There are some big issues to chew on in the consumer world at the moment. The imminent collapse in the housing market and the soaring cost of basic food items to name but two. And I would not want anyone to think I am belittling any of them to return to a subject I've written on before. But I cannot help but revisist the great scandal that is the decline of the West Cornwall Pasty Company. To recap...this was a family run business that, for the first time in this Devonian's lifetime, cracked the formula of how to make authentic west country pasties in The Smoke. But last October the family sold out to private equity house Gresham for £40 million. And, I'm sorry to report it's been downhill all the way. It's been just another depressing example of how big business in general, and return driven private equity houses, in particular, do not get real food. First the meat ratio plummeted alarmingly. Now, in a recipe change that would have had the Cornish tin miners marching out on strike, air seems to have become the biggest single ingredient - and not west country air at that. A colleague showed me the innards of his pasty this week. He had only bitten through the pastry, yet the filling had retreated to the far corner. How many more "Gresham pasties" have been padded out in the same way. They are literally selling hot air, the stuff they dream of private equity boss finishing school. Perhaps even worse the shops are now selling a huge range of snacks as well as the pasties. Now at least half the selling space is taken up by bacon butties, hideous "anglo-pizzas" and sausage rolls. About as Cornish as a haggis. I predict that if the chaps at Gresham find they can make more money from these diversifications, the pasties will have all but gone from the range in a year. Very sad.