I DON'T get all this outrage over horse meat passed off as beef.

After all, we asked for it.

It's the predictable corporate response to the insatiable demand for cheap meat.

You can blame government, inspectors, retailers, or unscrupulous foreigners, but we have fed this demand.

Too many are not prepared to pay for better-quality food, even when they can afford it, including the government.

Do shoppers really care about the DNA in a dozen frozen burgers that cost thirty bob?

Some 80% of Brits still don't realise there is no ham in ham- burgers. They may now believe budget fish fingers contain sea-horse but do they care?

Folk seem more cheesed off at being duped by criminal labelling rather than with the thought of having eaten horse.

Brits spend 11.3% of their income on food, the lowest in the EU.

Only the Yanks spend less, which may account for their obesity epidemic, even worse than our own.

Residents of our leafy suburbs may claim to turn up their nose at budget brands, but even The Queen may have eaten horse.

It was unknowingly passed off as beef by Sodexo, Britain's biggest catering company at – ironically – Royal Ascot.

Sodexo also do the grub at Holyrood and Hampden Park.

Politicians' assurances that Scottish school meals were bought for quality and not cost have been exposed as complete tosh.

Official documents reveal that a £60million supply deal was weighted heavily in favour of price.

Frozen beef products have now been banned from all schools after last week's Cumbernauld High near miss, but we haven't a scooby what we have been feeding our kids.

The contents of some burgers enjoyed a magical mystery tour before galloping on to school menus and British plates.

One supply chain started in Holland, where Cypriot-registered factories bought meat from a Romanian abattoir.

They sold it on to a company in France, which in turn flogged it to a Swedish firm operating in Britain.

Police that lot, why don't you. Not easy with 800 UK food inspectors having been cut since the 1990s.

There was more EU light touch regulation in 2006, scrapping daily inspections at abatt-oirs which butchered animals into bits for processed meals.

Our Food Standards Agency even gave them advance warning of inspections, for goodness sake.

The Scottish and UK governments have been playing catch-up since the scandal broke in January.

They are desperate to replace the horse meat with some scapegoat.

ONLY last weekend, the Better Together campaign against independence warned: "Scots save billions on the cost of mortgages due to the UK's AAA credit rating."

Now the rating has been cut, Lib Dem campaigner Danny Alexander says it's "not a devastating blow".

The SNP is, needless to say ecstatic, conveniently ignoring their pledge to stick with Sterling after independence.

Do these folk have trouble making up their minds?

Well, Yes ... and No.