

Starbucks, purveyors of unusually bitter coffee, were eventually made to close close their store in the Forbidden City in the PR of China. The Forbidden City was built in mid 1400 and was home to many of China's rulers, until 1911. Well, since the fall of the Chinese version of communism in the republic, just like in Russia, some kind of rampant, more or less unrestraint capitalism has taken hold in the country. The result has been that many historic sites were swamped with commercial outlets from McDonald's to Starbucks and similar outlets. Critics have argued, probably rightly so, that these outlets (well, too many of them in any case) destroy the nature of these sites and destroy much of the atmosphere with their bright neon signs, and such things. After a long campaign by some of China;s most high profile media personalities, about half a million signatures were collected, asking Starbucks to pack their coffee bags and get out. And that's what the company did.