alanjjohnstone
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It is to be expected with the preponderance of sympathetic articles
TWO thirds of Scots support the introduction of universal basic income, according to a new poll.
An article critical of the “lesser evil” strategy of voting in the coming US election between Biden and Trump by Jonathan Cook
“At the very moment when the US two-party political system may be beginning to break down, when it has no answers to the first wave of major global crises to hit western “civilisation”, Jay and many others on the progressive left continue to argue that it is imperative to engage with the system, for gradualism, for assisting with those who try to make the system seem better, look more humane.”
One of my points is that the nature of the work in slaughtering animals is that it cannot be made humane and less cruel. But perhaps it may be possible to euthanise animals at an industrial scale in a pain-free manner in socialism with an injection. But then there is the butchering of the carcass that is required. Can a person intellectually divorce themselves from the connection?
No-one expects, Bijou, that domesticated livestock, bred over generation after generation into being totally unlike their earlier wild relatives, can be re-wild. It is impossible. (Maybe goats might be able to go feral)
So meat-eater will have a temporary respite as the present generation of slaughter-men carry out final culls of farm animals. (i’ve never met too many women who took up the occupation but I am sure there are exceptions. And i’ll add another caveat, it is usually women who predominate in the food processing sector of the meat industry. Matt will know what I mean when I learned the details from a newly arrived female immigrant of the unpleasant work endured at Broxburn)
We can also expect a slower end to milch cow breeding (with higher rates of lactose intolerance in Asia, i’m well used to soya milk now). Domestic cows can live to 20 years or more; however, those raised for dairy rarely live that long, as the average cow is removed from the dairy herd around age six and marketed for beef. To keep producing milk means cows continuously producing calves and they are usually slaughtered for veal.
Again i have to say that work which leads to occupational diseases that cannot be avoided will end in socialism and second-best alternatives will substitute. Such jobs cannot have the psychological harm minimised with improved safety equipment or rotating the task or by automation (not sure if sci-fi Asimov readers would approve of killing androids if they were invented).
There is ample evidence that shows such work as slaughtering animals is not good for a persons mental health.
“It may seem logical that people that are surrounded by death all day, every day would eventually succumb to the emotional turmoil and stress of having to kill for a living, seeing the live animals coming in knowing that the worker will personally be ending its life but not being about to care. Slaughter house workers are increasingly reporting symptoms of PTSD including extreme anxiety, domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse and social withdrawal. Nearly 10 percent of Americas Slaughter houses are in Texas, criminologists at the University of Windsor in Canada, reported in a study that there is a strong relationship between the location of a large slaughterhouse and high crime rates in American communities.”
How lightly those here pass over such findings as
“Most of the relevant literature addresses animal abuse preceding homicide or domestic abuse cases where the mental predisposition to abuse already exists and animals serve as a convenient outlet for aggression, a relatively easy first step before moving to human targets. In slaughterhouses, the predisposition to abuse is not necessarily preexisting, but killing animals may serve a similar purpose in those without a predisposition as it does in those with one by acting as a first step that desensitizes workers to further violence aimed at humans.”
I have already suggested that even under clinical conditions vets are affected by the need to euthanise animals.
“Studies of shelter staff, veterinary professionals, and laboratory animal technicians have consistently shown that these people experience a higher than usual rate number of physical and psychological symptoms of stress—including high blood pressure, depression, suicidal thoughts, and substance abuse—related to their job.”
But as I have also said what we personally wish is not particularly relevant. Unless you wish to rear and slaughter your own livestock (and I expect there will be some) those who engage in the industry will vote with their feet and eventually walk off the job. Self-survival will prevail among those now pressed into such work by poverty. We may disagree but I do not envisage willing volunteers lining up to undertake such tasks when there is no vital need to do it.
Greggs as Bijou now probably has tasted a few times, do plant-based meat-less sausage rolls and steak pasties, a pleasure I have never sampled since they went on the market after my last visit to the UK but from press reports they appear perfectly satisfactory as an alternative to real processed meat.
Manufactured artificial meat is still in its early days of development but it seems it will progress and produce alternative sources of animal-free meat.
Those are not unrealistic ideas when peoples welfare comes first. Meat-eaters aren’t going to be deprived as ALB suggests.
Some meat-eating will persist, varying according to local geography and cultures, as I said often enough previously, but it will become an occasional luxury indulgence. The daily diet will be predominantly plant-based with those seeking the familiar taste and texture of meat finding it in suitably adequate alternatives and substitutes. And as the Gregg’s vegan products have demonstrated, when such is readily available and accessible, they are adopted.
As an aside, I come from both farming and fishing background. Fathers side still has family working on farms but mothers side, the connection died out with the whaling and herring industry. I recall my father telling me of one of the less pleasant tasks he did in his youth – castrating lambs with his teeth. Perhaps he was passing on a legend, just as he passed on to me his hatred for farmers and land-owners and the fore-lock touching docility of rural workers (including a number of his own family members) to their “social betters” and how they still voted the way the employers instructed them despite the demeaning manner in the way they were treated. He recognised intuitively what Marx described as the “idiocy of rural life.”
As you should know by now, ALB, my point on meat-eating is that it will disappear when socialism is established because of the serious psychological effects suffered by those workers in abattoirs and slaughter-houses. No amount of job-sharing will provide sufficient voluntary workers to engage in the unavoidable cruelty of that industry. There can never be a humane cruelty-free killing of livestock on the scale necessary to supply the present day demand.
I believe your brother is a vet, and from conversations I have had with some, the worse experience they have is the euthanasia of healthy unwanted animals and that is by a process that is as pain-free as possible yet it remains an unpleasant task.
Today’s level of meat-eating is only maintained by the extensive use of immigrant labour as most indigenous workers decline to work under such conditions which are both inhumane to the animals and as these posts show, also inhumane to the workers. It means only those desperate enough will take such jobs. Such desperation will not exist in a socialist society.
The brutality of the industry towards animals creates the management mind-set that spills over into the brutal working conditions and the callous treatment of those unable to find alternative employment.
The coronavirus pandemic, as with many other aspects of society, has brought to the surface the underlying conditions of the migrant workers within the meat industry.
That is the focus of the posts.
If I wished to concentrate on bus-drivers, it would be on their reduced mental stress because of lesser levels of road-traffic and jay-walkers which will also be part of the benefits of socialism.
As an aside, I think we can speculate that if the taste for flesh persists inside socialism, it will be satisfied by meat substitutes and we see the development of lab-grown meat produced in vats in addition to the increased popularity of plant-based fake meat.
Meat plants across the world are grappling with serious coronavirus outbreaks. The US has been hardest hit, with confirmed cases at more than 200 meat and food processing plants and the death of at least 66 workers. There have also been clusters of cases at meat plants in France, Germany and Ireland, where more than 500 workers have tested positive.
“It’s a shit way to go for £9 an hour”
The South Yorkshire meat processing plant where three workers have died from coronavirus has been criticised for failing to adequately protect workers. Three workers at a Cranswick food processing facility in Wombwell, Barnsley, which supplies UK supermarkets, are confirmed to have died after testing positive for coronavirus. The UK-based company has an annual revenue approaching £1.5bn
Foreign workers are forced to endure inhumane living conditions so that we can eat cheap meat.
Those who toil in German slaughter houses are to gain extra protection after new COVID-19 hotspots erupted at several slaughterhouses across the country, with hundreds of migrant workers from Eastern Europe infected. The infected workers from Romania, Poland, Bulgaria and other eastern European countries live in cramped and often squalid shared accommodations, which makes quarantining and social distancing nearly impossible.
Many of the workers in Germany’s meat industry are hired by subcontractors. Next year, these types of labor arrangements, known as Werkverträge in German, will be banned for the meat industry. Until now, the meat industry largely procured workers using a network of subcontractors and task-specific work contracts. German slaughterhouse operators would sign special contracts with subcontractors which determined a set price for the number of animals that needed to be slaughtered or outlined the weight of carcasses that needed to be cleaned and processed. These types of contracts mean the German companies are not legally responsible for the personnel, leaving workers vulnerable. Migrant workers are often shorted their pay or charged extra fees by subcontractors for work expenses.
Other articles
A woman who lives across the street from the workers’ home tells me that authorities were slow to act and says she feels sorry for the foreigners. “They are poor people, put up in squalid conditions and exploited,”
Half of all Americans who name Fox News as their primary television news source and 44% of voters who cast ballots for Trump in 2016 “believe that Bill Gates is plotting to use a mass COVID-19 vaccination campaign as a pretext to implant microchips in billions of people and monitor their movements.
Biden continues his gaffes.
The supposed political neutral former lead prosecutor on Robert Mueller’s special counsel team Andrew Weissmann hosts a Biden fund-raiser. A gift to Trump’s campaign accusation of the “deep state” for Biden.
Then Biden does his best to alienate his black vote.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52773555
“Charlamagne urged Mr Biden to return for an additional interview, saying he had more questions.
“If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black,” Mr Biden responded.
Charlamagne said: “It don’t have nothing to do with Trump. It has to do with the fact that I want something for my community.”
“Take a look at my record, man!” Biden said, throwing his hands in the air, seconds before concluding the interview.”Related
The UK government sold gilts with a negative yield for the first time in its history on 19 May, meaning investors paid for the privilege of borrowing from the UK government. The three-year bond, which matures in 2023, raised £3.75bn, and offers a yield of -0.003%.
How do individual visionaries describe themselves?
“Entrepreneur, Futurist, and Creative Problem Solver”
“Healing, Liberation, and Empowerment Coach, Multidisciplinary Systems Thinker, Creative Strategist, and Social Innovator”
“Behavioral Specialist and Business Coach”
“Author, Speaker, Filmmaker, Forbes Contributor, TEDx Speaker, and Technology Futurist featured on CNN”
“Expert in Experiential Design, Immersive Media, and Interactive Technology”
“Senior Director of Innovation, Design and Entrepreneurship at Southwest Airlines”
Yup, not one bus-driver among them – all very elitist and new ageist
Arundhati Roy and Naomi Klein help launch a Global Green New Deal project to foster internationalism and visualize possibilities for a new and better world for people and the planet.
One in five Japanese companies are worried they may not have sufficient capital if the coronavirus crisis persists, a Reuters poll showed on Thursday, underscoring how even some of the world’s biggest cash-hoarding firms are bracing for prolonged pain.
One in five Japanese companies are worried they may not have sufficient capital if the coronavirus crisis persists, a Reuters poll showed on Thursday, underscoring how even some of the world’s biggest cash-hoarding firms are bracing for prolonged pain. In Japan, listed firms held cash and savings totalling a near record $2.47 trillion (2 trillion pounds) on their balance sheets at end-December, central bank data shows, with their cash-to-sales ratio exceeding their peers in other advanced nations.
And from RobertS diligent Grist, we have this report again from the right-wing.
https://blog.acton.org/archives/115897-marx-vs-the-universal-basic-income.html
Ive Marx, an economist and sociology professor at the University of Antwerp, tested the effects of introducing a universal basic income in the Netherlands. Their model assumed that the government would give every adult under the age of 65 a monthly check of €700 ($760 U.S.) and €165 a month to minors. The program’s €94 million price tag would have to be paid for with a combination of tax increases and service reductions.
Marx said a UBI would reduce income inequality, but it would increase poverty by 3%.Marx concluded a UBI “is massively inefficient if one cares about the least well-off in society.”
A rare media sceptical story on the UBI,
If universal basic income is such a good idea, why has nobody implemented it before now?
The problem is that, despite its superficial attractions, there are major flaws in all the models for UBI that have been put forward. Setting UBI too low would increase poverty, while setting it high enough for all would involve eye-watering levels of taxation…another reason why UBI should be opposed, and that is because it offends the basic belief that work is good for people. There is a long Scottish tradition that work is fulfilling, gives purpose to life, and is a reward in itself …Workplaces are not simply locations housing wage slaves: they are environments where we interact with other human beings, socialise, and feel that our efforts are of value.
Not so sure about wage-slavery being admirable and to be expected from Conservative politician but yes, work is both social and socialiable. Often our closest friends aren’t our neighbours but our job colleagues.
Norma McCorvey, most notable for being the plaintiff known as Jane Roe in the 1973 landmark supreme court case Roe v Wade that led to abortion becoming legal in the United States, made a stunning admission just before her death in 2017. Her role as an anti-abortion advocate was largely funded by ultra-conservative groups.
“I took their money and they’d put me out in front of the cameras and tell me what to say. That’s what I’d say,” she said. “I did it well too, I am a good actress.”
