To be fair, it’s not the sort of thing you expect to hear from a trade union, so when the GMB issued a warning that bananas were set to disappear, UTC sat up and took notice.
It’s all to do with the emergence of a new species of the Fusarium Oxysporum pathogen, the auld yin explained to a rapt audience. GMB puts it all down to “low-paid, large-scale monoculture” which is destroying worker health, the natural environment and local communities.
The union says: “The system for the production and trade of dessert bananas is little more than a house of cards built on the shaky foundations of monoculture and genetic uniformity. This house of cards threatens to collapse at any moment.”
UTC was mostly concerned about what the potential impact might be on foam bananas, a favourite treat of his.
